Break Up With Your Insurance Prospects (& 6 More Surprising Sales Tips)

Have you ever been ghosted? The phenomenon isn’t just tied to dating—if you’ve been an insurance agent for any amount of time, chances are you’ve been ghosted! If you’ve had a client or prospect disappear from contact without any explanation like this, you’ve no doubt struggled to figure out another way to get your message across. Technology makes it easy for us to contact our leads, but it also makes it easy for them to avoid us. (Tweet this!) Here are seven surprising sales tips that can help you get past being ghosted and in front of your leads.

1. Break up through a voicemail.

Break up with a potential customer? Yes! If you’ve been ghosted but have a phone number, leave a break-up voicemail. With this type of message it’s best to get right to the point:

• Tell them this is the last time you’ll contact them.
• Give them an ultimatum that shows urgency. (i.e., “We’re able to lock in this pricing now but it may not be available in a week from now.”)
• Remind them of interactions you’ve previously had, and reiterate any promises they’ve made in the past.
• Incorporate calls to action they can hold onto, and give clear directions for when and how to get back to you for next steps.

This insurance sales tip may sound a little silly—who wants to encourage a potential customer to stop talking to them?—but it will get them back on the phone with you if they have interest in your product. If they don’t, you’re saving yourself time and frustration by moving on.

2. Reference their own memories.

When you sell insurance, capitalize on your prospect’s memories. If you assume there’s a 50 percent chance a prospect is even listening to or reading your messages, referencing any past personal interactions—emails, voicemails, handwritten notes or cards, other gifts—may better hold them to an action. Just make sure you’re doing these things—writing, calling, sending gifts—in order to create an impression on your prospects that they’ll actually remember.

3. Use voicemail and email scripts for common situations.

This sales tip will save your producers a ton of time. Instead of reinventing the wheel with every voicemail, drop scripted voicemails and emails. That way, your producers aren’t leaving, for example, 40 individual messages or writing 40 unique emails to people who haven’t responded to your agency’s messages—they’re saving time by using a predesigned template 40 times.

One-off, ad hoc emails can confuse prospects, annoy customers, and dilute your brand messaging. Here’s a better way.

You can and should spend time up front to create voicemail and email sales templates for common situations—and you can even use our free templates to help you get started.

Once you’ve started using templates, they will save your agency time, and in turn, cost, helping your team work efficiently and effectively.

4. Send multiple-choice emails.

“I know you’re super busy, but please answer with the following depending on how you feel:

1. I’m busy but interested.
2. I am not interested anymore.
3. I may be interested later, but not right now.”

Requesting a simple one-letter response is a way to keep the lines of communication open with a prospect you may be unsure about. If they acknowledge option A or C, you know you don’t necessarily need to close down a file. Instead, you can plan on contacting them again in the next 30 to 60 days and add it to the following month’s cadence.

5. Write short and sweet emails.

Be assertive about what you are trying to achieve from an email, but be brief; long-winded emails may not get responses. For example, we’ve seen agents successfully use this tactic:

Some prospects see this and a sense of urgency sets in—the idea that they may be passing on a great deal can create a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out), and can elicit a response that they actually do want to work with you. One word of caution: This doesn’t work with all clients! Knowing the client you’re selling to goes a long way with this tactic‚ so use it only strategically when you think it might succeed with that particular prospect. If a prospect does not respond to a “close the file” email (or they confirm that they DO want you to close their file) make sure that you remove them from your outbound prospecting cadence.¹

6. Tell the client they aren’t the only fish in the pond.

Here’s a surprising sales tip: To get some prospects’ attention, you can convey that not doing business with them isn’t actually going to be the end of your world. Saying something like, “If you’re not interested please let me know—my schedule is pretty much booked solid with people in your neighborhood so I don’t want to waste your time,” can be successful when used with the correct audience. But be careful! This is a strategic approach you should use only when you reasonably know a client and are confident that it will not put off a client who is a genuine prospect.

7. Close the book today, but reopen it down the line.

So a prospect says they’re not interested right now. Is it over? No! A lead is never really dead, especially with insurance. If a prospect has a car and a home, there will always come a point when their insurance expires. That means there’s always an opportunity: today, next month, or six months from now. One note of caution: Be aware that if you’re purchasing leads, the individual vendor may have specific terms regarding how long of a window of time you have to contact each lead (i.e., to avoid over contacting consumers, vendors –including EverQuote –often prohibit contacting a lead after 90 days).

Agents should never let a lead go to waste, because in a month’s time that lead could turn into a completely different person in a different situation. So leave a note to revisit the prospect at a later time to see if the situation has changed and how you can help.

Looking for more insurance sales tips to get in front of your leads?

If you’ve found this article helpful, check out our resources and other articles on the EverQuote blog, where we cover everything from insurance sales best practices, to sales scripts to help you handle common objections, to proven processes used by top agents from across the country. I think you’ll find it useful!

¹There are both federal and state laws that address emailing, calling and texting of consumers for marketing purposes. It is important that emails, calls or texts you place are made in compliance with these laws and that you properly honor opt-out or do not call requests. Failure to follow these laws can result in claims seeking significant monetary damages.