Why Your Book of Business is Plateauing

Brokers often see a plateau in their book of business when client acquisition strategies have changed or their current client base refocuses their energy away from insurance needs. This could be due to various factors, like increased competition, market saturation, or limited marketing efforts. 

After COVID, brokers see relief from the harsh changes that COVID brought about, but some of the biggest challenges brokers faced over the last few years will likely persist. Brokers need to make plans of action to thrive, not just survive.

Learn more: 10 Ways to 10x Your Book of Business Guide

 

New Ways of Doing Business

Post-pandemic businesses are busier, comfortable with remote work, and more risk-averse. As we all build back, it’s more important than ever to get creative with the ways we:

Virtual Selling

Workforces and businesses have leaped into the unfamiliar landscape of digital marketing, virtual selling, and less familiar outreach methods in this post-pandemic environment. The brokers that have been slow to adapt have seen their books dwindle, creating an opportunity vacuum wherein the most inventive, adaptable brokers are profiting.

Soft Workers’ Comp Market

Across the country, brokers face the reality of plummeting insurance premiums, increased competition, and the growing popularity of state-run insurance funds. For example, it’s estimated state funds now insure more than 40 percent of California businesses.

Brokers who, in the past, secured and retained business primarily on a cost basis should anticipate more difficult days ahead.

Permanent or Temporary Shifts?

At BBSI, we’ve seen some fundamental industry shifts become a more permanent part of our working landscape, including:

  • The predominance of virtual communication
  • Increased client scrutiny of workplace safety, employee health, and risk mitigation
  • Better risk mitigation for human resources and payroll management

Our clients are more selective about the services they pay for and seek a better “bang for their buck” in HR and workers’ compensation products. They want assurance that their brokers provide them with the best advice and service. Insurance is a commodity we all need, but hope not to use. If your clients understand how they manage their X-Mods and take control of their premiums, they will be more motivated than ever to implement changes.

Balance Serving Clients and Obtaining New Ones

Servicing current clients involves managing ongoing relationships, addressing client concerns, and ensuring current policies. 

Obtaining new business involves prospecting, cold calling, networking, and following up on leads. 

The demands of these two areas can often compete for a broker's time and attention, making it challenging to prioritize and manage tasks effectively.

The Insurance World is Changing

Change Resistance:
The Elephant in the Room

For many years, successful brokers relied on standard sales tactics like mailers, cold calls, knocking on doors, and working their referral networks. Brokers who fail to adjust to new realities and best practices will quickly fall behind their more innovative competitors (or colleagues).

The problem is these brokers are some of the most talented and experienced in the industry. If the insurance world is to bounce back quickly, agencies across the country will have to work cohesively to implement new strategies. 

The following are a few tips for overcoming change resistance in the insurance industry.

Tip #1: Establish an Open-Minded Culture

Changing team culture starts at the top, with a shift in attitude and thinking among the leaders of the team. The right message can encourage both new and existing producers to implement the industry’s most successful strategies.

By promoting open-minded thinking, you set a precedent for agents to follow and quickly adapt to changing conditions. The COVID-19 pandemic is a prime example of why agencies must learn to be agile and adaptable. Producers who previously depended on in-person interactions had to rethink strategies completely. The brokerages thriving right now are the ones that implemented digital tools for communication and outreach, such as video conferencing, email marketing, social media, and more.

Tip #2: Educate Brokers on New Threats to Their Books

Keep your eye on the future to identify potential threats to renewals and new clients. Competition in the insurance industry is changing as aggressive, comprehensive business service providers like ADP and Paychex get serious about expanding their markets. 

Many brokers have seen or experienced these PEOs’ common tactics of getting their foot in the door with payroll services before slowly taking over related services on the backend, including workers’ compensation, health benefits, and more. 

If your client begins payroll services with one of these providers, you’ll likely have to play catch up and fend off these providers from cannibalizing your services. 

Partnering with the right team, such as BBSI, allows you to offer more services while protecting your book of business. With a business model focused on a true partnership with brokers, BBSI provides value to the client-broker relationship. Rather than replacing the broker, it empowers them to offer more services to their current clients to support the growth of their book of business.

Learn more: Is a PEO a Broker’s Friend or Foe?

Tip #3: Embrace Referral Partners Outside of Insurance

Insurance brokers often make the mistake of maintaining a siloed approach in their business by only offering insurance solutions. To break out of this, brokers should consider building a local network of referral partners outside the insurance industry. By connecting with related providers, such as financial advisors, payroll servicers, merchants, and even printing companies, brokers can build a community that proactively helps each other’s client bases and improves their processes in each area.

When someone asks one of your partners for an insurance referral, you want to be sure your name comes to mind. Likewise, you can strengthen the relationship by referring clients to your partners’ businesses. Networking connections can have a night-and-day difference in whether a client is happy or dissatisfied with the overall service you provide.

Tip #4: Offer Strategic Advice

When brainstorming introductory offers, think about ways to prove your expertise and offer value upfront without cutting into the value of your paid services. Providing advice before the deal is closed is a value proposition that some clients may appreciate, since a broker’s role is to help clients make informed decisions about their insurance coverage.

You can educate clients about the various insurance products available, their benefits, and the potential risks involved. This information can help clients make informed decisions about their insurance needs and choose the policy or plan that best suits their budget and business requirements.

New Prospecting Tips for Brokers

As arduous as the pandemic was, it is one in a series of stumbling blocks that have challenged agents’ ability to expand their book of business for years. 

What’s certain is that the old ways of prospecting don’t work as well as they once did. To remain competitive, brokers need to embrace new technologies and modern marketing techniques. Using more targeted, strategic, and arguably efficient outreach tactics consistently will help you break through your current plateau and breathe new life into your business.

Want to skip to the action plan? See our ten best tips to 10x your book of business here.

 

1. Create a Gameplan for Growth

It’s said that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. But if you don’t know where you’re going, that first step can lead you in the wrong direction. Consistent growth requires planning.

Look six months into the future. Where would you like your agency or your book of business to be? Choose ambitious (but realistic) goals and lock them in. Let these goals guide your actions over the coming months.

Now decide how best to achieve these goals. If you’ve chosen to work with a marketing agency, they’ll take the lead on tactics and implementation. If not, you’ll need to plot your strategy. Ask yourself what sorts of collateral will reach your desired audience most efficiently. Which touchpoints — like email, social media, phone calls, and mailers - will you use? How will you acquire the needed skills? Which contact databases will you use, and how will you find them?

Remember that while your goals shouldn’t change once set, your strategy should be fluid. Every few weeks, check on your progress. Make changes to tactics that aren’t performing well. Pour more resources into those that are. Experiment, A/B test, refine, and iterate. Keep your goals in sight even as the path forward changes.

2. Refine and Build Your Audience

You can’t be all things to all people. Every industry has eccentricities and unique requirements a blanket approach can’t fulfill. If you try to appeal to everyone, you may find that you aren’t appealing to anyone.

Instead, choose a few verticals to focus on and learn the industries inside and out. Discover their triggers, worries, and challenges. Find out what drives their decision-making and what they need to be successful. You can use this information to craft compelling marketing messages that ring true and address what’s most important to them.

If you’re considering enlisting the aid of a marketing agency, look for one with experience targeting your chosen industries. These agencies already know your audience’s pain points and can speak to them with authority. They’ll get you in front of the right people with blog content, LinkedIn posts, automated email campaigns, and a host of other tactics to establish your credibility within your verticals far more rapidly than you could alone.

3. Optimize Your Cold Outreach Efforts

Warm leads are always preferable to cold, but the latter still have a place in any thorough outreach plan. The trick is to use data intelligently to optimize these efforts for maximum impact.

For example, workers’ compensation policies and employee benefit plans are generally 12-month contracts with a renewal date. In the past, brokers had no way of knowing when competing policies were up for renewal, but today, you can purchase lists with relevant renewal dates. Armed with that information, you can create targeted email campaigns designed to attract customers to your policies before those renewal dates and re-engage clients that may want to discuss a change in the policies and plans.

There’s plenty of data out there waiting for you to parlay into effective marketing campaigns. You just need to know where to find it. A professional marketing agency can help. They know how to acquire the data that can give you a competitive advantage, and have the expertise to utilize that information best. Enlisting an agency’s help could be money well spent.

Re-Thinking Client Retention in the Changed Insurance Landscape

As part of Sales 101, we’ve all learned the golden rule. It is about six to seven times less expensive to retain a current client than acquire a new one. 

However, that’s not to say retaining a client doesn’t require hard work and attention. Every action you take and word you speak in a client relationship points to one overarching truth: your service and partnership are your product. 

Your clients’ goals and pain points will inevitably change over time. If you can pivot your communication and approach accordingly, you increase your value, build trust with your client, and retain their business longer. 

When you provide more than just a policy, you’re creating differentiators that will give you an advantage in the market. The more you offer, the less competitors and more loyal customers you'll have.

Client lists have been dwindling in the broker space over the past year for various reasons. Increased competition, lower rates, and outdated outreach strategies have made it difficult for brokers to show enough value to keep clients happy and engaged long-term. 

As a broker, what can you do to continue to engage and retain your current clients?

1. Conduct a Self-Evaluation of Your Performance

The days of “set it and forget it” are gone. Competition from other brokers is steep. State funds are stepping up their service offerings, and comparison markets are driving down rates. If you’re not offering your clients value beyond a policy, there’s a good chance someone else will.

Take stock of your performance. How often do you communicate with clients? Are you checking in to see if their business situation has changed? The pandemic and other factors have created a volatile environment. Plans that you made six months ago may need to be revised to better reflect evolving conditions. Make sure you’re providing your clients with a partner, not just a policy.

2. Stay Ahead of Client Needs

It’s equally important to evaluate your clients’ present situation and help them forecast future needs. Renewals don’t require a lot of upkeep, so that’s where many brokers put their focus. They approach their book of business with the thought, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” Except that if you’re not checking in with your clients — learning where they plan to be six months to a year in the future — you won’t know if it’s broken.

At BBSI, we don’t focus on annual renewals. We work to ensure clients stay with us for the life of their business. We use renewals as an opportunity to align our solutions with the business’s future needs.

To become invaluable to clients, ask them questions about their future growth plans, their ability to scale, and what their future threats will be. Not only does this practice ensure that we’re providing relevant service, but it also demonstrates our commitment to the client and strengthens the relationship. Strong relationships are the basis for long-term retention. 

3. Find Ways to Lighten Your Client’s Workload

You’re a broker. People come to you for their insurance needs. If they’re looking for payroll support, they’ll have to look elsewhere. If they need HR support, you can’t help them. 

Or can you?

If you’re consistently and earnestly staying ahead of client needs, this is where you can make an impact. You’re not an HR professional, but you probably know a few. You can help your clients in ways unrelated to your professional expertise by referring quality professional service providers. Leveraging your network in this way sets you up as a trusted advisor. You become a hub for services and advice outside of your purview, which naturally adds value to your relationships and insulates your value from price-based risk. 

As a side benefit, when you refer clients to other professionals, they’ll return the favor. Suddenly everyone you know becomes a potential source of new business leads.

How The Right PEO Can Help Grow Your Book of Business

As brokers scramble to add additional value to their current and new client relationships, they face one problem that no broker can avoid — the limited hours in a day. 

Between managing lead pipelines, staying on top of renewals, and maintaining current relationships, there’s barely enough time in the day for a quick lunch. PEOs can efficiently help manage your day-to-day client load and free you to continue prospecting, and take time to learn and tinker with new outreach tactics. 

PEOs offer insurance brokers a way to increase their reach and value in an organization by providing services in HR, payroll, operational/management consulting, workers’ compensation, staffing, employee benefits, and more. 

A broker that truly understands their client will know what areas of expertise their clients need to make their business run more efficiently. The broker builds an extra, crucial level of trust with that client by offering them connections to outside resources that will help fill business gaps.

Can PEOs be Trusted?

The plain truth is brokers and traditional PEOs have had strained relationships in many parts of the country for decades. Although large PEOs claim to partner with brokers, they often contact a broker's client directly to slowly take over lines of insurance and support in crucial business areas.

These large PEOs hope their name recognition and breadth of services and product offerings will allow them to steamroll established broker-client relationships. 

And it's working. 

READ ON: Is a PEO a Broker’s Friend or Foe?

BBSI, The Non-Traditional PEO

As mentioned above, traditional large PEOs can absolutely threaten a broker’s book of business. However, that’s also what makes options like BBSI so attractive. BBSI is a broker's best defense against the threat of predatory PEO providers. 

Rooted in the essence of true partnership, BBSI’s business model depends on brokers' trust to thrive. 

There’s a reason why BBSI clients stay with both their brokers and BBSI at a 90% retention rate. Below is a list of the ways BBSI differs from a traditional PEO:

  • We are a true partner to our brokers. When a business reaches out to us for services, our first question is, “Who is your broker?” Unlike other providers, our goal is to partner with you and our mutual clients. We specialize in benefits and workers’ compensation because our priority is getting your clients the best coverage and rates available.  
  • We offer a full range of benefits for employees. With BBSI, your clients will gain access to plans and rates normally only available to much larger companies. We’ll work directly with you to help your clients make their plan decisions simple and guide them through open enrollment. Our current plans include a variety of options for businesses of all sizes, including medical, dental, vision, and a whole range of ancillary benefits. 
  • We provide a full team of business consultants and specialists. With each engagement entered, your client’s resource pool grows exponentially. BBSI provides a team of dedicated local professionals in areas of HR, payroll, staffing and recruiting, risk and safety, and general business strategy to fortify the gaps present in your client’s operation. 
  • We succeed only when you and your clients succeed. BBSI’s value proposition centers around workplace productivity, profitability, and safety. The more impact we can have on these areas, the better you’ll look to your clients. Our main priority is managing the client’s strategic initiatives (staffing, streamlining HR, workplace safety, etc.) while ensuring you, the broker, get all the credit. We focus on keeping our brokers in the loop, because our success is tied to your success. 

Learn more about BBSI in this recorded lunch & learn session.

Growing Your Book of Business Starts Here

While the insurance industry felt the crunch from increased price sensitivity from clients, the cheap comp market, and technological shifts for years, the pandemic effectively pushed these effects into hyperdrive. 

And yes, while many of your clients and leads have returned to pre-pandemic living, many others have not. Remote work and shifting communication preferences will continue to influence how brokers rebuild their books. 

Clients will come back to the office, likely revenue-short and risk-averse. Brokers will have to work overtime to show value to keep their clients’ attention. 

Luckily, with the right help, brokers can use these uncertain times as an opportunity to integrate themselves further into client businesses. Strategic partnerships, regular check-ins, and efficient new outreach tactics will go a long way to getting ahead in this changing environment. 

While we all find our footing, it's BBSI’s honor and privilege, after more than 50 years in business, to enter the next chapter with all of our broker partners like you.


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How to 10x Your Book of Business

We’ve distilled our expertise into the 10 most impactful tips to build back your book of business.