TECHNOLOGY

Keep in touch!

Relational SalesPro offers automated marketing communication to warm up prospects, foster client loyalty, and generate referrals

By Nancy Doucette

There's no denying that we are in a digital environment. Just look at the number of e-mails that pass through your inbox every day. And there's no denying that your commercial lines or benefits prospects and clients are also struggling with e-mail overload. For most business people, there are simply too many electronic messages to keep up with.

That's good news for Deborah T. Miller, marketing consultant and co-founder of Relational SalesPro, LLC. She says her organization's Web-based turnkey product, SALESPRO Opportunity Builder, helps producers cut through the clutter created by e-mail marketing. It generates professionally written, targeted correspondence that nurtures the relationship and builds trust between prospects and clients and the producer.

"The acquisition as well as the retention and profitability of an account are dependent on both the prospect's and the client's confidence in the producer. That begins with trust," Miller points out. "Trust is the end result of a relationship built on consistency and integrity. Clients and prospects must learn that you do what you say you're going to do." And sometimes, she suggests, a producer's message is best delivered outside of an e-mail.

 "There's a subconscious perception of professionalism when you send a letter through the mail. The prospect sees that this is a signed business communication, on business letterhead, with a business logo, in a business envelope with first class postage. Instantly, a sensory awareness of who you are is etched into their memory," she maintains.

That said, SALESPRO is flexible, allowing agencies to correspond with clients and prospects in the fashion they prefer. Once a conversation or meeting has taken place, a producer should inquire how the individual wishes to receive communication. Some will prefer surface mail; others will choose e-mail. The pure act of asking fosters trust, Miller says.

An industry veteran, Miller has background in insurance sales, marketing and management with agencies and carriers. She says she well understands that for most producers, prospecting is among their least favorite activities and that going on appointments is what they should be doing. "SALESPRO takes the prospecting process out of the producer's hands and automates it," she explains.

Ron Pitcher, CWCU, principal of Pitcher Insurance Agency, Inc., based in the Chicago suburb of Palatine, recalls that he evaluated his prospecting activities in the late 1990s and decided that Miller could help. She had pioneered a PC-based turnkey program of insurance-specific nurture marketing campaigns called The Marketing AutoPilot Sales System (MAPS), and Pitcher became an enthusiastic user. He was delighted when he was invited to be a beta agency for the Web-based SALESPRO Opportunity Builder that Miller launched in 2009.

Pitcher's five-person agency specializes in manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, and construction. To keep his prospect pipeline full, he relies on his new business marketing director, Melissa Ritchie, who is a part-time team member, and Relational SalesPro. "She inputs the leads into SALESPRO," he explains. "She makes the follow-up calls, and sets the appointments. You must have a process," Pitcher emphasizes.

Miller expands on the process that SALESPRO provides to producers like Pitcher. "Our technology removes every non-income producing task from the producer. The SALESPRO software is loaded with hundreds of insurance-specific campaigns and strategies, letters, e-mails, faxes, reports and call prompts. All the producer needs to do is send us their leads and begin marketing."

She continues, "SALESPRO is not a 'reactive' CRM. In other words, producers don't have to decide what to do next. Ours is a proactive system. Once the contacts are loaded, the system sets the initial strategy and produces every communiqué until human intervention is required. After human intervention—to call for an appointment, do a drop-by visit, or go on an appointment, for example—the producer simply selects the appropriate answer to three questions to tell SALESPRO the result of the meeting, or lack of, and the system sets the next campaign.

"Bottom line," Miller says, "the system cannot make the phone calls or go on appointments, but everything else is automated and on auto-pilot."

The phone calls are a vital part of the prospecting process, she points out, and if someone representing the agency doesn't follow up on written communication with a call, she speculates that about 60% of all opportunities dry up.

Because Miller believes so strongly in relieving producers of non-income-producing activities—such as prospect pre-qualification and information verification, which require human intervention—she built a call center portal into SALESPRO for producers or agencies that outsource calls to a call center.

Miller says she's seen statistics that indicate it takes a salesperson an average of nine attempts to connect with a senior executive. "When you multiply that over and over again, you can see what a huge time investment it is for a producer," she says. Those statistics further show that 48% of salespeople give up after their first attempt. In all, 92% abandon the effort before making contact, she says.

Persistence pays off

"Price is not a sustainable competitive advantage," Pitcher observes. "You have to build a relationship with anyone you want to do business with, and a key component of that relationship is trust. The letters that are part of SALESPRO build trust and name recognition."

Pitcher acknowledges that he doesn't have the time to create and write letters like those that are part of SALESPRO. He appreciates that they dovetail with the agency's "total cost of risk" approach. He supplements the SALESPRO letters with other materials such as newsletters, brochures, or his total cost of risk CD, depending on the prospect and the circumstance. "You have to be multi-faceted in your marketing efforts," he declares.

Pitcher adds that he depends on SALESPRO to help him keep in touch with existing clients as well.

Miller explains that SALESPRO contains five years of prospect communication, from new suspect through the proposal, and three years of client retention communication. Centers of influence communication is also included. "Nurturing a relationship isn't an instant process," she observes. "The relationship becomes warmer and more valuable as time goes on. And the true value of nurture marketing manifests in the second year with a dramatic increase in appointment activities," she says.

Relational SalesPro offers four separate modules: personal, commercial, benefits, and bonds. The data fields, reports, and communications within each module are customized to fit the target audience, she points out.

Leveraging centers of influence

Jan Berthold, CLU, ChFC, CPCU, is a senior vice president at Heffernan Insurance Brokers, headquartered in Walnut Creek, California. Before joining Heffernan, she owned her own agency and used MAPS. She missed it once she arrived at Heffernan—which uses SalesForce, she reports. Heffernan permitted Berthold to purchase SALESPRO for her personal use.

Berthold says her loyalty to Miller's products is due to the fact that SALESPRO is specifically designed for insurance brokers. "Its framework is designed just for insurance brokers," she says. With SalesForce, she adds, she would have to write the letters, know when to send them, and when to follow up. All that is built into SALESPRO. "It helps me be organized and persistent," she states.

Berthold explains that she works with large clients by referral only, so she uses the centers of influence letters in SALESPRO. At the time of our interview in mid-February, Berthold had just received three new leads, thanks to the letters which she says help keep her "top of mind" with her contacts.

Berthold elaborates: "One of the leads was from an attorney, one was from a former client who had lost her job due to a merger and is now with a new company, and one was from a CPA. I visited the CPA the day before I got the lead. He showed me that my letter was next to his phone and said he was intending to call me with some referrals—in the middle of tax season!"

Miller concludes: "SALESPRO effortlessly keeps the producer's name and unique message in front of prospects, clients, and centers of influence, which means the producer is top of mind when the prospect is ready to buy. As a result, producers have more time to devote to income-producing activities."

For more information:

Relational SalesPro, LLC

Web site: www.relationalsalespro.com