Insurance Sales: But They Told Me They Wanted It!

Has a prospect ever told you they wanted to buy, and then changed their mind? Or they bought and then almost immediately backed out of the deal, wanted a refund, or canceled their premium. Were you left wondering how that could happen when they seemed so excited and on board?

If you’ve never experienced this you’ve got to be green. Every beginner and many seasoned professionals experience this and they don’t understand why it happens. The explanation is actually pretty simple, and you have yourself to thank for the result you got.

Buyers are highly emotional in their decision making process. Somehow you’ve gotten their attention or entered their radar, and they’re all excited about buying. And you get all excited because this probably doesn’t happen just all that often to you, and you’re thinking this is going to be one of the easiest sales you’ve ever made.

So how does it all fall apart? In your excitement to fulfill their perceived need you fell into a deadly sales trap. You fell into the trap of thinking the reason they told you they wanted to buy was the real reason or an important reason to them.

The truth is these buyers aren’t really clear about their need or what they want. They get caught up in an idea and think they want to buy, but then they start thinking about it and they realize that they really don’t need what your offering or they really don’t want what they thought they wanted. A recent commercial depicts a young man in a store looking at a big screen TV all excited and engaged in the purchase ready to pull the trigger and buy when a pig, representing savings, slaps the guy on the hand and tells him he doesn’t need that and the poor salesperson is left holding the bag just like you.

So how do you circumvent and avoid this? Until or unless you help the prospect to clearly understand that there is a need and that the need is important you have a window shopper on your hands. Your prospect has to have a light bulb go off solidifying for them exactly what they want to do, why that’s important, and why it’s important to take action now.

The easiest way for you to help the prospect through this thought process is to ask good questions. When you have an over eager buyer you need to get them to take a step back to help you understand why they need what you have. In most cases, the quickest way toward a sale is to step back.

Through your gentle probing questions you’re helping the prospect to build their own case for purchase. Now the great thing about that is people hate to be wrong, so if they wanted to back away from the sale later they’d have to disagree with their own argument and that’s highly unlikely. Through this sales discussion both you and the prospect have the same information at the same time, and when that happens you reach the same conclusion and that means a sale for you if you’re a match.