Marketing and Selling
Life Insurance
Examining the core skills needed to become successful
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What’s
So Difficult About Selling Life Insurance?
What’s
So Difficult About Selling Life Insurance?
Article # 2
Written By John Lensi, CLU, ChFC, RHU, REBC, CMFC, LLIF
If
you had not chosen a career in the insurance industry,
How much thought
would you have given to learning about marketing and selling life insurance? Let’s face it;
we’re
not
talking about a product with a lot of sex appeal.
Looking at the role the life
insurance and financial services industry
has taken towards developing a sustained awareness and appreciation
with the
general public for life insurance is somewhat dumbfounding to me. For
it is
they who stand to gain the most (exclusive of a beneficiary) from a
positive
understanding and appreciation by the public of owning sufficient life
insurance
coverage.
Most life insurance companies spend a considerable about of money on
the goal of creating individual carrier brand name recognition and
comparatively
little towards creating a positive culture towards the value of their
product.
Something
is fundamentally wrong in our society when the beer industry devotes more
resources creating an “appreciation and awareness” for an alcoholic
drink, than
the life insurance industry does for its more socially benefiting
product.
Given all of this, and knowing a quick solution is not eminent by
either our
education system or by the insurance industry, let’s continue to
address the reality of marketing and selling life insurance in today’s
marketplace.
Examining
the competencies needed to be
successful in
marketing and selling life insurance.
Several
years ago I made a close examination of the competencies needed to be
successful in marketing and selling life insurance. My research
involved speaking to hundreds of successful producers as well as my own
experience successfully selling life insurance.
Although there
are numerous subsets for each of these, I was able to identify eight
core skill-sets a producer must master to be a high-level producer in
the life insurance business. Pictured below is a weighted pie chart I
titled “Wheel of Success” illustrating these eight core competencies.
eight core skill-sets a producer must master to be a high-level producer in the life insurance business
Having quality insurance prospects and being able to schedule favorable appointments will pretty much take care of everything else if these two skills are mastered.
Upon
examination of the chart, it’s easy to see two skill sets
encompass roughly 50% of a producer’s success in this business – having quality
prospects and being able to
schedule favorable appointments. Perhaps a bit
overstated, but pretty much everything else takes care of itself if
these two skills are mastered.
If mastered, then marketing and selling life insurance takes on a new
life.
Given the critical nature of these two competencies, most of my
remaining
commentary is devoted to these two areas.
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First,
let’s examine what is meant by ‘acquiring qualified sales leads’.
The key word here is “qualified” otherwise Sales
leads
are a dime a dozen in the
insurance business.
Qualified
sales leads are not just sales leads,
and this is what makes all the difference in the world when it comes to
sales efficiency and ultimately a high level of sales success.
What
is a qualified sales lead in the life insurance business?
A
qualified sales lead in the life insurance business has four
characteristics that must be satisfied to be truly a qualified sales
lead:
- can the prospect reasonably qualify
for life insurance?
- can the prospect afford
life
insurance?
- does the prospect have
a need for
life insurance? and
- is the prospect able to be seen
on a
favorable basis as a result of
third party influence
(TPI)?
If
one were to go through any producer’s prospect inventory and apply this
litmus test to each “prospect”, all four characteristics must exist to
truly have a qualified sales lead. If a “name” in a prospect inventory
passes any less than all four measurements, it simply is not a
qualified sales lead.
Aren’t
most producer sales leads qualified?
Sadly,
the answer is often no.
More sadly, most producers think all their
leads are “qualified”. You may ask how can this be when sales leads are
a salespersons lifeblood. What you’ll generally find upon a close
examination of an ineffective producers inventory is most of their
sales leads pass the first three criteria and fail on the fourth
criteria – the ability to see the prospect on a favorable basis.
This
is a critical point I want to drive home; for this is a key reason why
producer failure in this business often results.
Few
struggling
producers come to realize the real cause of why their sales
are down. Quite often this is a result of poor prospecting
habits and
the failure to understand basic prospecting fundamentals for this
business. It is easy to know when sales are down, yet when trying to
figure the reasons why this is so, often a misdiagnosis occurs.
Please take
some time to reflect on this above chart in this marketing and selling life insurance article.
In article number 3 on
, John will be discussing the Why's
and Why not's as to how a misdiagnosis occurs as related to your insurance sales.
Learn
and Earn