Learning The Many Stages on How to Sell Insurance.

Learning how to sell insurance, or for that fact, anything, requires a significant number of key areas, ranging from people skills, good communication and product knowledge.

People Skills

Probably the number one area is good people skills. I have assisted in training well over a thousand (1000) agents and so many times I observed new life insurance agents get into a battle of wits with a new prospect during their early selling interviews. That is not a good people skill. Winning the battle and losing the war is not good.

I once read that selling is 83% people skills and 13% product and product knowledge. If you reflect back on things that you have bought from salespeople during your life, you will probably remember those sales people who made you feel good or gave you that feeling of trust, and seemed to go out of their way to do something special.

A salesperson needs to develop good realtionship building skills, good listening skills and good communication skills.

Learning to talk slow and communicate in that persons language is also very important. Each person has a communication lifestyle that a salesperson needs to be aware of. See my hub article on listening.

There are different stages to learning how to sell insurance. i would categorize agents into several categories:

1. The first 90 days
2. the first year
3. The first 2 years
4. The 5 year plus agent.

Each of these stages are significant, as to where a new agent is in their career.

The Key to a successful Life insurance career.

In each one of these above stages, an insurance agents needs to focus in on different aspects of learning. But first and foremost, a new insurance agent needs to learn how to get effective and learn how to market and specialize in one or two product within a specific target market area, so they can make a living. You need to keep it simple in the beginning.

How did McDonald's get to where they are today. They specialized in one thing early on. Hamburgers, Milk shakes and french fries. Over time the became more efficient and added new products. Learn to crawl, then walk and then run. Almost every successful business started out by specializing in something. Specializing gives you that base to generate your income, and when that income is sufficient, then start expanding your sales portfolio.

Too many times, new insurance agents start to try and become efficient by looking for short cuts, over analyzing stuff, wanting to be everything to everybody and so on. This is when they start struggling, then fail. Analyzing stuff and getting efficient comes at a later stage. In any sales business, there is only one report card at the end of the month, and that is how many sales you make.

Each sale has what I call a work unit.

To make one sale you need to make so many phone calls. That number of phone calls will result in one interview and lets say you need 3 interviews to make a sale.

Here is an example of a work unit:

1. One sale will come from:
2. 10 phone calls, which give you one interview and
3. You need 3 interviews to make one sale.

So how many work units do you have to do every week? If each work unit results produces $320, how many work units do you have to do each week to meet you life style?

This is just an example. If you specialize, these calling numbers will be much lower. Your calling ratios will be determined by your record keeping and your numbers maybe higher or lower. Click here to learn more on how to sell insurance.

 

Have a great day..Ted