Independent agents work to protect their clients’ biggest assets: their homes. It’s no surprise that clients need to feel they can trust their independent agent when it comes to advice on protecting something so important. What is the key to fostering (and strengthening) trust between clients and agents?
According to Accenture, one-third of customers who abandoned a business relationship last year did so because they felt that personalization was lacking. The catalyst to personalizing client relationships is the client data that agents can leverage to drive more tailored conversations and advice. A Customer Relationship Management platform can help independent agents build and manage customer relationships—helping agents manage all their interactions with their existing and potential customers.
However, what most agents don’t know is that tapping into client data can support not only personalization and client retention, but also lead generation.
Generate more leads
Independent agents, like many small-business owners, are compelled to wear multiple hats—from attracting prospective clients to scheduling appointments, onboarding new agents, managing data, and closing sales—it can demand more time than an agent has in any given day. With so many tasks to focus on, spending quality time generating new leads tends to get buried in favor of more important priorities.
With a CRM platform, agents can create targeted lead generation campaigns to attract highly qualified prospects across multiple platforms. Further, prospects’ data will be stored in the platform automatically, enabling automated notifications for more immediate follow-ups, leveraging key insights to deliver personalized messages.
Retaining clients
Because CRM software records customer details and history, agents can deliver a more personalized customer client experience, offering a more consistent (and automated) experience with every client touchpoint. With client data on hand, agents can review purchase history, preferences, and details to better personalize conversations. An agent might record notes about a client’s plans to put an addition on his or her home. In consecutive conversations, the agent is easily reminded to ask about the progress of the renovations and offer a personalized insurance policy or tailored financial advice. If an agent knows his or her client has teenage children, this information can be used to reach out about adding a teen driver to the auto insurance policy once the driver hits the road.
As independent agents seek to modernize their business, the crucial component to a digital transformation is data, and the ways in which they leverage that data to grow their business. By maximizing the use of client data through CRM to personalize outreach and touchpoints, independent agents can generate more leads while retaining more of their client roster.
Not only can agents’ business prosper, but they can foster greater client trust with targeted, automated communications. It’s time for independent agents, who haven’t already, to embrace software solutions to scale their business with new client relationships, while building stronger relationships with existing clients—without adding staff or spending every waking minute prospecting.
Joe Greenspan
As vice president, commercial operations at Act! (www.act.com), Joe Greenspan leads a team focused on customer revenue growth, strategic commercial programs, and operational excellence. With nearly a decade at Act!, he is a change agent driving pricing and commercial strategies, product and service launches, messaging and positioning, sales enablement, and customer lifecycle activities. Before Act!, Joe spent 13 years at Sage in various product and commercial leadership roles, with the majority of his tenure leading high-performance product marketing teams. Joe holds an MBA from Arizona State University and a bachelor’s in psychology from Santa Clara University.
