How to Turn One-Sale Clients Into Multi-Sale Clients

Many of you may have made a New Year’s resolution to generate more leads for insurance. That’s certainly a good goal to have, but if you have a good-sized caseload already, it may be misguided.

I’ve been in this business for a long time, and I’ve had to honor to speak with a lot of savvy insurance agents who tell me the same thing: You get a better value of your time spending it on retaining current clients rather than trying recruit new prospects.

We’ve written plenty about the importance of attracting new clients and how you can do it. If the size of your caseload isn’t generating enough revenue to support your business, you need more clients. Plain and simple. But you can’t increase your revenues if existing clients take their business elsewhere.

The best way agents can protect their revenue is by making sure their current clients become permanent clients.

But just as with generating leads and turning prospects into clients, keeping your clients on board requires strategy and a sufficient effort to execute it.

So here are three ways you can continue generating rock solid profits from your current caseload.

1. Position your insurance policies as the best remedy for their stated needs. Remember when you sold a client his first policy? Why did he buy it? Why did he choose you? Keep those reasons in mind in your correspondence with clients. Remind them not just of how your policies are serving their needs but also how they are protecting them.

Protecting them from what, you ask? Well, if they have a permanent life insurance, you are protecting them from an unsteady stock market and preserving their financial prosperity. Or you can remind them in concrete financial terms how their loved ones are protected in the event of an unforeseen tragedy.

2. Give your clients the biggest promise possible you can deliver good on… and then deliver it. Ask yourself, what distinguishes you from your competitors? What do you give your clients that nobody else does? Is it the best customer service (not just in your opinion but in your clients’ opinion)? It is the most superior product?

You need to stay on top of your promise by making sure that what you promise is true and that you are regularly delivering on it.

3. Reward customers for coming back. We all remember (or at least try to remember) important anniversaries in our lives. You reward your kids for each birthday and you celebrate your wedding anniversary with your spouse. Why don’t you congratulate and thank your clients on the anniversary that came aboard? I doubt they would remember the day they bought a new insurance policy, so they’d at least be surprised to receive a card or e-mail from you. Such correspondence allows you to thank them as well as inform them about a new product.

John McCarthy
Managing Editor, Leads4Insurance.com