Imagine if you could sit down with a successful insurance agent who’s led one of the fastest-growing agencies in his market, and learn the exact processes he uses to win sales. Would you be interested?
Of course you would!
While we can’t arrange a one-on-one conversation, we can do the next best thing: reveal powerhouse agent Brooks Baltich’s proven sales conversation and insurance quote template so you can implement it in your own agency. Below he shares the first two steps your sales process absolutely must include (and what it should not include) if you want to close more deals, more often.
Determining how a call came in is vital to your agency’s success. This information will help you adapt your approach to the prospect immediately. Are they an inbound (warm transfer) or an outbound (internet lead) call? Are they calling your office, or are you calling them? Is it an inbound call or a follow-up? Depending on the answer, you will handle them differently. (The rest of these steps assume we’re dealing with an inbound call; outbound calls are handled similarly except that you don’t need to ask how the prospect found you—you already know the source.)
In addition, knowing the call source helps you understand where your business is coming from. You must be meticulous about knowing and tracking this information so you can get a clear picture about where you should increase your lead and referral marketing efforts, and where you should adjust your spend. For example, I once did some marketing in the Yellow Pages. That ad has continued to bring in calls for years—information I could only determine because I used a tracking phone number. I knew the lead source and could tell that it was providing an ROI, which meant I could track how my investment was performing and made changes when I needed to.
Some important questions to ask when identifying the source of inbound calls:
This will lead directly to step two.
Once you’ve gathered their source information, you’ll move to immediately finding out their reasons for calling. “Why are you shopping for insurance today?” is the main question to ask.
Let them finish what they have to say, listen carefully, and then frame your response around what they’ve indicated is important to them. This is typically one of five things:
Once you’ve identified their hot-button issue, begin to build value around it. Show how choosing your agency will address their pain points, and frame the conversation around them (not the features of your products).
At this step in the conversation, it’s important to discover the prospect’s current type of insurance, and ask if you can quote them for multiple products, not just the one product they may be inquiring about.
“[Name], I'd love to quote everything. My job is to help you get what you deserve at claim time. Even if you don't go with coverage for everything, I can protect you best by at least looking at your coverage, spotting any holes or gaps, and letting you know what I’ve found.
And then you can choose whatever you'd like to do.”
These first two steps are just the beginning of the process—steps three through eight explain the rest of the process, in detail. Check out the entire guide to get started—it’s chock-full of more tips, tricks and example scripts that Brooks uses—and that have a proven record of success. You can get the complete guide here.