We have all heard of the phrase “If you don’t grow you Die”! Seems ominous, but history has proved this statement to be true time and time again. Sadly, it seems to be true even in down markets. Some of you must be saying, “What??!! Are you kidding me? We are trying to survive here and you are telling me that I should grow”.

Well, there is a way out! Some of our customers and prospects (VA partners) are already beginning to take advantage of this process. In this article I am going to talk about three basic steps that VA partners have followed and successfully come out ahead in this soft market. But before we start I must say that for this strategy to succeed one must be ‘consistent to the purpose’, meaning, one must be ready to stay the course in the light of going against the norm that is followed by Wall Street.

• Decrease reaction time: It is a known fact that the probability of the sales keeps diminishing with every moment of delay from the time you get a quote to the time you can respond. Meaning, in the most ideal case we would all like to have an online rating and quoting engine that can dramatically increase our sales. In the absence of this mythical unicorn we would like to be the first to respond back to our prospects. Meaning, we have to become a 24x7 shop! To this you say, “Ah ha! Exactly, but who are you kidding. It is impossible to afford a night shift for my people here”.
• Sales is a numbers game: It is a known fact that only 20% of all the sales quoted get converted into actual sales. But the irony is the fact that most companies are able to only quote 50% to 60% of the quotes that come their way. All in the saying that, while we need more sales we don’t have the bandwidth to cater new sales. To this you will say, “Yes, I know about this problem. How on earth do we fix this without hiring new staff in this soft economy???”.
• Grow your top-line by leveraging internal experts: Despite all the hue and cry a large portion of the market is under served. Even if you don’t want to take on new aggressive accounts many company don’t get new agents or new customers because the technical domain experts who understand the customer problems are sitting in the back office and catering to the existing demand. Instead they should be in front of prospective customers and agents talking to them about how our company can provide better value and increasing the sales by working hand in hand with the sale people. This poses the most obvious question, “Great! This sounds like a plan, but, if my back office people start selling who is going to cater to the current demand?”

As we said before VA partners have crossed to all these three hurdles by engaging with Vantage Agora. We have provided these companies with a team of excellent, well trained industry Insurance IT experts that work on their operations from India. With a matter of weeks of engaging with us, VA partners have,

• Transformed their long standing internal subject matter expert employees into driving sales because their current work was done by the team in India. This gave them a great career path and improved retention.
• Increased sales on rush quotes as the companies decreased their reaction times from 24 hours down to 10 to 12 hours as the team in India was processing the rush orders during the US nights. This has not only increased their reaction times but has already improved their customer satisfaction from both agents and end customers.
• Increased capacity: With the extended VA team in India, VA partners have been able to process more quotes. This has again increased their top line in a very short period of time.

We believe you can emulate them and grow your business. Just contact VantageAgora Insurance Outsourcing and we will set you up with a free trial to prove that it works for you!