A telemarketing strategy for insurance agencies that is effective and efficient is a key component of a successful lead generation program. To ensure that insurance agency leads are always in high profile, there are many important components to consider. Agents should create buyer personas and targeted prospect lists. They also need to use telemarketing (appointment-setting) scripts. Let’s look at an insurance agency lead generation program from the appointment setting perspective.
Your insurance agency might be targeting trucking as a niche. It may have a high close ratio but not enough prospects to increase its revenues. You might think of your trucking agency as a baseball team. However, you don’t have enough at-bats to grow your business. A targeted appointment setting campaign is one way to increase your pipeline activity. You can use eMarketing or appointment setting calls, or, if your budget is not sufficient, just the former. These are the building blocks of your lead generation campaign for transportation insurance.
- Buyer Persona: A brief description of the person who is able and willing to buy your solution.
- Prospect Scorecard: To quantify your approach to prospecting or building pipelines, create a Prospect Scorecard.
- Targeted prospect and email lists: After your agency has identified your target market, it is time to create a quality prospect list. This is sometimes called a suspect list.
- Telemarketing script with your value proposition, top 3 differentiators and a compelling telemarketing script Your value proposition should be clear, concise, and compelling.
- Professional Appointment Settingter: I did not refer to them as a Telemarketer. They must be credible, professional, and knowledgeable about the insurance industry.
Buyer Persona
Let’s start with the Buyer Persona. A Buyer Persona can be described in one to two paragraphs as a description of your ideal customers. An example of a trucking insurance agency buyer persona is Mike Jones, who is the owner or CEO a trucking company with between 10 and 150 horsepower units. This position has been held for at least three years. He is looking for an insurance agency that specializes in transportation insurance, and can provide both expert guidance and coverages. Although he is not quick to make decisions, he will consider a new agency that offers deep expertise and affordable pricing. Although he can make the purchase decision, he may want to validate it with his team. The sale will likely move forward once he has made the decision.
As each industry and buyer has different key attributes, you should create Buyer Personas. To determine, measure, and qualify prospective buyers by target industry, you can use a Prospect Scorecard if you are unsure about the key attributes.
Prospect Scorecard and Targeted Prospect List
The Prospect Scorecard is a tool that can help you determine five to ten of the most desirable attributes of your most valuable prospects and quantify them to help you determine the quality of your agency’s pipeline. This can help you to make sure that you’re contacting the right suspects and optimize your appointment setting campaign. Targeted suspects will result in more prospects and ultimately, more prospects who close.
Once you have identified the ideal prospect attributes by target industry, such as type of business and revenues, employees, title and geography, your agents can then create a complete, current suspect list. Focus on one or two titles if you are targeting small businesses (Owners, CEOs, Presidents). Call high and far if you’re targeting large companies, since the decision-making process can be confusing and distributed. Campaign results will be dramatically improved if you have a current, quality list with ex-dates where possible. If you plan to augment your appointment setting using insurance agency eMarketing you will need quality emails. You must also follow all opt-in/opt out and Can-Spam regulations.
Insurance Agency Telemarketing Script
After the list has been assembled, it is time to create a compelling script. Below is a very basic example:
Mary Smith, XYZ Trucking Agency is calling you. Trucking companies are our only clients. We help them insure their fleets and offer creative solutions to maximize coverage and reduce premiums. We take care of all your renewals and administration. We have over 60 years experience in trucking insurance and know how to make sure you succeed. You can get a second opinion on your biggest cost center in just a few minutes. Do you have 10 minutes to meet one of our trucking agents or do you need a quick meeting?
This simple example shows that industry jargon is a good way to communicate expertise. Your top three differentiators should be included in your telemarketing script. Effective appointment setting campaigns can help companies identify potential change. Maybe their service is poor, they have had a difficult renewal, or they are looking to improve their operations. Timing is everything. Continuously casting a wide net will increase the chances that your producers are at the right place at right time. This can be viewed from a metric perspective. Your appointment setter works 20 hours per week and dials the phone 25 times per hour. That’s 500 calls per week. This is approximately 24,000 calls per annum. Your targeted prospect list contains 1,500 companies with three contacts, which means that each contact will be reached approximately 6 times per annum. They will not reach them six times (voice mails, meetings, out of the office, etc.). They are likely to reach them at most once, giving you the opportunity to share your unique value proposition with thousands of prospects.
Professional Appointment Settingter – Inhouse Vs. Outsource
It is more difficult than most agents realize to find, train and manage an effective appointment setter. An agency may only be able to hire one appointment settingter and still be successful. This is similar to believing that every producer will succeed. It is more likely that only one out of three appointed setters will succeed. This is due to the infrastructure and support systems used, as well as the supervision that was provided for the telemarketing campaign of the insurance agency. Agents will have to manage, train and measure each appointment setter and campaign. To optimize appointment setting campaigns, the agency must also create and refine their call script and document a lead handling procedure for both producers and appointment setters. Many agencies may not have the resources or expertise to complete the above tasks.
Long-term appointment setting is best. Campaigns will usually record the best results when they are accompanied by professional insurance agency eMarketing or a branded fulfillment program. Producers should use a consistent and simple qualification process, such as the Prospect Scorecard.
