Automation for Insurance Agents

A Personalized Touch Through Automation

Greater Des Moines (DSM) startup Rocket Referrals allows insurance agents to automate referrals and retention. Founding brothers Carl and Torey Maerz discuss the emergence of opportunity within the insurance industry.

Startup Growth

The Maerz brothers started out brainstorming markets. Knowing their location as an insurance capital, they decided to go talk to insurance agents and ask about their customers and how they use technology. Within the smaller agencies, they didn’t have a lot of ideas of using tech to grow their business. The brothers saw an opportunity to help with automation. The key was to sell the idea and have the agents help ensure the product became exactly what the agents needed and wanted. Over time, growth became evident as scheduled demos backed up. After hiring another salesperson, the Maerz brothers moved to hire support. Building internal tools was also one way to keep costs down while growing the company.

A Bottom-Up Strategy

Insurance agents will talk to the carriers and find carriers interested in new technology. Rocket Referrals works with those carriers then about reaching out to other agents. Going directly to insurance agents and developing a relationship with individual people in the industry allows the startup to build trust.

Monitoring Customers

Through reports, Rocket Referrals can determine which customers are using the program. Rocket Referrals actively monitors this to stay on top of client usability of the software. Data gathered about how happy the customers are with their insurance agent is also valuable to those higher-level insurance agents in understanding who their best agents are.

What Makes a Great Startup?

It isn’t the software. It’s the people and how they service the clients, along with how innovative and efficient you are as your startup grows.