How GarityAdvantage Leveraged Zoho CRM to Manage Their 2500+ Agents

Overview

GarityAdvantage, a leading insurance NMO (National Marketing Organization), attained its goal of streamlining the lead management and agent relationship management processes with Zoho CRM.

About GarityAdvantage

GarityAdvantage is a family-owned NMO business that partners with more than 2500 agents across the country to sell the best insurance and Medicare products to the senior market. The company provides assistance that the agents need to drive their growth and increase their revenue multifold. This support includes sales-focused training, client retention tools, free lead opportunities, co-op marketing money, marketing services, and a virtual enrollment platform.

The Challenge

Why did GarityAdvantage need an advanced solution?

GarityAdvantage was started in 1970 as the "Joseph I. Garity Agency", a life, health, and annuity agency serving brokers in the Boston area. In 1985, Brian Garity joined the company with a focus on health insurance products for individuals and small businesses, quickly growing the company’s distribution to include all 6 New England states. Soon after, they expanded to Medicare products nationally, requiring a lead distribution solution.

Although they started out with a database program in a call center setting, as their business grew over the years, so did their software needs. Today, they are a team of over 35 members along with 2500 agents across the country.

During this growth period, the team switched to Inside Sales software to help their marketing and sales team provide unwavering and timely lead support to their agents. However, around 2011, Garity Advantage realized that Inside Sales could no longer handle their tasks efficiently, so the management team started exploring the market to find a solution that was both effective and delivered high value for the cost. They wanted advanced software with several customization options.

Some of the reasons for switching from Inside Sales to a more technologically advanced solution include:

• To automate the entire lead management process.
• To manage various carrier leads to the carriers' specific requirements.
• To manage the leads that they acquire through postcards and inbound sales.
• To assign leads to each agent.
• To manage the seminar dates that their agents hold for public awareness.
• To track and report on the status and quality of the lead programs.

The solution

How did Zoho CRM become a technology partner for GarityAdvantage?

When GarityAdvantage looked for software that could help them address their challenges, they found themselves looking at Zoho CRM's website. The team found the website appealing and decided to try the free edition. GarityAdvantage loved it and soon upgraded to the enterprise edition. They found that Zoho CRM's broad range of features made work much easier for them. Once their data was imported, they were able to:

• Create custom fields and unique IDs to categorize leads comprehensibly and effectively.
• Easily track the lead status and the level of collaboration with external agents.
• Automate sending email alerts to agents based on the lead source and integrate their Facebook account with Zoho CRM to capture leads automatically.
• Capture lead information using Zoho Forms.
• Use QR codes on postcards to capture lead data and automatically add it to Zoho CRM.
• Send regular lead reminders.
• Streamline the process for agents to report back on leads.
• Create calendar notifications for every event organized by the agents.