Relationship Building for Insurance Agents in 2019

Hey! I’m Chris, I’m an insurance broker and I help captive agents with hard to place insurance risks, basically any insurance policy that a standard captive agent cannot do. 

In this article, I’ll be giving away some of the most simple and useful ticks, that I’ve been using and have found a lot of success from. If you do insurance, real estate, or mortgages, this article could be very useful for you.

​Hopefully, by now, you’re aware that our industries heavily depend on building relationships. My tips and tricks include the implementation of the technology available to us, which can be very helpful for building relationships with clients/professionals and increase referrals to your business.

The two relationships to focus on:

1. Potential/existing clients.
2. Professionals in surrounding industries.

TIP #1: Build relationships With Potential/Existing Clients

• Texting every person in your contact list or Facebook friends list and letting them know what you do and how you can help them. Here’s an example of a message you can send: “Hey ____ I hope you’re doing well! As you may or may not know, I am an insurance agent. If you ever need a quote or know somebody who needs insurance, please let me know! I’d really appreciate it and I’ll send you a little gift as a thank you!” 
• Making Videos is probably the most efficient way to build a relationship with your customers. Studies show that after the 4th or 5th time of a person seeing you on video, the human brain, actually processes the information from the experience as if they had met you in person. By making videos you have the ability to multiply yourself across many social media platforms. This allows you to sell yourself to hundreds of people in a very short time. If you start to get more complex with it, you can actually run ads based on the demographics of people who you want to target (age, gender, location, etc.) Some great tools are Facebook Business Manager, LinkedIn Premium, Instagram Ads/Story Ads, and Youtube Ads.
• Asking all of your current clients if they know anyone else who might need insurance. A great way to do this is by checking in with your current clients, and asking them if they have had any changes in their insurance needs or questions about their policy. This way you’re showing them great customer service and also letting them know that you will treat their friends/family with the same great service that they’re receiving with you.​

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Tip #2: Build relationships with other people in similar industries. 

• Joining groups on Facebook regarding the industry that you’re targeting. For example, if you are going after first time buyer’s homeowners’ insurance, join a Facebook group for “Real estate buyers, sellers, and investors”. Read a ton of the posts, ask questions, and make polls. It is also extremely helpful to join insurance groups to learn more about how other agents are finding success. An excellent group on Facebook is “Insurance Soup” or “Marketing for Insurance Agents”. 
• Walk into your local real estate office, insurance office, or loan office. Introduce yourself and let them know what you do and how you may be able to help. Acknowledge the fact that they may have someone they already work with but you’d be more than happy to be a back up if for some reason they aren’t able to get the job done.
• Ask friends to introduce you to their connections from a similar industry. Almost everyone knows someone who’s in real estate or has even done it before. Ask your best friend’s older sister who has been in real estate for 10 years if she has an insurance agent that she works with. If you don’t ask you’ll never find out!

First and foremost, you must focus on what you want to accomplish. From their, you can begin implementing these strategies that will help bring in new referrals. The reason I’m giving away my secrets is that I know that 90% of the people reading this won’t actually take action, and implement the strategies. I wish you the best of luck and I hope you take advantage of the opportunities life has to offer! There’s no guarantee how long they will be there.