Why the Second Sale is More Important Than the First
In the restaurant business, there’s a three-visit strategy. If you can get a person to return a second time, the changes are 42% likely they’ll return for a third time. If you can get a third visit, the odds you get a customer for a fourth time are something close to 70%. Then, you’ve got a customer for life! If you apply this same strategy to the insurance business, it makes for a perfect retention strategy. Why should you care about the second sale more than the first? It’s simple. The first sale is easy. Anyone can sell something to one person, once. However, establishing a buying relationship is the ultimate retention strategy.
What Other Agents Are Doing
“You don’t have to harass the beneficiary to make a second or third sale. We provide quality, valuable content for free. We remind the beneficiary we’re still here to serve them – better than any other choice in the area – and if they like what they see, here’s a little something they might be interested in. We give a soft ask frequently, but not too obviously.”
“Don’t hard-sell. Instead, give them great reasons to return. Don’t spend all of your time working about the first enrollment. Put all the brain matter to work on earning the second…also, fourth.”
“Don’t wait too long to make the second sale. Beneficiaries can sometimes forget why they bought from you outside of the need of the insurance plan. If you never ask for an additional meeting, and a year later you show up or call to see them again, they’re likely to have already been contacted by your competition for other plans, or they may have even forgotten your name.”
You need to get new customers and keep older customers simultaneously. The old customers are the ones who believe in you and your services. Yes, we should all provide exceptional services to get new customers in the door, but never at the expense of keeping a loyal customer. In the words of one agent, “The new customer pays for your lunch, the loyal customers pay your mortgage.” It’s essential to begin your third-visit strategy by asking yourself: What can I do to encourage a new sale? What can I do to help your customers tell others? What can I do to keep my customers returning for more?
Taking the Next Steps
Make the short-term goal to give your current customers three exceptional experiences, and you’re more likely to see the benefits of the strategy in practice. For example, if you meet with the client to sell the initial health plan, let them know you’ll come back to visit them and see if the plan is meeting their medical and financial needs.
“When you show up for the second visit, this is when you start laying out other plan recommendations on the table. Bring graphs, charts, worksheets – the tangible evidence of your proposal is pivotal.”
Agents who use the third-visit strategy express the importance of recommending things such as hospital indemnity, long-term care coverage, accidental, cancer, heart attack, and stroke plans, dental, vision, and hearing, as well as a final expense or other term-life insurance plans.
“Clients don’t necessarily want to enroll in everything all at once. It’s sticker shock to sit down and say, ‘Your monthly premium is x-amount of dollars, but now let’s add another $12 for this, $20 for that, and $35 for this.’ So, bringing back several new solutions on the second-visit isn’t as overwhelming.”
“I’ve found that once a client has had the opportunity to experience out-of-pocket costs, or see how their plan works without supplemental coverage, they’re more interested in filling in gaps. They’ve also had time to speak with friends or family members about their experiences with coverage, or the lack thereof. This makes the second-visit, third-visit, and fourth-visit that much better. At that point, they’ve heard the emotional reasonings behind your recommendations and truly see the need.”
If you’re ready to begin working on your new retention plan based on the three-visit strategy, contact Agent Pipeline to discuss what supplemental plans are available in your market. Agent Pipeline has an expansive portfolio providing you with plans such as:
- Hospital indemnity
- Critical illness
- Cancer, heart attack, and stroke
- Dental, vision, and hearing
- Long-term care insurance
- Accidental policies
- Final expense insurance
- Term life insurance plans
