Gregory & Appel is an independent risk management advisor working for more than 135 years in central Indiana. The company offers business and personal insurance, as well as employee benefit solutions for clients. This family- and employee-owned enterprise operates as one of the leading independent insurance agencies in the United States. Its century-long organic growth comes directly from investment in client and employee success.
This technology-enabled insurance brokerage brings ingenuity and innovation to an industry known for control and caution. Gregory & Appel performs ahead of the curve, so when a lack of industry technology impeded the company’s sales process, it set out to create a solution of its own with the help of Galvin Technologies.

The Challenge

The insurance industry is notoriously slow to innovate. In fact, the basic model of insurance looks largely the same as it did several centuries ago. Only recently has insurance started experiencing the technology revolution other sectors have been navigating for years. Gregory & Appel prides itself on operating at the leading edge of the industry. The company found the technology tools common to insurance lacking in power and misaligned with its unique coverage and benefit services. As a result, the team struggled managing their own sales pipeline. Rather than driving transparency and efficiency, outdated technology reduced productivity, generated errors, and limited visibility to reports and analytics. Gregory & Appel needed a sales process as reliable as its insurance offerings.

The Solution

For phase one of the project, Galvin Technologies migrated Gregory & Appel into Salesforce Sales Cloud. In just under a month, Galvin had a set of Sales Champions trained as power users. The team retired a legacy pipeline tool called Salestracker and used Salesforce for logging all phone calls, emails and other sales activities. Leveraging the new data, the team started generating pipeline reports and forecasts for a better sales picture. Galvin also configured the system for easy implementation of Pardot, giving Gregory & Appel new marketing campaign capabilities for lead nurturing and pipeline assistance. The Salesforce implementation introduced process automation and efficiencies never experienced before in the company’s history. 

Phase two, which is currently underway, extends the sales reach further by going direct to consumer and deploying Financial Service Cloud for a better relationship management with policyholders. 

The Results

For a company already priding itself on innovation, Gregory & Appel’s migration to Salesforce introduced a new era for landmark sales and service. 

Governance – with better visibility came improved accountability. System-generated reports illuminated returns on engagement, sales conversion rates, and deal timelines. As a result, leaders could manage commission splits and lead assignments more strategically for maximized productivity and motivation across the team.   

Lead Nurturing – when it comes to insurance, consumers have many options and online platforms make shopping around easy. With Pardot, Gregory & Appel could feed information continuously to leads keeping the company and its products top of mind for the consumer. The marketing platform increases the amount and quality of communication as it applies specifically to the needs of the lead without creating additional work or headcount. As a result, the company is starting to see increased sales pipelines with better qualified leads. 

Data Management – a company in business for more than 135 years amasses a great deal of data in that time. Galvin Technologies successfully migrated all necessary sales data into Salesforce seamlessly, creating a single system of truth for the company. Three business lines included in the sales process launched without issue. Galvin thoroughly trained about 50 users, which represents nearly one-third of the company’s employees, on Salesforce and the new process. The migration leveraged legacy information while creating new, better data from users for an overall improved sales process. 

More companies are finding a “we’ve always done it this way” approach as a competitive disadvantage. If legacy processes are leaving your company behind, let Galvin Technologies find ways to innovate. A simple process update or system upgrade can deliver tremendous value for keeping your company on the cutting edge.