Insurance marketing: how to overcome objections

During your insurance marketing presentation, ask your customer what he or she is looking for. A low rate? A local agent? Just to compare rates? Or something in the coverage he or she hasn’t gotten before?

Once you have an idea of what the customer’s chief priority is, you can craft your presentation with a focus on that topic. That way, you can avoid the customer’s later objections altogether. Any question the customer may have, you’ll know it upfront and you can deal with it.

But in the event that a customer still harbors an objection once you’ve finished up your presentation, here are some things to keep in mind:

Avoid lectures. The last thing a person wants to hear when they’re trying to buy insurance or anything else is a list of reasons why they’re wrong. It’s fine to gently guide customers into the right direction, but if you start finger wagging or talking about mistakes customers made in the past, they’ll just feel bad and want to get away from you.

Get them to explain the objection. If someone says, “I can’t afford it,” ask what you need to do so they can afford it. Or simply rephrase what the customer said as a question: “You say you can’t afford it?” That will get the customer talking and you can hash out some ways to get past the perceived problem.

Don’t get bogged down in details and jargon. Just because some words and phrases mean a lot to you as an insurance agent, that doesn’t mean they mean anything to your customers. The smallest details of a policy or the industry conventional wisdom about why a policy is good won’t do anything for your customer—he or she just wants to know why this policy is right for his or her life. Remember that and don’t do anything in the insurance marketing conversation that will confuse him or her.

More on overcoming objections:

12 Common Objections #12: “I’m Overwhelmed with Options”

12 Common Objections #5: “I’ll Stick With My Current Provider”

12 Common Objections #4: “I Need More Information”

Insurance marketing: the sales conversation

Focus on the biggest priorities the client sets out. Focus on the two or three major points in the policy you’re offering that you think will be most important to the insurance client.

In insurance marketing, the old rule is that 90% of your sale will be based on 10% of the features you offer. Discuss the other parts of the policy as well, but don’t spend too much time on them.

Every time you hit a major point in your presentation, ask the client, “Would you be interested in that?” or “Is that what you were looking for?” You’ll get an idea of what’s important to the customer, so you can continue to focus on that feature. You might even get the client to agree to buy the policy right then and there.

It might also be useful to ask the client to take your place for just a second. If he or she was trying to convince you to try to buy a product he or she really believed in, what would they say? What would he or she change about the product? What questions would the client ask? This is a way to get the client to participate more intently in the insurance marketing conversation by telling you what’s stopping him or her from moving forward with buying the policy.

And remember: Don’t bring up the price until you absolutely have to. Once the price enters the conversation, that will be the only thing that matters anymore. But you know and your customer knows that price isn’t the only worthwhile part of the policy.

If your customer asks, “How much?” tell him or her that you want to get through the main points and you can talk about price at the end. Or simply ask, “Is price the only important aspect of the policy for you?” Odds are, they’ll say “no,” and you can progress through the main points.

More on insurance marketing and the sales conversation:

6 Signs a Client Is Interested

Insurance marketing: The successful close

Insurance marketing: there’s more to it than the close

Insurance marketing: 4 tips for productive phone conversations with clients

Have a genuine person-to-person talk. It’s important you remain professional, but it’s fine to have a talk with the customer about something you both enjoy—maybe sports or a shared interest in cars. It will loosen the customer up and make things smoother.

Make sure they understand the basics. The customer is calling you for a quote. For effective insurance marketing, before you can provide the quote, you should make sure they understand what factors affected the price and how the policy works—generally what it covers and what it doesn’t. That way the customer better understands what they’re paying for and will be more inclined to close the sale.

If you call a customer to find he or she doesn’t pick up, don’t get intimidated by the sound of the tone on his or her voicemail. Leave a message! It’s a good way to let the customer know that you made an effort to make contact fast.

When you leave a voicemail message, be sure to:

Include your info. Leave a message that includes your name, agency, the reason for your call and your phone number. Ideally, give your phone number right away so that, if for some reason the customer doesn’t get to the end of your message, he or she will have heard it.

Use your hook. Give them a reason to return your call. Customers are more likely to call back if you say you can help them use insurance to protect their financial security and livelihoods, rather than just, “I sell insurance, please call me back.”

More about effective sales phone calls as part of insurance marketing:

8 New Strategies for leaving a voicemail

Four Tips for Effective Voicemail Messages

5 More Tips for Effective Voicemails

Insurance lead management systems: 3 ways to make them work for you

Measure your progress. Many insurance lead management systems have features that allow you to track each lead’s place in the sales process. So when you follow up, you can know exactly where it is you left off and avoid the time-consuming process of catching back up.

Also, your content management system can give you a good idea of where you’re having the most success. That data could lead you toward improved profitability by helping you to know how to narrow your filters.

Organize information. Insurance leads can come from all sorts of sources—the web, email, direct mail, referrals, people you connect with via social networking, and so on.

A lead management system is a single, centralized place where all your lead information lives. You can live with the assurance that, when you return to it, it’ll be organized, updated and easy to cull for the data you need.

You can also use your system to keep up with notes on specific clients so you will always have a place to find the little details that can mean so much in the process of making a sale.

You won’t have to deal with messy or illegible notes scribbled on a note pad next time you call or get caught off-guard with a call from a client.

Drip marketing. Clients may not always respond to the first message you leave them or your initial phone call. But that doesn’t mean you should give up on them or that they’re not interested.

Your insurance lead management system can help keep them updated by sending periodic, regular messages letting them know all the aspects and benefits of your agency, why it’s the best for them and what you can offer.

You can provide the customer with new information each time—some aspect of the policy you didn’t discuss or an update—and bring him or her closer to a sale.

More about insurance lead management systems:

Questions to Ask When Looking for a Lead Management System

5 Great Reasons to Get a Lead Management System

How a Lead Management System Can Keep Your Office Organized

Insurance marketing: Keep in touch via social networking

You can use social networking sites, much like email, to send insurance marketing messages to clients and potential clients.

Both Facebook and LinkedIn have messaging systems that allow you to send one person or a group a message much like an email. Likewise, on Facebook you can write what’s called a “note,” a long-form message you can make visible to all your friends or fans.

In those messages, you can generally promote new goings-on at your agency, tour features of the policies you sell or announce new initiatives. On the other hand, you can also send private messages to your friends / fans specifically geared toward them and looking at their personal needs and requirements.

On Twitter, you have the option of sending someone who follows you a “private message,” which holds to the same 140-character limit but is only visible to the person to whom you send it. Likewise, you can carry on conversations with specific people by using the @ symbol in the regular Twitter timeline.

The most apparent benefit of using social media sites to keep in contact with customers is that you’ll be speaking to them, essentially, where they live.

If you can make it acceptable to your customers to talk to them in their personal social media space, you’ll have made yourself as much a part of their lives as their friends. Your messages about expiration dates and new offers will be right in the mix with wedding announcements and party invitations. You can become as much a part of a customers’ life as those other events.

More on social networking for insurance marketing:

Insurance marketing: understanding social media

 

The future of insurance marketing

 

Building Your Agencies Brand Online

Insurance leads: 3 tips to using purchased leads effectively

Don’t assume. Jumping to conclusions is a common reaction to a lack of response from a client or less-than-expected return, but you have to fight the urge to decide that customer simply bought from somebody else or that leads just won’t work for you.

Keep asking, keep making contact and keep buying insurance leads until you have a definitive answer.

If a customer raises objections, don’t assume that they’re probably going to walk out your door. People can have genuine questions, even if they do plan on buying.

Hang in there, provide good answers and avoid being defensive. If you can impress the client with what you know and don’t get confrontational, the conversation should continue.

Don’t settle. It may be tempting to keep the number of leads you buy at the same level well beyond the point that your agency has grown and expanded, or to even reduce them after you reach an initial growth goal. That’s short sighted.

To continue growing, you should keep the number of leads you buy over time at a steady pace.

Turn insurance leads into more leads through cross selling. Say, for instance, that one of your customers is shopping for life insurance. Have him or her fill out a form with some questions about just what the customer is looking for in a policy.

Then ask if he or she might have an interest in other types of insurance you sell. You could use that information to cross-sell another policy. Then, ask that lead if he or she might be interested in referring you to others.

Keep the cycle going.

More on using purchased insurance leads:

Lead Management and Keeping Up with X-Dates

If you are wondering if an area is generating leads, add it and find out!

Tracking Progress Through Lead Management

Insurance leads: 3 keys to success in using purchased leads

Some agents make mistakes when they buy insurance leads. They don’t know how to use them to the best effect. They let them sit for days before they call or they focus on too small an area or group. As a result, those agents get impatient and give up on leads, feeling disillusioned and frustrated.

Don’t be that agent. Two of the major ways to make leads work for you are to contact potential clients quickly and make sure you buy enough leads to make your investment valuable. But there are some other things you should do—or more importantly, not do—to make leads work better for you.

Don’t give up on them. It may seem obvious to simply say, “see it through,” but a lot of agents expect insurance leads to be the equivalent of a get-rich-quick scheme. They anticipate that their agencies will grow immensely in just a few weeks. That’s just not realistic. It takes time and patience to really make leads pay off.

Work the weekend. Try upping your insurance lead flow on Saturday and Sunday. Since lots of agents take those days off, you’ll have less competition, even though lots of people will choose those days to go online and search for insurance quotes.

People also tend to be more available to talk on the weekend, so you likely won’t be butting into a customer’s busy schedule.

Don’t be pushy. Agents who get impatient may feel a need to prod their customers to make a decision more quickly. That’s a mistake. The harder you push your customers, the more you’ll push them away. Give them room to breathe and time to decide, stay patient, and your work will be worth it.

More on using purchased insurance leads:

Insurance leads: How to manage your leads

Using Lead Management to Edge Out or Catch Up

Lead Management and Drip Marketing

Insurance lead management systems: what to look for in choosing yours

Here are some things to look for as you look for an insurance lead management system and make your final decision about which one to invest in:

• If system generates its own emails to send to potential clients.
• Whether all relevant information is easily accessible and can be sorted.
• Whether the system tracks the sources and types of leads you’re getting.
• If the system keeps up with conversion rates for the various types of leads.
• If the system includes a workflow based on insurance industry practices.
• Whether the company that provides the system offers training for best practices.
• What sort of support the company provides.
• If the system is web-based or requires its own hardware.
• How reliable the system is.
• If the system provides full visibility of your lead history.
• Whether the formatting of the reports the system provides fits your needs.
• If the system integrates with the information sent by lead providers.

More on insurance lead management systems:

Another Reason a Lead Management System Is a Good Idea

Lead Management and Cost Savings

Tracking Progress Through Lead Management

Insurance marketing: Are you using the biggest social networking sites?

Facebook

Facebook is a social media site that allows users to connect with “friends,” with whom they may then share comments, photos, videos and links. Users create specific pages for themselves where they list interests and other information about themselves.

Businesses can create “fan pages” for their brands. Users can become fans of those pages and interact with the company there. It’s the largest social networking site in the world, so odds are many of your clients already use it.

Tips:

• Post pictures so people can see the personal, human side of your agency
• “Tag” pictures with people’s names. If you tag a client in a photo, their friends will see that and your agency will be more visible.
• Monitor your Facebook page for unwanted content or complaints. Respond politely. Others may come to your aid, but you need to be there to participate.
• Keep a dialog going. Talk about safe topics other than your business. Maybe sports, local activities or interesting news articles.

Twitter

Twitter allows users to post short messages of 140 characters in real-time. Other users (“followers”) can then respond to those messages in directed “tweets.” Various third party websites also allow users to post pictures, videos and longer messages.

Tips:

• Twitter allows you to post information in real-time, so it’s a good place to make announcements in support of your insurance marketing.
• You can also answer customer questions and have a dialog about their concerns.
• Twitter’s “list” function allows you to organize your followers and the people you follow into groups, such as customers or other professionals.
• Like Facebook, Twitter gives you the opportunity to share links to interesting content.

LinkedIn

Similar to Facebook in functionality, LinkedIn is a social media site specifically geared toward business professionals and which can serve as a sort of online resume. This makes it especially effective in insurance marketing. Users can recommend other users as a sort of professional seal of approval.

Tips:

• Get involved in groups. It’s a good way to network with other professionals.
• Recommend people you know. Maybe you’ll get recommendations back.

YouTube

Not exactly a social networking site per se, YouTube does offer a venue for you to upload videos, which you can then place on Facebook, link to on Twitter or post on your company blog.

More information on social networking sites:

4 Things to Avoid When Updating Facebook

“No one wants to connect with an insurance agency on facebook”

Building Your Agencies Brand Online

Insurance leads: How to get more customer referrals

Give your clients the opportunity to refer your agency by making it easier for them to do so.

In asking your clients for insurance leads, don’t make them have to figure out ways to word a recommendation. You also want to avoid surprising the clients’ friends when you call and drop their—maybe former—friend’s name. Give clients plenty of time to talk to their friends and confirm that it’s OK to call before you pick up the phone.

Provide the stamp if clients want to mail a letter, and always make yourself available to talk on the phone.

Likewise, it’s a good idea to offer a product or service that could come up in a day-to-day conversation, which gives your client an in to bring you up. Luckily, insurance—be it health, car or home—tends to deal with everyday issues.

Offer a reward

A discount, free promotional item, special gift certificate or some sort of VIP status are a few of the things you could offer to push your best customers into being more vocal about your agency to their friends or to give you the contact information of some people they know.

In addition, offering rewards for the people being referred to your agency could help your clients make the leap into voicing their recommendations. It gives them something tangible and valuable to offer their friends, beyond simply their word, in giving you insurance leads.

But you should be aware that offering to pay a client for a referral can be a risky proposition. At that point, it becomes less an agent / client relationship and more one of monetary responsibility. You’re asking the client to put his or her credibility on the line when passing on insurance leads. That can scare people away.

If you don’t want to spend the money it takes to provide rewards or gifts, simply thanking the people who take the time and make the effort to refer your agency can go a long way. Send a personalized email or postcard to let those clients know how much you appreciate their leads.

More information on customer referrals:

4 Reasons You Should Ask For Referrals

Gauging the Client to Ask For Referrals

Referred insurance leads: Word-of-mouth is marketing gold