CRM for Health Plans - Best Practices in Sales Cycle Automation

Background

Health insurance organizations are facing the dual challenges of improving revenue performance while finding increasing margin pressure in many lines of business. In this environment, improving sales effectiveness has become a central focus - nearly 54% of insurers¹ have identified increasing sales performance as a major priority in their organization.

Companies looking to modify sales processes must approach the effort with an open mind and a solid understanding of the various components - from lead generation through to underwriting and policy writing – that affect the sales workflow. It’s also critical to gain a measure of the producer pool and their strengths and weaknesses. With the right approach, insurers can transform their channel and captive agents into top-performing, consistent revenue generators while eliminating burdensome manual tasks and overhead.

Challenges

Operational enhancements entail significant investments of time, effort and money. However, when insurers are experiencing the following challenges, it is likely that investments in operational efficiency will yield a substantial return.

Best Practices

Customer Relationship Management

Insurers who leverage CRM can be proactive in providing a high level of service to attract new consumers and retain membership. The system makes it easier to distribute intelligence to sales agents and measure effectiveness through analytics and reports, adjusting strategies as-needed. The end result is a refined and efficient process that boosts productivity.

An effective approach to CRM: Improves the productivity of sales staff overall Converts more sales interactions into sales opportunities Breaks down physical boundaries and eliminates down time

A comprehensive CRM technology solution empowers the distribution channel by allowing inside sales managers and producers to seamlessly share information. This helps in hands-on management of interactions with potential customers: giving them the right information at the right time and empowering them to make the right choice of coverage.

Integration with ICM Incentive Compensation Management (ICM), on its own, transforms administrative burden into a strategic advantage. No longer burdened by inefficient commission systems, carriers are equipped to put effective incentive plans into place that motivate employees to perform, increase loyalty of top producer talent, and reduce in-house agent turnover.

Integrating ICM with CRM: Achieves a holistic view of customer needs Enforces a consistent sales process Drives new revenue opportunities

A fully-integrated approach – connecting CRM to compensation management – further automates the sales cycle. It not only encourages producers to reach established goals but also helps managers to easily track the performance of each agent in comparison with the company objectives, providing a real-time analysis of the impact each producer has on revenue generation. The overall process helps in the assessment and tracking of producer goals against the goals of the company. These evaluations assist in adopting sales process that best suits the interests of both the producer channel and the organization.

Producer Portals

The need for producers to spend time on shadow accounting and other trivial administrative tasks is drastically reduced with automated portals. With instant access to comprehensive information through a single window in CRM, each producer can concentrate more on their primary tasks with better collaboration and consistency across the entire organization. It also gives the ability to quickly react to new developments in order to maximize the possibilities of an opportunity conversion.

Greater Insight Equals Better Decision Making

The ability to access customer data at all stages of the sales cycle empowers carriers to improve their decision making abilities. Information gleaned from real-time sales reports, customer requirements and analytics assists in optimizing sales resources, strategy and processes. A consistent sales process across the entire organization greatly contributes to higher productivity and strategic alignment, leading to revenue increases.

The trend in insurance sales and compensation management is towards a holistic approach. Integrating CRM with ICM provides great benefits to producers and management alike, resulting in a predictable, agile process that directly impacts an insurer’s bottom line.

Go to top

Download PDF