When you’re just starting out in your insurance sales career, you may not realize how important soliciting and embracing customer and prospect feedback can be in helping you improve your skills, boost your future sales, and build a more successful business.
Asking for and receiving feedback can provide you with insights you might otherwise be unable to secure. You can learn what’s working and what may need a tweak. Feedback from prospects and customers can help you identify communication gaps or sales processes that could be improved with a little refinement.
What are effective ways to generate feedback?
Surveys: Customer surveys are a popular method for seeking comments. There are many questions you can ask, a variety of formats you can implement, and multiple platforms available to help you distribute your surveys and analyze your responses.
If you’re using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software in your agency – which you definitely should be – a survey widget may be built into your CRM.
Another option is using an online program like Survey Monkey. The company touts itself as a global leader that asks 20 million questions daily. If you like “slider surveys,” SurveyMonkey offers tips for using “slider questions” in your next survey. Two alternatives you might consider are Zoho and SurveySparrow.
Email: Sending an email is an easy, inexpensive way to reach out and get candid feedback from your prospects and customers. In your outreach, you want to let those you are soliciting know that you want their honest opinions – good and bad – on their interactions with you or your sales team.
Give them information, up-front, about the timeframe for their responses and when they might expect to hear from you again in response to the opinions shared with you.
If you’re offering an inducement to stir a greater response to your email (or survey), be sure to mention the planned timing. Sharing this information can help you build trust – assuming you do follow up in a timely manner. Regarding an incentive, you might consider an entry into a drawing for a gift card or a nominal token of appreciation like a coffee mug, glassware, golf balls, movie pass, etc. Zen Habits published a list of 30 Frugal Gift Ideas to You Appreciate Someone.
Social Media: Using social media is another option. And, like CRM mentioned before, some social media platforms have built-in polling tools.
Live Chat: Many organizations offer live chat in connection with their websites or customer support, if your is among these, live chart can be effective in gathering feedback from website users and others concerning what’s working and what can be improved. Best of all, you get feedback in real time.
Interviews: Another useful tool for soliciting feedback is what is often referred to as an exploratory customer interview. Of course, this approach takes more time – and you may have fewer takers who want to share their time and thoughts. However, it can help you develop more insights into your organization and the different approaches used by different members of your sales and administrative teams – both good and bad. Some experts believe a more in-depth interview gives you the opportunity to confront issues early on in your customer relationship, helping you nurture more successful relationships over time.
Your ideal goal is to make changes to your workflow that automates your solicitation of feedback. You also need to review all feedback with an open mind and evaluate what reasonable changes you can make that will help you improve future efforts and your customer interactions.
Collecting feedback is crucial to your continuing success. Listening to the feedback you get will help improve things not only for you and your sales colleagues, but for your prospects and customers alike.
