Creating Higher Insurance Production With Adaptive Sales Ability
Insurance representatives earning a good income possess sales ability skills, and personal ability skills. The professional earning a substantial income has also mastered adaptive selling skills. You could constantly question yourself why you missed getting a sale. Alternatively, see how vital being adaptive is to consistently producing sales. As a sales person your goal is always creating higher insurance production.
Starting out as a career insurance trainee you are instructed to memorize word for word a sales presentation that the company has used for generations. This also includes a jumbo pictorial presentation binder. Now you go through what should be called a show and tell presentation. Prospects are not overly fond of your "one size fits all" show book or your presentation that does not flow like you would naturally talk. They are uncomfortable and your highest level of perspiration activates by starting the presentation..
To end up with presentations that results in a sale you need three skills that you cannot rely on your career office to teach you. In fact, the high majority of your fellow sale people end their career without realizing their importance.
Sales Skills These are the tricks and tips of the trade. Some are discovered only by trial and error. Several you become skilled at through constant repetition. Various others are mastered by trying new techniques other insurance professionals have developed. Once you obtain a sales skill, it allows you to learn another and another. Sales skills are a career long building process.
Personal Skills These are up to you to learn on your own. Confidence, motivation, and inspiration are three of the major ones. Many self-improvement books can significantly improve your personal skills, with little time or money invested. Remember that your clients can see right through you, without conquering these personal skills few sales are made.
Adaptive Skills There are two different types of adaptive skills to you need to triumph over. Each of your clients is unique, and what they want from you differs widely. You must adapt yourself to every prospective client you are proposing selling insurance to. The second adaptive skill is adapting your presentation to capture your prospect's interest. Then you take control so that instead of selling the prospect is buying from you.
Adapting You Personally Let me give this example from personal experience. On my first appointment with a senior couple on looked and felt very uncomfortable. I wore a vested business suit, lugged a suitcase-sized briefcase with tons of product information, plus my crammed presentation book. I entered a house with the temperature blazing at 85%. I was completely over dressed and over packed. In addition, I felt a little easy each time the elderly spit tobacco juice into his handy tin can. Quickly I got into a set presentation and soon after left without a sale.
Either you need to adapt your attire up a notch or more casual depending on whom your clients are. They want to do business with someone they feel closer to their level. Also, you need to adapt your pre-presentation manner. The relationship scene before the presentation must be where you want it. That means that the prospects not only like you, but also feel you are trustworthy. For a senior, you focus on finding about their favorite collection or hobby. Have them show you their favorite piece and talk about it. Even take a phone picture of them showing off their prized possession. You can ask any prospect what they are most proud of.. Few will take this as an annoyance, instead is it personal adapting yourself to them, thereby winning them over.
Adapting Your Presentation Developing an adaptive sales ability is not that hard once you understand the reasoning for it. The first presentation you memorized was suppose to serve all purposes but instead served none. There are two major areas of importance, where you must adapt your presentation to match the situation.
Emotional Need Adapting Every person has six major unique emotions. However, they are only likely to buy if your presentation provides them with the benefits they need to cover the emotion they are concerned about. Too many insurance sales people just keep on talking and talking about every possible benefit their insurance could provide. The prospect get bores and starts to throw out objections just to keep the salesperson from rambling on. The two most common emotions you face in insurance selling are fear and greed.
Right at the start, you MUST find out how your prospect is hurting. Is there a fear or worry that if they die or get sick they will not be able to pay their debt obligations? Alternatively, is it a greed feeling to accumulate wealth and security by seeing their nest egg grow. Never think there is a close correlation between the two. Your prospect certainly does not. Upon finding the problem, you adapt your full presentation. The client only needs three or four good reasons how your insurance product can solve the problem.
Next, you must adapt your presentation to the product you are selling. Choose two or three products, instead of a whole product line. Learn enough about them until you feel and sound like an expert. Concentrate your prospecting to finding people want to find out more about these products only. Strip down your presentation material to a simple yellow pad and folder for each product. Leave the overnight suitcase in your car where it can be used as a storage bin. Now develop a separate presentation of your own just using the materials you are taking in to a prospect's home. You will see how easy this is, and how much more relaxed you and your prospects will feel.
Considering emotions and insurance products, you might have six adaptable on the spot presentations. Many parts will be interchangeable. There are key phrases and selling methods you consistently use. An added advantage is that your presentation time is now 1/2 what it use to be, creating much higher insurance production.
Well published author, Don Yerke likes to concentrate on what you don't know or what no one else dares to print. Tell it like it is.
Watch for his new paperback book debuting on Amazon this spring. It is loaded with great insurance marketing and recruiting information.