Insurance Sales: If You Can't Reduce Their Risk You Can't Earn the Sale

Why don't prospects buy? It's no secret they don't buy because they feel buying is too risky. And they have a very valid concern. With the wrong decision they can get locked into products that are completely wrong for them and too costly to walk away from.

It’s your job to help them to identify their real risks and then use the facts to make a good decision. A lot of their concerns are based on perceived risks and information rather than facts. Just like any buyer of any product or service they’re concerned that the dollars they’re spending today are producing a value greater than the investment.

With projections you can address that concern fairly easily if you even get the opportunity to present projections. They’re quite naturally concerned about their ability to pay for the investment you’re asking them to make. But the bigger underlying concern is whether they even need what you’re presenting.

This is probably your biggest trouble spot. If you get to the point of presenting your solution, and you haven’t appeased their perceived risk in relation to need it’s a clear indication that you didn’t do a good job of understanding them and what they wanted. Your solution should clearly support the outcome they envisioned, and they should understand that to get that outcome they need the solution you’re providing.

If they aren’t clear about their need and the relationship between the solution you have and what they want, don’t continue trying to advance the sale. Back up and get the information and clarity you need so you can move forward together. Ask their permission to step back and clarify your understanding.

They can’t move forward without this clarification because now they run the additional risk of looking foolish. Because they aren’t convinced they even need it and they aren’t sure it supports what they want, if they proceed they feel like they’ll look like absolute fools. And then they begin to distrust you because they think you’re trying to trick them or coerce them.

If you try to move forward and drag them along it will only confirm in their minds that they shouldn’t trust you, and they won’t have any confidence in you or your abilities. Your only hope of insurance sales success is backing up so you can move forward. After you’ve gotten the clarity and joint understanding you can address their perceived risks head on and knock them off one by one.

And the best way to do this is to get the prospect to do it for you. Get them to articulate all of their perceived risks in writing and then have them go back and articulate their perceived rewards in writing. At this point everyone has the same information at the same time and if it’s a good decision everyone will come to the same conclusion.