Building Stronger Customer Relationships
One of the easiest and most effective ways to grow your customer base is through existing clients. What better advertising than loyal, happy, long-term clients giving you a “two thumbs up” endorsement!
Use these tips below as a guide to success:
- Be Authentic – people usually know when they are being given “the treatment” and they also recognize when someone genuinely has their best interests in mind. Be upfront and honest, it pays tremendous dividends.
- Don’t Rush – you are building for a long-term relationship, and that takes time to earn your customer’s trust. Let your actions over a period of time speak for your intentions.
- Build a Partnership Relationship – get to know your customer and what they need or what their goals are long term. By understanding their needs and goals, you can then tailor your efforts to “assisting” them meet those goals. Making the transition from “just another” company to being perceived as someone with a personal investment with them is HUGE!
- Acknowledge Loyalty – if your business permits loyalty programs, discounts, special offers, then get moving! If not, then identify a means of recognizing their loyalty by hosting special events or sending cards of appreciation on anniversaries, birthdays and holidays. If you’re sending a card, at a minimum, personally sign your name…. nothing is worse than a personalized “stamped” signature!
By thinking about how you would like to be treated if you were in the customer’s place, you will be well on your way to building a strong customer following, who will be one of your most effective marketing tools!
Why Aren’t You Closing On Leads?
Increase Sales
Think about your selling style. Do you overwhelm the prospect with your company’s credentials, your credentials, never take a breath between questions or truly listen to the answers? One of the hardest things to learn in sales is the power of silence! How many times has someone “talked” a customer out of sale…. In my experience, far too many! Review these thoughts and see if they help your close ratios.
- Provide Value – don’t focus the discussion on the “features”, yes they are important, but spend more time discussing why your services add value, meet a specific need of the client and benefit them by doing business with you.
- Listen to Your Lead – ask a question and “really listen” to their response before you start formulating your response in anticipation of what you “think” the customer is going to say, they may surprise you! We have only ONE mouth and TWO ears for a reason…. Use them accordingly.
- Stop Talking About Yourself – the lead is not really interested that you are a top producer, #1 in your Division, or in the President’s club. They want to know what you can do for them and help meet their needs in the most cost effective means. Focus on them; people like to hear their name and talk about themselves, you’ll learn a lot about them if you give them a chance.
- Review Your Lead Providers – if you buy online leads, review the close ratios by lead provider on regularly scheduled intervals. Look at bounce percentages, watch for stale lists and see who is giving you the higher ROI.
- Mine Your Database – you’ve invested time, money and resources to generate leads, so don’t give up on them too early. Take a long term approach to earning their business. Using a drip email campaign program like AgencyIQ will keep you in front of the lead on a consistent, long term basis. Using AgencyIQ’s powerful, customizable drip email system is an automated, cost effective tool that will help you improve your ROI and conversion ratios on those valuable leads.
Give AgencyIQ a call and let us help you get the most out of your leads and increase your close ratios!
Automated Reminders Are Here!
We are excited to introduce new features with reminders that we think you’ll find pretty useful. Not only have we improved the interface for creating and managing reminders, but we’ve added the ability to schedule reminders automatically as a part of your workflow configuration for your agency.
Changes Within Reminders
Each reminder now contains a reminder type, allowing you to classify your reminders into configurable categories. The reminder type contains defaults of “call”, “appointment”, and “to do”, but you can easily customize your reminder types to add to this list. Simply visit the Lists tab under “Agency Settings, and select the “Agency-wide Lists” section. There you will see a list for reminder types and you can create your own types.
By selecting a type on your reminders, you can easily sift thru your reminders on the dashboard by using the new “type” selector at the top of the Reminders tab. Once you begin using reminder types, this drop-down will appear, allowing you to narrow the reminders listed to those of a given type. Want to see all your reminders for calls? It’s a snap.
Select a Reminder Type to narrow the list of reminders displayed
Also note that there is a new “Daily” option for listing all your appointments and reminders for a given day chronologically. This is useful if you’re working your call list for today, for example.
Automating Reminders
You can now set up new workflow actions that automatically set reminders, just as you can trigger autoresponders. Add the reminder in the action section of your workflow rule by selecting reminder from the Add Action drop-down, in the bottom left-hand corder of the actions section. You can add one or several reminders to suit your needs.
If you’re triggering actions based on a status change, remember that you may have other reminders set based on other workflow rules that had previously fired. You might want to start your actions off by issuing the action to cancel previously scheduled reminders which will, in essence, wipe the slate clean. Then you can add one or more reminders for the new status.
Don't forget to cancel previously scheduled reminders
We think you’ll find the improvements to reminders an enhancement to your workflow. Let us know what you think!
Time Management Tips
February is National Time Management Month. Let’s review some helpful tips to keep you on time and less stressed!
- Plan & Organize – without a plan, you will experience an 80% failure rate. Time spent organizing is time well spent. It doesn’t matter how you organize, just organize in a way that works for you.
- Set Goals & Prioritize – the first step is to decide what you want to achieve. Keep the goals achievable, with a little bit of stretch. Next, prioritize! Use the 80-20 rule from our old friend Mr. Pareto… 80% of the reward or achievement comes from 20% of the effort. Spend time in the areas that offer the greatest return on effort.
- To Do or Not to Do – that is the question! Combine a list of action items with your calendar. You can see your progress and make adjustments as needed. Knowing where you are is half the battle most days.
- Delegate – No is not a four letter word! Some tasks are just not worth your time, but others on your staff could be a perfect fit for activities that are a drain on your schedule, but still need to be handled.
- Don’t schedule 100% of Your Day – Interruptions are going to happen… so build time into your schedule to accommodate them! Not only will this lessen your stress level when emergencies happen, but it will lessen the number of “fires” you have to deal with on a daily basis.
- Know Your Prime Time – we all have biological a “prime time” when we are running on all cylinders. Knowing if you’re a morning person, afternoon guru or night owl, you can try to schedule your priority tasks for those times.
- Reward Yourself – break your day into small blocks and give yourself a small reward for achieving a goal. Building small successes as you move through the day will give you both emotional and physical boosts. All work and no play makes for a long day!!!!
Disaster Prevention on a Budget
We’ve discussed risk management in previous blogs, and the importance of identifying, quantifying and understanding business risks. But, what are some simple, inexpensive ways a small business can prevent disaster from upending their business? Review some of the tips below and see if they fit your budget and apply to your business!
- Develop multiple revenue sources – Never rely on one customer, industry or client to be your only revenue stream. Diversity will help insulate you if you lose a high value customer. You should plan on losing at least 10% of your customer base annually, not necessarily through your fault, it’s just the natural flow of business.
- Document It! – The first rule of business is ‘get it in writing”. What may have been understood in a verbal conversation can easily lead to major misunderstandings at a later date….that’s why the court house is full of lawyers. A well defined and thorough written document can save hurt feelings, money and clients!
- Rainy Day Money – You never know when your revenue stream will be interrupted or for how long. Fire, flood, natural disasters or even economic uncertainty can bring business to a sudden stop. Having a reserve fund to see you through slow months or more trying situations can save your business until your cash flow returns to normal.
- Back Up, Back Up, Back Up…. In case you are one of those folks who has never experienced their computer hard drive crashing….YOU WILL BE, it’s just a matter of time. There are so many easy, automatic ways to back up your business data, especially from PC’s and laptops available today. I suggest you consider an online backup system that is cloud based. They are numerous and inexpensive, and are accessible 24/7, allowing you to recover vital data to keep your business moving if those geek gremlins attack.
- Have a Plan – sounds easy, and it really is. Take a few minutes and think about some of the vital activities you, your staff and your business perform routinely. Write them down, make copies, distribute and familiarize key employees with those processes. Then, when someone is out for a day or week or month, a co-worker will know how to turn on the copier, write an invoice or turn on the coffee maker!
Email Open Notification
Many have asked for it, and now we’ve delivered. Introducing Email Open Notification!
Email Open Notification is a way to be notified (passively or actively) when an email that you’ve sent to a prospect was opened in their email client. We’ve even extended notifications in AgencyIQ to be able to alert you on your cell phone via SMS text message when a prospect opens your email message, so that you can place a call right then and there and reach them when your pitch is top of mind.
First, a note of caution: We cannot accurately tell you if the prospect you emailed actually read your message. We also cannot tell you if they didn’t. We can’t accurately tell you if your message was marked as spam, or for other reasons was never opened. The technology of email just can’t do that reliably; the protocols that make up the email infrastructure on the Internet just don’t provide it. Any vendor that tells you they can is clouding reality.
On the other hand, if you receive notification that an email you sent was opened, you can be (reasonably) sure that it was actually opened. You see, the way this works is we place a tiny invisible image at the bottom of each email message sent. When the recipient’s email system displays your email message on their screen, their email system will come back to our server to get the invisible image. This image won’t alter the look of your email (it’s transparent and only a single pixel in size). However, when we serve this image up, we can record the open of the email message.
Now, if the email recipient uses a text-only email reader (which doesn’t support images), or has their email client set to not download images automatically, we can’t register the open. So make sure you’re approaching this from the right perspective: how many opens you got, not how many you didn’t.
How do I see opens?
Everywhere in AgencyIQ where a list of sent emails are shown you can see the open status of your email. Just look for the small open envelope.
Notifications Tab under "My Settings"
This indicates that the email message you sent has been opened by the recipient. If you hover your mouse over the envelope, a small pop-up will show you the date and time that the email was opened. If you want even more detail, simply open the message and look at the bottom for the “Open Log”. This will list every time the email was opened. Note, we only register “opens” that are at least 10 minutes apart, since some email clients redraw their screens many times and this would lead to an inflated recording of opens.
How can I be notified immediately when a prospect opens my email?
This comes in two steps. First, you need to set up your notification address. This is an email address that the system will send a notice to when an email you’re particularly interested in is opened.
We’ve revised and simplified the notification setup, on the Notifications tab under “My Settings.”
Check this box to receive notification when the email is opened
We’ve broken out the various types of notifications you can receive, and provided separate settings for each one. You can set the specific email address as well as a window of time where you want to receive these types of notifications. We’ve also provided a checkbox to temporarily disable a particular type of notification, if you’d like.
The idea here is to send the message to your smartphone, via SMS text message. All major cell phone carriers have an email interface that allows you to send an email directly to your phone, which they will convert to a SMS text message and send to you. If you click the little “+” icon below the notification fields, we provide instructions to send SMS text messages to the cell phones of most major US carriers. Make sure your cell phone plan supports text messaging and that you’re aware of the rates your cell phone carrier will charge for sending and receiving text messages before using this feature.
Enter your information here, and use the “test” link to send a test message to make sure everything is working properly.
Once you have the notification address set up for your account, you’ll need to specify that you want to be notified when an email is opened.
When composing an email message (either as an individual email message or as an autoresponder email), you have the ability to check the box “notify me when this email is opened.” Checking this box on an email you send will tell the system to send a message to the notification email address you provided in “My Settings” when this email is first opened. In the case of autoresponders, the notification will be sent to the agent who is currently assigned to the contact that the email was sent to.
Check this box to be notified when an Email is opened
That’s it! We hope you find this great new feature useful!
Staying Relevant As An Agent
Success
Survey results from an online insurance comparison site CoverHound.com indicate that consumers of auto insurance still prefer to deal with local agents versus online or telephone purchases from direct carriers. While direct carriers continue to gain market share, shoppers still prefer that personal connection. That’s great news for agents!
The survey shows that 39% prefer to deal with a local agent, 32% prefer direct contact with carriers and 29% are indifferent. Not surprisingly, 50% of 18-25 year olds preferred a direct carrier association, while only 27% of 41-50 year olds held a similar preference. As an agent, this provides some valuable insights into market demographics and should assist you in defining your marketing strategy. Utilizing online technology should be an important part of you marketing plan. Having a presence online is crucial to reaching a significant percentage of the market, regardless of age, but is essential to reach the younger age demographic. By making contact in an environment clients are comfortable in, you make yourself available to begin the process of developing a lifelong relationship. Reality is, the younger age demographic will probably have less extensive insurance needs early in the relationship, but as they mature, their insurance needs will increase to keep pace with larger homes, more expensive cars, life insurance policies, and health care needs. Branding yourself as a valuable resource that will assist a client with wealth retention and protecting them from loss from young adulthood will create a steady, reliable income stream potential.
The use of online technology by consumers will only continue to grow in the next ten years and beyond. Position yourself NOW to be an active participant with your potential clients online. If you haven’t already done so, take a look at what AgencyIQ can do to assist you with our online program. Our customizable software and drip email marketing campaigns will assist you in growing you business!!
Keys to Delivering GREAT Customer Service
Every company say the “Focus on Customer Excellence”, “Our Customers Are #1”…….. but how effective are they in delivering GREAT customer service? Review the list below for some insights and ideas on how to create a GREAT customer experience:
Know your Customers – Who are your chosen customers? What are their needs and expectations? How well are you meeting those needs
Empower Your Front-line Staff – train your staff to handle customer issues themselves. Allow them to act independently and with flexibility. Nothing kills customer service quicker than “I have to check with my manager”.
Organization/Importance – Customer service must be a priority for Senior Management! Develop an organizational mentality that facilitates a smooth flow to resolve customer issues and places a priority on a positive, successful resolution to customer issues.
Turn Problems into Opportunities – if handled quickly, fairly and effectively, you can turn a customer with a complaint into an advocate for your brand!
Learn from Your Mistakes AND Your Successes – View mistakes by your staff as learning opportunities! Be willing to change procedures or practices based on customer and staff feedback. Review your successes and incorporate those practices and principles into areas that may need improvement.
Anticipate the Future – Technology changes constantly! Don’t fall into the trap of “if it’s not broke don’t fix it”. The business landscape is piled high with the corpses of businesses that failed to recognize and embrace change. Webchat, email, text messaging, Facebook, Twitter are just a few of the high tech avenues to communicate with customers. Don’t let your customers disappear into the technology dimension without you!
Contact AgencyIQ today for a FREE 15 Day Trial and let us help you provide a GREAT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE for your prospective and existing clients!
Staying Relevant in Today’s E-Commerce World
Survey results from an online insurance comparison site CoverHound.com indicate that consumers of auto insurance still prefer to deal with local agents versus online or telephone purchases from direct carriers. While direct carriers continue to gain market share, shoppers still prefer that personal connection. That’s great news for agents!
The survey shows that 39% prefer to deal with a local agent, 32% prefer direct contact with carriers and 29% are indifferent. Not surprisingly, 50% of 18-25 year olds preferred a direct carrier association, while only 27% of 41-50 year olds held a similar preference. As an agent, this provides some valuable insights into market demographics and should assist you in defining your marketing strategy. Utilizing online technology should be an important part of you marketing plan. Having a presence online is crucial to reaching a significant percentage of the market, regardless of age, but is essential to reach the younger age demographic. By making contact in an environment clients are comfortable in, you make yourself available to begin the process of developing a lifelong relationship. Reality is, the younger age demographic will probably have less extensive insurance needs early in the relationship, but as they mature, their insurance needs will increase to keep pace with larger homes, more expensive cars, life insurance policies, and health care needs. Branding yourself as a valuable resource that will assist a client with wealth retention and protecting them from loss from young adulthood will create a steady, reliable income stream potential.
The use of online technology by consumers will only continue to grow in the next ten years and beyond. Position yourself NOW to be an active participant with your potential clients online. If you haven’t already done so, take a look at what AgencyIQ can do to assist you with our online program. Our customizable software and drip email marketing campaigns will assist you in growing you business!!
Updated Reports
Now agents can track their sales and activities easier than ever. We’ve updated two reports, the Lead Source Summary Report and the Lead Source Detail Report, and we’ve added the Agency Activity Report.
Lead Source Summary and Detail Reports
This report shows you how many leads you’ve received from each source during a given date range. In addition to the raw numbers, a graph is also produced that visually compares these different lead sources to each other.
In this update, we added the ability to narrow down leads assigned to individual agents, as well as to show close ratios across these lead sources. By checking the box “Show Breakdown By Class” (circled in red in the screenshot below) and clicking “Refresh,” the report will expand to show Prospect vs. Client (and Cancelled) contacts. We show both the raw numbers as well as the percentage breakdown.
Lead Source Summary Report
As before, if you click on any of the detail numbers inside the report, you’ll be taken to the Lead Source Detail Report, showing you all the contacts that roll up to that number. On this detail report, we’ve expanded the selection criteria to allow you narrow down by Agent(s) and Class, and we’ve added a column to show you the last date that an email was sent to this contact.
Agency Activity Report
If you are an agency owner or agency manager, you’ll have a new report called the “Agency Activity Report” at the bottom of the Reports screen. This report allows you to see the detail of what’s going on in your agency, such as contacts edited, leads received, emails sent, and all other events inside your agency account.
Agency Activity Report
Above the detail in the report you have several options to narrow the events you’re interested in. You can select all agents or a specific agent, whether or not to show agency events or user events, what type of events to show (events related to email, leads, billing, or the agency), and what severity to display (ranging from informational and notices to critical events). This will give a manager a large degree of detail to be able to see what is going on in their agency.
We hope these reports give you more information to help you effectively manage your agency. We’ve got more on the way!
