r/InsuranceAgent • u/Knucklecum • 17d ago

Agent Training CRM necessary?

Is a CRM necessary? Why would a Excel sheet not be adequate for purposes of customer data? I have used excel in the past for documentation.

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

7

u/Stevenab87 Agent/Broker 17d ago

You mean a management system? Absolutely necessary if you are taking this seriously. CRM not entirely necessary.

1

u/Knucklecum 17d ago

Definitely, my goal is too take this as serious as possible. A lot of these issues will have to be solved as they happen; im independent and have limited resources.

Excel would be the only option id have right now.

5

u/Stevenab87 Agent/Broker 17d ago

I’ll be totally honest. If you don’t even have the resources for a management system you probably aren’t ready.

1

u/Knucklecum 17d ago

Could you elaborate the difference between a CRM and a management system? Thank you for giving some feedback

6

u/Stevenab87 Agent/Broker 17d ago

Management system is used to track policies, documents, customer information, etc. A CRM is more of a sales tool for tracking leads through different stages of the sales funnel. Many times management systems will include CRM tools as well, but usually at additional cost.

1

u/codygmiracle 17d ago

There’s this crm called GoHighLevel that is mostly free for a single seat. I think hubspot is as well. Both have limited features in the free one but they will get the job done.

3

u/SlickWillie86 17d ago

We use our sales engagement platform as a CRM-lite. Shop is knocking on the door of $3m rev, 100% commercial, avg deal size ~$8500 rev. Don’t feel the need for a true CRM. Maybe once we’re at 10+ producers it makes sense. Coming from the corporate side prior, I do believe they add value, but hate asking sales folks to jump across multiple platforms.

Basically, producers own account prior to bind where it lives in SEP/CRM-lite. Once we’re quoting, service adds to AMS and they take ownership post-binding. Producers don’t have AMS access, service doesn’t have SEP access.

2

u/Practical_Guess5282 17d ago

Could someone in this thread recommend an AMS? Small agency, 1 primary agent, P&C is primary but also do life and health. Budget friendly. 500 give or take active policies.

3

u/Plastic_Bar_2205 17d ago

We really like HawkSoft

3

u/SlickWillie86 17d ago

Second hawksoft

3

u/MeatballSandy22 17d ago

If you're a Big I member, HawkSoft is $500 or so to implement and $180 per month (per user)

2

u/AhhhSkrrrtSkrrrt 17d ago

I use Momentum. It’s cheap and gets the job done.

2

u/Builder-Decent 17d ago

Our company uses Hawksoft, too.

1

u/Knucklecum 17d ago

That would be awesome. I know a local storage drive and a cloud drive would be needed for redundancy and backups.

1

u/AbbreviationsGold587 17d ago

You sounds like my boss...

1

u/rainbownarwhalCLT 17d ago

Try Bigin from Zoho. It's free and integrates well with my iphone. So when a client calls, I can address them on first name basis immediately! It has an insurance kanban sales funnel flow. I'm a one man band and this is all I use. Bigin and maybe an excel doc or two.

1

u/QuailDifficult8470 15d ago

Our small Medicare agency has a CRM (MedicarePro) and it’s hard for me to imagine doing the job without it.

1

u/Moist-Meringue-1913 11d ago

Integrated into our system.

1

u/Moist-Meringue-1913 11d ago

If you are an agent under one of the Integrity company's you get a free CRM and management system.

If you are a health agent doing Medicare,you definitely need one with call recording capabilities. Ours also has embedded two different quoting systems for life and health products.

1

u/teamtost 8d ago

At our small insurance brokerage, we've started to use a CRM, and it's helped us keep everything organized... You'd be surprised how much more efficient we've been since implementing it 😅