Existing customers are easier to sell to by a long shot: You’re 60-70% likely to sell to an existing customer, compared to the 5-20% likelihood of selling to a new prospect.
In insurance, for MGA’s, Brokers and Carriers, business is all about building relationships. As a result, cultivating your current customer base by cross-selling and upselling within your current book offers perhaps the truest opportunity to drive efficient and sustainable long-term growth and profitability. Not only are more policies per account more profitable, but upselling and cross-selling increases customer retention by building a stronger sense of trust.
Upselling and cross-selling demonstrates that you are meeting customer expectations by looking after not only their immediate but also their future insurance needs.
Never lose sight of opportunities with your existing customer base
The key to successful insurance upselling and cross-selling is making the right approach, for the right customer, at the right time. Customers will not welcome an attempt to sell a policy they don’t need. This risks credibility. With the right Insurance Operating System in place, this is much easier than it sounds.
Single source of truth
By utilising multiple 1st and 3rd party data sources and having quotation, policy lifecycle and CRM insights in one place, you build a joined-up data flow making it easier to upsell and cross-sell.
A single version of the truth enables:
● Deeper Understanding: Up to date insights on policyholder lifestyle or personal circumstances ensures you intuitively know at any given moment what matters most in the policyholder’s world and therefore what products will be of most benefit.
● Improved Relevance: Customer data triggers enable brokers and MGAs to analyse what policy or offer will have the greatest impact. The result – improved relevance and enhanced probability of success of any upsell or cross-sell approach.
● Timing: Increase the chances of upsell or cross-sell success by using what you know about the customer to get in touch at the optimal time – again customer data triggers can pin-point when a customer is in “buying mode” i.e. a particular need or a change in circumstances.
● Value: Upselling is a business development tactic helping you to build deeper relationships. The most successful approach is value driven; if a customer cannot relate to you or work out why the policy you’re offering is of benefit to them it simply won’t succeed. Leveraging data from across every facet of customer interaction (claims, quotations, CRM etc.) ensures that you know which policies will be most relevant, why the customer needs it, and the value it will deliver.
Upsell and cross-sell in the most relevant, timely and value-driven way possible
Retaining and growing current customers is the key to a healthy business. A modular insurance CRM and insightful data intelligence modules help you achieve that all-important one single version of your customer. Aventus for example integrates all customer metrics into one single customisable dashboard, provides actionable intelligence to react quickly to events within a book, and customer data triggers for opportunity creation.
A modular operating system can help you create exceptional seamless customer experiences and identify the additional upsell and cross-sell opportunities that ultimately help your business grow.
Peter Goodman
CEO & Founder
Aventus
