Cross-Selling Bias Trips Up P-C Agents

One of the primary sales strategies driving the most successful independent agents is to relieve their competition of the burden of their accounts.

The trick is determining how to best apply this concept to cross-selling life, health and employee benefit products and convincing the property-casualty producer to even bother.

In our training experience, we have worked with agencies who regularly derive 25-to-30 percent of their revenue from selling benefits. One very large agency has actually achieved a 50-50 balance between life, health and benefits and p-c.

There are others out there. How did they achieve these results?

There are practical techniques that these successful agencies have in common. However, p-c agents remain non-committal because of the cultural bias that surrounds this subject.

These biases have become part of the culture of the p-c agency and are happily passed on to other generations of producers, account managers and even customer service representatives. Among them are:

No, we wont introduce the benefits experts to our clients. We just went through a tough p-c renewal.

The account is just fine and I dont want to take the chance that well make a mistake on the benefits side and jeopardize the p-c account.

The client is too busy.

The client is fine right now. Dont rock the boat!

Agencies that have successfully expanded their book of business into new lines consistently have certain factors in common.

Step One: The first factor is building the production of non-p-c business into the agencys sales culture.

Producers have heard all the reasons for doing this: growth expectations, balancing the agencys book of business, defensive or retention factors, enhancing the experience and expertise levels of the agencys professional staff at all levels, and so on.

Revenue growth in non-p-c business is not accomplished overnight, but with the application of some practical ideas and discipline, the culture of the agency can be transformed to where the expanded lines are viewed as a vital component to success.

Step Two: The second step for success is the use of a systematic new business process. This systematic process begins with setting growth and retention goals for the agency. The most successful agencies are targeting specific growth objectives not only in terms of new revenue but also in terms of new client names, new lines of business from existing accounts, and contact goals with prospective accounts.

Start from the possible and move gradually to the impossible. The best agencies require that each producer and account manager set up meaningful and measurable written goals.

An example of this practice would be asking how many appointments regarding employee benefits, life, health, etc., can be made in the next 60 days by a producer? Again, start from whats possible and move forward from there.

Step Three: The next step, after the goals are set, is to determine your target prospective clients. Again start from what is possible and use your best judgment. An agent should start with a client he or she has a great relationship with, one the producer feels safe with.

With a success or two (and success could mean that nothing went wrong), the agent will have more confidence in moving forward to the next opportunity.

Right now, independent agents reading this article could probably think of five accounts that could be contacted for the purpose of introducing the benefits expertise of their agency.

Step Four: Next, what is the producer's contact strategy? Should the producer approach the client solo or bring a benefits expert along? Would it be better to mail information, followed-up by a call?

Perhaps the agency or a market could conduct a series of benefits workshops for a variety of clients or prospects? Or maybe the producer should consider a combination of these and other promotional approaches.

Step Five: The next step is execution of the contact strategy. Now calls and appointments have to be made. This is where the breakdown of the process occurs 100 percent of the time! The easy parts are goal setting, targeting and planning your contact.

The Final Step: The last step is measurement. Why measure? Because this is what the most successful agencies do, and besides, the top producers want to know how they are doing.

This doesnt always make the producer feel good, but it offers the opportunity to correct their course and even change behavior and activities on a day-to-day basis.

A p-c agent needs to think of it this way: Is what they are working on right now leading them towards or away from achievement of their sales goals? Right now, while reading this article, is this leading toward or away from achievement of sales goals?

Another feature successful agencies have in common is compensation. Arrangements vary widely, but, when well designed, compensation drives the desired behaviors. We do not want to downplay the importance of compensation. It can be the glue that holds all of the other parts of the sales process together and moves it forward.

As a final note, can you, the reader, set one short-term goal? How many benefits appointments will you arrange within the next 60 days? As you complete this goal, watch what happens as you build momentum in your non-p-c business results.

Tom Redmond is the president of Redmond Group Inc., in Redbank, N.J., an insurance consulting firm. Further information is available at Tom@RedmondGroupInc.com.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, January 21, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.

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