The Cross-Sell System Behind Insurance's Best Agencies

Callan [0:00:01]: Welcome to the Insurance Growth Lab, where we go deep on the growth campaigns and strategies driving real results in the insurance industry.

Callan [0:00:09]: I´m Callan Harrington founder Flashgrowth And in each episode, I sit down with marketing and growth leaders from carriers and sure tech and top brokers to break down one specific initiative, whether it's how they marketed a product, scale a channel or solve a specific growth challenge.

Callan [0:00:26]: It's no fluff just tactical insights you can apply in your own company.

Callan [0:00:31]: Cross selling is probably one of the most brought up topics on the show from the elite agencies.

Callan [0:00:43]: In my conversations with them both on the show and in some of the studies that we've done, they religiously track policies per customer.

Callan [0:00:53]: And very often, they're tracking that metric over all of the other metrics, and they're putting in exponential importance on that.

Callan [0:01:01]: So for today, we wanted to pull together some of our favorite conversations that we've had where these elite agencies are breaking down their cross sell process.

Callan [0:01:10]: So without further ado, let's get to some of our favorite cross sell moments.

Callan [0:01:15]: Chris, I finally got you on the show, which I'm excited about.

Callan [0:01:21]: I think most of the people listening to the show, wolf have at least heard your name.

Callan [0:01:25]: If they haven't heard you talks specifically.

Callan [0:01:27]: With P&C insurance, you guys have over fifty employees, even won the safe code liberty a mutual National agent for the future award, there's no lack of accomplishments, both in the space and outside of the space.

Callan [0:01:39]: But an area today, I really wanna dive into, and I'll even share just in our conversation earlier, where you said real growth starts with retention.

Callan [0:01:49]: What does that mean?

Chris [0:01:52]: Retention is the foundation of every single agency.

Chris [0:01:56]: You know what that solid foundation is built on?

Chris [0:01:58]: Communication.

Chris [0:01:59]: Emails or for information, phone calls are for communication.

Chris [0:02:04]: The only way you're gonna communicate is by picking that phone up.

Chris [0:02:06]: Yes, emails still plays a role you drip on them, and we're sending questionnaires has anything changed.

Chris [0:02:11]: Have you added a dog?

Chris [0:02:13]: Have you added any pets?

Chris [0:02:14]: That's for information, but the communication aspect is, hey.

Chris [0:02:17]: I got your questionnaire back from the email.

Chris [0:02:20]: Yep.

Chris [0:02:21]: I noticed that you added a dog.

Chris [0:02:23]: You don't have an umbrella right now.

Chris [0:02:25]: You have three hundred thousand of liability.

Chris [0:02:27]: I highly recommend you move that to five hundred thousand, and if the carrier we happy would goes to a million, and we go to a million.

Chris [0:02:33]: Let me tell you, dog bites are the most common home claim that we see inside of our agency and the average payout is north of a hundred thousand dollars.

Chris [0:02:41]: So it's all about education, and you can only educate people through good communication.

Callan [0:02:48]: This so emails are for information, phone calls are for communication.

Callan [0:02:51]: It makes complete sense.

Callan [0:02:52]: You've heard a big agency.

Callan [0:02:53]: You've got probably tens of thousands of clients.

Callan [0:02:56]: That let's just say households between households and businesses.

Callan [0:02:59]: All get a phone call?

Callan [0:03:02]: Do you segment that?

Callan [0:03:03]: Is there a certain if they're under a certain premium hold threshold?

Callan [0:03:07]: Is this gonna be used with Ai?

Callan [0:03:08]: Or what does this look like?

Chris [0:03:10]: We tried it always?

Chris [0:03:11]: You know what works best?

Chris [0:03:13]: Calling Our lot clients every single year.

Chris [0:03:16]: That's what works the best.

Chris [0:03:17]: It's not sugar coding.

Chris [0:03:19]: I know people say, but it's not weight bearing or it's not financially the right choice.

Chris [0:03:25]: You know, my largest clients have come from some of my smallest clients, we're the largest writer of Fedex parcel deliberately in in the United States.

Chris [0:03:34]: And it's amazing when some of the in are, like, yeah.

Chris [0:03:37]: I got this three hundred thousand dollar count from a twenty five thousand dollar count...

Chris [0:03:41]: Who was the referral?

Chris [0:03:42]: Yeah.

Chris [0:03:43]: It's just...

Chris [0:03:43]: That's the way the ball bounces.

Chris [0:03:45]: We went back to calling everybody.

Chris [0:03:48]: We're not a big mono line agency.

Chris [0:03:50]: We we feel that mono line actually hurts a client because they're losing discounts

Callan [0:03:56]: Yeah.

Chris [0:03:56]: If you have the home without the auto, you're losing a discount.

Chris [0:03:58]: Right?

Chris [0:03:59]: There's multiple discounts you could end up losing.

Chris [0:04:01]: So that model business, and to think of it as just an A client is wrong.

Chris [0:04:07]: What are we doing to pick up that phone to say, hey.

Chris [0:04:09]: Talent, I I wanna give you a call.

Chris [0:04:11]: I wanna...

Chris [0:04:12]: Hey, We got your auto.

Chris [0:04:13]: Hey, did you have to purchase in a house you were talking about?

Chris [0:04:15]: Yeah.

Chris [0:04:16]: Actually, I did purchase.

Chris [0:04:17]: Great.

Chris [0:04:17]: I would love to be able to add some discounts to your auto.

Chris [0:04:21]: And how we do that is this bundling the two together.

Chris [0:04:24]: Not only is it better for you pricing in a lot of cases, it could actually be better for you and making sure the liability doesn't get in a snag.

Callan [0:04:33]: Whether it makes financial sense or not, you believe that it ultimately does because the A's could become Double a's or triple a's.

Callan [0:04:41]: Whether it's from referrals or they just grow their business.

Callan [0:04:44]: Doesn't really matter that they can get there.

Callan [0:04:47]: Eric, I've been excited to get this on the books and dive into a couple of things.

Callan [0:04:54]: You guys are over a twenty million dollar agency.

Callan [0:04:57]: You're driving two hundred and seventy new inbound leads a month without any cold calls or anything like that.

Callan [0:05:02]: You over doubled your policies per household, which is pretty incredible.

Callan [0:05:06]: What does that exact system look like?

Callan [0:05:09]: Is it when when somebody's coming up for...

Callan [0:05:12]: When they'll say they're coming up for renewal or it's a win back campaign Is that a series of emails, phone calls?

Eric [0:05:20]: We have a very detailed, but not complicated renewal journey.

Eric [0:05:25]: Or we have a renewal questionnaire.

Eric [0:05:26]: It's just like a gravity form, and it has you know, the questions that we want.

Eric [0:05:30]: The questions that we feel like are important.

Eric [0:05:32]: The last question is hey, like, you know, I see we have your home or Auto.

Eric [0:05:36]: Call calls and you...

Eric [0:05:37]: You got your home, your auto, your Rv and your boat.

Eric [0:05:40]: Right?

Eric [0:05:40]: So we created needs chat boxes and then those needs boxes, whenever the form submitted get pushed into agency Zoom and automatically populates a needs tag.

Eric [0:05:51]: So if we write your home in auto today, for some reason, we didn't get the the...

Eric [0:05:57]: With the Rv or whatever.

Eric [0:05:58]: Right?

Eric [0:05:58]: If we write your home in all day, we take off those two tags and we and we leave needs Rv.

Eric [0:06:04]: Yeah.

Eric [0:06:05]: So we can come back and pick that up later.

Eric [0:06:07]: The end goal is that everybody generates opportunities.

Eric [0:06:10]: Everybody generates cross sells.

Eric [0:06:11]: Right?

Eric [0:06:12]: We have an acronym.

Eric [0:06:12]: It's, and then, basically, it stands for greet, verify, gather, execute close.

Eric [0:06:17]: So greet the insured, verify who they are in our system.

Eric [0:06:21]: And then gather what they need, execute whatever they need, mortgage update auto update or whatever.

Eric [0:06:26]: And then the closing, we have five ways to close call?

Eric [0:06:30]: Basically, is it...

Eric [0:06:31]: Are you following us on social media?

Eric [0:06:33]: What else do you have inside your that needs to be insured?

Eric [0:06:36]: Did you leave us a Google or have you left us a Google review?

Eric [0:06:39]: Have you downloaded the carrier insurance apps?

Eric [0:06:41]: And then the fifth one is basically client referral.

Eric [0:06:46]: You haven't...

Eric [0:06:47]: You, the only anybody that would be...

Eric [0:06:48]: That could benefit from our services.

Callan [0:06:50]: If somebody's asking you and they're saying, Eric, we're we're looking to start our our cross sell process, what's the first piece of advice that you're giving them.

Eric [0:06:58]: I would say, call every one of their carrier reps and request on mono line home or a mono line auto list.

Eric [0:07:04]: We take that list, and then we we dissect it pretty quickly.

Eric [0:07:09]: What we do in the past?

Eric [0:07:10]: How we quote in the past?

Eric [0:07:11]: What it...

Eric [0:07:12]: What it is, then we just throw some automation in there real quick.

Eric [0:07:14]: We don't make it complicated, and then we throw a task for the agent to call.

Eric [0:07:18]: And then just attack it.

Callan [0:07:21]: Clint, I'm excited to have you on the show.

Callan [0:07:22]: You know, we've known each other fe now...

Callan [0:07:24]: And pretty long time within the industry.

Callan [0:07:27]: One of the reasons that I wanted to have you on the show was to talk through driving adoption of that product with an insurance agency.

Callan [0:07:38]: I think there's a lot of companies that are out there, whether if they're on the warranty side if they're on the home security side or a

Chris [0:07:47]: lot of

Callan [0:07:47]: people want to work with an insurance agency.

Callan [0:07:52]: Because they've got the trust.

Callan [0:07:53]: They have the access to the customer.

Callan [0:07:55]: They're already being a risk adviser in there depending on the agency.

Callan [0:07:58]: I guess that could be a little debatable.

Callan [0:08:00]: But for the most part, that is the key role.

Callan [0:08:03]: And you're going in there and you're doing this, you're you're able to break through the mold of the standard in the P&C market, Home umbrella offering.

Callan [0:08:10]: So I wanna start there, how did you start to crack through that?

Callan [0:08:15]: And what was it that made agencies say, okay.

Callan [0:08:20]: This is worth my time.

Callan [0:08:21]: So that's ultimately Twitter comes down to.

Clinton [0:08:23]: Your average producer and CSR inside of an agency.

Clinton [0:08:26]: They get paid to clock in.

Clinton [0:08:28]: They do their job at five o'clock.

Clinton [0:08:30]: They clock out and they go home and they don't think about work until the next day.

Clinton [0:08:33]: And they wanna be able to just rinse and repeat that day in and day out.

Clinton [0:08:38]: Without having major disruptions to their world.

Clinton [0:08:41]: And when you bring in a new product or a new system, now they've gotta do their day job and then learn these additional things.

Clinton [0:08:48]: And so where that becomes important and want I made the decision to join fair over and and an auto warranty carrier over another line of business is because it is a simple product to learn and sell.

Clinton [0:09:01]: I don't have to train you as a producer or CSR.

Clinton [0:09:04]: How to understand a completely different discovery conversation, how to cross sell into a line that's completely unrelated to anything you've ever sold before.

Clinton [0:09:14]: Because talking to somebody about their finances, talking to somebody about death, talking to somebody about family planning is very different than talking to somebody about what their liability limits and deductibles should be on auto insurance.

Clinton [0:09:26]: And so that's a really hard switch for a lot of producers in the independent channel where we have built a industry generational here where I'm a P&C agency only.

Clinton [0:09:39]: I'm a life and health agency only, and and we don't cross over.

Clinton [0:09:43]: And so warranty is kind of that that cheat code for that piece of it because we're not saying you have a separate sales conversation.

Clinton [0:09:51]: We don't present it at that as that for for these agency producers.

Clinton [0:09:55]: We present warranty almost as a an endorsement conversation.

Clinton [0:10:00]: So if I'm selling you auto insurance or and it's Cali, Hey, our next steps right now, we're gonna talk about your comprehensive and collision coverage.

Clinton [0:10:07]: This pace to fix your vehicle if fits damaged in an accident.

Clinton [0:10:10]: You have a deductible for that?

Clinton [0:10:12]: What would you like your deductible be?

Clinton [0:10:13]: Great.

Clinton [0:10:14]: By the way, if your vehicle breaks down, There's no coverage for that under your auto insurance because it wasn't caused by an accident.

Clinton [0:10:22]: The average gender repairs about thirty five hundred dollars.

Clinton [0:10:25]: Would you wanna pay for that out of pocket or would you want somebody else to pay for that?

Clinton [0:10:28]: Great.

Clinton [0:10:29]: I'll add the vehicle breakdown protection for you?

Clinton [0:10:31]: That's the sales conversation.

Callan [0:10:33]: And so playing that back.

Callan [0:10:35]: Life insurance different.

Callan [0:10:36]: I gotta learn something different.

Callan [0:10:38]: Could I get different license have to even...

Callan [0:10:39]: I have to think about this differently for auto warranty, it fits right in.

Callan [0:10:45]: If I'm selling this, I should be selling this essentially.

Callan [0:10:47]: Is that correct?

Clinton [0:10:48]: It's complementary.

Clinton [0:10:48]: I don't have to talk about a different topic.

Clinton [0:10:51]: I'm still just talking about protecting your car against risk and against potential loss that you as a consumer having related to driving your vehicle.

Callan [0:11:00]: I've got a lot of respect for warranty companies and what they do?

Callan [0:11:03]: But not everybody does.

Clinton [0:11:05]: Most people don't.

Clinton [0:11:06]: Yes.

Callan [0:11:08]: Warranty, the word warranty has a stigma to it.

Callan [0:11:11]: How do you get around that?

Clinton [0:11:14]: It's just like what we talked about is.

Clinton [0:11:15]: You're not leading with...

Clinton [0:11:17]: Oh, hey, by the way, we've got an auto warranty product that can protect your car if it breaks down separate from your auto insurance conversation.

Clinton [0:11:24]: Right?

Clinton [0:11:25]: You're not having two separate conversations.

Clinton [0:11:26]: You're weaving in Hey, if your vehicle breaks down, would you want down protection?

Clinton [0:11:31]: You're talking about covering an actual need and exposure for the consumer and helping them solve a problem that they would have, which is that out of pocket cost of fixing their car?

Clinton [0:11:42]: Versus trying to just sell them another product in the awkward transition of, hey, Now that we've taken care of your car insurance.

Clinton [0:11:50]: Let me talk to you about these ten other products we have.

Clinton [0:11:52]: We've got financial planning.

Clinton [0:11:54]: We've got life insurance.

Clinton [0:11:55]: We've got warranty, we've got hospital income policies Right?

Clinton [0:11:58]: We've got this whole menu of things.

Clinton [0:12:00]: What we do like to talk about, that doesn't work from a cross all standpoint.

Clinton [0:12:03]: You've gotta find products that are complementary to each other.

Clinton [0:12:07]: And as you're having that needs based conversation, you're uncovering those needs in a natural organic way through the conversation of protecting your client.

Clinton [0:12:16]: And that's where auto warranties is a really nice complement to auto insurance without competing with your existing book with your existing partners.