Nine Ways to Get Personal When Selling Business Insurance

By | November 8, 2004

Every business insurance prospect yearns to be treated as an individual. No serious executive, regardless of their firm’s size, wants their company’s insurance problems to be solved by some prewritten, fill-in-the-blank solution. This is understandable. Yet, on the flip side, most professional producers have written hundreds of businesses with similar exposures to loss.

As a result of these experiences, agencies often use stock proposal templates as their core presentation device. These pages may have been self-created, borrowed, or bought. Regardless, they are employed because busy agents literally cannot afford the time and expense of creating a fresh, individualized proposal each and every time that they present a new business quote. Still, this is what many prospects seem to expect, especially if they resent paying thousands of dollars for a multi-page, laser-printed, promise. Fortunately, with just a little extra effort, there is an inexpensive solution to this common proposal dilemma.

The answer starts by making a simple decision to fashion a “canned” presentation tool into something special for each new business prospect. It must be demonstrated, to each potential insured, that you’ve done more than just change the names and numbers on a standardized template. You also want to show that a reasonable level of research has been performed. This month’s column helps you to manage this challenge by honing your proposal personalization skills. These often-overlooked talents can guide you past the boilerplate and closer to the sale.

Here are nine ideas to point the way.

1. Be positively personal. Initiate your proposal persuasion presentation by telling the prospect what’s right about their current policies. Spend some moments talking about specific “smart decisions” they, not their agent, made by selecting a particular coverage, policy limit, deductible, etc. Discuss the areas of protection that you wouldn’t think of changing. This positive and personal approach helps to reassure the prospect that you won’t claim that everything they presently have is inferior, just to sell them a replacement. It’s a vital credibility builder for you and reassuring for them.

2. Use digital images. Many producers like to scan in a company’s logo and/or display an image of its premises on the front cover of each new commercial lines proposal. As for the inside pages, they are usually just numbers and words and maybe a few informational charts. The favorable impression the custom cover made is usually long forgotten by page three.

That’s why it’s helpful to incorporate color photographic images of the people and property that you expect to insure throughout the entire proposal. While on a fact-finding, preproposal visit, ask if it is okay if you snap a few digital pictures of the prospect’s vehicles, premises and employees at work to accompany the application. Then display some of these photos in the relevant sections of your proposal.

Include images of the company’s vans in the business auto section, employee photos in the workers’ comp and employee benefits sections, pictures of various buildings and their contents throughout the property section, etc. You might even include a downloaded image of the company’s Web site when proposing cyber liability insurance. Combined, these graphic inclusions help to remind your prospect to look beyond the mere numbers to the actual people and property that the proposal is intended to protect.

3. Paste Post-It notes. Some points made by your proposal are more important or interesting than others are. A simple and direct way to draw attention to these key issues is to point them out by placing Post-It notes on the pages where you have something special to go over. This sticky little note, combined with its handwritten message, delivers an immediate and personal impression. Use Post-Its to reinforce a powerful proposal point or to highlight a distinctive difference in your offer. Depending on the length of your proposal, limit yourself to no more than three sticky notes, so as not to dilute their impact.

4. State why. Virtually every new business proposal outlines an agent’s suggested changes and enhancements concerning a prospect’s insurance program. However, these documents seldom seem to get into any personal detail. Personal, in this case, means why the producer actually feels that these upgrades, options, or other modifications are needed. Each significant recommendation must have a logical reason behind it.

Some agents prefer to explain this in their presentation’s narrative. However, the message will get through much better when the logic is expressed in writing as well. These account-specific revelations clearly disclose you have done more than fill in the blanks on this proposal. It shows you’ve gone to the effort of explaining why you believe that this insurance prospect should accept each key recommendation.

5. Make promises. Insurance is a formal contractual pledge to indemnify in the event of a covered loss. But, prospects who spend thousands of dollars for that pledge also appreciate receiving some more personalized assurances than the traditional legal language. A simple way to accomplish this is to incorporate, within your proposal, brief individualized memos from key insurance people who promise to routinely be accessible throughout the new insured’s policy term. Incorporate one each from yourself, an agency principal, the CSR who’ll service the account and if you can arrange it someone from the lead insurance company. No promise other than availability is suggested.

6. Display association affiliations. When your agency is a paid member of a particular prospect’s industry trade organization, prominently feature that association’s logo on the firm’s new business and renewal proposals. It graphically makes the point that you are a dues-paying associate and a supporter of the group’s purpose and goals. Use of the association logo is one of the important reasons why the agency joined, so display it whenever it can help you.

7. Involve staffers. When making a new business insurance proposal presentation, it’s a good practice to use the decision maker’s name frequently. But it’s an even better practice to involve the staffers in attendance, by occasionally eyeballing each one and addressing them by name.

This is a popular and effective technique used by politicians. While these influential employees may not make the ultimate buying decision, their opinion of you and your offer will usually be asked, after you have left. For extra credit, find out which staffers will be sitting in on the meeting and prepare separate copies of your proposal for each one. Individualize the cover with their name. They will appreciate the personal copy and love the rarified attention.

8. Personalize testimonials. Letters from happy agency insureds are a smart addition to any proposal. However, most testimonials usually are generic thank you letters written by satisfied clients to the agency or quoting producer. These impersonal documents can give the impression that they have been used hundreds of times to try and impress potential buyers, regardless of who they are. The impact of a testimonial is far greater when they’re individually written from a current client to a future one, recommending and proclaiming complete satisfaction with your pricing and services. Of course, you can’t ask insureds to prepare a personal testimonial for every quote, so save this special type of testimonial for your most important presentations.

9. Personalize thanks. The big finish on most proposals is the premium page. Even if your price is terrific, it’s best not to leave your prospect thinking only about money. To accomplish this, attach a simple thank you card to the inside back cover of your presentation. The decision maker and attending staffers can then flip open the card and see your handwritten message thanking them for their valuable time and consideration. This way, each prospect’s last impression of your proposal will be a bit more personal than a page full of dollar signs.

While every account has its own set of risk management needs, most are textbook situations. Still, you must never let a prospect or insured feel that their business operation is routine. Maximize the impact of your next commercial lines proposal by daring to get just a little bit personal.

Alan Shulman, CPCU, is the publisher of Agency Ideas, a subscription-only sales and marketing newsletter. He is the author of the 1001 Agency Ideas book series and other popular P/C sales resources. He may be reached at (800) 724-1435 or at: shulman@agencyideas.com. His Web site is www.agencyideas.com.

Topics Commercial Lines Business Insurance Numbers

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Insurance Journal Magazine November 8, 2004
November 8, 2004
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