Life insurance agents handle dozens of calls a day across hundreds of clients, so they need a CRM that keeps up with their busy schedules. A CRM for life insurance agents should house all insurance company information, understand where each lead is in their workflow, and act as an active appointment book. It’s not just about becoming another tool; it’s about gaining a second brain, keeping everything organized and controlled in your workflow.
If you’re a life insurance agent or manage a life insurance agency, you know how important it is to prioritize and manage your time efficiently. We’ll walk you through all the essential elements of a life insurance CRM for your team and how to utilize it effectively in any workflow.
Our team at Hooked has spent over 15 years in the life insurance industry, so we’ve seen the frustrations they’ve had with their CRM and dialer systems. That’s why we created Hooked: to address all the issues they were facing. Book a demo with us today to see how Hooked can help keep you and your agency efficient and functioning.
What is a CRM for Life Insurance Agents?
A customer relationship management system (CRM) for life insurance agents specializes in the needs of life insurance agencies. Essentially, these CRMs track each lead, identify the next steps, and prioritize tasks for agents. Depending on how your agency operates, you should choose a CRM that offers omnichannel support, allowing you to contact your leads via SMS, email, or phone.
CRMs were made to make life easier, and that’s no different for the life insurance industry. Especially when you are handling sensitive client information, being HIPAA- and company-compliant is necessary to ensure that security measures are in place.
Why Life Insurance Agents Need a CRM
Life insurance agents need to use a CRM to keep their leads organized and track payments. Without a CRM, you are in danger of these common mistakes:
- Lapsed Policies: Depending on the life insurance policy, it can end, so having a CRM that alerts your agents when that occurs can mitigate a lost sale.
- Cold Leads: If you’re using spreadsheets to keep your CRM organized, your leads can get buried and ignored. Your CRM should alert you whenever a neglected lead is in your book of business.
- Reminder for Referrals: When you finish a sale, it’s important to advocate for yourself. The best way to find qualified leads is by referral, so if you ended the conversation on a good note, your CRM should prompt your agent to relay a referral.
- Compliance and Disclosure: Life insurance agents must begin their calls with the agency's disclosure and compliance statements. These are essential to keeping your calls in check legally.
These are just a few of the reasons why life insurance agents need a CRM. If you are planning to expand your business, whether by hiring more employees or reaching out to more leads, a CRM automates your lead management and helps you build and retain relationships with your customers.
Must-Have Features in a Life Insurance CRM
CRMs can specialize in industries or have unique features inherent to their company. Before you invest in a CRM, you should always check if it could be something you use every day. However, we believe there are a few features that life insurance agents can’t ignore:
Workflow Tracking
Alongside the record-keeping your CRM should be doing for each lead, it should also track their placement in your workflow. This allows you to prioritize your client list and ensure each lead is cared for, building a stronger relationship between you and your customers. This becomes an essential element of life insurance agencies because of the different processes agents go through to make a sale.
If any step of the workflow is overlooked or ignored, the insurance provider could reject the client, interrupting their customer journey with your company. Having a CRM that ensures every system is accounted for and no steps are missed.
Automated Omnichannel Outreach
Depending on the life insurance policy you plan to sell, each client will want to be contacted in specific ways. With omnichannel outreach, you can meet clients on their terms, regardless of how they choose to communicate.
Automation is a bonus that CRMs can bring to the table. Because the number of clients is overwhelming, having a CRM automatically send your leads' information or messages can benefit your agents. Especially if they can retain the relationship with the customer after making the sale, these messages can remind your clients about the conversation and provide an avenue for them to refer you to friends and family if life insurance comes.
Policy Lapse Reminders
Especially with term life insurance, policies expire after their designated period. Most term policies can convert to a whole life policy after they’re over. However, depending on the client’s age, they can keep their term life policy at a reasonable rate. CRMs should signal to the agent when a policy is about to lapse.
This ensures agents can explain any changes thoroughly and allows them to renew or convert their policy if they enjoyed their coverage.
Built-In Compliance Check
Security and compliance are imperative to keeping your business safe. For life insurance agents, we recommend investing in a CRM that stresses your company’s compliance standards. Protecting your lead’s information isn’t negotiable, especially when you’re handling sensitive information like medical history and Social Security numbers.
Having your CRM do automatic compliance checks offloads these tasks from your agents and ensures that you are HIPAA compliant.
Reporting
Reporting across every step of your workflow shows your agency where your customer journey needs adjustments. Especially in insurance sales, if your workflow has severe flaws, CRM reports should tell you exactly where processes were missed or what needs adjustment.
How Life Insurance CRMs Work in a Typical Agent’s Day
When a life insurance agent logs into their computer, they should open all the tools they need for the day — including their CRM. Once the CRM is open, it should dictate which leads the agent is currently working on and what their next steps are in their workflow.
With the help of their CRM, life insurance agents will contact their leads and log down any notes of the interactions in the customer profiles. After they’ve finished their notes, they’ll designate a lead status so anyone can see where they are within the company’s workflow.
CRMs keep lead management easy and engaging for the agents, making them a valuable tool for insurance agents.
Workflows by Different Life Insurance Products
Each type of life insurance has different needs from its CRM, so you must evaluate your needs for each insurance type you plan on selling from your agency. Here are a few of the features and workflows you should consider when deciding on a CRM:
Term Life Insurance
Term life insurance is active only for the term, so in most cases, they will need to renew their policy to remain covered under the same program. Your CRM must track every client you’ve sold and alert you when their term is expiring. This ensures that your client remains in your book of business.
For term life insurance agents, having a proper scheduling and notification system will benefit them the most.
Whole Life Insurance
Whole life insurance covers policyholders for their entire life, so agents' priorities shift from scheduling to maintaining a relationship with their clients. CRMs in this industry should retain knowledge of all the insurance policies they sell, so agents will always have the information needed to respond swiftly to leads.
These policies also take longer to pay out, so having a CRM that can handle longer workflows requiring more check-ins becomes vital to the CRM’s ecosystem.
Final Expense Insurance
For seniors seeking life insurance, final expense insurance is typically their only option. Final expense insurance is a whole life option, and it will need similar features to regular whole life policies. However, they are working with shorter workflows and use different tools for omnichannel communications.
They should also have the ability to notify you whenever there is a flag for pre-existing conditions and potential underwriting issues to ensure clients are getting the best coverage possible.
Annuities
Annuities are a special type of life insurance policy that can pay out to policyholders or investors. Each one is different, so your CRM must track the different policies and terms that policyholders are investing in.
For agents, having your CRM automatically alert agents where each client is in their annuity workflow is extremely helpful when navigating complicated policies and agreements. CRMs that track payments are also helpful since they can notify agents when policyholders miss a payment.
How to Choose the Right CRM
Each company has different needs, so you must evaluate your needs before making a decision. Here are a few of the ways you can evaluate your needs and find a CRM solution built for you:
Map Your Sales Workflow
Your first step should be re-evaluating your current customer journey map. See where your CRM or spreadsheets are putting in the work to offload the mental stress on your agents and figure out if there is a way to make the process simpler and more efficient.
Sales workflows will always be changing with your audience, making your call training dynamic and effective.
Identify Your Biggest Pain Points
While reviewing your customer journey map, you should identify the pain points your agents face in their process, especially with their CRM. If your agents are struggling to find the data they need on the current system, it’s time to change their workflow, especially if it’s becoming a barrier to sales.
Once those are uncovered, find a CRM that can fill those gaps and simplify the workflow. Each situation is unique, so contact your potential CRM provider and ask questions or search forums to see if it’s the solution you need.
Organize Your Current Toolbox
As a life insurance agent, you’re using several tools to keep yourself organized and focused throughout the day. Before switching to a CRM, ensure your current toolbox integrates well with the new CRM. If you can’t use the tools you’re used to or can’t find suitable replacements, we suggest either finding a new CRM that can fulfill your needs or asking the CRM provider to create integrations with your existing tools.
The only exception to this rule is if the new CRM has built-in tools that will replace the existing ones. This makes your processes more efficient since you will have all the tools you need in one location. We highly recommend finding a CRM that matches your workflow and makes your life easier.
Ask for Demos on Potential CRMs
Before purchasing a CRM for your business, you should ensure it will work for you and your company via a demo. With a demo, you can test the features, see how the program works, and ask questions related to your workflow. Always ask for a demo to ensure it will work with your team and that it’ll be easy to understand.
A simple CRM will make it easier to enact new onboarding and training for the program, so it should be something you consider during the demo.
Setting Up Your CRM
After purchasing a new CRM for your life insurance agents, here are some of the steps you should follow for a smooth transition:
| Steps | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Importing Contacts | Your CRM will be useless if you can’t transfer your client database. Check the format your new CRM accepts and if they can assist in the transfer. |
| Create New Workflows | When you move to a new CRM, your workflow should adjust to a new process and become more efficient. Map out how your agents should use the CRM. |
| Test Integrations | Check the integration list and see if they work with your current toolset or can replace any tools you’re using. |
| Transfer Agents Over | Once you’ve checked your integrations, moved your contacts over, and created new workflows, it’s time for your agents to start using the new CRM. Build up a plan for a safe transfer. |
| Adjust Customer Journey | This step will be a perpetual adjustment for your workflow. Whenever you see your agents struggling, it’s time to evaluate the process to improve it. |
We highly recommend you ask questions about each of these steps during the demo for a comprehensive view of the CRM and how it will match your workflow.
Mistakes Life Insurance Agents Make With CRMs
Some CRMs can be incredibly difficult to use, so it’s important to know the common pain points that can cause your life insurance agents issues. Here are some of the common mistakes life insurance agents make with their CRMs:
- Improper Use: A CRM is only as good as the information you feed it. If your agents aren’t entering information correctly, you won’t find what you need when you need it. Always ask your agents to fill out the necessary fields and emphasize the importance of notes.
- Not Cleaning Up Data Before the Transfer: Before you move to another CRM, you should clean up your data. With bad data, agents get confused and enter incorrect information. Things become muddy and lost.
- Over-Automating: Especially if you moved to a CRM with AI integrations, having everything become automated can be an issue. Your agents should be involved in creating their processes and ensuring they are properly followed.
- Ignoring Metrics: The metrics you set for your agents should be their goals when talking with respective clients. Make sure your agents understand their goals and how to find them within their CRM.
How Hooked CRM Works With Life Insurance Agents
Hooked CRM was built with life insurance agents and agencies in mind. We’ve integrated a VoIP dialer, CRM, and an AI assistant into a simple platform for your agents — no more filtering through pages to find the information you need. Everything is in one convenient location. Agencies using our platform have seen a rapid increase in their efficiency and sales made.
Interested in how Hooked can enhance your current workflow? Book a demo with us today, and we’ll walk you through all of our features. We’d love to talk to you about your current processes and how they can work together with our program.
