Last Updated on July 1, 2024
Using a virtual assistant to streamline your operations and enhance productivity, you can boost your insurance sales. Research by Deloitte analysts who surveyed insurance executives discovered that one-third of respondents anticipate significant revenue improvement. However, the insurance industry faces some significant challenges, namely:
- Attracting and retaining high-performing agents.
- Enhancing producer productivity.
These challenges are interlinked; difficulties in hiring can be mitigated by empowering existing agents to achieve more sales in less time.
Factors Impacting Productivity
Forward-thinking insurers are adopting onboarding virtual assistant services to elevate agent satisfaction, retention, and overall productivity. Especially with five key productivity challenges faced by insurance sales teams:
- Poor AMS/CRM data hygiene, resulting in messy contact information.
- The lack of a lead management system leads to the disappearance of physical lead data.
- Time-consuming prospecting activities, including research and list building.
- Inconsistent lead follow-up without a formalized process.
- Manual workflows in back-office processes cause delays.
These productivity drags impact insurance sales teams in several ways:
- Inconsistent CRM data entry erodes trust, leading to reduced CRM usage.
- Divergent business development processes result in lost leads.
- Prospects require entry into the CRM for consistent communication.
- Unclear ownership of lead follow-up leads to missed opportunities.
- Manual sales workflows, constrained by time, become inefficient.
Hiring a virtual insurance assistant is a solution to address these issues, offering a comprehensive remedy that not only resolves productivity challenges but also contributes to the accelerated growth of your insurance agency.
Hiring a Virtual Insurance Assistant
A virtual insurance assistant is a game-changer in the insurance industry. These virtual assistants offer businesses offsite assistance to handle administrative tasks for teams. The key benefits of using a virtual assistant and outsourcing these tasks to one include fast access to top talent at cost-effective rates, flexible terms, ease of scaling up or down, and no additional HR required.
Tasks VAs can Help Insurance Sales
Virtual insurance assistants can assist insurance sales teams with various tasks. The goal is to enhance productivity, allowing your insurance sales team to concentrate on sales and client relations. Here are vital functions that these virtual assistants are trained to perform:
CRM/AMS Management:
- Input all contacts into your CRM and update missing information.
- Ensure contact data is clean and up-to-date, managing statuses and removing duplicate entries.
- Run reports and provide insights about your pipeline.
Lead Management:
- Update contact information regularly to prevent lead data decay.
- Log all communications (calls, emails, meetings) for a comprehensive record.
- Maintain lead status and ownership in your CRM/AMS.
Prospecting:
- Utilize contact databases such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator and ZoomInfo based on lead qualification criteria.
- Build email lists for outreach.
- Launch and manage email campaigns.
Lead Follow-Up:
- Reach out to qualified leads from website forms or campaign responses.
- Schedule calls with prospects.
- Confirm meetings to reduce no-shows.
Build and Manage Workflows:
- Create automated email drip campaigns for leads.
- Schedule social media outreach.
- Set up alerts and outreach for client milestones like renewals, birthdays, and holidays.
By handling these tasks, virtual assistants contribute to the background efficiency of your insurance agency, ensuring that your sales team’s focus remains on core activities such as selling and maintaining client relationships.
Back-Office Tasks That Can Help Your Insurance Sales Team
A skilled virtual assistant can handle various back-office tasks, allowing producers to focus on acquiring new business and serving existing clients. Some of the functions performed by managed virtual assistants include:
- Underwriter Communications: Handling communications with underwriters to save time spent on hold.
- Endorsement Processing: Managing changes in plans by processing endorsements efficiently.
- New Business and Quote Preparation: Preparing materials for new business proposals and quotes.
- Invoicing and Payment Processing: Manage the invoicing process and process payments.
Tear Sheet Preparation for Sales Calls:
- Preparing tear sheets to enhance the effectiveness of sales calls.
Most salespeople spend only 35% of their time on sales-focused activities, so a skilled insurance VA becomes a valuable resource. If your growth goals are hindered by challenges in hiring and productivity, hiring a virtual assistant is the solution. By leveraging this service, you can provide your producers up to 65% more time for selling, all at a fraction of the costs of hiring additional sales staff.