Harvest Sales Opportunities With Annual Reviews

Compensation and benefit plans, such as group benefits, voluntary benefit programs, pension plans and nonqualified benefit plans are all valuable benefit programs that employers should consider to attract and retain valuable employees. Since these benefit programs can account for a significant percentage of a firm's payroll, the programs should be reviewed annually.

Succession planning and business insurance needs are a second area of concern for many successful, closely-held businesses. Succession plans are designed to protect the investment value and continuity of the business. In addition to succession planning, a company needs to review all of its business insurance needs (e.g. property-casualty and liability, life insurance etc.).

Key person life insurance can protect a business upon the death of a key person; repay outstanding loans and lines of credit; fund buy-sell agreements and nonqualified benefit obligations; and create the capital necessary to continue or expand the business.

Develop your sales process

Once you have obtained or developed the annual review brochures to use in your practice, the next step is to develop a sales process for you and (if applicable) your staff. In some cases, the best way to develop your sales process is to develop a "pilot program" to learn first hand what makes sense.

As you or your staff schedule annual review appointments, ask your clients if they want to receive an annual review brochure before their appointment. This will give clients time to become familiar with the process and think about their needs. Another step you can take is call the client a day or two before your appointment to confirm the time and to see if there is an interest or needs the client wishes to discuss.

As an alternative to mailing or e-mailing annual review pieces before your appointment, consider placing your annual review brochures on your website. In so doing, your customer can retrieve these pieces easily and have another reason to visit your website.

A few more tips

Prior to completing a pilot program, explore how you can leverage the creativity and support of your staff to help you succeed. For example, you may want to create special rewards or compensation programs tied to the number of annual review appointments scheduled, new sales generated, new referrals or other critical success factors.

If you work with professionals who specialize in other areas (e.g. investments, employee benefits or property-casualty coverage), suggest that they consider using your annual review process, which can create benefits for each of you. The review process can be a great to tool to facilitate greater collaboration, block out competition, and increase client satisfaction, referrals and sales revenues.

To sum up, scheduling annual reviews for your best individual and commercial customers can be a valuable strategy with which to increase the satisfaction of existing clients, generate cross-selling and referral opportunities, and forge stronger partnerships with others in your practice or outside of your firm. As you develop this new marketing strategy, keep in mind that your goals are to help clients discover their planning needs and to develop financial solutions that will help them achieve their most important planning objectives.