Marketing departments focus on developing and positioning an agency’s brand while sales departments are tasked with converting leads into customers. The level of discussion between the two teams varies from company to company and can be dependent upon many factors. However, when talking about independently owned insurance agencies, one thing is certain: the two must work together.

Considering the limited resources that most agencies have, it’s especially important to eliminate any confusion of roles and responsibilities, including who is tasked with the different elements of the marketing and sales functions. To start, you must identify the different functions and ask questions about your current processes:

Building a brand in your community is important for the health and success of your agency. Your marketing team should be:

• Providing clients with the highest quality customer service (referrals and recommendations are critical to your brand).
• Actively engaged on social media channels.
• Developing community partnerships with non profits.
• Sponsoring events and organizations such.
• Networking.

An effective and transparent sales strategy will ensure that your sales team is giving every lead you receive the appropriate amount of attention it needs. Things to consider include:

• How are leads divided between your team?
• What is the suggested number of contact attempts or follow-up calls?
• Are quotes delivered over the phone or through email? Both?
• What does your email marketing program look like?
• How are your agents trying to round-out customers and sell additional policies

Often marketing representatives or agency owners are tasked with the above marketing activities while sales representatives are focused on the second list. If this is how your agency is operating then it’s time for you to rethink your strategy. Your marketing team should have a major influence on the sales team’s strategy, while the sales team’s field expertise should influence the marketing team’s perspective on their effort. Otherwise you are losing opportunities to gain new clients and sell additional policies.

All of the marketing and branding efforts at your agency are done to drive leads to the sales team, so it makes perfect sense to include the sales representatives in the marketing process. How can your marketing representative post content on social media channels without hearing from the sales representative what the customers are looking for when they inquire about an insurance policy?

If your sales team finds that most people don’t understand what an umbrella policy is and shares that information, the marketing team can put together a communications plan to educate customers. This will give the sales team more leverage when trying to sell umbrella policies. If your agency is using an email marketing program and has the ability to track open and click through rates (like the one found in our Virtual Profit Center) this gives your sales team a tool to focus their efforts on warm leads who have opened the marketing team’s emails about umbrella policies.

If your agency is sponsoring an event in the community and focusing on a specific topic while talking to attendees, it’s important to keep that conversation going when the event is over. If your booth at an event is focused on car insurance and educating people on what their current policy isn’t covering, and your sales team will be following up on all of the leads obtained at this event, it’s important that they follow up and start talking about car insurance, and not trying to sell a home policy. Without a dialogue and a plan between the two teams, simple errors like this are bound to happen, muddying the waters of your sales process.

Every agency is unique. The size of your teams, the responsibilities of each employee and how they divide their time between the different roles is dependent upon many things. It’s time for you to sit down and look at your agency’s marketing plan and sales plan.

Ask yourself:

• Do you have plans that are written down for the entire staff to see?
• Do they have specific, measureable goals?
• Do the two correlate?
• Do they identify who is responsible for execution?

They each accomplish very different things but it’s important for your agency to have both, and for everything to be connected.