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2012 Forecasts for Insurance, Mortgage, Higher Ed

Alyssa Trenkamp — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:23:00 +0000

January 19, 2012 — Ah, the New Year. January always offers a chance to move forward with a clean slate and an eye for the future. In that spirit, here are some blog posts that offer a look forward to 2012 and some predictions and previews for what the year has to offer in private-sector higher education, mortgage and insurance.

#1 – Five reasons why for-profit schools are here to stay via @washingtonpost – In this column, Jay Mathew’s begins his look at the future of for-profit education with a clear and definite bias against the institutions, and initial reluctance to review the book titled “Change.edu: Rebooting for the New Talent Economy” written by Kaplan’s Chairman, Andrew S. Rosen. While the book didn’t shake Mathew’s feeling completely, he noted “Rosen convinced me that for-profit educational ventures are here to stay.” He went on to detail five reasons why. http://wapo.st/sSAwCQ

#2 – The Mortgage Battlefield of 2012 via @NatlMortgagePro – John Walsh offers up his predictions for the embattled mortgage industry from the frontlines of the struggle, including continued low rates and the reemergence of innovative products. http://dlvr.it/12P29W”

#3 – Experts 2012 Rate Outlook via @MortgageNewsMND – Rob Chrisman gives an overview of mortgage rates and industry predictions based on outlooks from industry experts Freddie, Fannie and others. Predictions anticipate a similar year to 2011, with HARP 2.0 and expected low interest rates throughout the year likely to have a positive impact. http://tinyurl.com/cwl8zfe

#4 – Three Ways Insurers Will Compete on Data in 2012 via @insurancetech – highlights how analytics is likely to change insurers approach to underwriting, claims, and risk management in 2012 http://ow.ly/87ZXG

#5 – Health care reform you can expect in 2012 via @Bankrate – The piece looks at what patients, doctors, and insurers should expect from the pieces of the affordable care act going into law in 2012. http://bit.ly/zuUE7U

#6 – Insurance Veterans’ Forecasts for 2012 via @ijournal – The piece discusses the future of the industry in the coming year with nine different industry leaders to get a better grasp on what to expect. http://bit.ly/yjGcS0

#7 – 3 Key Challenges Facing Agents in 2012 via @ijournal – In this podcast with Bob Rusbuldt, CEO of Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America, Bob articulates what he believes are the three biggest challenges facing independent agents and brokers in 2012. http://bit.ly/z6gNSb

Text Messaging for Sales Success

Alyssa Trenkamp — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 17:11:50 +0000

Are your sales tactics dated? A barrage of repeated call attempts and e-mails may feel like the way to go in sales, but if they annoy or overwhelm the consumer they’re ultimately counterproductive. To maximize ROI, it is important to mold sales efforts to today’s savvy on-the-go consumers.

And if you need convincing on consumer behavior, take a look at these statistics:
The United States has more than 300 million wireless subscribers and a recent study by Pew Internet showed that at least half of Americans ages 18 to 29 send at least 40 text messages a day and half of those ages 30 to 49 send at least 10 per day. That exceeds the number of calls they’re making by factors of eight and two respectively.

This doesn’t mean throw out all the tried and true best practices. What it does mean, is looking for a good mix of old and new sales tactics that will ensure a positive initial brand experience, and give you a leg up on the competition.

By adding automated text messaging into the sales funnel, a savvy sales manager can open up a range of options for reaching the consumer. Here are a few tips for using text messaging for sales success:

Let prospective customers guide your practices: give your customers the option to receive text messages with appointment and deadline reminders.

Send friendly reminders: text messaging can be a nice alternative to phone or e-mail to provide a quick reminder of an application deadline, appointment, etc. Triocci University of Beauty Culture found that using texts in their recruitment was an effective way to remind prospective students of important deadlines and appointments.

Stay in touch with a busy customer that wants to respond on their time: a mortgage broker, for example, could use text messaging to communicate with a client who is often in meetings but wants updates and red flag notifications to keep the process moving forward and ensure he can lock in the quoted interest rate.

Appeal to the younger consumer: texting could allow younger potential consumers to absorb and respond to marketing information in a fashion they’re most comfortable with. You might consider running a promotion or contest via text messaging.

The new automated text messaging service offered by Leads360 are tailored to send texts with a timing and frequency balanced towards giving potential customers important, actionable information in a convenient, immediate package that ensures regulatory compliance. More importantly, the prospect’s replies go directly to the email box sales rep, eliminating the need to hand out cell phones to the sales force.

We’d like to hear from you. How do you plan to use text messaging to improve the consumer experience?

NEW WEBINAR ANNOUNCEMENT: What Planet Are You On?

Marketing — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:43:35 +0000

Please join us on December 9th at 11AM Pacific / 2PM Eastern for a brand new webinar about how to understand and leverage the unique characteristics of your sales process. You can register here, for free, in about 5 seconds.

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What Planet Are You On? Leverage the Differences between B2C and B2B Sales and Marketing

Applying the 7 universal ground rules of sales and marketing and the 3 keys to lead conversion

Knowing what factors are critical to success in your business is not as obvious as you may think. The most successful sales and marketing organizations understand which planet they are on, and they know which sales and marketing approaches align with their needs.

Understanding the characteristics of your sales and marketing efforts are essential to achieving higher lead conversion and sales success.

Sign up for this free webinar to learn how the 7 universal ground rules of sales and marketing apply differently to B2C and B2B sales. Find out what the unique characteristics of your sales efforts are, and see how to leverage the 3 keys to lead conversion using powerful lead management software from Leads360.

From this webinar, you will learn:
•    Questions for better understanding the rules of your target marketplace and sales process
•    The 7 universal ground rules of sales and marketing
•    The 3 key drivers of sales lead conversion
•    How lead management software can boost your sales and increase ROI
•    Why implementing the wrong technology solution can cripple your business

We’ll see you there.

Keeping Ahead of the Curve

Leads360 — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:28:28 +0000

In today’s brisk economic climate, every industry is struggling to adapt. Nowhere is this truer than in insurance. Selling insurance can be very difficult if the right tools aren’t employed, but those companies that have shown the willingness and initiative to embrace new technologies have seen their businesses thrive even in difficult times. More and more people are shopping for insurance online, and those companies that take advantage of this fact are seeing big returns.

A Pew study found that 53% of all Americans not only use the internet, they use it on a daily basis. What’s more, 92% of those American making more than $50,000 a year use the internet. There are few areas where this has become as visible as it has in the insurance industry. Most people are shopping for their insurance online these days. A whopping 80% of individuals who bought auto insurance last year began their research online and almost 30% of the 25-50 age group wound up purchasing their policies online. These trends aren’t limited to auto insurance, though. Across the board, customers are turning to the internet as a valuable tool in their shopping for the right policy and those companies willing to make the shift to pursuing internet leads are cashing in.

While traditional business models have insurance companies trawling through fewer and fewer opportunities with less and less sophisticated methods, internet leads allow agents to ignore limitations like geography and time and increase the number of contacts they make and policies they write. Rather than spending time seeking out interested buyers, agents using internet leads can focus on those individuals who have already expressed an interest in buying their products and spend more time closing sales. What’s more, the right software can allow a company to organize and efficiently track their leads in order to maximize sales. Advanced data and sophisticated methods of organizing and distributing leads in real time allows a sales staff to contact quality leads quickly, efficiently, and get the desired results more often.

The internet has changed the pace of business in insurance sales. Internet leads are more effective than traditional methods, particularly when contacted within the first five minutes. Those companies that have been willing to utilize these leads and employ efficient methods of managing and tracking those leads have had the most success in recent years.

How Many Times Should You Call Each Sales Lead? Read Our New Call Attempts Study

Marketing — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:03:12 +0000

Here’s what our own Nisheeth Singh had to say about the study:

As you may have read on Lead Critic today, we released our newest research regarding the impact of call frequency on sales lead conversion.

To misquote a famous author: “Elementary, my dear Watson”. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s written works never actually saw this phrase although the first and second parts of the phrase were seen in close association during conversations. But I digress.

As many of you opined above and is the central premise of the paper (found here), sometimes the most obvious and logical actions are never taken by lead buyers. I don’t necessarily understand why they don’t but I do revel in the fact that it means significant upside for those that choose to engage with their leads smartly.

We conducted the study based on several million leads that our clients tried contacting over a period of many months to have as diverse a data set as possible. We studied the effects of multiple call attempts all the way to 20 and I’ve published the entire results of our study below just to whet your intellectual curiosity. Some explanation is in order:

* Column 1 denotes the call attempt

* Column 2 denotes the percentage of ‘Contactable leads’ contacted – this is key to understanding the study and is NOT the same as Contact Rate. This means that the data set excludes any leads that were never contacted. This metric is a percent of the remaining leads in our study which we define as ‘contactable leads’

* Column 3 denotes the percent improvement in the ‘% of Contactable leads contacted’ metric for each successive attempt over the very 1^st call attempt

* Column 4 denotes the percent improvement in the ‘% of Contactable leads contacted’ metric for each successive attempt over the preceding call attempt

Contact % of Contactable Improvement Improvement over

Attempt leads contacted over 1st attempt preceding attempt

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1 39%

2 72% 87% 87%

3 83% 114% 15%

4 88% 128% 6.5%

5 91% 136% 3.4%

6 93% 141% 2.1%

7 95% 145% 1.5%

8 96% 148% 1.1%

9 96% 150% 0.8%

10 97% 151% 0.6%

11 97% 152% 0.5%

12 98% 153% 0.3%

13 98% 154% 0.3%

14 98% 154% 0.3%

15 98% 155% 0.2%

16 99% 155% 0.2%

17 99% 156% 0.2%

18 99% 156% 0.1%

19 99% 156% 0.1%

20 99% 157% 0.1%

As you can see, the benefits of calling start trailing off pretty steeply after the 5^th or 6^th attempt, we chose to prescribe 6 attempts as the cut-off. I beg to defer with LeadCritic in that this is a very statistically relevant study with a data set this size and of this heterogeneity, at least at a high level. I do agree though that to get maximum benefit from a study like this, one should conduct the same study but specifically for their own sales team to understand the effect of call attempts on their contact rate.

Cheers!

Nisheeth Singh

Director of Strategic Intelligence, Leads360

This is Your Auto Insurance on Slowdown

Matt Johnson — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:35:08 +0000

The debate about how high gas prices might affect auto insurers has been supplanted by concerns over how their balance sheets may look in light of investments that have turned sour in recent weeks. How individual companies will be affected by the economic slowdown will vary in the short term, but it seems likely that overall they will have some difficulties. The credit crisis comes at a particularly bad time for the auto insurance industry as their prices have fallen in recent years due to competition pressures. The government seizure of AIG also portends some upcoming shifts in market dynamics. AIG has indicated it is likely to sell off assets to repay federal loans, and with no announced buyer, the degree to which this will affect market concentration remains to be determined.

Bush shelves children’s insurance compliance concerns

Matt Johnson — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:03:05 +0000

The President has backed off threats to impose financial penalties on states that have enrolled too many children in a State Federal insurance program. Fifteen states were threatened with penalties to take effect Monday if they failed to remove children from families with incomes of 250% of the poverty line from the program. Legislators argued that the new guidelines, including a requirement that children go uninsured for one year prior to being enrolled, were too stringent and would result in too many children going uninsured. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP insures 6.6 million people, an overwhelming majority of whom are children. Compliance concerns haven’t evaporated, but for the immediate future, their enforcement and resulting fines and loss of Federal funding have been taken off the table.

California makes another attempt at reforming the insurance industry

Matt Johnson — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:27:30 +0000

Efforts to pass a universal health plan failed earlier this year. But the issue is still alive in the hearts and minds of legislators. They are keen to avoid fully scrapping the two years of work they put into wholesale health care reform.
If government requires that certain services are included in insurance policies, it drives up the cost of these policies and leaves people who can’t afford them uninsured. When the government doesn’t stipulate the details of insurance policies, cheaper plans come available, but these cheaper health plans aren’t made available to elderly or infirm, who need them most.
There is an equal but opposite reaction within the insurance industry for every bit of regulating the government does.
California is trying to chart a third course that limits the insurers’ profits on individual health care plans, as well as limit the annual spending of the insured. Governor Schwarzenegger opposes stipulating specific services to be included in policies, but proponents of such limits suggest that it’s the only way to provide consumers with meaningful healthcare reform.