While every agent has his or her own sales process, they all generally contain some variation of 4 important actions:
1. Introduce yourself to the client.
2. Create value in the relationship.
3. Build trust.
4. Individualize your sales pitch.
These steps have been traditionally time consuming but so valuable to your success rate that you had no choice but to invest the time into each of them. Now, between blogs and newsletters, much of the work is done for you and not just for the benefit of one potential client, but for hundreds.
Introduction: Your insurance newsletter and blog can serve as your initial introduction to new clients. Through these tools your prospects can read about your office, your experience, the lines of coverage you sell and the insurance companies you work with.
Value Creation: Your blog and newsletter are forms of education and when you give away free education, you become more valuable. As you educate your blog and newsletter readers they begin to think of you and your agency as a valuable partner rather than a sales team.
Trust Building: Consumers do not want a fly-by-night agent or one who only communicates with them when they want to sell them something. Clients never want to feel like a meal ticket. Your newsletter and blog offer a great way to stay in touch and offer transparency in your process and opinions.
Individualizing the Sales Pitch: When you pitch your product cold you attempt to take some really accurate guesses about what is going to appeal to your client. When you have a blog, your potential clients may leave comments or questions on the blog that give you tremendous insight into their personal situation and concerns. This gives you hard data that is totally relatable to build your pitch around.
But remember, just having a blog and newsletter are not enough. You must focus on providing the right content, the right tone and the right kind of information in order for your content to provide the right kind of benefits.