When implemented into an Insurance Agency or MGA, Salesforce is a great solution that can create improvement across the board. From marketing automation to sales productivity to backend management and more there are a variety of places where Salesforce can create improvements to productivities across the board.
Solutions built on Salesforce help Insurance Agencies and MGAs include marketing automation, sales productivity, and backend processes. Here we highlight each one.
Salesforce for Insurance Improves Marketing Automation
More and more insurance Agencies are taking advantage of Salesforce marketing automation. These tools are used to market through multiple channels such as social media, email, and webinars. And they can mine data from Salesforce to be far more targeted in their marketing efforts than ever before. Both Agencies and MGAs track ROI on Marketing Campaigns, allowing them to determine where to best invest their marketing dollars.
Salesforce for Insurance Boosts Sales Productivity Focused on New Business
Especially for Agencies, new business capture is key to growth and profitability as customers more and more are purchasing insurance directly from Carriers. One of the best uses of Salesforce is setting activity and sales goals, focused on new business, and tracking against those goals. For example, setting goals for capturing the number of prospective X dates per week. These are dates current policies expire written through a competitive agency. Then formal follow up activities can be established and tracked leading up to the X Date. So, an insurance needs discovery session 60 days prior to the X date and to submit a quote 30 days prior. This is an effective plan because renewal time is the point a customer is most likely to switch agencies. Another example is tracking against the goal of the number of meetings per week with referral partners, often referred to as Centers of Influence. These efforts result in agency Producers investing targeted time on new business development and increased close rates for new business.
Salesforce for Insurance Improves Critical Backend Processes
For MGAs, there are many high value examples where the entire process from appointing agencies, to managing the submissions, through underwriting, renewals and even calculating commissions, can be done all in Salesforce. Sales, Service, and Underwriting have centralized visibility, which improves operational efficiencies, lowers cost, and facilitates collaboration with their agency and carrier partners.
There are also some untapped areas where Salesforce can boost success for Insurance Agencies and MGAs. These top three areas are client experience, policy management system integration, and full agency management systems. Let’s take a look at each area.
How Salesforce Improves Client Experience
Organizations are using Salesforce Experience Cloud for online self services. This can be a game changer in several areas such as Agencies submitting submissions online to MGAs and agencies retrieving quotes for their customers from the MGA. Another example is the ability for Agencies’ customers to submit their services requests online for coverage changes, claims and other service issues. Salesforce Service Cloud capabilities to create searchable Knowledge Articles to support customer service without having to rely on a service rep for every request is another way client experience is elevated. Another opportunity for improvement is to establish standard services processes, such as an endorsement request process with predefined follow up tasks, or even setting up a chat option for customer service.
How Salesforce Integrates with Policy Management Systems
Integrations today are easier to achieve due to the advancements in integration technology, and Salesforce as a flexible cloud platform is perfect for building these integrations. Detailed policy information, integrated from back office systems into the CRM, arms the marketing and sales teams with rich data to be more far more focused in their business development and service efforts. In fact, we are already seeing MGAs integrating agency production data into Salesforce, so they have visibility into agency performance, right in the CRM, to better focus their marketing efforts to Agencies and to provide the education and support the Agencies need.
How Salesforce Works with Full Agency Management Systems
Salesforce has partners, such as Veruna, who provide a full Agency Management System, called an AMS, for independent Insurance Agencies, built on Salesforce. Think of it like an ERP system for agencies. It includes full policy management, accounting, the ability to download policy and commission data from carriers, and an award-winning ACORD platform. ACORD forms are the hundreds of industry standard forms used in the Insurance for things like auto schedules. They are all integrated with Veruna. Many of the current Agency Management Systems are built on older technology, which limits their ability to customize, integrate, and take advantage of third-party apps like marketing automation. These are the very strengths Veruna brings on the Salesforce platform.
As an Insurance Agency or MGA, Salesforce is a valuable solution to help improve performance in a variety of aspects of business. The improvements that can be made through a Salesforce solution implementation can make the difference between a happy client and a dissatisfied one.
Sikich is well versed in helping Insurance Agencies and MGAs. Check out this short demo to get a quick look at the Sikich HEADSTART for Insurance that not only will help you retain existing clients but grow your business. Interested in learning more? Let’s get the conversation started.
