Did Your Insurance Sales Training Really Teach You How to Run Professional Interviews and Develop Good Life Insurance Prospecting Skills?
Insurance Sales Training, Do it right.
Sometimes we get off track from the life insurance basics we were taught during our insurance sales training and this impacts our ability to run a quality interview.
Or maybe we just need a refresher course. Take a couple minutes and lets review some of the basics of running an effective and orderly interview.
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Keep in mind a sale is made during every interview: You either sell them, or they are going to sell you, on why not.
----------------------------------------------------------------- The actual interview consists of Four distinct steps called the sales cycle.
What is the sales cycle?
Well, I see it as an orderly and defined way, during an interview whereby you get a prospect to agree with you about certain wants and needs. When agreed upon, they will then want you to provide a solution to make sure those wants and needs are taken care of, by using the products that you sell. In our case: Life insurance. (Remember people buy what they WANT, not what they need.) They need life insurance, but if they want a new boat. Guess who wins! _________________________________________________________________ Moving on.... First off, your insurance sales training coach should have taught you how to do a warm up session when you first sit down in front of a new prospect. (10-12 minutes) This is where you sit down and just chit chat and get to know each other. You are looking for a common bond to create a relationship with the prospect. A common bond would be like fishing, golfing, model railroading, etc. Once that bond is established you can make your transition into your questionnaire.
Transition Phrase: Mr. Prospect, when we talked on the phone the other day, I indicated I had some ideas I wanted to share with you about (whatever you called on) What I would like to do now is gather some information from you to see if we really have anything to help you and your family. (Move into the opening questions, starting with name, on the Confidential Questionnaire.) Now lets examine the 4 steps that make up this sales (or selling) cycle.Step 1. Client Interview Questionnaire This is what I call the interrogation process, digging into the prospect's mind, discovering what they want, developing a rapport. Here is where you sell you, by learning to Listen and ask key questions.
Step 2. The actual Sales Presentation - Showing benefits and features to help the prospect take care of their wants and needs.
Step 3. The Close - Sell them what they want, make them a client.
Step 4. The second sale – Which is where you ask for referred leads upon completion of your interview.(This will be discussed in a separate topic page. ------------------------------------------------------------
I am sure that there are many variations of a sales cycle. However, I am going to share with you how our life insurance marketing team approached it. This concept is based on a proven format that has helped many life insurance agents during their early years and their ongoing insurance sales training program, become more successful in the life insurance business. In your companies life insurance sales training program you will be taught how to run an interview using the following concepts. Some companies UTILIZE a two-interview concept. This is more of a total financial planning sale. The first interview is a fact finder and the second return interview presents the proposal to the client - the agent attempts to close the sale by going through the closing process.
Other companies UTILIZE a target-marketing, one-time sales presentation, for example, Medicare, mortgage insurance, disability income, etc. -----------------------------------------------------------------
In either case, you still need to go through each step of the sales cycle in an orderly fashion to uncover what the prospect wants to do relating to their financial life.
This insurance sales training topic page will explain and try to clarify why the client interview questionnaire, which we call the confidential questionnaire, comes into play and why it is so important. Your company may have a interview questionnaire they like to use. However, I am going to provide you with an overview and outline of the one developed by our sales team. You may want to use this questionnaire, a variation of it, or just add some of these questions to what you are currently doing. If nothing more, I want to emphasize how and why each of the questions on this questionnaire have a specific and defined purpose. Now here is something that most agents do and I could never understand why.They transition into the sales presentation to early.
Rule Number one, you should, never under any circumstances, move into the actual sales presentation until you are sure you have uncovered a want or need, that the prospect wants taken care of, and you have qualified them money wise. In other words, you need a meeting of the minds to move forward. Do they have the money to do something, and would they be willing to make a money commitment. If not, then why would you waste your time going throught the presentation. Timing is everything.
Again, I want to re-emphasize, the biggest mistake many Life insurance agents make, is that they gloss over the client interview questionairre, and jump right into the presentation on the hope that the prospect will get excited about the product and buy it . ...You couldn't be more mistaken! It is paramount that during your insurance sales training sessions that you learn that the sales cycle needs to be presented in a logical step-by-step process.
Click here to go to the second part of this insurance sales training topic, and learn how the closing pyramid concept will increase your
life insurance sales.
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