WHY THE CLIENT NEEDED THE RESEARCH?
Sales for our client’s Insurance Plan had been declining for a while. Various initiatives, including increasing communication efforts and a considerable price drop had failed to move the needle. Lateral Strategy was hired to understand consumer’s perception of the plan and discover what could awaken interest in buying.
WHAT WAS DONE?
We set out to thoroughly understand Consumers perception and interest in the plan. It turned out Consumers loved the product features and found its price point very attractive. Many even had wished there was a protection plan for the product. When asked why they had declined the Plan, all were unaware that the company offered an insurance service. Moreover, there was real desire for the “insurance plan” as most consumers surveyed had spent more money fixing the product than the cost of the insuring it.
Had we solely been a Market Research firm, we would have given out client a report with the findings and walked away. But we felt that there was an inherent demand for this product in the market and we know market research is useless unless it provokes new thinking and new actions. We couldn’t just leave and make our client responsible for arriving at a solution by themselves.
We turned to the company’s sales database to understand what was going on and discovered the most recent hires were making the sales, whereas those working for over 2 years were hardly making any sales of the Insurance Plan. Digging deeper Lateral Strategy hit upon what was going on. It turned out that people working for the Company for a long time had discovered a loophole in the system and did not feel comfortable selling the Insurance Plan to their clients. They were more interested in developing a long term and trustworthy relationship with their clients, than in the incentive provided by the Company for selling the plan.
RESULTS
A new Plan was co-created with the sales people’s feedback, the loophole was closed, and sales went up 18%. Strikingly, the Insurance Plan had a price increase a year after the Research was conducted and sales remained intact.
