How to Grow Your Business Owner’s Policy (BOP) Business

Trying to figure out how to grow your insurance business may seem like an uphill battle at first. But when you start to break this goal down into more specific parts, it becomes much more attainable. One way to approach this goal is to focus on how you can grow specific lines of business. Many commercial insurance agents market general liability policies, but you also may find success by highlighting your business owner’s policy (BOP) coverage.

For those who do not yet sell BOP, this insurance offering typically combines general liability with property coverage. Sometimes business interruption protection is also included. Typically, these policies are offered to small and mid-size businesses, though eligibility requirements may differ depending on factors like the carrier and state where the insured business is located.

BOP policies can be attractive to small and mid-size businesses who want more of a comprehensive plan to limit their risk. However, not every small business owner knows about BOP coverage, so there may be a bit of a learning curve. In this guide, we’ll explore more how insurance agents can grow their BOP line of business by focusing more on educating potential customers about this option and emphasizing the efficiency these policies offer.

If you want to improve your BOP sales process, we can help. Click the button below to learn more. 

Educate Potential Customers

While many business owners may be familiar with the underlying components of BOP coverage, they may not specifically have heard of a business owner’s policy or understand why they might choose that option. As such, insurance agents looking to grow their BOP business may need to first educate potential customers more on what these policies include and why small and mid-size business owners should consider them. 

This education can be done in a marketing context, such as by sharing resources on social media, in emails, and on your website. But while you may be tempted to go for the sale right away to grow your BOP line of business, it’s important to remember that prospects who are unfamiliar with an offering would be unlikely to jump right into a purchase. Instead, they need time to learn about BOPs and weigh their options.

Some of the ways to educate potential customers on BOPs, including both new leads and existing customers who may want to change coverage, include:

Create Dedicated Landing Pages

Since customers might not be familiar with BOPs, it can help to create dedicated landing pages that explain these offerings in detail. For example, on your website, you might include a list of the different types of coverage you offer, with BOP being one of them. Then, if business owners want to learn more, they can click through to a landing page that includes full details on these policies. 

You could even create industry-specific landing pages, such as creating one on how BOPs can be used by restaurant owners and one on how BOPs can be used by salon owners. Insurtech solutions like Wheelhouse enable you to do just that. Wheelhouse also gives them the opportunity to request a quote directly from that page. This eliminates the risk of losing a potential sale for those that are ready to purchase. For those that aren’t ready, you have educated them on the benefits of BOP and they can come back when they are ready or reach out directly to learn more.

Write Case Studies

Landing pages can go over the details of your BOP offerings, but to help bring this coverage to life in the eyes of prospects, it can help to share case studies. When you successfully sell a BOP, see if your client would be willing to participate in a case study, where you write about the challenge they were having, the solution you implemented (in this case a BOP) and the outcome, i.e., how it benefited their business. That way, other business owners considering BOPs can get a deeper sense of why these policies are useful.

Meet With Business Owners

When meeting with business owners, whether that’s during a scheduled client meeting for an annual review, or if you’re chatting with business owners at networking events, you may spot opportunities to discuss BOPs. You don’t have to try to make a sale on the spot, just aim to explain what these policies are so that business owners can become familiar with them.

Generate Word-of-Mouth Buzz

As you sell BOPs, ask clients if they’d be willing to make recommendations or leave reviews for you, specifying that they bought these policies. If you offer a good customer experience, many business owners will be willing to provide feedback, which can ultimately help more business owners learn about BOPs.

Focus on Efficiency

As you speak with prospects and customers about BOPs and as you create corresponding content, there can be opportunities to go beyond just explaining the basics of what’s included in these policies. Educating customers is important, but past the initial information stage, you also need to give them a “why” as they consider whether a BOP is right for them. As such, insurance agents should highlight the efficiency that BOPs provide.

“Since a BOP is prepackaged, there is only one policy to review and it can be more cost effective than purchasing separate policies. Additional coverage can be added in the form of endorsements or riders,” notes the Insurance Information Institute.

As insurance agents learn their clientele’s pain points, they might decide to lean more into either how BOPs provide efficiency in terms of saving time, or they might emphasize the cost advantages of this bundling.

Saving Time

Since BOPs combine multiple types of coverage into one policy, that can save business owners time in terms of:

• Having only one policy to select, rather than two or three
• Receiving invoices and other paperwork for just one policy, instead of separate statements for the different components BOPs cover
• Being able to renew one policy, which can be particularly efficient in comparison to having different policies on misaligned renewal cycles

Saving Money

In addition to saving time, BOPs can create cost efficiencies. Just as carriers and agents often promote the cost savings that can come from bundling multiple types of coverage together, you may be able to highlight how BOPs save money by essentially being pre-bundled offerings.

Get specific and show potential clients what they would pay for separate policies compared to what they could get under one BOP. It also can be helpful to show business owners what the cost would be if they just purchased a more limited policy, like general liability coverage. They may not think they need a BOP that also covers property, but you might utilize a few examples of how it can also be expensive to not have coverage if something goes wrong. In the long run, having more comprehensive coverage through a BOP can save business owners money. 

Make Purchasing Easy

As much as BOPs themselves might provide efficiencies in terms of saving time and money, you don’t want the process of purchasing these policies to be complex or for business owners to not fully understand all of their options.

That’s why it can be helpful to create BOP-specific resources, e.g., landing pages and case studies. But insurance agents should also make sure that they have systems in place to allow business owners to easily request BOP quotes and compare rates from different providers. 

Using tools like Wheelhouse can make purchasing easy, as business owners can efficiently gain bindable quotes from multiple carriers in one location online. And when it comes time to renewing BOPs, Wheelhouse also makes it easy to automate this process. By providing a smooth, streamlined purchasing process, you can grow your BOP line of business.