red barn consulting

Insurance Providers + LinkedIn = New Customers

Leave a Comment / Insurance, Sales, Uncategorized / By / / , , , , , , , , ,

It’s time to learn to love LinkedIn (again). We know it might have been a while — You signed up once because you thought it’d be a good idea. Occasionally you get an email people are looking at your profile. Perhaps you’re subscribed to a few groups. You get notified about new insurance jobs or industry people who want to connect with you.

But you never sign back in — Who has the time? You need to service the insurance customers you\’ve got now, right? Well, yes. But that doesn’t mean you should dismiss LinkedIn out of hand. Here’s the thing — Used well, it’s an incredible way to get new customers, grow your insurance business, and get noticed. And who doesn’t want that? Certainly not you, and certainly not us.

So, deep breath, head over to LinkedIn, and learn how it can help your business thrive.

Connecting with potential customers on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the largest network of professionals and business people in the world. And you know what all professionals and business people need? Yep. Insurance. Whether it’s business and professional liability, property, product, or personal coverage, they are your marketplace. You can use this to your advantage. It’s really not that hard – Trust us – Here’s how it works:

  • Update your LinkedIn profile — The five-year-old picture of you with the cheesy grin probably isn’t going to cut it. Go professional, and create a compelling profile to match. Tell your story, don’t just list your resume highlights. Why should someone buy their insurance from you? What’s your Secret Sauce?
  • Look at your Prospect List — Are you connected with any of them? Probably not, and that’s ok – We will get there! Now, see if any of your connections are connected with any of your prospects. Ask for introductions.
  • Make new connections within your tribe — Connect with other insurance professionals, people you used to work with, and other LinkedIn members. Stay on top of industry news and see what other folks are doing.
  • Join relevant groups — Where are your prospects hanging out?
  • Once you’re connected, develop relationships — Don’t try to push the sale – Build relationships, offer advice, have conversations. Wait for opportunistic moments to talk about your expertise
  • Move towards a sale — When the time is right, offer your guidance and ask prospects to view their insurance portfolio. The sale will happen if you’ve built up some trust.

Becoming an expert in your field. Something else LinkedIn allows you to do? Demonstrate your expertise. No, we’re not thinking about your talent at creating origami swans, or that time you replaced a carburetor without a manual, we’re talking about your insurance business acumen. There are several ways to share your expertise and build authority.

Writing on LinkedIn Pulse. LinkedIn Pulse is LinkedIn’s blog platform. Think of it as a place to create and write insightful, interesting articles and publish them to a wide audience. There are dozens of questions people have about insurance, but don’t know who to ask. You can create posts about those subjects, answer questions, and provide awesome advice.

If these posts do well, they’ll show up in other people’s LinkedIn feeds, LinkedIn search, and maybe even on Google. As the author of these pearls of wisdom, people will look at your profile, see where you work and… Well, you fill in the rest.

Participating in LinkedIn groups. While it’s true that many LinkedIn groups are nothing more than awful, awful spam factories, there are still some good ones out there. Once you’ve found a good group you can respond to questions about insurance and help people out with their insurance issues. Again, this builds your authority as an expert. The next time those people are looking to renew their policy, guess where they’ll turn? Right.

So, you can see, LinkedIn can be a great way to expand your reach and find new customers. Don’t consign LinkedIn to be somewhere you’ll visit “when you have the time.” Rekindle your LinkedIn relationship today, and turn it into a beautiful friendship.

Insurance Providers + LinkedIn = New Customers Read More »

Healthy Technology — How It Helps Healthcare Providers and Customers Thrive

Leave a Comment / Healthcare, Marketing, Uncategorized / By / / , , , , , , ,

The pace of technological change can leave you breathless, and not because you need to go to the doctor. In fact, as technology makes our lives easier, it’s expanding into every industry — One where it’s having a profound impact is in healthcare.

It’s easy to see why. Faster, better access to medical information, apps that make it easier for a physician to do their job, and giving the patient complete insight into their health is good for everyone. In fact, it’s vital for health providers to start adopting this new technology so they don’t get left behind.

The thing is, it’s all about how technology makes your patients’ lives easier. If you understand and support their healthcare journey through technology, it builds trust with your patients and gives you an edge against your competition.

Getting the skinny on your patients.

It’s vital to have all the latest info on your patients — Medications, lifestyle changes, symptoms, medical history — You name it. Unfortunately, something most of us hate is form filling. That’s why being able to get and record information from your clients electronically makes things much easier.

How the technology helps your patients

  • It’s less frustrating for the customer to provide the information, so they’re happier
  • It’s easy to transfer information between health providers, meaning a complete picture of care.
  • Software can automatically prompt for follow-up questions, so you build a complete picture.
  • You can tend to all your patient’s medical needs, with a holistic approach.

Having healthcare information at your fingertips. Diagnostic tools and information are getting even more portable and user-friendly.

From patient charts and details on a tablet, to wearable diagnostic devices providing real-time data, doctors and patients have access to a wealth of information.

How the technology helps your patients

  • Real time diagnostics means doctors have access to the latest information and can tailor treatment accordingly.
  • Easy access to test results, charts, and treatment plans ensures a complete understanding of patient needs and conditions.
  • This provides a more flexible, reactive, and caring approach to meeting your individual patient’s medical needs.

Sharing all the medical details that matter. It used to be that if you referred someone for an x-ray or other diagnostic test, you’d need to wait for the results to be posted or couriered back to you. With high-speed internet access and software designed to handle the huge amounts of data that medical imaging produces, those waits are becoming a thing of the past.

How the technology helps your patients

  • Find out what’s wrong with your patient much more quickly, resulting in faster, more focused treatments.
  • Easier to share results with other experts so you can get a specialist consult to ensure you’re recommending the right course of action.
  • More confidence from your patient that you have all the details you need to make the right choice for their treatment.

Medical convenience through smartphone apps

It’s not just in person doctor and patient interactions where big changes are happening. There’s a whole host of smartphone apps designed to do everything from reminding a patient to take their meds, to allowing people to remotely consult with a doctor or specialist (telemedicine). These apps are an incredible way to help patients make better decisions and take charge of their health.

How the technology helps your patients

  • They can get an update or text message if a doctor is running late.
  • The convenience of reminders and updates to help them take care of their health needs.
  • Greater access to a wider range of health and medical services.

Stepping into the health portal

Finally, the idea of the patient portal is becoming ever more popular. It’s an online, one stop “body shop” where patients can ask their doctors questions, review test results, book appointments, and get other vital information. It’s the way all practices seem to be going nowadays, and it’s the type of convenience patients love.

How the technology helps your patients

  • They can log in and get updates on their diagnostic tests, treatment and medications.
  • They can easily look up doctor availability and schedule appointments.
  • They can easily ask questions of a doctor.

Of course, with all these technological changes, it’s vital to maintain the human touch. A good bedside manner, a deep understanding of a patient’s needs, and helping them make the best health decisions are vital. A website that shares all your services, gives details on each doctor, and puts your patient’s needs front and center is a great way to show that you care.

Fortunately, with the right technology, that gets even easier.

Healthy Technology — How It Helps Healthcare Providers and Customers Thrive Read More »

Reducing Risk and a Well-Rounded Book — Expanding Your Insurance business

Leave a Comment / Insurance, Sales, Uncategorized / By / / , , , , , , , , ,

As an insurance provider or broker, you might have decided to specialize in a particular type of insurance. On one hand, that makes good sense, right? You’ve got expertise in a particular area, so you can give top-notch service and advice to your customers. But, by sticking to just one or two types of insurance and customer, you could be severely limiting your business growth, and no-one wants that. You don’t want all your eggs in one basket.

Diversification is smart.

Reducing your risk and liability, because no-one thrives on too much adrenaline. Insurance is all about managing risk, both for the carrier, and for you as an agent.

If you break into new specialties or areas you’re spreading the risk that something bad will happen in a particular area or for a certain type of insurance. For example, if you’re just insuring residential property in coastal Florida, and a hurricane hits — That’s a massive impact to your business. You can diversify via location, types of industry, or lines of insurance.

Expanding your business base, because you want to turn your revenue stream into a river. Selling insurance in more areas means more sales, which means more profit. There are probably only a handful of people who need insurance for their art collection, so it’s great to be an expert in this field – but make sure you are insuring all their lines of business! Their auto, home, workers’ comp, business insurance. Diversify, Diversify, Diversify.

It gives you lots of new marketing opportunities, especially with existing customers, which brings us neatly onto our next point.

Cross-selling and upselling, because just getting new customers is hard… One of the best things about having a variety of insurance lines is the ability to cross-sell and upsell them to existing customers. For Personal Lines – ensure you have home, auto and umbrella for all clients where applicable. For your commercial clients – do you have all lines of business and have you offered them life insurance and benefits?

The more you expand your book, the better these cross-selling opportunities become — It’s like a virtuous circle of insurance joy.

Better for your customers, because what’s good for them is good for you. Finally, having a more rounded book is better for your customers. They can buy all their insurance in one place, and have a single point of contact for all their insurance needs. That reinforces your brand, builds trust with your customer, and helps you stand out from your competitors. Well-rounded books have a much higher retention rate. And that’s pretty great.

Reducing Risk and a Well-Rounded Book — Expanding Your Insurance business Read More »

Getting Your Banking Website ADA Compliant – What Does It Take?

Leave a Comment / Finance, Marketing, Uncategorized / By / / , , , , , , , , ,

As we covered in our last article, getting your website ADA compliant by 2018 is critical if you want to avoid problems (read; big, big problems) from the Department of Justice. Here’s a quick refresher.

Essentially, the DOJ wants all banking websites to be fully accessible for visual and hearing impaired people by 2018. If your website isn’t ready, you could run into issues with fines, getting sued, equal rights laws, and bad public perception. You don’t want that to happen, and neither do we (really, we like you).

So, what does the DOJ mean when it says you have to get your website ready? Glad you asked.

Making your website accessible — What the DOJ wants

The DOJ has several requirements under the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. That’s a bit of a mouthful so we’ll break it down. This comes in two delicious compliance favors — The changes the DOJ requires, and what that means in terms of getting compliant.

Changes required by the DOJ under the ADA

There are over 70 (really!) specific requirements so we’re just looking at the high-level areas. Here are the direct quotes on what each one involves.

  • Perceivable – Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.
  • Operable – User interface components and navigation must be operable.
  • Understandable – Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable.
  • Robust – Content must be robust enough so it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.

Now, that list doesn’t look very easy to understand (we know!) so here are some examples of what they mean in practice.

Perceivable — ADA Compliance

  • Provide text alternatives for any non-text content — Having text descriptions of any images or interface components, making sure there’s a good text alternative that can be read by screen-reading software.
  • Captions / sign language for prerecorded content — Videos and other media will need to have captions and / or sign language so hearing impaired people can get the information they need.

Operable — ADA Compliance

  • Keyboard navigation — Your website should be completely usable and navigable using just a keyboard (i.e. There’s no requirement to use a mouse to access any specific part of your banking website.)
  • Accessing media — Users should be able to easily pause, rewind, and interact with all the media (video, audio, and other) on your banking website.

Understandable – ADA Compliance

  • Language of the webpage — The language on a specific webpage can be easily updated according to a user’s needs.
  • Ease of use — A website must have consistent navigation and be easy to read and use.[/cs_text]

Robust – ADA Compliance

  • Make sure all of your website enhancements for ADA work with all client browsers or other ways people access your website.
  • Make sure your enhancements work with the various specialized hardware and software that visual and hearing impaired people use. (e.g. screen readers, braille interfaces, speech recognition etc.)

You probably don’t have the time to do all this (I mean, there are 70 requirements, and they’re not exactly… simple). That’s why we’re here.

Relax, we’ve got this

We understand just what it takes to get your banking website ADA compliant. We also understand you just don’t have the time. That’s why we’re here to help — We’ve already helped banks like Litchfield Bancorp and Collinsville Savings Society, and we’re here to help you.

Get in touch today and we’ll explain exactly how we’ll make your bank website ADA compliant. Get yourself some peace-of-mind.

Getting Your Banking Website ADA Compliant – What Does It Take? Read More »

You’re Wasting Time

Leave a Comment / Operations, Uncategorized / By / / , , , ,

Productivity is your thing. You worked through the weekend…You wrote emails, put together a sales meeting agenda, and answered phone calls. So what if you were late for your friend’s birthday party and the lawn didn’t get mowed. You were still productive. Were you really? Research shows that working long hours actually saps your productivity in the long run. You might think you’re getting work stuff done by clocking in more than 50 hours a week, but the truth is you’re wasting time.

An interesting Stanford University study that looked at the productivity of females working in munition factories spread all over Britain during World War One proves the point.

The author of the study, John Pencavel, found that the output of the women who toiled more than 70 hours a week differed little than if they had worked 50 hours a week.

That’s right. All those long hours those women spent – Sunday was their only day off – loading gun cartridges didn’t matter to their output in the long run. In fact, the study found that productivity begins to fall after working 50 hours a week.

Yes, I know working piecemeal in a munitions factory during wartime in 1914 isn’t the same as working in an office, but the study proves that clocking in long hours in any line work is counterproductive.

Aside from zapping your productivity, working long hours can lead to fatigue, obesity, brain damage, stress, and even a news article. So how does one work less and still stay ahead of work obligations? There is plenty of advice out there. Business Insider ran a story highlighting entrepreneurs who manage to get things done by working fewer hours.

By working less you’ll get more and better work done, a Slate piece suggests. The thinking is that when your energy is depleted from working long hours you are prone to make bad decisions and mistakes.

So, next weekend, turn off your cellphone. Go for a bike ride, spend time with your family, take a yoga class. And mow the lawn.

Unplug…Have Fun…Get more work DONE!

You’re Wasting Time Read More »

You Might Need a Digital Detox

Leave a Comment / Culture, Fun Stuff / By / / , , , , , ,

Would you rather clean your toilet than your email inbox? Do you find yourself checking your cellphone when it’s not ringing? Does a walk on the beach do little to relieve your work stress?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might be in need of a digital detox. But don’t try to tame the technology beast alone.

Sign up for a weekend at Camp Grounded in Anderson Valley, California,“where grown-ups go to unplug, getaway and be kids again.”

The camp, which gained national attention last year, invites campers to trade in their technology——- that means cellphones, computers, tablets, clocks, and live off the grid for a weekend in the woods.

Activities offered at the camp include meditation, swimming, a talent show, and archery. Corporate teams are encouraged.[/x_custom_headline][cs_text]It sounds extreme, but some of us just can’t unplug.

Consider some of the statistics Camp Grounded complied in its digital Camp Grounded manifesto.

  • Sixty one percent admit to being addicted to the internet and their devices.
  • The average American dedicates 30 percent of leisure time on the web.
  • Fifty percent of people prefer to communicate digitally than in person.
  • Sixty seven percent of cellphone users check their device even when it’s not ringing or vibrating.
  • Heavy internet users are 2.5 time more likely to be depressed.
  • The average employee spends 2 hours a day recovering from distractions.

If sneaking out at night at Camp Grounded—- which is actually encouraged—- to gaze up at the stars is not your style, Conde Nast Traveler offers several more luxurious vacation options to un plug.

From a safari camp in Tanzania to a resort nestled in the Andes in Peru, the places are remote and technology is sketchy. Just don’t pack your phone.

PS – we didn’t get paid by Camp Grounded or Conde Nast Traveler – we just think the Red Barn Team needs to unplug once in a while. Company Retreat?? Maybe

You Might Need a Digital Detox Read More »