Professional liability insurance, also known as errors & omissions insurance, can financially protect business owners in the event they make a mistake in their work. From healthcare professionals protecting themselves against malpractice claims to advertising agencies protecting themselves against creative mishaps that hurt clients’ reputations, professional liability insurance helps enable business owners to go about their work without worrying as much about mistakes or misunderstandings derailing their companies.
Yet even though there’s often a strong need for professional liability insurance — and in some cases, it’s required for a professional to be able to take on certain clients or do their job in a certain location — it isn’t always easy for insurance agents to either convince businesses owners to obtain this type of coverage or connect with those who are searching for professional liability policies.
In this guide to growing your professional liability insurance book, we’ll look at how insurance agents can expand their businesses by:
- Identifying Target Customers
- Connecting With Prospects’ Concerns
- Creating Relevant Marketing Materials
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Identify Your Target Customers
Professional liability insurance can be helpful to so many types of businesses. While it may seem advantageous to cast a wide net to bring in as many new clients as possible, that’s not always the most effective method. Instead, you might have better luck if you try to connect with more specific types of business owners who need professional liability insurance.
For example, you might specialize in providing medical malpractice coverage (a type of professional liability insurance), so your sales and marketing efforts are geared toward healthcare professionals. You might even decide to focus on a particular type of doctor.
Or you might decide to focus on a type of customer that doesn’t necessarily get as much attention when it comes to pitching professional liability policies, based on what you’re seeing other agents go after. For example, you might identify that there is an abundance of web developers in your area. These developers might need coverage that protects them from mistakes that make the client look bad and costs them business opportunities. Yet other agents in your area might not be pitching them, leaving an opening for you.
You don’t have to limit yourself to just one client segment, and you don’t have to cater to everyone either. Find the balance that works for you. By narrowing your focus on who you want to target to grow your professional liability insurance book, agents can gain benefits such as:
Increasing prospecting efficiency:
You don’t have to always write a new pitch from scratch or spend so much time learning about a prospect’s business if you already have templates in place and a good understanding of the sector you’re targeting. You may find that business owners of a similar size in the same industry respond well to the same type of pitch. Or you can at least knowledgeably talk to that prospect about some of the business challenges they might be facing, which could help you quickly develop a relationship and ultimately turn them into a client.
Gaining referrals:
As you embed yourself within a sector, it could potentially be easier to gain referrals or at least generate some word-of-mouth buzz. Not everyone within the same industry is in fierce competition with each other. Many work collaboratively or are at least friendly with others in the same role or a similar position. So, if you start making inroads with realtors, for example, they might refer you to other realtors in nearby towns, as well as to title agents, escrow agents, real estate attorneys, etc.
Connect With Prospects’ Concerns
Once you’ve identified the types of customers you want to target, you need to understand their concerns to offer professional liability insurance as a relevant solution. As mentioned, narrowing your focus to certain types of clients can help you in this regard, as you may already have a general understanding of a new prospect’s concerns if their business resembles another client you work with.
H3: Liability Concerns
Ask clients and prospects what types of liability concerns they have, such as getting sued for malpractice, making a factual error in consulting work that costs their clients’ money, etc. Business owners might not necessarily be thinking directly in terms of what applies to professional liability insurance, but you may come across concerns through conversations or through reading industry materials that help you understand and relate to clients.
For example, maybe you have a photographer as a client who shares a story about how they lost their camera after shooting a wedding. And maybe you’ve come across other photographers who haven’t experienced that but who share a concern about something like that happening. While their primary focus may be on how they feel for their customer who then doesn’t have their wedding photos, it can also be helpful for insurance agents to point out how the photographer could be potentially liable for not fulfilling their obligations for the job, and they may want to protect themselves from these occurrences.
Financial Concerns
Some clients might not have very specific liability concerns but rather more general financial concerns. Pay attention to what these concerns look like so that you can discuss how to address those concerns when prospecting.
For example, some business owners might be concerned about the cost of unexpected lawsuits, whereas others might be concerned more generally about bringing in new revenue. Agents may be able to help address these concerns, such as by explaining how professional liability insurance could potentially help business owners expand their potential customer base, considering some types of clients require or at least prefer, this protection.
Create Relevant Marketing Materials
As you narrow your focus on certain types of customers and better understand their concerns, you can start to create more relevant marketing materials that help you grow your business. Some ideas to try include:
Building Targeted Landing Pages:
Using a platform like Wheelhouse, you can easily create different landing pages geared toward specific types of clients. A landing page that markets professional liability insurance for web developers in Chicago might resonate with this prospect group more than a general landing page for small business owners.
Writing Specialized Blog Posts:
Similar to creating more targeted landing pages, insurance agents can also create more specialized blog posts to improve their content marketing. Writing about how to solve some of your prospects’ specific concerns can help your blog posts resonate with your target customers.
Creating Social Media Groups:
If you can identify certain types of customers and prospects that might benefit from communicating with each other, you can try creating a social media group, such as on Facebook or LinkedIn. For example, if you’re targeting accountants and related types of financial professionals like estate planners, you could create a group for everyone to network with each other. There they can trade advice and find ways to partner together. As the leader of a group, you can elevate your brand awareness.
Start Building Up Your Professional Liability Insurance Book
Growing your professional liability business can be within reach. To do so, try identifying your target customers rather than casting too wide of a net. Then drill down into addressing their specific concerns and create marketing materials geared toward these prospects. Using InsurTech tools like Wheelhouse can help you close more deals as you draw in these prospects.
If you want to create custom landing pages to help you target specific groups of people or learn more about how you can provide quotes online, then click the button below.
