Leveraging face-to-face relationships
with potential insurance clients
When you are giving the rundown of coverage, do so by using
examples of incidents that anyone can understand. … [R]eal-world
scenarios that you can walk a prospect through to explain policies are helpful.
By Michael Wayne
As an insurance professional, was there anything that struck you as particularly odd about Super Bowl LIX? Of course, that is assuming you watched the broadcast. No, I’m not referring to questionable officiating. I’ll stay away from that topic, especially since it seems to have been a source of discussion all season long when the Kansas City Chiefs were playing.
Throughout the regular season and playoffs, every televised game felt like it showed commercials that featured Patrick Mahomes and Jake numerous times, a talking gecko, a woman whose name rhymes with “dough” and her companions, a flightless bird and his partner, mayhem, good hands, a “turning into your parents” therapist, or a caveman. In many cases, commercial breaks featured a combination of two or more of the above. Either it is effective advertising that I know all of those, and others that I didn’t mention, or I’ve seen them so many times now that my brain can’t help but remember.
But there wasn’t a single insurance commercial during the “big game.” While it may not seem like it to anyone watching professional or college games prior to Super Bowl Sunday, advertising dollars from the insurance industry have plummeted over the last several years, as underwriting costs have risen sharply.
Considering the backlash to the industry following the wildfires that devastated the Greater Los Angeles area, it’s no wonder State Farm decided not to run any spots. Even if the business decision was the smart one, the optics still look awful when you pulled out of the market that was utterly devastated just months before and then afterwards ask for an emergency 22% increase for California premiums.
Advertising is effective, but whether and to what extent the effect is positive or negative toward a brand is the question. Overwhelmingly, an individual is going to make their insurance decision based on a relationship with someone they are face-to-face with and not a commercial. That, at least, has been my experience. To that end, here are the top five ways to appeal to prospects during a conversation.
Talk about reality. Insurance can be confusing to those who don’t deal with the minutiae of it on a daily basis. In many instances, insureds feel like they are trying to learn a different language when attempting to understand their policies. When you are giving the rundown of coverage, do so by using examples of incidents that anyone can understand. Wrecks, surgeries, tornadoes, house fires, earthquakes, and other real-world scenarios that you can walk a prospect through to explain policies are helpful.
Make it personal. Your goal is to build a lasting relationship. Doing so necessitates understanding all aspects of a prospect’s needs. From a personal lines or benefits standpoint, you have to know what your prospect’s life is like. Everything from what they like to do, what their diet is like, who they come home to, and all points beyond and in-between are fair game for you to explore. You are working to craft a solution for them and need to relate that solution in simple terms that are directly related to what they want and how to help them achieve their personal goals.
Show, don’t tell. Provide your prospect with the worst-case scenario. It may seem like a scare tactic, and that’s because to a large degree it is. The important thing to remember here is that you are doing everything possible in this instance to protect the prospect from what could happen to them without proper coverage. What you don’t want to do, however, is only highlight the negative. Implore your prospect to see the benefits of coverage and what that coverage will mean for all aspects of their life.
Provide testimonials. You don’t need written statements from clients who have faced the same issues as the prospect you are working with to provide a compelling real-life success story. The main aspect to this is to be truthful. Do not conjure a fable that extolls the benefits of specific coverage. Even if the stories are not exactly an apples-to-apples correlation to what your prospect is experiencing, you will likely have positive and negative anecdotes you can make relatable to paint a picture of what their world would look like at both ends of the spectrum.
Destroy false narratives. Perception is reality, and there is a lot of “reality” about insurance that makes it difficult for anyone to believe that their best interests are at the heart of an insurance broker. It is incumbent upon all of us to be good ambassadors for the industry in everything that we do. In particular, when we do have the opportunity to dispel falsehoods, we need to do so. When we have the chance to explain in the simplest terms possible what specific coverages do, we need to do so. When a prospect gives us the time, we need to take it and educate.
Just about everywhere I look right now, the words I most often see in headlines accompanying insurance are “crisis,” “worsening,” and “impossible.” What that tells me is there is a lot of opportunity for those of us who are doing things the right way to help people and organizations, win business, and build long-standing relationships that can be beneficial for everyone involved.
The author
Michael Wayne is a freelance insurance writer.
