In the “good old days,” cross-selling meant asking your clients for additional business. Legendary State Farm agent and author Cosmo Conte proved this as an effective means of building an agency's book.

Although this can still work, acknowledging the value of cross-selling or account rounding, today's consumer needs to be treated differently. Rather than you asking them, they need to be positioned to ask you.

Even on the producer side, there's an unspoken fear that the client might think them too pushy. That fear means producers will settle for what they have rather than going for more—even though cross-selling is in the best interests of your client.

How do we cross-sell in today's market? The answer is a consistent policy of proactive educational nurturing. Through a campaign of education and information, agents position themselves to enjoy the benefits of “reactive cross-selling.”

This means focusing on content and motivation by instituting campaigns for email, electronic newsletters, seminars, community involvement and social media. These campaigns must be designed to constantly provide information in a non-threatening, non-selling way to our clients—helping them through a support and nurture system. You must manage your database of contact points and maintain a clean database of viable prospects that could also benefit from these campaigns.

E-mail: E-mail is great for bulletins—sent when you become aware of critical information or deadlines that need to be immediately brought to the attention of clients and prospects. Don't attach a document to the e-mail; mount it to your website and provide a link to it in your e-mail. That drives more traffic to your website where clients and prospects might spend additional time.

Use variable, randomized signatures, including your basic contact points. Have a list of 10 specific signatures with different product or service-focused messages, then set up your email system to randomly pull signatures for every email sent from your office.

Newsletters: Focus on the content, frequency and continuity. Don't attempt one every month, unless you have a passionate employee who can drive and manage the content.

Content must be informative and valuable to the recipient. It may take a few newsletters, and an analysis of your open and click-through rates, to find the categories that mean the most to your audience.

Seminars: Bringing clients and prospects together in a collegial atmosphere to gain information on critically important topics is a unique and extremely positive method of engagement. Set up tables around the room like a small tradeshow with information on the various products and services you offer to this particular audience.

Community involvement: Participation in charitable activities in your area lets you engage with your prospects and clients.

Social media: Use it to engage, nurture, inform and educate. The selling happens and is reactive when people begin to trust you. Own your space and build your connections or friends. When someone replies to anything you post with a comment or a question, acknowledge them. Some organizations have dedicated employees to manage their cyber space identity and brand.

Best Interests at Heart

Agencies should cross-sell for two reasons. First, the investment already has been made in onboarding the client. The costs of prospecting, relationship development and first sale have already incurred. The true profit lies in expanding that relationship to include additional lines of coverage. Carrier commissions are the same, so earning the same commission with less expense becomes higher profitability.

Secondly, the more policies a client has with your agency, the higher the rate of retention—unless you really mess up on the service side of the relationship.

Special Reports /

Not Your Father's Cross-Selling

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