Cold calling is an essential technique that every insurance agent needs to employ to gain new clients, or at least new prospects. But, cold calling can be daunting, especially for new agents. It takes guts and practice to learn how to talk to people you don’t know and offer them a sale.
Follow these six cold calling tips to improve your chances of converting prospective clients in paying customers.
1. Believe in the Products You’re Pitching
If you don’t believe in yourself and in the products that you’re pitching, it’s going to be very hard to convince others that they should trust you and spend their money with you. It’s important for insurance agents to be passionate about what they do and how they can help people.
That passion needs to come across when you’re making cold calls. It’s what will get people interested when you call them, and it’s what will partly influence their final purchasing decision.
2. Have a Plan
A lot of sales professionals will tell you to call, call, call and stick to it. It’s true that when you are cold calling, it’s important to keep at it and stay focused on the task at hand.
Creating a plan for how you’re going to attack cold calling will help you stay motivated and on point. Schedule out your cold calling days, and clear other tasks off your schedule if you can. Singularly focusing on cold calling will help you avoid distractions, which can derail your progress.
Make sure you are hydrated and that you take breaks to eat. Even through you’ll be sitting most of the time when you’re cold calling, it can still be very taxing, especially on your voice. If you’re not taking care of yourself when you’re cold calling, it’s easy to get tired and start sounding raspy.
3. Follow a Script
It’s always a good idea to have a script when you’re cold calling. While you don’t want to come off as robotic in what you’re saying, you also don’t want to go too far off track, either.
A script is very valuable to give you talking points to refer back to, especially as potential clients start asking questions or take the conversation in a different direction. You want to be able to respond to whatever questions or inquiries a potential client may have, but you also want to keep them progressing toward the goal you have for that call.
Personalizing some of the speech — while sticking to the point and the facts — will help you come off as a more genuine person when you’re cold calling.
Cold calling scripts are often provided for you by either the insurance agency you work for or the insurance company whose products you’re selling. A good tip is to carefully read the script, then adjust some of the language so that it feels more natural to you.
4. Have the Right Tools
To be successful at cold calling, you’ll need to be able to track what happened with each of your prospects when you called them. You’ll want to notate whether they expressed interest, whether they hung up on you, or whether they didn’t answer.
It’s difficult to do this if all you’re doing is taking sloppy handwritten notes as you’re calling. Having a good customer relationship management system, also known as a CRM, will make your job a lot easier.
If you’re an independent agent, a CRM is well worth the investment. There are even some companies that will provide basic CRMs an affordable monthly cost.
Utilizing a solid CRM will not only improve your cold calling outcomes, but it’ll help you work on other aspects of your business, such as marketing, follow-ups, and even billing and collections.
5. Don’t Give Up
The most important thing to keep in mind is that cold calling is a numbers game. A large majority of the cold calls you make will be unsuccessful. Either you’re going to have to leave a message, or the person you call isn’t going to be interested in buying your insurance products.
One of the general consensus statistics is that a sales representative will need to make at least six calls before they’re able to complete one sale of their service or product. Therefore, you can’t get down on yourself if you make a lot of calls and don’t make any progress toward a sale.
6. Stay Positive
Not everyone on the other end of the line is going to be polite with you. Some people simply don’t like to be cold called. You may even come across people who are outright rude to you. Throughout it all, you need to stay positive and have a good attitude. Don’t be rude back to an inconsiderate person, simply thank them for their time and move onto the next call.
After a poor experience, take some time between each call. Don’t let a bad experience on one cold call carry over to the next few that you make. If you need to take a break and step back from the phone, do it. Clearing your mind and starting afresh will only help you enter that next call with a more positive attitude.
Contact us today to learn how we can help you establish and grow your insurance business!