Producers Must Be Picture Perfect To Convince Clients To Switch Agencies
With the commercial lines market stabilizing for the first time in nearly four years, insurance carriers are starting to revive their competitive spirit and price increases have eased.
For the final quarter of 2003, the Washington-based Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers reported that premiums for one-third of all commercial property-casualty accounts held steady or dropped.
Even commercial p-c premium increases have largely been only in the one-to-10 percent range. Major brokers are increasingly reporting flat renewals, if not moderate decreases under the proper circumstances.
As selling opportunities increase for commercial agents and brokers, they will be facing a chronic occupational hazardthat is, the extremely high client retention rate enjoyed by the people against whom producers compete for business.
I dont have to tell you how tough it can be to wrest an account from an entrenched incumbent. Most of the time, price is not the issue. Rather, it takes clear-cut, powerful differentiation based on how agents and brokers provide service.
Therein lay the challenge. Indeed, this is a classic problem that traditional selling does not solve.
When youre talking to a prospect that already has a commercial agent or broker, you cant go on the offensive against your rival. Even if you do offer superior service, you say so directly at your own peril.
Almost always, a direct attack will cause your prospect to push back. He or she will be defensive for having hired the incumbent. If you want to make people feel defensive, its easy. Just start questioning the decisions they have made.
So the problem is: How do you get your prospect to see that he or she is being underserved by the incumbent without your having to say anything bad about the incumbent?
Moreover, how do you get your prospect to see that youre better without appearing to be bragging, and thus inviting skepticism?
Add to this problem an additional complication.
Traditional selling assumes your prospects know where their pain is, and that they already see how they are being underserved. My belief is that most of them dont.
Many, if not most commercial insurance customers have lowered their expectations to the level of service they are currently receiving. If they had any pain about their service, they have pushed it to the backs of their minds. It lies dormant.
Therefore, until you activate that pain by showing your prospects the ideal service they could be receiving, you have nothing to sell them.
Its like a guy who thinks clothes are clothes and is happy buying off the rack at some discount store. Unless you first motivate him to upgrade his wardrobe, you dont have a chance of luring him into Neiman Marcus.
Is it possible to solve this dilemma? Can you phrase a question that:
Blames the incumbent without your criticizing the incumbent?
Gets your prospect to feel the pain of being underserved?
Positions you as the one to remove that pain?
Yes, you can. Its called a "picture perfect" question. Heres an example:
"Im curious. When your agent comes out two months before renewal and sits down with you to develop a service timeline so you will have a systematic way to find and get rid of your exposures, and to watch your claims and payouts for audit purposes, are you comfortable with how that process works?"
As constructed, your "picture perfect" question overcame all three of the objectives you were hard-pressed to achieve:
First, you did bring up the incumbent and draw attention to a lack of service. However, you did not criticize or attack the incumbent. You voiced your assumption that the incumbent was already doing a good job.
Second, you said something that created pain on the part of your prospect–the realization that he or she is not currently getting the service you mentioned. You gave yourself something to sell.
Third, because you were the one asking the question, you implied to your prospect that you already provide this service. Instead of boasting, you communicated the point matter-of-factly.
Challengers, start your engines!
With the market for commercial lines insurance becoming more competitive, there will be an increase in challenger-incumbent selling situations in the months ahead.
An agent and brokers best strategy as a challenger will be to go into sales calls knowing their competitive advantages over the incumbent. What are the incumbents areas of service weakness that match up against your own service strengths?
When youve done this research and youve come up with concrete examples that demonstrate the contrast, you can use the "picture perfect" technique to your advantage.
Randy Schwantz is president and CEO of The Wedge Group, a sales training and consulting firm headquartered near Dallas, Texas. A complete discussion of "picture perfect" and other sales call techniques is available in his book, "The Wedge: How to Stop Selling and Start Winning," published by The National Underwriter Company, which is the parent company of this magazine.
Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, February 27, 2004. Copyright 2004 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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