Stop designing insurance products no one wants to buy

You’d be surprised how often I see an insurance company advertising their products and think ”I would never buy insurance from them.”

No, it’s not because the company is disreputable, has terrible reviews, or offers inferior coverage. It’s because of the way it’s being sold.

Selling an insurance product is no easy feat. Let’s face it, no one actually wants to buy insurance. It’s something we do out of necessity, not because we’re excited to get a policy document in the mail. The only time we even think of buying insurance is when something makes us (or our possessions) feel vulnerable or when some insurance salesperson makes a good case that we need to buy coverage or switch to a new provider.

If you’re selling insurance, you’re facing an uphill battle. So you need your products, your customer-facing processes, and your sales and marketing messages to speak directly to what your customers really want and need.

If you want to seriously get my attention and not be one of the many insurance companies customers dismiss, here’s what you need to do.

Go digital

This is not optional.

Insurance is a bit of a legacy industry. Plenty of old, well-established companies coast on their name and reputation. They manage to stick around because they’ve become household names. A lot of newer insurance providers make the mistake of emulating these older companies. But without the brand recognition they have, it’s impossible to reach their level of success by using their outdated methods.

And honestly, their level of success isn’t all that impressive when you consider how much better they could do if they went digital instead of relying on small armies of insurance agents.

For one thing, their cost-per-sale would go way down.

They would also have a sales method that could be scaled easily. When you’re relying on agents to sell your product, the only way to really scale is to hire more agents. That’s incredibly unwieldly and inefficient.

And then there’s the growing number of customers who just want an easy way to access product information and communicate with the company. They’re not interested in spending time on the phone or setting up a meeting when they should be able to find the information on the website.

Your customers want you to go digital, so that’s the first step to getting their attention.

Build a product with sales in mind

Today’s insurers tend to design products from the bottom-up. They create products reflect what their actuaries think is a good policy instead of designing ones that are easier to sell.

The result is almost always some insanely complex product that is far too compliated to communicate clearly and simply to customers. You practically need to give them a presentation just to explain what it does and what it covers.

No one has time to sit through that kind of detailed explanation, especially if you can’t give them a quick, enticiting summary of the product beforehand.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but this is what happens when you don’t design a product with sales in mind: you end up with something you can’t sell.

Show the price

I don’t want to waste my time looking under the hood of a car unless I know I can afford it. It’s the same with insurance products. I don’t want to read about a product or go through a lengthy sales process unless I know what the coverage will cost me.

You need to show your customers a real and relevant price, and do it up front (or as close to up front as you can). If your product is so complicated that you need a ton of information and input from me before you can give me a quote, I’m just going to walk (or click) away.

Plenty of insurance companies loose sales over this and they don’t even realize it.

Make the product relevant

Most people have insurance, but they also spend very little time thinking about insurance. You have to make them care about your insurance product before you sell it to them.

How can you do that? By giving some context that makes it relevant to the customer.

Present it alongside other forms of coverage so the customer can see what makes your product different, or what your unique selling point is.

If you try to sell your product in a vacuum, most people will just ignore it because they have no easy frame of reference for it.

Let me complete the purchase online

You’ve got my attention, piqued my interest, and offered me a product that meets my needs. But you haven’t closed the sale yet. You can still loose my business by making it too hard for me to purchase your product.

Even if you offer superior coverage at a better price, you still need to make purchasing the product convenient if you want to increase your sales.

You need to let your customers buy the product online, but you also need to let them buy it immediately. I want to click, enter my information, and move on with my day. I don’t want to get dragged to another site or have to wait for a call from an agent to complete the purchase.

Can you imagine Amazon dominating the global marketplace if every time you wanted to purchase a product a sales rep phoned you to finalize your order? Me neither.

We make it easier for you and your customers

All of this boils down to making it easier for your customers — easier to get a quote, to get information, and to purchase your product. But making things easier for your customer often feels like it will make things incredibly difficult for you. How do you even begin overhauling your systems, your online interface, and your sales approach?

We know the insurance industry is heading in this digital and customer-centric direction, so we created a service to make it easier for insurance providers to adapt. We assist insurances in digitizing their sales channels and making new or existing insurance products digitally distributable.

It’s still not an easy task, but it’s not impossible. And if you want to grow your sales and succeed, it’s essential.

Read more about what we do at www.penni.io