- Building strong business relationships with partners in the industry, and with clients and potential clients, is an obvious and vital part of business all successful brokers and agents have taken. That means being a true partner with not only insurance carriers and enrollment companies, but also each business owner, CEO, HR director and employee.
- Being truly consultative as opposed to being a product peddler is one of the first steps to building a successful relationship. Make the consultive sales process part of creating the relationship that helps make the client an active part of the solution as opposed to a passive receptor of information and product.
- Precision is key when not only discussing product and process, but also when listening to the clients' needs.
- Ultimately listening to the needs of the consumer will build and cement the relationship for the long term. Selling to your needs is the best way to lose the client.
- A business relationship is one that's cemented over time and not a onetime sell. The best clients are the ones you already have.
- Your integrity not only will help keep the clients you have but also build new ones. Your reputation will spread one way or the other and one built on integrity certainly will help attract new clients.
- Of course, the central facet of integrity is honesty. It's what we ask from our clients, and our insurance carriers. If something happens, for example, and a batch of policies hasn't been issued, we as a broker need to know the truth. We might not like it, but we need to know the policies are still waiting to be issued, and more importantly that there's a plan in place. In turn, we need to do the same with our client partners.
- By owning our mistakes, creating a solution for the immediate issue, helping to prevent a recurrence of the issue and most importantly effectively communicating all of this to the client is all we as brokers ask from our partners and all that our clients ask from us.
- Remember why we're in this industry. By providing professional, accurate and reputable advice and products, you have positively affected lives, in many cases, helped in a time of need that otherwise would have been at the very least a financial catastrophe for employees or their family.
- Don't forget to have fun.
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