Whether you are just starting your insurance sales career or if you’ve been running your agency for a while, it can be tempting to rely on the same generic sales tactics, day in and day out.
Approaching a sale with the intention of helping people can make an impact on your client relationships and, ultimately, your sales success.
Below, we’ll cover the top insurance selling strategies for helping you strike the perfect balance of maximizing your sales potential without resorting to repetitive or generic sales tactics.
The best tips for selling insurance allow you to blend innovative tools and technology to complement your style of selling insurance.
Here are 10 health insurance sales tips that allow you to do just that.
Effective prospecting starts with a customized, user-friendly website that draws consumers in for accurate and timely information.
Consider colors, images, and fonts that appeal to your insurance niche and keep your content current. Include blogs, online seminars, and information sessions to reach out to as many potential customers as possible.
Another way you can boost your online presence is to leverage social media and networking sites to strengthen your brand, encourage referrals, and open up new revenue streams for your agency.
Agents have a busy profession. Managing leads, closing sales, communicating with clients, and running the day-to-day business of your agency is just part of life as an insurance sales agent, but when you are only one person, automation can help you focus on the tasks necessary to generate more insurance business.
Staying organized is a key factor in increasing sales – and insurance agency management tools, including auto-response and a leading quoting engine, can help you stay on task and increase productivity, manage prospects, deliver quotes, and enroll clients.
Many leads require follow-up phone calls, but without body language and facial expressions, the tone, inflection, and volume of your voice become even more important in closing a sale.
Try practicing phone calls in front of a mirror – this exercise may make you more aware of your demeanor as you introduce yourself and your services. Be professional, friendly, and empathetic, and give your call the attention it deserves. Be aware of the pacing of the conversation, pausing frequently to allow your client to respond.
Whether you are on the telephone, video-chatting, or meeting someone in person, the most important thing you can do is truly listen and become a credible source of information for health insurance coverage.
Don’t go into a client conversation with pre-existing assumptions – every customer has their own personal history, health concerns, family obligations, and insurance needs. Practice active listening and try to empathize with your clients and leads.
With any new relationship, you want to find some common ground to connect on a personal level. In fact, empathy, compassion, and care all play important roles in insurance sales, as people will respond on an emotional level to someone they like and trust.
Find out who your client is and what matters to them. Try to avoid giving a hard sales pitch or sounding like you have a “script” you use with all your customers.
By expressing genuine commitment to helping someone find healthcare coverage that meets their specific needs and preferences, you position yourself as a confidante, advisor, and sales agent your clients will turn to consistently.
Qualifying your leads is an important step in insurance sales.
Consider the potential increase in sales with the help of a lead management system that helps you buy and sell leads. This will free up time for you to focus on other demanding tasks without worrying about how your leads are organized by coverage qualification.
There is no single handbook that has the most relevant health insurance sales tips for each agent. Instead, you have to discover what insurance sales tactics you are comfortable with and what techniques will allow your specific personality, knowledge, and experience to shine through.
Expect potential clients to have objections – and they can include concerns about needing insurance, types of insurance plans, costs, or changes to their previous insurance or broker.
Be prepared to listen to their objections and respond to those specific issues. They may need reassurance or want to understand their coverage in greater detail before they proceed to a sale.
Being young can seem like a liability if you are starting out in an industry where your colleagues and clients may be much older.
However, acknowledging your age and using it to your advantage can actually help you establish yourself as a new insurance agent excited to share your passion for helping people find the coverage they need.
When you are not caught in the frenzy of an Annual or Open Enrollment Period, use your downtime to focus on marketing, lead generation, and communication with current clients.
Participate in industry conventions or seminars to network with other insurance professionals from whom you can learn.
Developing insurance selling strategies takes work, but you can generate more insurance business by finding techniques and resources that fit your business model, your market niche, and your personality.
If you’re ready to take the next step for your insurance agency, we have just the resource to help you do so! Download your copy of Online Marketing for Insurance Agencies to improve more areas of your business!