Insurance sales cycles are seasonal, just like in many other business sectors. Seasonality means business will fluctuate in your insurance agency throughout the year, and it may become what you refer to as a ‘bad couple of months.
However, if you understand seasonality, you can manage it so your insurance agency doesn’t suffer. If you’ve experienced highs and lows in recent years, it is time to manage your seasonal sales better. Doing this will help your agency cope with spikes and dips during the year and allow you to even them out somewhat.
Why Is It Important to Manage Seasonality?
Consider the following long-term factors when managing seasonality in your agency. First of all, COVID-19 hasn’t gone anywhere. It may not be as prominent in the news, but the pandemic continues to interfere with consumer behavior and still affects spending patterns. This makes it hard to predict seasonal fluctuations.
Furthermore, there is a lot of economic uncertainty due to various factors, including conflict and geopolitical tensions. This affects consumer confidence and insurance sales. And, to make matters worse, insurance competition continues to increase in the face of all these challenges. This means that every year, your agency will have to compete with new players in the insurance market.
Looking at these challenges individually, you can see why your agency must manage seasonality and streamline the sales cycle.
Understanding Why Sales Seasons Fluctuate
Your agency’s seasonal pattern won’t be the same as the next. You need to identify your unique pattern to understand where to make changes. You can do this by analyzing historical sales data. Establish which months you sell the most and the least. This information is the starting point in managing seasonality in your business. And it will help you lessen the impact of the slower months.
How To Manage Seasonality
You can help improve sales during the slow months by developing targeted marketing campaigns. For instance, if you discover that you sell less insurance during the festive season, you can create a marketing campaign focused on car insurance. If you don’t sell a lot of policies in January, you could launch a back-to-school campaign highlighting the benefits of student insurance. You can make the tax season slightly less dreadful by offering discounts on life insurance policies.
These marketing campaigns may not appeal to customers instantly, but they give them something to consider. And, when they’re ready to buy, your agency will be the one they contact.
Get a CRM System
When you increase your marketing campaigns, you will contact a lot of new and potential customers. If you haven’t yet invested in a CRM (customer relationship management system), you should do so.
A good CRM system will help you keep track of the leads you’ve contacted and the ones you still need to respond to. It can also help you stay in touch with leads who have yet to decide on buying insurance. By regularly communicating with your prospects and leads, you can increase your chances of converting them, even during the slow seasons.
Introduce Exciting Products
Keep a couple of limited-time offers and other exciting insurance products in your back pocket for when sales start slowing down. A wide range of products can help you smooth out your sales cycle. It does this by attracting different customers to your new products. People are not all in the market for insurance at the same time. So, when you offer something that appeals to a different audience, you can improve sales during historically slow months.
This also means branching out to include complementary insurance products. If you exclusively sell home and auto insurance, it would be a good idea to start offering health insurance or life insurance, too.
Always Try To Retain Customers
No matter what time of the year it is, it is essential that your agency works toward customer retention. But, when you start selling more policies during off-peak seasons, it will be even better for your business. This is because your existing customers will renew their policies during the off-peak season, instantly improving your sales record. It is also a good time to try and upsell or cross-sell to existing customers, especially if you have new products available.
Make the Best of AI
AI technology has been nothing short of a miracle for the insurance industry. You can use it to even out your seasonal sales cycles too. You can use machine learning and AI chatbots to finetune and personalize marketing campaigns. It can also help you to predict customer behavior and identify growth opportunities.
Take Control Of Your Agency’s Sales Cycles in 2024
In the coming year, focus on digital marketing, customer experiences, and insurance trends to help you overcome difficult sales seasons. If you plan and execute your strategies well, you can build a resilient and profitable agency throughout the year.