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July 01, 2009 at 08:00 PM
How many people have sought you out to buy life insurance so that they can cross it off their to-do list? The likely answer is, “none.”
Buying life insurance won’t be found on anybody’s priority list because it’s just not something that people think about on a daily basis. The old saying that life insurance is sold, not bought, fits nicely here. John Beck wrote a great book earlier this decade called “The Attention Economy,” which framed just how difficult it is to grab a consumer’s attention.
One point Beck made was that the average American grocery store stocks more than 140,000 items, yet the average family purchases only about 150.
There is an abundance of financial news and information, educating the masses more than ever before. But this blessing is also a curse. Buying the right box of cereal doesn’t quite carry the same challenge as buying the right life insurance coverage. Imagine consumers wading through the ocean of information that’s available on products and services, doing their homework trying to make an educated decision, and approaching you to have “the life insurance discussion.” It won’t happen that way. But that discussion does have to happen, and in order for it to work, we need to make life insurance a priority for our clients.
Whatever your particular approach, by making it happen, you’ll help them accomplish the most important “to-do” that never even made it on their list.
Recognizing the need
Every person, young or old, has different values when it comes to family life. For some, there is nothing more important. For others, it’s less of a priority. But for those who place their family above all else, it will be especially effective to remind them of how important their week-to-week paycheck is. In the event of their death, surviving family members must be able to sustain some type of similar lifestyle. As painful as it can be to discuss this, when going over various scenarios, remind them that their children will have already lost a parent.
They don’t want to lose another parent to a job just to make ends meet. Having the money from an insurance policy buys them peace of mind and security in a very uncertain and emotional time.
As a financial professional, it’s crucial to find out what is most important to the family and then have them decide if that’s worth protecting. In other words, you must appeal to your client’s emotions and justify the sale with logic.
Most sales people sell with their left brain, which is logical, rational, and analytical. You should instead sell with your right brain, which controls emotions and intuition.
Ask any top producer, and they’ll tell you that they sell concepts, emotions, pictures, and feelings. They paint the full picture and let their clients see how the drama could possibly play out. Because let’s face it — in our world, we’re trained to see logic, numbers, and the support of data. People don’t buy data, however. They buy what makes them feel good.
