Insurance is a challenging industry in which it’s hard to succeed.
By wondering how to be a good insurance sales rep, you’re already beating out the thousands of reps who think they’ve got it all figured out. And that’s the way to make your job that much easier.
To have a B2B or B2C insurance sales career you can brag about, there’s not just one straight path to follow.
But there definitely are a combination of skills to acquire, habits to form, and attitudes to shape to help you be a better advocate and agent for your customers.
Here are some tips to get you started.
Embrace Rejection
A lot.
Can you deal with that for the long term?
Some days, your product is selling like hotcakes. On other days, your customers have their no’s sitting at the tip of their tongue, ready to strike down any hope you have of closing a deal.
And that’s okay!
You’re not selling ice cream – people need time to make big decisions and purchases.
So that “no” is often, it’s really just a placeholder for the yes.
But you won’t get there if your soul is crushed after every rejection.
If you want a successful insurance sales career, learn to be resilient and come to terms with the idea that you can’t always succeed.
Sometimes even the best insurance sales get the dreaded “no.”
Don’t take it personally and choose to move on instead of thinking of yourself as a failure.
Always Be Closing Learnin’
The truth is that no amount of time spent in the insurance sales games exempts you from needing to freshen up your knowledge and techniques.
No one doubts your expertise, but do you really want to risk your career with a we’ve-always-done-it-this-way type of attitude?
Remember what happened when Blockbuster refused to adapt to a changing landscape?
The best insurance agents are always learning and willing to improve. Even if your agency leadership provides great training opportunities, own your insurance education and:
- Read books, articles, research, studies, and more
- Rub elbows with other pros at conferences
- Surround yourself with quality professionals
- Learn from your mistakes
- Learn to take advice and constructive criticism
Plus, what about the experts you Slack with on a daily basis?
Whether you’re a fresh or seasoned insurance sales agent, consider your colleagues as an additional (and free!) resource to ask questions.
They are right there, after all.
Brush Up on Your People Skills
To consistently crush your insurance sales career, your communication, attentiveness, and customer service game need to be at a 10.
And ignoring calls won’t get you there.
You don’t need to be blessed with the gift of gab, but you must be able to effectively engage your customers to get them to buy the right coverage and understand policies.
Be attentive
When your customers speak, do you really listen?
Can they reach you or are you notorious for missing calls?
One of the major complaints of those who buy life insurance policies is there’s no one around to answer their questions after purchasing a policy.
So, here are some things to work on, according to Investopedia’s Mark Cussen.
- Availability: Be available to your prospective and existing clients. Make sure to provide a timely response to inquiries and always answer their phone calls. Keep your customers happy and reassured by picking up the phone when they need you. It’s simple.
- Emotional intelligence: Successful insurance sales reps listen and empathize with clients on a deeper level to understand prospect needs. When you know their pain point, you can help them see financial reality clearly, even when they swear they’re uninterested. You can get inspired from this resource on generative AI uses cases related to insurance to come up with a knowledge base to help your customers.
Own Your Customers’ Experience
If you’re just in this for the money, your customers will notice, and they won’t want to buy from you.
Why would they?
Closing a deal might feel like the hardest part of the job, but really, it’s earning the trust of a skeptical customer who probably already thinks your only agenda is to sell and take their money.
Every interaction prospects and clients have with you and your agency adds to and is part of the customer experience:
- The way you speak.
- The timeliness of response.
- The quality of response.
Create a customer experience you can be proud of. Your bottom line will reflect this attitude.
Stay Organized and Aim for Consistency Across the Board
Some sales reps take years to nail down time management and an effective follow-up process.
But you don’t have to be one of them.
To be a good insurance sales rep, develop organization skills, so you’re not stuck in a procrastination cycle where you squeeze in calls during lunch because you were catching up on yesterday’s work during breakfast.
In an on-demand business, your time is your most valuable thing.
You can think of it as currency. So, if you want to succeed in this line of work, start budgeting your time, just like you’re budgeting your money.
Whether you use a system to set goals, manage time, or create a consistent follow-up cadence for leads, you need some sort of process to help you prospect in a way that’s disciplined and replicable.
Level Up Your Tech Skills
You can’t confidently say that you’re the best sales rep out there if you don’t connect with your clients on every platform there is.
And there are a lot of platforms you can leverage.
By not being accessible on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, you’re missing out on more sales opportunities than you can count.
Here’s the thing: A good insurance sales rep takes full advantage of any available digital tools and technologies to better communicate with customers, follow up on calls, and keep track of sales activities.
Plus, be aware of how your customers like to use technology to find information and connect with companies.
Then, you can easily tailor your strategy to target them in ways they respond to.
Sales and marketing are more aligned than they’ve ever been, so embrace the digital age because it’s here to stay.
The more tech variety you implement into your sales strategy, the more deals you’ll close.
Create Your Own Techniques But Don’t Forget the Classics
The advancements in artificial intelligence (AI infrastructure), social platforms, tech tools, and more make it easy to think classic sales techniques are a thing of the past.
However, they’re not, so don’t write them off just yet. Nothing beats human-to-human interaction for your buyers, especially because money is involved.
“Yeah, but no one cold calls anymore,” is a completely wrong assumption. Cold calling is a powerful method of generating sales, but only if you do it right.
Think personalization, getting to know and understand your prospects, and being helpful. Don’t cold call without previously researching your potential clients.
As you chart your own path in this industry, remain flexible and change with the times. But don’t forget that “old-school” cold calling still gets the job done.
Keep these tips in mind:
- You prefer email and text messaging, but business still gets done over the phone. You have to be an effective cold caller.
- Your tone, pace, and inflection are being assessed. Your prospect is going to want to confirm that you actually get what you’re talking about.
- Your prospect listens carefully to see if you’re the right option as their insurance provider. No time to craft the perfect response here! Be quick on your feet to provide value.
This Was Your Crash Course on Being a Good Insurance Sales Rep
It’s as simple as this: Great sales reps focus on multiple skills to be successful. Are you up for the challenge? Apply these skills to boost your insurance sales and get your career on track. Need more tips on making a good insurance sales agent? Check out the ultimate playbook that’ll help increase your sales with the right strategies.
