How To Sell Life Insurance Successfully
In this guide, you’ll learn exactly how to sell life insurance successfully, by using a proven step by step formula we teach Sales Professionals and Business Owners around the world.
Learning and following a sales process would have to be the most important thing you’ll ever learn in sales, because it’ll deliver something you’ll need to thrive in selling.
And that thing – is consistency.
Read on to learn exactly how to sell life insurance successfully, and how you can implement it into your sales strategy.
Learn more: How To Stop Winging It, And Learn Exactly How To Close Consistent Sales With Ease
How To Sell Life Insurance Successfully With A Sales Process
Also known as a sales formula or sales framework; the sales process is key to consistently succeeding in sales.
If you wish to learn how to sell life insurance successfully, you’ll need to master following a consistent sales process.
The benefits of using a sales process include:
- It creates a system; allowing you to close sales like a road map
- Certainty – for both you and your potential clients
- It allows you to control the process and conversation
By following the following sales process, you’ll be a lot more confident while talking to potential clients, because you won’t have to worry about what to say next, what to ask, or what you should do next to move the sale forward.
How To Sell Life Insurance Successfully
Below is a more detailed breakdown of exactly how to sell life insurance successfully:
Rapport
The first part of any sales conversation, as well as learning how to sell life insurance successfully, is building rapport with your potential clients.
Without building rapport, your potential clients won’t feel comfortable disclosing anything and your sales conversation won’t move forward.
Rapport is important because people buy from people they like and trust.
By building rapport, you’ll be able to ask deep diving questions that can ultimately lead to a buying decision.
Related article: A Guide To Building Sales Relationships/ Sales Rapport
Qualifying
The second thing you need to master when learning how to sell life insurance successfully, is qualifying your potential clients prior to going into a deep dive sales conversation.
Many Sales Professionals make the mistake of speaking with people they think are potential clients – but are not qualified to either afford their product or service or make a buying decision.
By qualifying people early, you’ll save a lot of time, energy, and money.
The qualifying framework to add to your sales process, is borrowed from an acronym called BANT.
Originally designed by IBM, it’s an easy to remember framework to remember what you need to ask to qualify your potential clients correctly.
BANT stands for:
- Budget
- Authority
- Need
- Time frame
Further reading: Qualifying Sales Leads – A Step By Step Guide
Pre-Framing
The third segment we recommend you master when learning how to sell life insurance successfully, is something that makes our sales process very different from the others out there.
We teach something called a pre-frame (also known as an intent statement).
The deep diving sales conversation you will have with your potential client, is called the frame.
You’ll have the opportunity to ask questions, and ‘frame the conversation’ in a way which will ultimately lead to a decision being made – either proceeding with a sale or deciding you may not be the right fit for one another.
The pre-frame is the conversation you have prior to the frame; in this case, it is what’s discussed prior to going into your deep dive sales conversation.
During the pre-frame, you want to cover three important things:
- Ensure all decision makers are present
- Let them know that you’ll be asking a lot of questions, to work out whether you can in fact help and serve them and their needs
- Give them comfort that at the end of the conversation, it is more than OK to say no if they’re not interested. Also let them know that many people use the “I need to think about it” as a way of covering for no. By giving them comfort, they’ll be more transparent.
The reason the pre-frame is key, is for two reasons.
Firstly, you’re removing two core sales objections up front – the I need to think about it objection, and I need to speak to objection.
Secondly – you’re getting permission to ask deep diving questions, which is the next segment you’ll need to learn on how to sell high ticket items.
Using a pre-frame will be a game changer for your business and overall sales process, because you’ll get to the underlying truth faster than using a traditional sales methodology.
Related article: Do You Want To Be A High Ticket Closer? Find Out How
The Secret To Learning How To Sell Life Insurance Successfully? Asking Questions!
The most important thing you’ll need to learn in regards to how to sell life insurance successfully, as well as your overall ability to close more sales, – is the art of asking the right questions.
At The 5% Institute, we emphasise the importance of asking questions because we believe in using a consultative sales approach.
By asking the right questions – you’ll be able to help guide your potential client toward the sale and help them sell themselves on the need for a solution.
During your sales conversations, we recommend asking the following question examples:
- Finding pain
- Learning about their ideal outcome
- How they make buying decisions
- Why they’re speaking with you
- How long they’ve had their issue
We’ve written numerous articles on questioning and question categories, and recommend you read them to learn more. Check out the linked articles below to find out how.
- Sales Probing Questions
- Open Ended Sales Questions
- 10 x Questions To Ask A Potential Client
- 5 x Closing Questions To Win More Sales
An important note: finding pain is one of the most important ingredients for your questions and sales process.
This is because if you can’t find friction or any issues with their current situation – they won’t need to make a change.
The article below details how to do so effectively, without being pushy or breaking rapport.
Further reading: Pain Points & Sales – Your Ultimate Guide
Discussing Money
Discussing money is another important part of learning how to sell life insurance successfully as well as your sales process, because you can use the discussion to build monetary value around what a solution for their problem and pain points will mean.
When you’re discussing money, you ultimately want to understand two important things:
- What is it costing them by having these issues? Learn the financial and personal impact of what the pain points mean.
- How much would they pay to fix it, and have a solution?
Discussing this here makes asking for the sale, and your closing questions a breeze.
Presenting
Once money has been clearly discussed, the next stage of learning how to sell life insurance successfully is presenting your solution.
Many Sales Professionals handle presenting incorrectly and do something we call ‘premature presentation’.
As per our article in Entrepreneur, premature presentation is when you present your product or service prior to understanding what they need solved and hope that something you say sticks and resonates.
This spray and pray method are outdated and won’t help your closing rate.
Instead – when you’re presenting your product or service, we recommend you do so by prescribing it to their pain points and demonstrate how each of their problems will be solved with specific features and benefits you have.
Using a prescription approach as a specialist would, will align you as a trusted adviser, rather than just another salesperson trying to make a quick sale.
Related article: Value Messaging – Your Ultimate Guide
Handling Objections & Closing
Finally, the last module to master when learning how to sell life insurance successfully, is handling their areas of concern, and asking for the sale.
Although many people advocate using word tracks and sales scripts, we recommend not using either.
Instead – we recommend using a simple and easy to remember objections framework.
The framework is:
- Listen carefully
- Repeat back the objection, and ask them to expand
- Validate the area of concern
- Re-frame the concern
- Confirm you’re on the same page
To learn how to do this in detail, read the article here to find out how.
Once you’ve handled all their areas of concern, simply ask if they’d like you to help them achieve what they intend to have solved and have them sign any agreements you may have in place.
Related article: High Ticket Closing – Your Step By Step Guide
How To Sell Life Insurance Successfully – Final Thoughts
We can’t stress enough when learning how to sell life insurance successfully, that you should be following a consistent sales process to close more sales.
The outlined sales process is a great framework to use to close more sales, because it gives you consistency, as well as an easy-to-follow road map.
By following this proven sales process, you’ll lead your potential clients on a journey and positive sales experience, rather than position yourself as just another salesperson or commodity.
The sales process is the most fundamental, and important thing to master in sales if you wish to close consistently.
If you’d like to learn about our sales process in more detail, you can join the 7 Day Sales Challenge for free here.
Want To Learn Exactly How To Sell Life Insurance Successfully?
If you’re interested in learning how to sell life insurance successfully, and taking your sales skills to the next level, enrol in our flagship online program, called The 5% Sales Blueprint.
Our online sales training course is affordable, self-paced, and will take away the guesswork when learning how to sell life insurance successfully.
To learn more, simply click on the link below for more details.
