Marketing

Are You Asking One More Question?

By Gillan Boyer

One More Question

“To everything there is a season.”

We spend much of our day as active insurance agents working through a never-ending sales cycle, planting the seed, tending the growth of a concept or product, then hopefully harvesting a good crop of sales from our year-round effort.  Annual/Open Enrollment Periods can most certainly be considered a harvest of sorts.  But, if done correctly and thoroughly, it is also planting season.

Much of our marketing efforts should be ripening now, as the prospecting efforts need to be well underway.  Direct mail should be set up and being sent, sales dates set and filed with carriers for retail events, sales meetings set, filed, with marketing support ready to go.  It’s almost like right before Christmas, when we anticipate the rewards for being a good boy or girl.  However, it’s so easy to overlook what is placed right in front of us and it is so easy to sow for a second or ongoing harvest.

It’s reworking your current crop.

As we work through the folks that have a deadline to see us, those people that have from October 15th through December 7th, or November 1st through January 31st, we’ll sometimes forget that we need to follow the harvest to glean what is left behind.  We set that up with just asking one more question, wasting not what we have already invested.  That simple “Thank you for your business, could I ask you just one more question?”

That question could be simple as “Are you enjoying the return on your investments?”  Or ”I understand your current program will serve you well this coming year too, but have you considered what to do about the payments required each day in the hospital?”  Maybe even something as simple as “Are you interested in additional dental coverage?”  You may even complete an entire mini-fact finder, or offer a program of value like Legacy Safeguard, returning in a couple days to cover a program not permitted by your scope of appointment.

All in all, it’s a never ending cycle that can be made so much more seamless by just always be planting and harvesting.  It’s not just one season that allows you to do so.

Here at The Brokerage we are always here to help you with sales ideas and products to assist you in asking that next question.

What will yours be this open enrollment?

Gillan Boyer

About Gillan Boyer

Gillan leads The Brokerage Inc.'s marketing and communications initiatives. When he's not working, he's probably playing with his kids, making music, or reading a good book.