How to Increase Health Insurance Sales: 10 Powerful Strategies
health insurance, lead generation, dynamic numbers, call tracking, webcallback,
In 2023, as the health insurance marketplace welcomes over 3.6 million new customers, each of whom can choose from among an average of 88 plans offered by five insurers. This abundance of options makes it challenging to distinguish oneself from the competition.
Health insurance agents must overcome challenges like rising customer expectations and the increasing cost of healthcare.
Luckily, there are powerful techniques that you can employ to navigate these hurdles and succeed in the competitive world of health insurance sales.
Curious to learn more?
Keep reading as we explore this and unveil how call tracking can revolutionize your health insurance sales strategies. Plus, discover the optimal call-tracking solution tailored to your business needs.
This Article Contains:
- 3 Critical Health Insurance Market Challenges
- 10 Powerful Strategies to Improve Health Insurance Sales
- How Call Tracking Can Enhance Health Insurance Sales
- Skyrocket Your Health Insurance Sales with iovox Insights
3 Critical Health Insurance Market Challenges
To excel in the insurance industry, you must first understand the nuances of the health insurance marketplace. Certain industry-specific factors affect all players, big and small, and are a good place to start when rethinking your entire sales approach.
Here are three of the most common challenges faced by health insurance professionals:
Rising Customer Expectations
Did you know that 1 in 3 customers might stop supporting a brand they used to trust after just one bad experience?
This stat shows that customers expect excellent customer service and won’t tolerate anything less. Clients expect their brokers and agents to act as reliable advisors, ready to assist them in making well-informed decisions about their health insurance policy.
But that’s not all. Your potential and existing clients actively seek recognition, thoughtful consideration, and genuine care.
So, how can you address these mounting expectations?
Your health insurance agents must prioritize personalized engagement and commit to educating clients to build trust and credibility.
The Rising Cost of Healthcare
Willis Towers Watson’s 2023 Global Medical Trends Survey projects a 10% rise in healthcare costs this year, marking the highest increase in 15 years.
This increase results from extensive inflation and increased demand for healthcare while the supply of services remains more or less the same.
Its effects extend beyond financial implications for employees. Escalating living costs might lead individuals to postpone routine and preventive healthcare, compromising their well-being to meet financial demands.
What are health insurance providers doing in response to this?
To address this, health insurance provider Aetna offers plans that let low-income families take full advantage of the Affordable Care Act. If you qualify, the ‘premium credit’ can reduce your premiums to $0.
Additionally, Aetna introduced benefits such as the $0 same-day CVS MinuteClinic appointments, which allows you to visit CVS MinuteClinics for medical help without paying anything.
The Importance of Safeguarding Health Data
As a health insurer, you handle a large amount of sensitive data, such as patient records and prescriptions. However, cyber-attacks and data breaches can compromise your company’s reputation and have immense financial implications.
In 2022, breached healthcare records spiked to 51.4 million, up from 49.4 million in 2021. Notably, 78% of these breaches in 2022 resulted from hacking and IT incidents.
To address this challenge, health insurers can:
- Implement robust data encryption and access controls to limit unauthorized access to health records.
- Conduct routine security audits and continuous monitoring to detect and respond to suspicious activities.
- Provide cybersecurity training and simulate phishing attacks to educate sales professionals on recognizing and reporting threats.
- Assess the security practices of third-party vendors through regular audits and enforce data protection in agreements.
Now, it’s time to equip you with actionable strategies that proactively address these hurdles and optimize your approach to selling insurance.
10 Powerful Strategies to Improve Health Insurance Sales
The persistent challenges in the market highlight the complexity of selling health insurance. To effectively address these hurdles, we’ve curated a set of 11 potent sales strategies designed to empower you and your insurance sales agents.
These strategies will help your insurance agency connect with your audience, drive conversions, and establish your presence in the health insurance sector.
Analyze Past Sales
When you analyze your past successful sales, you gain valuable insights that help you make data-driven decisions, refine strategies, and focus on effective marketing strategies to increase sales.
Here’s what to examine:
- Lead sources: Identify how you initially connected with potential clients, such as in-person meetings, email marketing, phone calls, or online inquiries.
- Client profiles: Dive into the characteristics of your client groups. Consider their industry, group size, and the specific insurance product they purchased.
- Enrollment methods: Review the enrollment techniques you used for new leads, whether online sign-ups, group meetings, etc.
So, how can you extract these valuable nuggets of information?
Use iovox’s advanced call-tracking solution, which seamlessly integrates with your customer relationship management systems (CRMs), to unlock invaluable insights from your past sales process.
For example, an insurance agent can assign Dedicated Numbers to each source of their leads, such as in-person meetings, direct mail, phone calls, or online inquiries. This will help insurance agents identify which channels drive the most calls.
Additionally, insurance agents can Tag Calls (for example, by industry, group size, or enrollment method) for easy categorization and searching. This system simplifies sorting and reviewing calls based on specific criteria.
Maximize Your Reach with Search Engine Optimization
SEO can bring in potential customers actively looking for health insurance through search engines, boosting your company’s visibility.
Research and strategically integrate keywords related to your target market into your website’s content, meta tags, headings, and URLs.
If your target audience is concentrated in specific locations, incorporate location-specific keywords into your SEO strategy. Optimize your Google Business Profile listing to enhance the visibility of your insurance product in local business searches.
The systematic implementation of SEO tactics can increase online visibility and website traffic for your insurance agency.
Once you’ve laid the foundation for customer engagement, ensure your website is optimized for conversions. Encourage users to sign up for a newsletter or fill out a form so you can access their contact information as qualified lead data.
Become a Trusted Healthcare Advisor
Since selling insurance involves a non-tangible product, your credibility becomes paramount in a buyer’s decision. Your clients must feel confident that you offer the right policies and care about their health and financial security.
This is where the roles of educator and advisor come into play. To step into this role, you must help potential policyholders understand the intricacies of health insurance while genuinely addressing their specific health needs.
Find ways to explain health insurance options and coverage in simple terms. Avoid lengthy discussions about insurance jargon and alternatives.
Another great way to illustrate your trustworthiness is to showcase testimonials and referrals from satisfied clients.
Position yourself as a trusted advisor and educator from the start to gain and retain the trust of your potential health insurance policyholders, and you’ll make the sale.
Tailor Your Healthcare Plans to Individual Needs
While tools like Picwell and PLANselect simplify health plan selection based on finances, they often overlook non-financial factors like complementary medicine or long term care insurance.
As a health insurance expert, you can stand out by addressing these nuances and offering tailored solutions. Consider factors like pre-existing conditions, family size, and preferred healthcare providers.
Meet your clients’ non-financial needs to deliver peace of mind.
Offer Telehealth Coverage
Did you know that around 80 million Americans live in places called health professional shortage areas (HPSAs)?
These regions often have a skewed doctor-to-patient ratio, making it harder for people to meet their health needs.
Telehealth coverage can be a game-changer in such areas.
It allows policyholders convenient access to virtual medical consultations using digital devices like smartphones and tablets. This feature aligns with a modern, accessible, cost-effective health insurance plan many clients seek today.
When clients see that your insurance policy offers telehealth options, they are more likely to choose your plans over others.
Conduct Healthcare Seminars, Workshops, and Webinars
Healthcare seminars, workshops, and webinars can be powerful tools for health insurance providers to build trust with an educational focus and encourage informed decisions.
Offer workshops for CPR techniques, basic first aid training, road safety tips, and more to engage with attendees and address their questions and concerns directly.
Additionally, these seminars provide a platform to introduce related services, like life insurance policies or financial services, potentially leading to cross-selling and upselling opportunities.
A prime example of this approach is Cigna Healthcare, which offers a variety of health workshops, including one on choosing the right health insurance plan.
Follow Up with Leads
A timely lead follow-up can unlock opportunities and build lasting relationships with potential clients.
In fact, if an insurance agent responds within just one minute, it can result in a 391% increase in conversions. This highlights the importance of speed in contacting a potential client when trying to make a sale.
So, what’s the best way to do this?
Consider iovox’s WebCallBack feature, which facilitates instant connections with potential customers visiting your website. You can add a ‘request callback’ button. Once you receive a request from a prospect, follow up instantly to gain fresh insights into their needs.
Partner with Other Professionals
As a health insurance provider, you can boost sales and grow your customer base with the help of these three powerful partnership opportunities:
- Telemedicine companies: Offer current customers telemedicine services for easy and affordable healthcare.
- Insurtech experts: Bring advanced technology, like the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), and data analytics to improve pricing, claims processing, risk assessment, and fraud detection.
- Life sciences and pharmaceutical companies: Introduce groundbreaking treatment options into your insurance plans.
Showcase Sustainability Initiatives
As an insurer, your commitment to sustainability is a selling point. People care about eco-friendly practices.
Bupa is dedicated to sustainability and has committed to 100% renewable energy by 2040 and a 50% waste reduction by 2025.
These green initiatives demonstrate how health insurance agencies prioritize environmental protection, attracting eco-conscious individuals by reducing Bupa’s ecological footprint.
Provide Omnichannel Support
An insurance business committed to omnichannel customer engagement retains 89% of its customers, compared to a retention rate of only 33% for sales professionals with weaker commitments.
This underscores the importance of providing a seamless customer experience across various channels, including phone, email, chat, and social media. When your insurance company offers these options, you ensure that everyone receives the service they prefer.
But omnichannel support goes beyond convenience.
It also helps collect valuable customer data about their engagement levels on various platforms.
Additionally, omnichannel support provides immediate assistance and follow-up options, which keep customers engaged and loyal.
Additionally, all the customer data collected through omnichannel support can be efficiently handled and analyzed using a vital tool called call tracking.
How Call Tracking Can Enhance Health Insurance Sales
Call tracking assigns distinct phone numbers to various marketing channels, such as online ads or direct mail campaigns.
But why is this valuable to your insurance business?
You can pinpoint the origin of every incoming call to get invaluable insights into your marketing performance, such as:
- Which marketing channels are driving the most engagement?
- Which campaigns are generating the highest call volumes?
- How effective is your advertising spend?
These insights empower you to channel your efforts and resources where they matter most.
Next, we explore an effortless call-tracking solution that can significantly impact your sales endeavors.
Skyrocket Your Health Insurance Sales with iovox
iovox is a robust conversational AI and call-tracking solution that can be invaluable for your marketing needs.
With advanced call tracking, you can link calls to particular campaigns and sources. This can help you calculate lead costs and customer acquisition expenses.
Conversational AI extracts keywords from customer interactions, which lets you quickly identify trends, enhance your sales process, and improve customer satisfaction.
Here’s how it works:
Boost Your Lead Generation and Qualification Efforts
iovox offers features such as WebCallback and Dynamic Numbers to enhance your lead generation efforts.
WebCallback lets you add widgets to your website, enabling potential customers to request a callback with a simple click.
Likewise, Dynamic Numbers allocates dedicated phone numbers to monitor website visitors, helping you track interactions and improve your return on investment (ROI).
For instance, Abeille Assurances enhanced its digital presence with iovox’s Dynamic Number Call Tracking and WebCallBack. These solutions provided valuable insights into the effectiveness of their digital platforms and marketing campaigns, even for offline conversions.
As a result, Abeille achieved a 20% cost reduction and a 20% increase in high-quality insurance leads.
Identify Sales Growth Opportunities
iovox Insights, powered by conversational AI, allows you to:
- Pick keywords or key phrases from each call.
- Pinpoint the insurance products or services that generate the most caller interest.
- Uncover the main challenges discussed by your customers.
With this information, you can easily analyze customer conversations at scale to identify trends, opportunities, and outcomes.
For instance, iovox Insights can categorize callers interested in specific health plans or wellness services. Based on this information, you can tailor your follow-up communications to offer specialized health insurance plans catering to your customer’s needs.
Discover Ways to Enhance Customer Experience
iovox Insights simplifies the process of screening transcribed call recordings. This enables you to swiftly pinpoint call quality issues, such as when a sales agent deviates from a call script.
It also facilitates targeted training and coaching for your sales team, reducing call handling time and enhancing customer satisfaction.
But there’s more.
By examining call patterns, keywords, and customer interactions, iovox Insights assists in identifying the ideal insurance sales agent or department to handle specific calls. This streamlines call routing, ensuring callers are promptly connected to the most suitable resource to address their needs.
Want to know more? Learn how to capture new sources of revenue with Conversational AI from iovox
Final Thoughts
The rising cost of healthcare, customers’ growing expectations, and an urgent need to keep health data safe make selling health insurance a tough job.
However, the strategies outlined in this post can guide you to elevate your insurance sales approach.
And the secret weapon in your health insurance sales arsenal?
iovox’s call tracking and conversational AI solutions.
Monitor insurance industry trends, cultivate premium leads, pinpoint upselling and cross-selling prospects, and elevate the overall customer experience.
Regardless of your current sales approach, iovox will show you a way to refine it to bring in more qualified leads.
Click the iovox WebConnect call button on this page, and let’s connect.
You can email us at hello@iovox.com, connect with us at https://www.iovox.com/contact, or dial the toll-free number within the United States at +1 888 369 9519.
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