EverQuote Partner Spotlight: Interview with Ricochet360’s Brett Schickler

At EverQuote we recently launched our Technology Partner program, focused on providing agents the best tested and “EverQuote approved” solutions and tools to help convert EverQuote leads into satisfied customers (including access to special offers for agents looking to get started with our partner’s platforms).

For our initial partnership initiative, we’re focused on an area that we’ve recognized typically has a major impact on an agent’s success with our leads – Lead Management Software (LMS). We’ve seen that agents using an LMS tend to have more overall positive and consistent results when working with EverQuote leads. In fact, according to research from Gartner, companies that automate lead management (on average) see a 10% or greater increase in revenue in the 6-9 months after implementing an automated process through an LMS.

When it comes to insurance leads, we know that the product we deliver is only as good as the results you get out of it. Pairing real-time EverQuote with a high-quality Lead Management Software (LMS) helps you get the most out of our high-intent leads – allowing producers to contact leads quicker and to help ensure the proper follow-up cadence is followed. So we’re incredibly excited to introduce agents to one of EverQuote’s premier technology partners – Ricochet360 – whose insurance-focused solution pairs a full-featured LMS with an automated phone system and marketing automation – all in a single platform.

We spoke with Brett Schickler – Director of Sales with Agency Shield (the company behind the Ricochet360 Insurance Software) to learn a bit more about how Ricochet360 helps agents automate 90% of their sales team’s workflows and transform their efforts into predictable, repeatable outcomes (note that our conversation has been edited for length and clarity).

EverQuote: Hi Brett, could you introduce yourself and give a brief description of your role at Agency Shield / Ricochet360?

Brett: My name is Brett Shickler, I’m the Director of Sales with AgencyShield, the exclusive Ricochet360 provider. Ricochet has been in business since 2014, and the insurance vertical has been around for the past 2 years. We noticed that agency owners were typically using multiple platforms for their phone, their auto-dialer, their marketing automation and their CRM, so we saw that there was a real need in the marketplace for a product that combined these tools into a single integrated platform.

EQ: Can you give us a high-level overview of the Ricochet360 product?

Brett: Ricochet360 combines a Lead Management System (LMS) with an automated phone system, marketing automation, and CRM in one platform. By tying these features together it helps agents increase production and ultimately save time and money.

EQ: What are the main features and benefits of Ricochet?

Brett: Ricochet transforms your producers’ sales and support efforts into predictable outcomes using – all in one system – a fast dialer to call quickly, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to track clients, activities, and tasks, and a Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) to send emails in real-time. Using Ricochet allows you to automate about 90% of your sales process.

EQ: What are the core business problems that Ricochet is helping agents solve?

Brett: Many agents who are purchasing data leads have a difficult time getting in contact with these consumers quickly and then managing and tracking the follow-up sales process. With Ricochet’s auto-dialer, agents typically call a new lead in 5 seconds or less (faster than any other system on the market). It is also the only platform that allows you to trigger a follow-up sales call, generate a text and email drip campaign, and initiate the auto-dialer to begin calling the next lead in the queue at the same time. Agents can then implement new strategies and processes based around the technology (for example, creating and optimizing an outreach cadence blending email and text messaging).

EQ: Is there a specific type of insurance agent that would benefit most from Ricochet (can you describe what would make an agent a good fit for using Ricochet)?

Brett: We work with agents who fall under many different profiles and business models, but the type of agent that I think tends to benefit most from using Ricochet, is someone with 3 or more employees who purchases a relatively large amount of data leads and utilizes outbound prospecting. Ultimately the goal is to allow agents to streamline and automate their sales process, so we have also seen many agents using Ricochet’s built-in cross-sell campaigns. So once they bind a new customer with one line, they put them into a cross-sell campaign that automates drip messages (and even texts) to try and sell them on other products.

EQ: Why is automation so important for insurance agents in the digital age?

Brett: In today’s business landscape, automation allows insurance agents to implement predictable strategies and ultimately to stay competitive. Automation is technology – it takes out the human element of inconsistency and allows agents to have more personal conversations that are often crucial during the sales process. So eliminating much of the human element removes that element of potential error, and as proper follow-up may take 5, 6, 7 touches to even reach the client, automation allows you to gain consistency and better analyze your data.

EQ: What makes Ricochet stand out from other LMS systems marketed to insurance agents?

Brett: Ricochet is your all-in-one system – it’s not just a robust LMS, but an LMS with marketing automation, a CRM, and auto-dialer with text messaging – there’s no system that ties all those features together in one package that allows you to easily gain insights and optimize. Also having one platform central to your sales process makes it much easier to train new hires.

EQ: Can you walk us through a use case where Ricochet360 was able to drive impressive results for an agent using the platform?

Brett: We had an agent who switched to Ricochet about three months ago and is already seeing massive results. With their previous system, the agent’s salespeople were averaging 1 hour 20 minutes of daily talk time. With Ricochet, average daily talk time has increased to 3 hours. In one month, producers increased their number of outbound calls to 67,538 phone calls (with 8 weeks 6 days 10 hours talk time), sent 12,869 text messages and 15,789 emails, and ultimately saw a 30% increase in production.

EQ: Why has AgencyShield chosen to partner with EverQuote under EQ’s new Technology Partners program?

Brett: In our experience, EverQuote is producing the best leads on the market and producing the best cost per sale. Agents can contact EverQuote leads faster than any other vendor on the market and like AgencyShield, EverQuote is a progressive, forward-thinking company.

EQ: What do you think makes agents using EverQuote a particularly ideal fit for Ricochet?

Brett: One of the main reasons is the overall lead quality. Agents using Ricochet see dramatic ROI on the follow-up process with EverQuote leads, so Ricochet allows agents to capitalize on the full potential of EverQuote leads which they may not be able to do otherwise (without the auto-dialer and the automated follow-up as well as the drip campaigns). Another major reason is the integration, which allows EverQuote leads to be pushed directly into the agent’s Ricochet LMS. This is crucial because data and information is transferred from EverQuote to Ricochet in real-time.

EQ: Do you have any sort of special offers for EverQuote clients who are interested in trying Ricochet?

Brett: For any EverQuote clients interested in Ricochet, we’re taking $1,000 off the sign-up fee, offering a $30 per month discount, and lowering the minimum user requirement down from 5 to 3.

EQ: Thinking about some of your most successful clients, what (if anything) would you say they have in common?

Brett: Many of the most successful clients we work with are open-minded – they’re open to trying new tools and programs to succeed. Also, they tend to be able to make decisions quickly and rely on data to improve and decide what’s working and what’s not.

EQ: Can you tell us anything about future features Ricochet is planning for?

Brett: Our goal is to help every agency owner streamline their sales and follow-up processes. So we’re working on a way to create another version of the Ricochet360 platform but aimed at smaller sized insurance agencies.

Now, make this partnership work for you.

Working with a certified EverQuote partner like Ricochet will be a game-changer for your agency processes and make your job a lot easier. Find out more about the additional benefits of working with us and our partners—and learn more about promotional discounts.

Interested in learning more about Ricochet 360? Click here.

Interested in seeing how EverQuote can help you meet your growth goals? Click here.