Blog « Insurance Sales Training | Insurance Training & Consulting | Insurance Sales Techniques

How to Turn a ‘No’ Into ‘Yes’

April 16th, 2012

By: Tim Sawyer, President and Co-Founder of Astonish Results

Being in the sales industry, you probably hear the word ‘No’ all the time. But how do you handle it? Don’t get upset, don’t take it personally, and don’t end the conversation. If you do, you will never be a successful salesperson. Never give up on closing a sale when you hear the word ‘No.’ Instead, get excited. You’re getting an opportunity to explain why you are the best agency in the world, offering the best insurance in the world. Stay cool and collected, and attack the sale from a different angle.

Don’t waste your breath explaining apples if your client is worried about oranges. If explaining Uninsured Motorist coverage is getting you a ‘No,’ move on. Explain Comprehensive coverage. Your sales pitch will fall on deaf ears if you’re not hitting the hot spots your clients want to hear about.

Don’t use insurance lingo and be steadfast in why the client needs this coverage. Tell a personal story that illustrates the urgency of buying the coverage. Your job is to make the client believe in the benefits of the product. Price is not important. The coverage and your stellar customer service are. Sell the client on the insurance and your agency.

Listen to your client. What are their objections? Give them time to talk before you pounce with an unending list of reasons they should buy. What are their major concerns and hesitations? Be ready to shatter each one. Keep the dialogue friendly but firm.

Expect to hear a ‘Yes’ before you even pick up the phone. But be prepared to combat a ‘No.’ Know what objections you will encounter and have a solution prepared for each one. If you know this client will dwell on price, focus strongly on the benefits. Don’t cross your own boundaries when pitching the sale. Don’t make promises you can’t keep and don’t set unrealistic expectations.

If you’ve hit the client from every angle and slammed them with every reason and they’re still saying ‘No,’ stay polite. You are an agency focused on service. Stay that way, even when a sale is turned down. You never know who could send valuable referrals your way.

Astonish Coaching equips you with all the skills and tools you need to close deals. Our system helps agency principals develop their agency into a sales-centric culture. The ability to find leads, sell to leads, and keep loyal clients increases confidence, sales, and belief in your agency. Astonish Coaching will take you and your staff to a new level of success.

To schedule a Virtual Presentation today, call 877-905-1999 or register at our website.

The #1 Secret to Sales

April 9th, 2012

By: Adam DeGraide, CEO and Founder of Astonish Results

I checked. There are 249,000,000 Google results for “secret to sales”. And those tips may be useful to add to your arsenal of sales strategies. But even with all the secret sauce and winning strategies in the world, you will never feel the satisfaction of a new sale and can kiss your client retention goodbye if you don’t believe in yourself and your agency. If you and your staff don’t believe you are the best insurance agency in the world, how will you ever sell? And friend, this isn’t a secret. This is the most rudimentary foundation to any great organization, business or otherwise.

So starter question: do you believe in what you’re selling? Is that confidence reflected in your attitude towards leads, clients, and staff? When speaking with a client or lead, focus on building a trusting relationship with them. Before you can sell a product, you have to sell the idea of your agency. And how do you manage that? Simple: genuine confidence that partnering with your business is the best thing that a client can do.

It’s not enough for you to believe in your agency. Every staff member needs to be fully convinced that your agency is the cream of the crop; they need to be confident that no other agency comes close the customer service and products you offer. Your marketing and sales staff will deliver their unwavering belief in your agency through every contact they have with the public. Review with them each and every benefit your agency provides to clients. Sit your sales team down with your CSRs and allow them to listen to a few service calls. Service needs to learn to sell; sales needs to serve their prospects.

Since you believe 100% that you are the best and only answer for your customers’ insurance needs, isn’t it a travesty that one of your clients would consider writing a policy with another company? Every current client should be writing every single one of their policies with your agency. At Astonish, we refer to this concept as ‘rounding out’ your book of business, and firmly believe that every agency principal should be focused on it. Your current clients already believe in your agency and have developed a trusting relationship with you and your staff. Utilize this concrete relationship and cross sell for all insurance lines. Train your staff to use every interaction as an opportunity to round out a client. Instruct your staff to initiate contact with established clients and discuss other lines of insurance. You have a book of business that is primed and ready to become a source of more sales. If you and your staff believe in your agency, there is no reason a loyal client shouldn’t be receptive to a sale. Otherwise, you’re missing out on half the harvest you should be collecting from the time and effort you’ve invested into these clients.

And that means that some other agent is collecting that harvest. Food for thought.

Main Causes of Stress for Insurance Agents

September 20th, 2011

By: Tim Sawyer, President and Co-Founder of Astonish Results

Building your credibility and finding new customers are both challenges that insurance agents have faced for decades. If you cannot consistently generate sales every month, it is not possible to attain success.

There are endless causes for why agents are not succeeding. Much of it can be blamed on inadequate insurance sales training, lack of daily structure, and stress.

As a salesperson, you may be waking up at 7 am on Monday morning ready to hit the ground the running. Now that you are in an aggressive mindset and have your schedule fully mapped out, you are ready to roll. When it is almost time to go, you realize that it there is a big football game on tonight, so you login to ESPN.com and make your Fantasy Football moves. Before you know it, two valuable hours of the workday have been wasted because you were distracted.

For insurance agents who are becoming stressed out with their job, they can only blame themselves. They know exactly what daily activities they are supposed to accomplish every single day, but they do not follow through, and vice versa. Instead, they let outside distractions and other obstacles divert their focus, spoil their routine, and encourage bad habits.

As an insurance agent, you cannot allow outside distractions to stop you from achieving your goals. Every single day on the job, insurance agents need to do a sufficient amount of prospecting and lead gathering. This includes making phone calls, building an active insurance social media presence, gathering emails, visiting clients, or going to community events. If sales opportunities are not consistently being generated, this will lead to a stressful career in the insurance industry.

When taking a look at a successful insurance agent who is making over $250k per year as opposed to one who is only making $25k per year, there are likely to be vast differences in work ethic and daily organization. If $250k is the goal, be ready to put in the necessary work to reach that level of success. Balancing out your expectations along with your goals is the first step in structuring your daily plan.

Today, there are great deals of insurance agents who have failed due to distractions, becoming too comfortable with their job, and lacking daily structure. Because of all of these reasons, they are not reaching their expectations. As a result, they become STRESSED. Developing a planned, daily routine and not deviating away from it, is imperative in reaching your goals.

Do Not Let Your Ego Impede Success

September 14th, 2011

By: Tim Sawyer, President and Co-Founder of Astonish Results

One underlying issue within the independent insurance industry today is that many insurance agents struggle with their sales closing ratios. For a great deal of them, it is their ego that impedes them from succeeding in sales. The number one reason why the insurance sales techniques of particular agents are so successful is because their customers perceive them as confident individuals. At the same time, they are not egotistical.

Often times, unsuccessful salesman struggle when trying to close a deal because they fear they will come across as too desperate, needy, or offensive. The reality is that if your prospects are not forced to make decisions on whether or not they want to do business with you, that decision will never be made.

The longer time horizon a customer has to decide, the less of a chance that the sale will happen. If you do not push the product, then you are giving your customer an easy way out and you do not make money. If this trend continues throughout your career, then you will become desperate, needy, and broke.

If you are an insurance agent that has struggled with developing the proper mentality to close deals, this can be changed. However, it takes an individual who is teachable. If you need help, do you proactively seek it? Or, do you assume you know everything and attempt to fix the problem yourself?

In order to properly develop your marketing strategy to the ways of the modern consumer, it requires an open-minded individual that will be willing to modify their sales approach.

Although there is a fine line between being aggressive and pushy, an overly aggressive salesman has a better chance of closing out more deals with customers as opposed to an individual who takes a more passive or nonchalant approach. Historically, it has been individuals who have an aggressive mentality that are flourishing because they do not allow their ego to impede them from attaining their goals!