Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company’s commercial strategy is to profitably grow in alignment with the priorities of Distribution, Talent, and Capabilities. The Nationwide Academy Commercial Underwriting team, in collaboration with Commercial Underwriting Business Development, designed and delivered a new program focused on the strategic priority to develop underwriting talent.
The Consultative Edge learning solution was created to focus on critical skill sets as the insurance industry transforms: Agents increasingly are expecting underwriters to manage the agency relationship, conduct value-added meetings, and collaborate and manage customer pipeline opportunities.
Program Details
Consultative Edge is a two-day training program designed for Nationwide Commercial Lines Business Development and Middle Market Underwriters. Through a variety of modules, facilitators encourage participants to further enhance their relationships with agency partners and members using consultative sales and underwriting techniques. Modules include:
- Establishing Rapport
- Identifying & Working with Diverse Personality Types
- Elevator Pitch
- Identifying & Assessing Needs
- Effective Call Planning
- Driving the Business to Write: Pipeline, Promoting the Solution, Owning the Next Steps
- Addressing Apathy & Resolving Concerns
The course focuses heavily on real-world application and prepares underwriters to also serve as sales executives and trusted advisors. The learning solution uses a blended learning approach that incorporates role-plays and skill practice with expert feedback. A social media component using Yammer before the program starts to identify needs and familiarize class members continues between modules to provide reinforcement and after the course to provide an ongoing opportunity for collaboration. Tool training on a new customer relationship management (CRM) platform, Salesforce.com, is incorporated into the learning. The tool revolutionizes the way underwriters go to market as it arms them with actionable intelligence about agents and customers.
Results
- Learning adoption is evidenced by more than 2,000 individual customer opportunities being created by Nationwide underwriters in only six months. These efforts grew the formal centralized, measurable company pipeline from $0 to $50 million in that short time period. Underwriters are collaborating with their internal counterparts by managing agency relationship activities through the CRM platform as a result of their learning in Consultative Edge.
- Since Salesforce started rolling out to Middle Market Commercial Lines Underwriting in February 2015, more than 2,750 individual customer opportunities have been created, accounting for more than $114 million in identified premium.
