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The latest insights and thought leadership for independent insurance agents.
Insurance agents get a front row seat to the benefits of insurance. You see how a life insurance policy saves a home from foreclosure, or proper homeowner insurance gives the chance to rebuild. Agents know business insurance helps the small business community recover from losses and keep doing what they do.
It’s not unusual for independent agents to say, “If I could just make my client understand how this insurance policy benefits them, I know they would buy it.”
It is a challenge. Insurance can be confusing, and most consumers don’t have basic insurance literacy. Making sure your clients understand insurance not only benefits them as consumers, but also help you win sales. Try these tips to make insurance relatable and win over your prospects.
Indemnify, aggregates, endorsements and experience modifiers. If you’re using terms like these when you talk to your clients, you’re probably getting a few puzzled looks and not many sales.
Like other professions, insurance has its own lingo and language. As an agent, you are fluent, but your clients and prospects most likely aren’t.
So, if your sales pitch or coverage discussion is full of confusing insurance jargon that’s hard to understand, guess what happens? Eyes glaze over. The client loses interest and Poof! The sales opportunity is gone.
Losing the lingo isn’t easy especially for experienced agents who are comfortable with it. So, think 9th grade. That’s at the level you want to speak. This isn’t about talking down to prospects, it’s about clear communication. This means you talk about:
Practice your coverage and policy explanations without insurance terminology. Practice in your office. Practice on each other.
The human brain is wired to understand and remember stories. So instead of talking about limits and coverages, and deductibles, tell stories. Clients are much more likely to understand and relate to a story than they are to a theoretical discussion.
Discuss current events as they relate to insurance. For example, talk about how home insurance plays out in natural disasters such as Hurricane Michael. Or for a commercial client, illustrate the benefits of liability coverage with a discussion about Elon Musk and his shareholders.
Stories make insurance relatable and if your prospects can relate, they will buy it.
“What if” scenarios are particularly useful for life insurance and business insurance sales. Most clients understand what’s at stake with auto insurance or even homeowners, but life insurance and business insurance is a little more obscure and harder to understand.
Discussing “What If” scenarios can help illustrate the importance of these coverages for your clients.
For example, opening a conversation about life insurance with, “What if you passed away tomorrow?” is a good way to get your clients thinking about their need for life insurance.
Similarly, business owners need to think about “What ifs.” Asking “What if you had a fire?” is much more effective than telling them a policy comes with $100,000 in building coverage and cot $1,200 a year.
At first, using “What if” questions may feel uncomfortable, but they often lead to meaningful dialogues about proper insurance and result in sales. Be frank. Use them.
Insurance sales agents are people’s people. You tend to be confident and outgoing. While these are skills that lead to success, the top performing agents balance them with superior listening skills.
Good listening skills will help you overcome objections and communicate to your prospect that you are interested and engaged. Be a good listener by incorporating:
Careful Attention: Maintain eye contact with your prospect. Display proper body language by nodding. Allow them to complete their entire thought before responding.
Paraphrase for Understanding: When your prospect is finished speaking, paraphrase what they said. This shows them you truly understand their message.
Paraphrasing for understanding is useful for overcoming objections and rooting out a client’s needs and concerns. In short, you can’t help clients understand insurance if you aren’t listening to their questions and observations.
Seek to educate and protect your prospects. It’s common to get caught up in making the sale and fulfilling the legalities and technicalities of the business. In short, it’s easy to forget the point. Remember, insurance protects the wellbeing of policyholders. That is something every prospect can understand.
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