Newsroom

July 2010: "Social Media". What's the fuss?

Introduction
Almost every day we see or hear about social media.

• Are you on Facebook or LinkedIn?
• Do you have at least one video that you have watched on U-Tube?
• Do you have a Twitter account?
• What impact do you think these new forms of communication will have on your business over the next five years?

Networking
Insurance brokers and agents have always relied heavily on “networking” to both expand and maintain long term business viability. What has already changed is that the new generation of buyers are more comfortable with online research, referrals and purchasing. A research article I recently read indicated that “78% of consumers trust peer recommendations”.

Insurance carriers we speak to are aware of the issues but few consider including them in their performance evaluations. Creating a basket of weighted qualitative measures allows you to establish a performance score for each of the Agency/Broker in your distribution network. Incorporating qualitative measures into the scoring basket adds a whole new dimension to the concepts of performance management. It also reduces the subjectivity of the evaluation process.

Action
We certainly believe that Producers who are not testing the power of Social Media are placing both themselves – and your business interests at risk. A simple question that you might ask is:

• Does the Agency/Broker have a social media strategy?

Answers might be a simple “Yes” or “No” but to be truly effective should be more granular – and should be asked and answered at a Line of Business level. Our take is that this issue is currently more relevant in the world of Personal Lines than in the Commercial area.

In addition to the simple question asked above, you should consider asking if the Agency/Broker:

• Allows their individual Producers to access social media sites while at work?
• Controls the messaging Producers can convey about the Agency and or the Carriers?

Our scorePoint™ solution, with our proprietary Strategic Performance Index (SPI)©, allows you to measure how well each Agency is performing when compared to their peers.

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