In recent years, brokerages have invested a lot of time and resources in commercial management tools. We have activated CRM, automated processes, digitized customer relationships and learned to manage large volumes of information.

All of this has represented a necessary evolution. However, when I work with the reality of many brokerages, I observe a seemingly contradictory situation. We have more technology than ever to generate commercial opportunities and, at the same time, there are many difficulties in developing some of the branches with the most strategic value for the business: Health, Life and Deaths.

These three products share extraordinarily attractive characteristics for any mediator. They generate loyalty, provide stability to the portfolio, have excellent profitability and, in most cases, remain in the portfolio for many years. Despite this, it is still common to find brokerages where the weight of these branches is well below their real potential.

Automate before you know
In recent months I have had conversations with several brokerages interested in activating the sale of personal products through automated commercial campaigns. The reflection always tends to start from the same place: what commercial management tool do we have, how do we segment the database or which action do we automate first.

The question is logical, but it is probably not the most important.

Before deciding which campaign we want to automate, we should ask ourselves if we have the necessary information to make it work.

This is, in my opinion, the great conflict that part of the sector is experiencing today. Many brokerages want to automate their commercial actions before having built the necessary knowledge about their customers. And when this happens, technology ends up amplifying a weakness that already existed previously.

In my experience, the main obstacle to growth in Health, Life and Death is that in these branches, each and every one of the policies has to be sold. And to sell, you have to know your customer well.

The information we lack
In other words: we try to sell products when we don't yet know the clients we want to sell them to well enough.

Brokerages know perfectly well the policies their policyholders have taken out. In other words, the information in the CRM is linked to the risks taken out and little else.

Do we know if they have children? Do we know if they are self-employed or employed? Do we know their family responsibilities? Do we know if they have life insurance taken out outside the brokerage? Do we know their hobbies?

The answer is usually no. Or maybe yes, but not within the system.

And this lack of information has direct consequences on our commercial capacity. Because the sale of Health, Life and Death is deeply contextual. It depends much more on the client's life moment than on the product itself.

The same Life insurance can have a completely different meaning for a person who has just bought a home, for a self-employed person with dependents or for a family that has just had a child. The product is the same. The need, not.

Precisely for this reason, I believe that many brokerages are reversing the correct order of priorities. First we implement tools. Then we automate processes. And finally we try to find commercial opportunities.

Maybe we should start the other way around.

First understand customers better. Then structure this information within the CRM. And only then automate commercial actions.

Because automation does not generate knowledge. Automation takes advantage of the knowledge that already exists.

When a brokerage has quality information, opportunities appear naturally. It is possible to identify families with low personal protection, detect customers with mortgages who do not have adequate Life insurance or locate segments that are particularly sensitive to a Health or Death proposal.

In this context, CRM ceases to be a simple database and becomes a tool that helps the sales team.

Automate opportunities, not campaigns
This is precisely where the true value of automation appears. It is not about sending more campaigns. It is not about generating more emails. It is not about contacting customers more times.

The key, today, is to be able to identify opportunities and act at the right time and through the right channel.

Because a campaign sent to a person without need is noise. A proposal sent at the right time is advice.

The difference between one thing and another is not marked by technology. It is marked by customer knowledge.

For many years, intermediaries have competed mainly through product, service or price. In the coming years, I believe that we will increasingly compete through the quality of the information that we are able to generate and maintain about our portfolios.

The brokerages that know their clients best will be the ones that will identify more opportunities, those that will activate more sales of Health, Life and Deaths and those that will manage to establish more solid and stable relationships.

Enric Vidal

CMAB Sales and Marketing Advisor.

Director at SalesinMotion.es