Points that help you sell

Peer-to-peer content has always been a hallmark of Life Insurance Selling, with producers unselfishly sharing best-practices marketing, prospecting, selling and closing techniques that work well for them. That’s something we plan to continue, and you can help by sharing your own “Points That Help You Sell.” Got a great tip that really works? Email it to me at [email protected] and it could very well appear in an upcoming issue of NU Life & Health, credited to you, of course.

Here’s just a sampling of the kind of timeless tips you can find in a typical “Points That Help You Sell” – these three were culled from 1960s issues of Life Insurance Selling:

• Suppose your prospect has said he is very busy but has agreed to give you 5 minutes. What can you do in 5 minutes? The best thing you can do is ask some very pertinent questions – and here is one that might work: “If anything should happen to you, what is the very smallest amount of monthly income your family could get along on? If you had died last night, how much would they have to get along on now?”
• A good way to open up the subject of life insurance is to ask a prospect, “Do you have a will?” If he says yes, ask him: “How have you funded it?” If you can get him to look at the will and consider whether or not his desires for his heirs can be carried out without some real cash at the time of his death. Almost invariably, life insurance is needed to provide the cash.
• City-dwelling New York Life Insurance agent Joe Gerritse says, “I walk my dog several times a day and always take the same route. Naturally, I meet other dog owners who walk their dogs. In the course of time, we get to know each other. By now, 75 percent of the fellow dog owners I know are policyholders.”

For more from Brian Anderson, see:

• 87 years in life insurance history
• NAILBA 32: Simpson and Bowles came to “make members mad”
• How to say the right thing at a funeral