How Marketing and Sales Can Work Together to Fuel Insurance Agency Growth

Sales and marketing - they're two departments with their eye on the same end goal for your insurance business, but each play an entirely different role in helping you reach it. Marketing teams target their efforts on capturing the leads, while it's the sales department's job to nurture and convert. They're two interlocking pieces of the puzzle, but the relationship between them usually ends when marketing hands the lead over to sales.

It's a shame really. While each stand alone in the level of value they bring to your business, there's no way to really argue the idea that they should be working together as a whole, rather than separate as entities on the same team.

When marketing and sales departments work together with a more integrated approach, amazing things can happen – like a more well-defined target audience, higher quality leads that easier to convert and a nice cushion to your bottom line. Still, it can be hard to break out of the separate but equal mindset with sales and marketing, so let's break it apart and talk about how they should be working together and what happens when they do.

Content Collaboration

Quality content is crucial for every step of your client's journey. From the moment they first start thinking about their insurance needs to the day they purchase a policy and beyond, the right content meets them and encourages the next step. Traditionally, it's marketing's job to create content targeted on a specific audience and the sales team's responsibility to optimize it for conversions.

The only problem is that there's often a huge disconnect between the way these two teams define effective, quality content. The fact that 90% of content created by marketing isn't even used by sales, and that salespeople go on to spend over 30 hours a month – almost an entire work week – finding and creating their own content illustrates this point.

It doesn't take a genius to see that there's a huge waste of resources happening here, and in the end, it translates to lost potential for your business. The first step is to get these two teams working as one and collaborating on great content that guides potential clients through the sales funnel.

For example, say marketing worked side by side with one of your sales members with a client. They could witness the interaction and get a feel for the real customer pain points that salespeople see every day. Where marketing is focused on data and metrics, sales people are dealing with real people and emotions. Often a bit of perspective makes all the difference.

Marketers understand the trends and building engagement of a general audience, while sales knows more about the individual consumer. They can both bring what they know to the table, and create content that's balanced, effective and conversion worthy.

Open the Lines of Communication and Get on the Same Page with Leads

One of the main reasons that there's often friction between these two departments is that they're seeing things through an entirely different point of view. Let's take leads for example.

In your insurance business, you have different types of leads - information qualified, marketing qualified and sales qualified. Does your marketing and sales team know how to recognize each type of lead and do they agree with each other about the assessment? If they're not on the same page regarding their ability to read the type of lead that's in front of them, then you're losing clients.

Take the time to talk about qualifying leads, and make sure that everyone is on the same page. Do they recognize the difference between a first-time visitor that's asked for a quote and one that's already downloaded information about your policies and taken the time to research before requesting a quote? Define criteria for lead type so that both can recognize a lead that's ripe for conversion and how to further nurture the one who isn't.

How One Can Lift the Other

Marketers do a ton of behind the scenes work, which means they're not the faces that leads associate with your business. Your salespeople are the ones on the front line, using everything that marketing has provided to seal the deal. Since marketers are pros and making brands more appealing and trustworthy, why not have them use that same talent with your sales team?

Start by brainstorming ways for your marketing team to elevate your salespeople with content. For example, if your insurance site has a blog, a marketer could create valuable, useful pieces but include someone from your sales department as the author. Also, people have a ton of questions about insurance, so why not give them answers? Fill your marketing team in on some of the most common ones, and then have them present a live social media event where a face from agency your answers them based on a lose script.

Blend the Lines of Buyer Personas

Going back to how sales is the face of your insurance business, and marketing does it's work behind the scenes, it makes sense that they often have very divided ideas about customer personas. Marketers look at the industry as a whole, and then further narrow their efforts in on a specific type of customer. They're looking at a bigger picture.

Sales on the other hand is looking at the lead in front of them. The larger market doesn't really mean that much to them. They see the individual components rather than the whole. What happens when you blend an understanding of what captures the attention of an industry wide audience and how to motivate them on an individual basis?

The best word for it is growth.

Sales and marketing should be sharing their insights with each other to develop a more realistic buyer persona for the types of insurance you're selling. At the end of the day, this means more qualified leads and growth for your business.

A Digital Marketing Team That Wants to Work with Your Salespeople

You need a marketing team that understands the insurance industry and the value of the insights your salespeople can offer. We want to work with you, and your sales team, to create a marketing strategy that generates real results and real growth. Contact Confluency Solutions today today to discover how we can help you.