Life Insurance Sales Training
If Your Training is Limited to What the Company has Shown You You’re Missing Out
When it comes to:
- teaching you how to get licensed
- teaching you all the ins-and-outs of every insurance product, so you can professionally answer prospect questions
- helping you to help prospects to choose the best solutions for them
the insurance companies are your foundational source and resource that you should rely on.
You must have this knowledge to function. However, to succeed and build a successful life insurance business you must also know:
- how to promote yourself to get the attention of your ideal highly qualified prospects
- how to carve out a slice of the market that you can dominate
- how to get highly qualified prospects to reach out to you
- how to help those prospects to buy
- how to develop life-time relationships with prospects and clients that leads to future business and referrals
The way you’re shown to do these things through company training are not the most effective or efficient ways to accomplish this. In fact, some of the ways you’re shown to do these things position you as a pesky sales person that your prospects want to avoid at all costs. The better approach positions you as a trusted adviser.
There are several things that you’re shown to do that could be effective, but aren’t because of the way you’re shown to do them. Typically one of the first things beginners are asked to do is set-up appointments with all their friends and family members. The good thing is these are people who like you and trust you and who will be good about letting you practice on them.
However, these wonderful resources are wasted if you aren’t prepared to help them help you.
Cold calling is the pat answer to getting appointments, but:
- it’s a quick way to run through a large number of prospects who could have been prospects for you, but by cold calling them you’ve burned your bridges with them and now they’ll never work with you.
- it positions you as a desperate loser rather than a trusted adviser
- it puts you in an adversarial position with the prospect
would you rather have the people you meet with have their guard up thinking they have to fend you off because they don’t want to be sold, or looking to you as a trusted adviser who can help them get what they want?
When you start the relationship as a trusted adviser it’s very easy to continue to build on and deepen that relationship. When you start the relationship as a salesperson they may like you, however, you will have to prove yourself before they’ll ever trust you and that takes far more effort on your part if you can even ever get to that point.
You are never selling a product. You are selling a life-time relationship. You want every new client to remain a client for life. They will do that if and when:
- the ultimate outcome they want matches the solution you’re helping them get.
- they’re confident you’re looking out for them and properly taking care of their needs.
- you don’t just sell them a policy once and then they never hear from you again, rather, you are a consistent part of their lives.
They know they can count on you today and everyday to be watching out for them. They know you consistently bring more value to their lives than they expect from their agent. They are so comfortable with you they immediately tell others about you when the subject of your solution comes up in a conversation.
To develop a viable business you must have systems in place to consistently build on your relationships. If you don’t have systems, and if those systems aren’t automatic you’ll drop the ball. When you drop the ball you’re out of integrity with your clients and that puts you at risk for policy cancellations.