Agencies that prioritize adopting digital capabilities grow 70% faster than other agencies, according to Liberty Mutual and Safeco Insurance's “2022 Agency Growth Study." Those capabilities include everything from fundamentals like e-signature and social media to more advanced tools like paid social ads and chatbots.

When looking for digital tactics that can help grow your book, two simple but powerful tools can significantly boost your close ratio. These are automated information capture services and personalized video proposals.

How much time on average do you spend keying in information prospects provide? How often do you ask a prospect to send you their current insurance information and then never hear from them again?

Getting insurance information from prospects is time-consuming—so much so that prospects often jump ship before you can quote the business. If you're still gathering and entering policy information manually, you should consider one of the many automated information capture services frequently used by independent agencies, such as Canopy Connect, InsurGrid and Fize.

Insurance information capture services give you a prospect's information in seconds. You simply send the prospect a link by text or email, and the service then prompts the prospect to log in to their current carrier account. Once they've logged in, it pulls in all their information, making it available for you to download into a comparative rater. 

Canopy Connect reports that its service saves agencies 30 minutes per client on average, and that the ease and convenience to customers results in a 60% higher close rate for agencies that use it. InsurGrid likewise claims that its clients see a 22% increase in sales.

Because information capture services gather all of a prospect's insurance information, they typically uncover valuable cross-sell opportunities an agent may have otherwise overlooked.

Most agencies email PDFs of written proposals for new business. The problem with these written proposals is that they lack personal appeal.

With a 3-4 minute video, you can add a personal touch to the written proposal, hitting its high points, anticipating questions and sharing relevant anecdotes. For example, “Let me tell you about the time a client declined cyber liability insurance then nearly lost their business paying damages and legal fees when they were hacked." You can do all that while taking advantage of the friendliness and warmth that face-to-face communication can convey.

Loom, ScreenPal and Vidyard are great platforms for creating and managing video proposals. Prospects can watch the proposals at a convenient time and share them with other decision-makers. The platforms tell you when, and how many times, a proposal has been viewed so you know when to follow up to close the sale.

According to Forge3, using video proposals leads to a 15-20% higher close rate than PDFs alone. In fact, one agency claimed Forge3 had increased its close rate to 91% after they adopted video proposals as a sales tool.

Despite these amazing results, video proposals are still underused, which is likely one of the reasons they remain so effective in helping agencies stand out.

Dale Steinke is the director of independent insurance agency growth strategy at Liberty Mutual.