Communication is an essential part of your building and nurturing positive relationships with your customers. Your ongoing outreach can help you stay in touch, generate new referrals and leads, and reinforce your role as an expert when it comes to health insurance.
Having email templates in your sales arsenal is an effective tool for regular outreach to your clients. It’s important to have some ready-to-use messages for prospecting, follow-up, and enhancing your client communications.
Below are two messages you might want to personalize and begin using – plus links to some other tools:
Prospecting Introduction
Here’s a simple intro message you can send via email or direct mail.
Hi, I’m ___________, a broker who specializes in helping businesses like yours get access to health insurance.
I can offer you access to several different types of health insurance plans (HMOs, PPOs, and more) from top carriers, including CaliforniaChoice, Kaiser Permanente, Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield of California, and Aetna. [Nevada brokers doing business with Word & Brown can list Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Cigna, among others.]
Please, give me a call at _________ and let me show you how I can help you and your employees – and provide you with the health insurance and/or other coverage you want at a price to suit your budget.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Sincerely,
Name
Phone number
P.S.: I can also tell you all about the extra perks you get from choosing certain carriers, for example, access to a prescription drug discount program, HR support, and free POP and COBRA.
Follow Up
After your initial outreach, give it a couple of days and if you don’t hear back from your prospect, give him or her a call to touch base on whether there’s any interest in a possible meeting. In case of a “no” (to a meeting), ask them why and see if you can get information on their current renewal date (if they are already offering employee health insurance). Then you can follow up later or nearer to their renewal and ask for details about their group – perhaps, something like this:
Hi _________:
As a follow up to our previous conversation, I would like to run a custom health insurance quote for your employees and then schedule a meeting to review how I can help you save money on your employees’ benefits.
To make sure I present you with the best possible quote for your company, I would appreciate it if you could please fill out and return the enclosed form to give me more information about your employees. (If you have any questions about the form, don’t hesitate to give me a call at ________________.)
After I hear back from you, I will get to work on your quote right away, and contact you to discuss a time for our meeting.
Thank you,
Name
Phone Number
Enclosure: Census
Related: What’s a Group Health Census? Step 1 in Your Sale
Asking for Referrals
If you’re going to solicit testimonials or referrals from your current customers, be sure to ask at the right time. Positive customer feedback can really help you when you post it on your website, include in your newsletters, or mention it in other email marketing. Just be sure to ask your customers after you have demonstrated your value to them by successfully helping them find the right solution to their employees’ health insurance needs. Don’t be premature in asking for a referral or testimony. If you are not sure if the time is right, wait.
Tools You Can Use
The Word & Brown quote system, WBQuote, allows you to send a census form directly to your client along with a personal note. Ask your Word & Brown representative for more information on how to get you signed up.
Inbox by Google Gmail is a useful tool; it categorizes your messages, so it’s easier to follow up on your most-important emails.
The tools in Microsoft Word can help you with your sentence structure and grammar. An added tip is avoid “weak” phrases in your communication, such as “like,” “I think,” and “sorry.”
Crystal is an online resource to help you understand more about your prospects’ and customers’ personalities – and how you can communicate more effectively with others. Using Crystal’s free Chrome extension, you can look up contacts on Gmail, LinkedIn, and Salesforce and gain an edge in your sales outreach.
Of course, to maintain a professional image, you’ll want to get an email that works with your own website domain.
A Tip on Subject Lines
To attract the most attention – and get your emails opened – it is important to choose the right subject line for each email. It’s okay to be clever, but try to avoid being overly cute. Be witty, but not pushy. Consider an emoji, depending on the demographics for your target recipient.
