I love the phone. It's my bread and butter. The first thing I teach a new producer is how to work the phones. I'm not sure why someone would say you can only write the state minimum folks. We don't deal in the non-standard market at all, but I haven't had a carrier request photos in over a decade. The exception being on a few collector vehicles. We write plenty of business, most of it referrals, some of it generated by our telemarketers, but a vast majority of it is over the phone. Consumers have become accustom to doing business via phone and email. Not just accustom, but many prefer it. Why not give them what they want? The real challenge is in retaining the business. You have to build a bridge from the agency to your client. We have a retention program in place, that tries to make us more than those folks that wrote my insurance over the phone. I wrote a $2.5 million dollar house last month and have only talked to the client via phone and email. He's already referred two of his neighbors. You can drive across town to sign that client up. I'll stay in the office and sign up three, while you're stuck in traffic.
Sellilng P&C over the phone is easy even for standard markets. Forget the state minimums... stay away from the low-end guy, when purchasing leads. Filter as much as possible to only get high-protential leads. It's nice to have clients come in, but you move much faster over the phone. The key when working as a local agent (indy or captive) utilizing your resident-licenses and then focus on a few production using utilizing your non-resident license and be a national broker. I do 99% leads and 99% over the phone. Like Verbgravy said, "You can drive across town to sign that client up. I'll stay in the office and sign up three, while you're stuck in traffic."
I think it really depends also where you are. In my metro area of Philadelphia and New York City a lot of the commercial insurance is done over the phone initially due to the lack of time these guys have. I'm usually going through the process of quoting over the phone and email and then meeting them for personal inspection and app signing. These guys really don't have time to sit down and give me their life story just to find out I won't be able to help them out.
For you guys/gals that do it all over the phone, can you outline your process. Do you get necessary info to quote on first call, put together quote, and then call to go over the quote and close? Or do you email it to them and let them review at their leisure? I'm sure it's a case by case basis, but just want a gist of how you guys do it over the phone. When I was captive, I did many over the phone as well, but I sold on price and did anywhere from 60 - 80 quotes a month with little to no follow up, unless they reached out to me first. I would quote and then mail them paper copy and email them. Those that liked what they saw called back, those that didn't, no biggie.
I can't remember when was the last time I emailed anything for review first. I am really big on asking when is your next payment do to S.F. or Allsnake etc, and are they automatically going to withdraw that from your credit card or bank account? I get the info then call back with the quotes. If their payment is due in the next few days I know its urgent that I get this done today before they give their old agent any more money. I don't call back saying we can save you $30 a month - we can save you $360 a year or $1800 over the next 5 years that you would have been just throwing away to Allsnake. I go further if I know their agent is Bob Smith and he's the guy with his face plastered on billboards all over town, I say you don't have to give Bob that extra $1800 so he can use it to plaster his ugly face all over town anymore. They laugh and I get their credit or debit card. My customers are poor, a lot don't have a computer to email stuff, they work long hours at crappy jobs and I just try to simplify things for them. I use Carco for the photo inspections.
