Insurance sales professionals must find ways to communicate a clear value proposition in a crowded field. But without insight about the customer, it’s impossible to know which coverage options would best meet their needs. And in the age of personalization, buyers expect a tailored approach.

Thanks to new strategies and innovative technology, it’s now possible to take a consultative approach and deliver the right message to the right prospect—right on time. Here are four tips that can help you and your sales team close the deal.

Embrace the changing buyer journey. Today’s buyers have new expectations and demand a more personalized purchase experience. According to CEB research, the average B2B buyer is already 57% of the way through a purchasing decision before engaging a salesperson—and that number continues to grow each year.

In a new report, Aragon Research reveals that the average seller uses an average of five to eight tools each day to reach customers and prospects. Set your sales team up for success by providing tools that help them identify, target and interact with prospects at the right time. With a modern, cloud-based sales engagement platform, for example, insurance salespeople can track customer interactions across channels, gain insights to accelerate the sales cycle and yield better engagement from customers.

Modernize your presentation toolkit. Nothing puts a damper on a presentation faster than technical difficulties. Presenters quickly lose credibility if they waste time fumbling with software downloads, walking through complex login protocols or struggling to find the right file to present. According to CSO Insights, more than 60% of sales leaders say the lack of proper tools lengthens sales cycles—and the majority of salespeople don’t effectively leverage content during web-based meetings.

Instead of traditional web conferencing tools, invest in modern, cloud-based solutionsthat can instantly launch web-based meetings from email platforms, CRM records or mobile devices. It’s also a good idea to make sure your meeting solution automatically logs all engagement activity for each meeting back to a CRM system like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics. By capturing all meeting information, you gain the real-time insights you need to make the right decisions and prioritize your efforts.

Maintain a single source of truth for content. Aberdeen Research indicates that each salesperson spends 440 hours a year searching for and creating content. That’s a huge chunk of time you could be spending selling, and that practice also introduces the risk of inconsistent messages that can hurt your brand.

Customers today demand content that is specific to their concerns and pertinent to their stage of the buying process. If you can instantly pull from a library of rich content that includes presentations, videos and web pages, you can quickly address questions and objections.

Particularly if you’re a salesperson who spend a lot of time in the field working with clients, you should have content available on a mobile device. CSO Insights reports that only 35% of salespeople have full access to content on mobile devices—a major problem, given the 24/7 nature of selling. An approved content library that everyone can access anywhere, anytime promotes message and brand consistency.

Personalize your pitch. Every meeting is better if it’s personalized. Research from the Aberdeen Group indicates that top performers are 30-50% better at personalizing presentations—and, increasingly, videos—than their peers, ultimately driving higher lead conversion and win rates. Effective salespeople adapt to new situations to ensure successful meetings. Investing in broader sales engagement platforms instead of single-point tools helps salespeople personalize their pitches.

Highly competitive industries offer a great opportunity for forward-thinking sales leaders to increase revenue with greater personalization. By adapting to a changing buyer landscape and following these four tips, you can differentiate your insurance offerings, shorten sales cycles and close more deals.  

Michael Schultz is vice president of business development at ClearSlide.