Selling Insurance In an increasingly remote age

Working remotely can enhance your productivity and add scale to your business, it can save you time driving across town to meet a prospect or allow you to close a sale when travelling. Working remotely can even open up a new kind of client that prefers to interact digitally and non-face to face.

Sometimes we choose to work remotely out of convenience and sometimes we are forced to work remotely out of necessity (our current COVID-19 pandemic as case in point). For many independent advisors working from home and doing all client meetings externally or at the client's house is normal. No matter what kind of advisor you are or why you are working remotely we have some ideas and strategies to help you increase sales, save time and engage your clients for when you can't meet with them or they can't meet with you directly.

Digital Client Onboarding

Advisors who want to generate new prospects and leads (even when not actively networking or meeting with clients) need a way to connect with prospects digitally and establish why they are buying insurance to provide a recommendation. LIMRA says that over 85% of people will use the internet in some way when making an insurance purchase! So having a way for clients to get education and information on the products you offer is a must.

At LDA we recognize this need, so we built an embedded version of LDA so that you can add to your website. This not only allows you to capture prospects information who are shopping the market for life insurance but it also helps you establish how much they need and why they are making the purchase (their purpose). Once we know these items we automate an engaging digital report that reflects their need and timeline, complete with a "buy it now" option so that your clients can start the sales process.

Because we're not meeting with these clients directly we also need a way to gauge their interest so we heatmap the report and provide you analytics on how long they viewed the report and what their interests are, allowing you to follow up with the right prospects and close more deals. If your an existing subscriber you can have this as an add on to your account or contact us on LiveChat on the right for more information or to see a demo!

Case Sharing

A digital way to connect with your clients can save you a trip across town or allow you to communicate your client's insurance options from a distance or even a different time zone if you're on vacation or at a conference. Unlike traditional sharing methods like sending a PowerPoint over email using a shared link lets you know what happens after you hit send. We notify you when the client views the report and give you the opportunity to follow up at the perfect time.

With case sharing you can add annotations, expiration dates, visitor gates and even have a way to comment securely back and forth with your client (keeping a record of your communication with your case for compliance)

Screen Sharing

A shared case is great because it allows the prospect to go through your report on their own time, but sometimes you might want to walk them through your report yourself and highlight certain aspects of products, think about using a screen sharing program to screencast with your client. You can make changes on the fly and use the interactive features to highlight dividend changes or tackle objections. You're the driver so you can talk your clients through the narrative or tackle any objections.

If all goes well you can transition to an Eapp. If you're looking for the best screen sharing tool Zapier put together a great roundup  article that reviews a few of the top screen sharing applications. At LDA we use GoToMeeting and webinar but there are plenty of free options including tools like uber conference depending on how many people you need to host and what phone options you need.

Marketing Campaign

Another great way to generate leads digitally is to start a marketing strategy and share it over social or email campaigns. This kind of strategy lends itself well to a concept that applies to a broad but targeted audience. The idea is we create a mailer or social post that has information on the concept, we pair it with a case study and link to a shared case so that we know when people are interested in the concept they can take a deeper dive into the cost and ROI. Pairing all the benefits of a shared link with an email campaign makes this a powerful way to connect with your clients digitally and surface opportunities that may not have been possible reaching out to each client individually. We covered this in our November 2018 webinar on shared links (worth a watch if you are looking for ways to extend your reach without meeting with your clients directly.

Video Sales Letter

If you had a room packed with prospective clients and prospects what message would you share with them? What if there was a major event that prevented you from having the opportunity to share your information or maybe you just simply don't have the venue or means to host a meeting like this. This does not have to be a barrier, advisors can leverage technology to record and share their strategies and use google, Facebook and youtube to help connect those ideas to your ideal customers. At LDA we use ScreenFlow for our videos and webinars but you can even use free tools like iMovie, QuickTime or even the video camera from your laptop or phone.

I was recently supposed to speak at the Advocis financial planning summit in Vancouver however due to COVID-19 the conference was cancelled. Instead of missing the opportunity to share my message, I recorded it from my Air-B&B and shared it over social media to all of the attendees at the conference helping me stand out from the other presenters who missed the opportunity altogether.

Watch my presentation are you an advisor or a tech company

You can do the same with an insurance strategy or concept. Make the message specific to a group, If you wanted to give a presentation to a group of doctors or dentists with a private corp but don't have the ability to host that kind of event, record what you would share and use social media and SEO to help you share your message with the right audience.

E-Apps

Electronic Applications are a huge improvement over traditional paper apps, they reduce errors, they get processed faster and they speed up the time to coverage by severely limiting the turnaround time of NIGO (not in good order) submissions. E-Apps are critical in a remote work setting as it allows us to submit business from anywhere. If you're using LDA and presenting digitally think of including a link to the e-app in the product description so you can transition seamlessly! We're working with select carriers to integrate thee eapp process and eliminate re-entering client information so stay tuned for some exciting updates here! For more strategies on working with e-apps check out our blog streamline your sales process with e-apps!

SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization)

SEM and SEO are digital marketing techniques that focus on driving fresh clientele to your website. If done properly, individuals who are looking for life insurance will be driven to your website. The hope is that your website will have the ideal content and call-to-actions to convert this website traffic into qualified leads. Once you have a qualified lead, having a rigorous follow-up process is essential to turn leads into sales – a digitally focused sales process helps as well!

SEM focuses on using platforms such as Google AdWords to generate traffic to you site. Digital Ads are created focusing on copy writing, demographic selection and location marketing to fine-tune the type of individual you are trying to attract. When conducting a Google search, these Ads usually appear in the first and last 4 positions.

SEO is based on how Google ranks your site organically – Google reviews your site and ranks how relevant it is to a persons search query. SEO results are primarily driven by the content created for your website, and how your website is structured. The more authoritative your site, the higher you rank within Google’s algorithms. SEO results are the first 10 positions after any Ads you see. This strategy can take years to see results, but the eventual reward can be great!

One of our most productive LDA advisors Jordan from NorthWise financial knows the more qualified leads he can present insurance, to the more sales opportunities he will have. Jordan specializes in SEM & SEO marketing, to drive people to his LDA reports and you can too, Instead of reinventing the wheel, feel free to reach out to www.northwise.ca if you’d like a no-obligation consultation for your digital marketing needs.

Do's and Don't of remote sales

Do's

1. have a CTA (call to action)

It's important to make sure you ask for the next step. Sometimes in remote sales, there are no clear next steps so make sure you tell your clients and prospects what to do next once you send them your information.

2. Ensure your communication is on point, a lot of communication is non-verbal so you will have to compensate to overcome this barrier. Pay extra attention to your written tone and remember when communicating digitally PUNCTUATION & CAPITALIZATION SAYS A LOT about the message you're delivering. Watch your caps lock and how you emphasize your message.
3. Do get creative and test different strategies, in digital marketing this is called A/B testing it lets you try the same message to segmented users to see what is more effective. Make sure you test and refine your strategy for maximum effectiveness.

Don'ts

1. Don't be afraid to follow up, the anonymity of the internet and non-face to face communication makes it easy for prospects and tire kickers to ignore you. Don't be afraid to follow up more aggressively with a digital lead the worst they can say is no. 80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls after the meeting. 44% of sales reps give up after 1 follow-up.
2. Don't expect a silver bullet. Even though selling digitally is a great way to increase sales and scale your business it is not going to have the same conversion rate as your traditional selling methods. A great way to think about this, how many times have you gone to the grocery store and put all the items in your cart but at the last minute decided to leave without getting a thing (maybe never). However this happens every day online, you may have even done it yourself a few times. My point is that some of these strategies require a different outlook on conversion rates and volume needed so don't give up if your first attempts don't yield results immediately.
3. Don't forget to measure, like any effective sales organization measuring results is critical. Keep track of how leads generated and what concepts or campaigns were effective. LDA has a monthly report that can help you track your productivity of yourself or your team to make sure you identify successful trends and cull strategies that aren't working.

Conclusion

Whether you are working remotely by choice or being forced to be events out of your control, having the tools in place can greatly impact the success of your business. Please get in touch with us for help in leveraging any of these digital strategies and subscribe to our newsletter for more business-building ideas.