Why Isn’t Your Agency Quoting Personal Lines Over the Phone?

If you’re like most agencies in America, you are worried about the growing demands on your agency. Technology is swirling all around you but it’s expensive and most of you fear staff mutiny by disrupting their routine. Customers routinely and increasingly care more about price than your service and the big mega-national brands are spending over $1 billion dollars annually on marketing. So how does David compete when facing Goliath?

Well, we focus on what we can control and we devise a better way to do more with less. In my travels to visit with agents from coast to coast, I have to say I remain very frustrated with our industry. What I’m saying is I don’t think we are doing ourselves ANY favors. We complain that customers only care about price, yet we take an app and email them a rate and expect the customer to value us? They are valuing that you found the cheapest rate for them. You gave them no reason to value your agency.

In today’s growing and busy world we aren’t the easiest industry to deal with. We are open when our clients are at work and some of you even close at lunch. Thank you for being even more inconvenient. We don’t invest in technology to help customers when we aren’t open, and even worse we fear technology may make us work past 5pm. If you really want to grow your business, you are routinely working past 5pm.

For many of you, your processes make it about price during the sale. When you just email a quote, you are selling on price. How are you going to sell them on your service? Expect re-writes and lower retention—we gave them no other reason. And by no means can you give us the excuse that it was a shopper or web lead. They are still people in your community and you must find better ways to serve them. You can’t hope for referrals every month. If you want to grow, you have to learn how to serve your markets with the best processes available.

For 2017, I have committed to transforming this industry by pulling together a quote on the phone movement. Yes, quoting personal lines on the telephone. When introducing this through the first quarter of the year, I think most agents would have rather done a book roll. However, I’m not crazy and this is a reality. It can be done and I’m going to tell you how and why.

We have to quote on the phone. In my mind there is simply no other way to survive. Now I will strongly also advocate for the 80/20 rule—20% of the time you won’t be able to (these are the larger accounts). However, 80% of the time you have to go for it. Why? Do you know what it takes to generate a lead today? Even a referral? It’s a lot and it’s expensive. If most agencies don’t see profit until year two-plus, why are we making our process so difficult? It’s because we fear doing things differently and being uncomfortable.

In order to quote on the phone, we recommend a tiered approach to get comfortable with it. The first order of business is to divorce yourself from the quote sheet. Instead, put your headset on (if your agency doesn’t have headsets, stop reading this and hop on Amazon and get them) and type the information right into your rater. I never understood why we took a quote sheet to type it into the rater after. Seems inefficient to me. Once you break up with the quote sheet you should be able to quote monoline auto (or auto with renters and/or condo) and re-markets on the phone.

Now where do we get pushback on this? Well we believe the caller would not like to spend time with us on the phone (Untrue. If they know we will solve their problem, they are willing to wait; especially if you are carrying on a conversation.), and we would rather email them pricing and hope for the best. Now, put your business hat on. If I have a caller and I’m taking up 20-30 or even 40 minutes of their time, I’m stopping them from calling anyone else and I’m able to ask for the business right on the phone. Yes, that is accurate. So explain to me why getting off the phone is a better sales strategy? It’s just not, but we have to train and coach ourselves out of our comfort zone for the 80% of the calls we can quote on the phone.

Next for home, start by getting your RCE and tell the customer what you are doing! What an awesome time to explain RCE. Then pull up Zillow and confirm the information. Heck, you can even copy and paste it from Zillow to your rater. Now, agency owners, in order for this to really work you should state to your team where you want them to place business. When they see that carrier come up as an option they can bridge to that market. You don’t have to put your lead with the cheapest; you have to put them with whom you feel is the best. Also remember, before you bridge, you can get commitment on the rater rate. Get a yes and then finalize the details.

Here is the best news. You can stop emailing quotes with this process and hope they buy because of your great email. You can ask for the sale and get it done ASAP. Now when we launch this in an agency, it’s a six-month transformation. But agencies start to see 20-40% increase in closing ratio. Ask yourself “Do I need more leads or a better process?”