How to Sell Life Insurance Successfully | Good Life Insurance Associates

Selling life insurance can be challenging. Unlike some other forms of insurance, such as auto and home, life insurance isn’t a necessity of driving a car or mortgaging a home. In other words, it’s optional insurance that people choose on their own to purchase. As an agent, this makes selling life insurance more challenging than other types of insurance. But there are some things you can do to help make the value proposition clearer to prospects and improve conversions. Here are some tips on how you can sell life insurance successfully.

Convey the Benefits

How successful you are at selling life insurance will be dependent on how well you convey its benefits. Again, unlike auto and home insurance, life insurance isn’t a policy that people are forced to buy. Life insurance is an expense that people choose to purchase with no tangible current benefit. When people purchase life insurance, they are buying into the long-term benefits of the policy.

As an insurance agent, you can convey these benefits by appealing to people’s emotions. People purchase life insurance for the benefit of others rather than themselves. You can sell potential customers on the benefits of life insurance by explaining how it can help take care of family members after they pass.

Ask Tough Questions

One of the biggest obstacles you must overcome to sell life insurance is dealing with difficult conversations. To be effective at selling life insurance, you’ll need to ask potential customers tough questions.

These questions could include:

Does your family have a plan if you passed away today?
Can your family live the same life they are today if they don’t have your income to rely on?
Does your family have a plan for how to pay off your debt, if you have any, when you pass?

No one wants to talk about death, and no one wants to talk about what will happen to their loved ones when they pass away. But it’s an essential conversation that you need to be comfortable having—and starting—with people if you’re going to be successful selling life insurance.

You can do this in a sympathetic way, too. Establish rapport with prospective customers and sympathize with their situation. Tell them about your life, your family, and how you’re working to take care of them in that way.

Give Customers Options

One of the best ways to sell life insurance is to recognize that not every customer is alike. Different customers have different needs, and different things they are looking to get out of life insurance.

Knowing the life insurance options your agency offers—and being very knowledgeable about each—is important. The three main types of life insurance are:

Term Life: This policy guarantees death benefit payment if the insured dies during a specific term that’s set when the policy begins. Typical terms can be 10, 20 or 30 years.
Whole Life: This policy covers a person for their entire life, guaranteeing a death benefit no matter when the insured passes away. The premium remains the same for the entire policy, and it builds cash value on a tax-deferred basis.
Universal Life: This is also a permanent policy, with the main difference being the premiums, which are flexible. Universal policies pay out the death benefit no matter when the insured passes away, if the premiums are always paid.

Start with Current Customers

One of the easiest ways to get new leads for life insurance is to reach out to your current customers. You’ve likely already established a trusting relationship with those who you’ve sold auto and home policies to—or provided other financial services to. Since selling life insurance is all about trust, this gives you a leg up with these prospective customers, compared to other leads.

When you’re selling to current customers, you should rely on the tips above. In addition, you can tout additional monthly cost savings your customers can get by bundling more products—as long as your agency offers that feature, of course.

People are always looking to cut down on monthly expenses. That’s what makes selling insurance bundles so effective. Customers can gain extra protection for their loved ones with life insurance at rates that are likely less expensive than if they purchased the plan separately from another company.

Gain New Leads with Digital Marketing Campaigns

One of the most effective ways to gain new life insurance leads today is through digital marketing channels. Cold calling still works, of course, but you can build qualified lead funnels through multiple digital channels as well.

It’s free to set up social media pages on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter and others. Build out your profiles so people can see you’re a legitimate, well-respected insurance agent. Link the profiles together and start posting content that’s relevant and helpful to prospective customers.

Then, run digital ad campaigns on some of these channels. The ads can direct people to your social media pages or website for more information. They can also help you collect contact information so you can follow up directly with them.

Digital ad campaigns allow you to target your ads to the people you’re looking to attract. You can even set up multiple ad campaigns—one for each age cohort you’re looking to attract, for example.

The best part about digital marketing campaigns is that they provide you with a plethora of data, so you can track how well they are performing. Once you’ve refined the campaigns, it’s up to you to follow through and make the sale.

Be Patient

If you want to sell life insurance successfully, heed the above tips and ideas. Work on the action items each and every day. Then, be patient.

Unlike auto and home insurance, life insurance isn’t something that’s mandated by governments or mortgage companies. That means you will be responsible for all the legwork involved.

This will take time, and results may be slower to come by. But, if you work hard and stick to tried-and-true sales practices, you can become successful at selling life insurance.

Work with an Insurance Marketing Organization

As a leading Insurance Marketing Organization (IMO), Good Life Insurance Associates (GLIA) provides a full range of insurance products, back office services and tools to support your individual clients’ wants and needs. We provide financial advisors and insurance agents in our network across the country with access to a full range of premium carriers, expert support services, and an industry-leading compensation plan.