There seems to be an agreement in the insurance industry that, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the way we do business is likely to change—not just in the short-term, but also on a long-term basis. That doesn’t mean that we expect the coronavirus to be with us long term; we’re all hoping that isn’t the case. But it does mean that, during the COVID-19 lockdown, agents have developed some new habits that are likely to stay with us long after the health emergency is over and everyone is allowed to return to the office.

Back in January, before COVID-19 was a huge news story here in the U.S., we published an article about the benefits of working from home. Among those benefits are:

  1. less overhead,
  2. less drive time,
  3. more productive time,
  4. more play time, and
  5. more flexibility in the schedule.

Over the past several weeks, agents who may never have considered working from home before have discovered many of those benefits, developed a system that works for them, and perhaps changed their long-term attitude about where they’d prefer to spend most of their time.

Whether or not agents make a permanent adjustment to where they do their job, though, we should certainly expect that clients will make an adjustment to the way they want to interact with us.

In the same way that agents have developed new habits over the past few weeks, everyday consumers have as well. People have learned how to perform most tasks from a distance, and many of these new habits are likely to remain when things return to “normal.” It’s unlikely that everyone will simply fall back into their old way of doing things.

So, with all of that said, agents should expect some long-term changes, whether they like it or not. And if we can predict these changes, then we should certainly be taking steps NOW to make sure we can be successful in this “new normal.”

To help you with those efforts, we’ll be posting several articles over the coming weeks about the tools and skills you’ll need when selling online or by phone. Many of these articles will be repurposed from the Quotit blog, like the recent post “How to Sell Health Insurance Over the Phone.” We hope you will take the time to read them as they contain countless tips to help make you more effective and more efficient. The world is changing, and if we want to be successful, we have to change along with it.