Increasing insurance sales (part I) 

Tue, 21 Mar 2017 06:29:42 +0000

BY CHONGWE KAPOPOLO

Success is contagious. Associate with successful professionals. Surround yourself with successful, positive minded people. If you are surrounded by people who are meeting their goals, it will help motivate you to achieve your own objectives. Talk to other professionals in the insurance business about what does and does not work, and ask about their experiences when they were in your shoes.

Whether you sell life insurance, mortgage protection, disability and critical illness insurance, or annuities, the goal is the same: grow your client base and increase sales. The good news is that you are in a sales career that offers multiple ways to grow your business relatively inexpensively. Here are some approaches to selling more insurance than the office next door.

Listen more, talk less. As tempting as it is to sit down and begin explaining all the benefits of your insurance policies and plans, the best thing you can do is let the client lead the discussion. Instead of promoting your product, sit down and ask the person you are speaking with about their lifestyle. Ask questions about their family and concerns for the future, and let them tell you what it is they are looking for. Your role is more of an insurance consultant.

Do not sell products, instead provide solutions. Instead of jumping into a sales promotion, talking about the great discounts your agency offers on insurance products, explain to the prospect how what you are offering can help solve a problem they currently have, or potential problem down the road. People are much more likely to purchase products that solve their problems and provide them with peace of mind. You will only be able to do this successfully if you understand their families’ needs, concerns and interests.

Highlight benefits instead of features. Rather than focusing on the technical aspects of an insurance policy, although you want to be sure your customer clearly understands this prior to purchase, first highlight how having insurance will help them in terms they can relate to. For example, explain how the policy will help pay their bills if they ever became disabled. Be sure to keep the customer and their needs at the center of the conversation.

Leave something to remember you by. Most simple life insurance sales – especially customer driven sales – can be a one sit and close deal, but occasionally families will need to weigh their options and put more thought into their final decision. This is certainly the case with annuity sales or more complex life insurance sales. Be sure you are prepared with specific company or product literature that you can leave behind. At the very minimum, be prepared to leave a business card, because those who do buy may have questions after you leave and will need a way to get in touch with you, especially if or when they need to use the policy.

Set goals and deadlines. Make sure that your goals are specific. What number of appointments are you going to handle this week? 10? 15? 20? How many of those appointments will result in a sale? Be sure your goals are realistic. Rather than aiming for a 100% close rate, aim to increase your insurance sales by 10%. Incremental goals are much more achievable and create an atmosphere of success.  Do not leave your goals open-ended. It is not enough to say “I will increase my sales by 10%.”  Instead, give yourself a set deadline. “I will increase my sales by 10% every month,” is a better goal. The time frame is always an important ingredient.

Take advantage of networking opportunities. Take advantage of the opportunity to attend trade shows, conferences and meetings, and network with other insurance professionals in your field. These are great places to make connections, learn from respected industry leaders and stay up to date on industry trends.

Ask for referrals if any. Have a happy customer that you have helped in the past to introduce a new client? Do not be afraid to ask for referrals. Word-of-mouth is still a viable, and free, customer generating tool.

Make each day count by learning  something new every day. Devote some time each day to improving your sales and marketing knowledge. Read a book, or listen to an audio book, and try to learn something new about your field. See you-tube documentaries in your field.

Love your job. In order to be truly successful, you have to love your job and believe in the product you are selling. People who enjoy what they are doing experience less stress and a higher success rate.

Innovate ways to generate more insurance clients. Finding new clients is hard work. Everyone has their own client generating suggestions but it can be difficult to keep track of all the options.

Prospecting for your own customers is the best way of going about doing business, yes, it will be much more time-consuming, but the quality of the customers you find out of your own efforts might surprise you. Moreover, these clients are all yours – you do not have to share them with other companies as is the case of shared clients.

Though not exhaustive, there are five categories of accessing your clients: referrals, advertising, events, online marketing, and personal contact. While some methods might fall into a few categories, others may not. Most old-school sales agents will tell you that there is no better way of getting high quality leads than referrals. And they are right to an extent.

With countless other ways to increase your exposure and accessibility for your target demographics, you can hardly rely solely on referrals to get ahead in business. Still, it is a proven source of great clients, so there is no question whether you should or should not do it, especially when you are just getting started.

Sometimes, simply asking your clients to recommend you to their friends, relatives, colleagues, and other acquaintances can work wonderfully. Most people do not even think about recommending a product or a service to someone else, but if you directly ask them to do that, they will be much more likely to remember you once they hear that someone needs insurance.

Another way to increase your client base from referrals, is striking up partnerships with other businesses. You can either pay for customers they introduce to you or simply do the same for them by recommending their services to your clients. Either way, instead of simply giving out phone numbers or business cards to get prospective clients to call you, it is much better to set up a system where your partner would ask a person for permission to have you call them.

You can try building a network of people who could recommend you to any prospective clients who need the line of insurance you are selling. Some of the ways to get into the circles of related professionals is to participation in local events, activity in business groups, and involvement in speaking engagements. As your network grows, you will notice that you can get more and more referrals from respectable people at no monetary cost, while doing the same for them. Look out for part II.