Selling Life Insurance
The Insurance Sales Process

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Learning and using an effective sales process
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Selling Life Insurance and learning how to become successful requires the development of an orderly and organized sales process, as explained in this article.  If done correctly, it will ultimately separate you from the rest of the sales field.

What makes up the sales process?

The entire sales process for selling life insurance is comprised of several different steps:

1) Prospecting, (an all time 24/7 situation)

2) Phone calling, (what to say and how to say it)

3) Sales Cycle, (the complete interview process)

4) Policy Delivery, (where you make them a lifetime client)

5) Annual reviews:(relationship building, sales and referrals)

*The associated links for walking you through the life insurance sales process are located at the bottom of this page, but before you jump to them, learn how these two valuable people skills can benefit you.

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Master these the two magical concepts and learn this
great little relationship building secret.

Keep in mind that selling life insurance is not a spectator sport. There is only one report card at the end of the month, and that is how many sales did you make?

People skills are one of the most valuable skills you must develop when it comes to selling life insurance. They must be polished. Somewhere early in my career, I read that selling is 95% about people skills, and 5% selling skills.

Before you jump to the sales process topics below, lets first examine these two very important aspects of selling life insurance which can not and should not be overlooked. They are what I call the selling yourself and relationship building concepts.

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Number one: Selling yourself

the method by which you continue to market yourself as you proceed through out the interview. It is going to be one of the key reasons people will end up wanting to do business with you. And people buy you, not your company or the company product. At the end of almost every sale, when it came to writing the check, the client usually asked, who do I make this check out to?

So how do you do this? How do you sell yourself? First of all, you need to make these strangers a friend. You only have about 10 to 15 minutes to create a relationship before you start your actual interview. Look for a common bond, such as fishing, golf, etc, that you can start talking about.

Throw in a short joke to lighten things up. People like to do business with their friends. People are going to buy into who you are and what you can do to help them. As you go through the interview process, you sprinkle little comments such as;

1. Once a year we will sit down and discuss your financial plan and keep it updated.
2. If you ever see something related to insurance and want more information about that subject, contact me and I will do research for you.
3. If you ever have any need to change beneficiary or your automatic premium withdrawals from your checking account, call me and I'll take care of the details for you.
   
4. I also would provide prospects and clients free pamphlets that I would get from a local attorney's office related to setting up a will, joint rights of survivor ship, living trusts, etc. Additionally, by being one of my clients they were entitled to one hour of free consultation with this atty. as related to estate planning or making out a will. (Easy to do, by working with a local attorney, CPA, and they can also be your legal professional speakers for appreciation dinners, etc).
   
5. I also indicated to them, that once a year I provide an appreciation dinner (more Referrals) for my clients and during that function we provide guest speakers on financial planning and investing.

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Number two:  Relationship building

What is relationship building?

How does it help in selling life insurance?

I always believed it is the building of a rapport, becoming a friend, a helper, a buddy. Just being you and being honest and upfront. Building trust. Relationship building starts when you walk in the prospects door and take off your shoes to show them that you respect their house.

As I mentioned, make them your friend in that first 10 to 15 minutes. It encompasses many facets during the sales process. As an example during the interview, telling people how you will help them. What you can do for them? How you helped other people.

It is the forming of a bond and is a critical part of your future business relationship with the prospect/client. I consider relationship building and selling yourself two of the most important all around aspects of selling and developing and keeping clients

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Here was one of my best kept secrets for selling life insurance.

It is an example of one of the techniques I used to help me in relationship building.

As soon as I left an interview I would enter on my prospect card or on my computer little footnotes about that client or prospect for future reference.

During the interview, they may have been excited and talked about one of their children's sporting events or they were going on a trip to Disneyland.

By making these little footnotes to myself, I was able to refer back to these notes and when I called back next month or during my annual interview, I would bring up that issue about their son or daughter or there trip. You would be surprised how impressed they were with me for remembering, and they were appreciative that I remembered, and thought I had a fantastic memory.

In today's culture and information world, anything you can do that will make you different and separate you from all the other agents will help you in selling life insurance.

 Remember, build relationships and sell yourself.

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Related Articles:

Click on the specific links to learn more about each of these steps related to the sales process.

1 ) Prospecting habits

2 ) Phone Calling for Appointments 

3) Approaching Prospects

4) Insurance-Agents-Work-Unit

5) The Sales Cycle

6) Policy Delivery 

7) Client Services

8) Learn to listen

9) Relationship building skills

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