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Cross-Selling: How Independent Insurance Agents Can Turn Monoline Into Multi-line

An insurance salesman reviews a policy with two customers.

Cross-selling may well be the one key growth strategy that independent insurance agents aren’t currently leveraging to their full advantage – and Renaissance offers a solution to its members that can change that.

Consider that when it comes to personal lines, the average agency’s book of business contains between 25% and 35% worth of clients who buy only one policy.

It’s likely that your agency has an equally high number of customers who have only have one policy with you. Rather than viewing it as a problem, see it as a profitable opportunity to pursue: Cross-selling those clients to multiple policies leads to better retention, increased customer loyalty and long-term revenue and premium growth.

Cross-Selling As a Mindset

The fact is, many customers who carry only one policy would be happy to have more than one if the savings are right and if the total value of the coverage being offered is clearly and effectively communicated to the client. The difference in price on having an auto and a renter’s policy, example, could make the latter essentially free to the customer and a bonus for you.

Naturally, it all depends on the client, but in many cases such decisions are a no-brainer once the opportunity is put in front of them – and the loyalty engendered in the process can go a long way when renewal time comes around.

“Renaissance’s technology tools and dashboards allow our Growth Advisors to analyze the characteristics of mono-line and multi-line policy customers,” says David Dawson, Renaissance Alliance’s Regional Executive Vice President, Northeast. “Quite often it’s the mono-line policy customers who are leaving; account rounded, multi-line policy customers make better clients, bring more lifetime value to your agency and generate more revenue and premium over time.”

All told, cross-selling is a means for contributing to the overall health of your agency. However, cross-selling isn’t just a practice; it’s a mindset – an agency-wide strategy that principals must embrace and make a priority with their customer service reps in order for it to be truly successful.

There are two key steps that must be taken: changing your CSRs’ behavior, achieved by clearly communicating to your sales staff that cross-selling is going to become a daily conscious effort among the team, and building the process.

Renaissance member principals enjoy the advantage of Maestro, a powerful email marketing tool that you can use to strategically reach out to monoline customers to cross-sell additional coverage.

Those who want to learn more about Renaissance’s technology suite are encouraged to contact us to get a full demo of how these tools can be put to work at your agency.

What’s my motivation?

Once the benefits of cross-selling are acknowledged by the agency principal and it’s decided that this strategy is the way to go, how can CSRs’ efforts be best directed in this area?

Financial incentives are one way to motivate the troops, as is gamification of the process. Creating a contest that awards the highest converter to multiple policies is an option that can yield successful results for your agency.

For example, Ted Hughes, Director of Sales and Business Development at Renaissance Alliance member agency Cushman Insurance in Brockton, Mass., decided last year during the first months of the pandemic that it was time to accelerate his agency’s cross-selling efforts.

Hughes launched an incentive program in which Cushman’s account executives could earn a cash incentive for each newly rounded existing account. Some managed to round five or six a month, while others upsold eight to 10 a month. Tickets to a Patriots game were awarded the CSRs who rounded the most accounts.

A year later, Cushman had sold 300 new policies.

Hughes is an avid user of Arno. “I’d been trying to get meaningful data out of our AMS for years. But now I’m getting reports that I never knew existed, that are yielded from our data set,” he says.

Maximizing Your Member Benefits

Leaving money on the table is not the style of independent agents, who know both the value of customer retention and the financial benefits of having clients with multiple policies.

Yet another advantage of being a Renaissance  member agency is that your Growth Advisors can calculate for you the projected lost revenue over the next five to 10 years that you could be missing out on by not cross-selling – and those numbers are often much higher than you expect.

Additionally, member agency principals can consult the Retention Dashboard (available under GrowthTrak), which helps them better understand their retention over time by Carrier, Line of Business, and Monoline vs. non-Monoline.

Independent agents are busy every day, and in the process of continuously trying to gain new clients, it’s easy to lose sight of how much revenue they can add with existing customers.

Speak with Renaissance’s Help Desk or reach out to your Growth Advisor to learn how cross-selling can boost your revenue, improve your retention and help increase your agency’s valuation.

Ask yourself this: “Who needs monoline, when you can have multi-line?”

How much can Renaissance help your agency grow? Calculate your agency’s projected cumulative earnings and valuation here: Calculate Your Growth Potential 

About Renaissance

Renaissance provides market access, placement services, technology and resources for independent insurance agents that want to grow their business and maximize efficiency.

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Renaissance is a good fit for independent insurance agencies that:

  • Have a positive loss history
  • Have a strong desire to grow commercial lines
  • Are led by a licensed and experienced P&C insurance professional
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