11 Sales Training Basics Life Insurance Agents Must Master

All right, so ladies and gentlemen, in this video, I'm going to be giving you guys 11 sales ideas or sales basics that you need to know as a new insurance agent that are going to allow you to see massive success in this industry. Now, I will be honest with you guys, this video might run a little long. I'm thinking it's probably going to be close to like maybe 15, 20 minutes because I'm going to be going very in depth into each of these concepts. I'm going through 11 things. And so this video is going to be super value packed, super, you know, action packed, so to speak. We're going to be covering a lot. So, you know, sit back, get your notepad out, turn off Instagram and Facebook and all your notifications because I'll be honest with you guys, if you guys can't focus on a 15 to 20 minute video, you're going to have a very, very tough time in this industry. And that's just me being straight up with you. So be sure to stick around to the end. I'm going to be going over a lot of these sales concepts that you need to know. And, and each of these 11 things can make a massive, massive difference in your ability to sell over the phone. Right? So let's go ahead and jump right into it. Some of these are going to be like very basic concepts and some of them are going to be a little bit more advanced. So we're going to be covering kind of a broad spectrum of things. But I really just want to like give you guys all of these tips and tricks that I've learned over the years of selling over the phone and also, you know, coaching agents and doing different things like that. So we're going to go ahead and jump into it with number one, which is the concept that there's basically two different types of questions that you can ask people over the phone. Right? And this is just in sales in general, these two questions. So you have open ended questions and you have close ended questions. Right? So an example of an open ended question is so what kind of got you thinking about this? Right? It's a question that prompts a response for them to explain and give more information. Right. There's no defined answer as far as what you need to respond to that because you can respond any number of things. It gets them talking, so to speak. An example of a closed ended question would be like, is this your first time looking into this? Yes or no? Those are the two answers. Yes, this is my first time looking into this. No, this is not right. So again, open ended questions are questions that prompt explanation, they prompt more response. Close ended questions or yes or no, this or that. Another example of an open ended question would be like so how did you come to that decision? Right? Or what about like what makes you think that you need $100,000 in coverage? Right. Why, why are you looking for $100,000 in coverage? That's an open ended question. Whereas a closed ended question would be like do you want $100,000 because you want to send your kids to college or because you want to pay for a mortgage? There's two responses. Close ended questions gives them a set defined close like it's, there's only a few answers they give open. There's infinite answers, very simple. So that's what the two types of questions are. When would you want to use an open ended question and when would you want to use a closed ended question? So the basic kind of like psychology and the strategy behind this is whenever you want to kind of engage your prospects and get them to think more, get them to give you more information, you're going to be asking open ended questions. So a perfect example would be in the very beginning of the call, in the discovery section of the script, we're going to be asking more open ended questions because we're trying to extract information from the prospect. We want to get them talking when we want to get them comfortable. We want to investigate or discover what their need is and what their why is and what their past experience is so that we have a better understanding of what we're walking into so that we can use that information in the close. Right? So open ended questions give us information, get the prospect talking. Now close ended question, this is what we want to use at the end of the sales call, right? Or when we're setting an appointment, right? This or that, right. We're when we want to set defined answer, we're going to ask close ended questions, right? So an example is when I'm setting an appointment, I don't want to leave it open. I want to say perfect. And would you rather do morning or afternoon? Afternoon. Okay, I have 5 o' clock or 7 o' clock available, which works better for you? So I'm giving them two set responses so they have to pick one. So again, to sum this concept up, you're going to use open ended questions to gather and extract information from your prospect. You're going to use close ended questions to essentially kind of like bring the hammer down this or that. Which one do you want to do? Right. Close forces them to make a decision. Open forces them to talk. So those two types of questions are very, very important to be used interchangeably. And, and you will build that skill as you spend more time on the phone and spend more time in sales as far as when to use those and how they work. So that's sales concept number one. Now number two is basically knowing when to push and when to retreat on a call. So knowing when to push or retreat. Let me give you guys an example that's outside of insurance. So let's think about dating, right? Let's say you go on a date with a girl or a guy, depending on who you are, what, you know, watching this, and basically you're interested in this, in this obvious. Use a girl as an example. So you're interested in this girl, you go on a date with her, you take her out to dinner and you get the sense that, you know, she's into you, whatever, right? You know, you've been going all, all night at dinner, you guys are hitting it off conversation, you buy her a, a glass of wine, whatever. You know, things are, things are looking good.

You're going to make a decision towards the end of the night whether you're going to push and try to advance the sale, so to speak, or whether you're going to retreat and, you know, avoid a situation or an uncomfortable confrontation, right?

That same skill of knowing when to push or when to retreat is very applicable when it comes to sales and the dating example. You know, obviously I don't have to, don't have to tell you what I'm talking about when I'm saying pushing, but when you're retreating, you're basically avoiding an uncomfortable situation. You're avoiding making the girl uncomfortable and losing any shot of closing the sale. So the exact same thing goes with selling insurance over the phone. When you push.

You'Re basically advancing and trying to close the deal. When you're retreating, you're setting an appointment or setting a follow up. So there's a delicate balance between knowing when to push and when to retreat. So let me give you an example of when you should push. If somebody tells you they need to think about it, right? I need to think about it is basically a smokescreen objection. So if someone tells me I need to think about it, there's no real objection. They're basically just, you know, kind of blowing smoke in the air and kind of trying to get me off of the phone. So I need to know whether or not to push or to retreat. So if they say I Need to think about it. I need to find out what the root objection is and keep pushing to find out how I can overcome that objection. Right? An example where I would need to retreat. Let's say somebody gives me the I need to talk to my wife objection. So the I need to talk to my wife objection. Sometimes it's a real objection and sometimes it's a smokescreen. There's about 50, 50. So if it's a real objection, they actually need to talk to their wife. And if they need to talk to their wife and I just try to close them and try to close them and try to close them. But they actually, like, make decisions together and, you know, their wife's going to put them in the doghouse or she has the access to the bank account. And I keep pushing. All of a sudden I could blow a sale that I could have got if I would have retreated, set the appointment, and then went back and followed up. So a lot of people would tell you, like, only go for the one call. Close. Just close them hard, close them every time. That's not true. You do need to learn the skill of pushing versus retreating and knowing when to do it and how to do it. Right. The next thing is don't sell them, qualify them. So this is the third sales skill, right? Not selling them, but qualifying them. And so basically, this concept, especially with insurance, is super critical. And so what this means is instead of trying to sell somebody on why they should buy insurance, you're qualifying them. The whole process is you're doing a consultation and you're seeing if they would qualify and if they would be a good fit for the insurance. So instead of me jumping on a call and trying to close you on why you need to buy from me, I'm seeing if you can even buy from me or if you can even get approved. That's the shift that you want to take. So whenever you're qualifying somebody, I'm going to use words like, okay, perfect. And just to see what you might qualify for, blank, blank, blank, ask health questions, right? Or I would say, okay, perfect. So, Ms. Jones, I pulled up a bunch of different carriers. Based off of what you're telling me, I think that you might qualify for Mutual of Omaha. I am going to have to submit an application to see if you get approved. Notice these conditions. I'm not saying you're going to get approved from Mutual Omaha. All you need to do is just sign up. We're going to fill out an application. I'm going to get you approved. I'm Leaving all of these ifs, all these ands, and all these buts. So I'm being very, very unsure about if they're going to get approved, but I'm sure about everything else. I'm sure that it's going to pay your family, but I'm not sure if you can get approved. So instead of trying to sell them, instead of trying to close them, I'm qualifying them. So that's the third thing. That's a very, very key skill. The fourth thing is consultative selling. So the best way to describe this is you're selling like a medical doctor, right? So think about it. When you go to the doctor, what happens, right? You don't just walk in, you're like, you know, hey, doc, have a headache, whatever. And then all of a sudden he's like, perfect, we're going to do a CAT scan, I'm going to assign you chemo meds, and then you're going to walk out of here with a crutch and a foot br. You'd be like, what the hell are you talking about? I said I had a headache. That's what most salespeople do, is somebody jumps on the phone, they like, barely even explain what their problem is, and all of a sudden they're trying to sell them something before they've even gotten a word out. Doctors, what they actually do is when you go in, what they should do is you go in, you tell them what their problem is, what your problem is, they ask you more questions about the problem, they ask you more questions about the problem, they try to diagnose the problem, and then. And then it will then prescribe a solution. So what you need to do is basically the whole first part of the call is the discovery phase. You're the doctor, you're sitting back in your chair, you got your white lab coat on, and you're basically just asking questions to figure out what, if anything, you should prescribe. This person, I'm not always jumping on every call thinking, okay, this person needs to buy insurance for me. I'm asking them questions to see if I can even solve their problem. So instead of trying to sell them something, try to solve their problem. And that's for consultative selling. Number five is differentiating yourself as an agent, right? So basically what happens oftentimes is everybody.

Has the exact same pitch, right? You'll notice this when you jump on the phone is people be like, I've heard that before. I talk to somebody like you before. But the thing is, if you're actually good, they haven't talked to somebody like you before because most agents flat out totally suck at their job.

They don't know how to underwrite. They tell people the wrong thing. They treat their clients like, like there's. They haven't talked to somebody like you if you're good. And so the way that you can differentiate yourself and the way that you can be good is one, become knowledgeable about the products.

Two, the key is not just understanding the product, but understanding it and being able to explain it on a level like on a third grade reading level. Right? So a lot of people, they think that they understand something, but then they understand it in industry terms. But if you truly understand something, you can explain it to somebody that's not in your industry. So give you an example. Most people think that everyone knows the difference between term and whole life. And most people think that they know the difference between term and whole life. When you jump on the phone with someone, you ask them to explain term and whole life, they have no idea what the hell they're talking about. The clients. Right. As an agent, most people will explain it something like this. Yeah. So basically the term has a period, usually 10 to 30 years. And basically with the term, there's no cash value you pay into the term. And, and then at a certain point, the term is going to expire after your period ends. And then what's going to happen is, you know, there's no cash value, so it just expires and you get a lot more coverage. Like you're explaining it in insurance terms. Right. I got confused and I was talking there. They'll explain whole life. Yes, a whole life. You get all this cash value and it lasts your whole life. And the premiums are locked in and everything like this, like you're explaining it in an insurance term, you need to explain it so simple that like your dog could understand what you're saying. Right? Term is like milk, eggs and cheese. It's great while it lasts, but once it expires, you have to throw it out. Whole life, just like the name says, lasts for your whole life. It never expires as long as you pay the premium. It's there when your family needs it. Super simple, right? So good agents can explain everything about the policy on that kind of a level. They can just simplify it down to the most basic level so that their clients can understand it. Number one way to differentiate yourself, second way is service. Right? So giving service to your clients, treating them like people, when you jump off of the phone with them before, you know, in the Call, put them on the do not call list so that they don't get freaking telemarketed to. It's going that extra mile to make their quality of life better. That differentiates you as an agent and also just like, caring, caring about the person. So if you can do those three things, you're going to differentiate yourself as an agent, and that's going to make you a ton of money. And, you know, you'll be a better, a better person, a better, better agent for your clients. The next thing we're going to talk about, the sixth concept is the three option close. So I can't tell you guys how many times I've jumped on the phone with somebody to, like, interview them or, you know, do a role play or whatever, and they basically just like, give you one option, and they're like, does that work? Okay, so I pulled up, pulled up an option for you here. What about 15,000 for 100 bucks? Does that sound good? That's how people close. It's miserable. So one thing too. Pen and paper. Necessary for every call. They must get a pen and paper whenever you're on the phone with them to write the quotes down. So, Ms. Jones, I'm getting some quotes pulled up for you. Can you grab a pen and paper for me real quick? Right. And the reason you do this is because if you don't, I'll give you an example let's say they've already mastered. We're doing three options. We're giving them three quotes instead of one. So you got that part down, but no pen and paper. All right, Ms. Jones, so I got three options for you. First one is 20,000 for $109.18. Second option is 15,000 for $96.74. And the third option is for $12,500. And this one is going to be for $73.58.

All right, how much was the 20,000?

You have no idea. You're going to rewind the video right now to check right now. I know it. But you have no idea if you don't write it down. So make sure they grab a pen and paper so they write it down. Otherwise you're just shouting into the wind, and there's no point doing that. So the three option close. The reason that we do this is because it makes them feel like they're in control. It also gives us a range of options so that we have a higher chance of hitting. If you've ever played, like, Battleship, right? I'll give this as an example. Imagine if you could guess three coordinates at a time instead of one. How many more ships would you sink? How many more deals would you close? So you give them three options so we can hit a range of prices and a range of coverage amounts. Gives us a better shot of finding something that works for them. The seventh thing is basically a way to re engage people back into the call. So this is kind of like a way to like it's temp checks or trial closes is what people call it. So essentially a trial close is like as I'm explaining something. Does that make sense? Do you see how that would be helpful? Would that be helpful for your family? Right. I'm doing trial closes as I go throughout because it keeps them engaged. What you realize a lot of times is like when you're explaining, when you're pitching, so to speak, your product, people get disengaged because you're talking and they're not. People are engaged when they're talking. So if they're not talking, they're just sitting there. Yeah. Huh. So the way that you re engage them is with temp checks. Right. So does that make sense? Yes. Do you have any questions for me on that? No. And a really good one to make sure that they get engaged is what questions do you have? For me, this is a really good one to throw out there. If they like start disengaging or you just sense that they're kind of like, you know, on, on autopilot listening to you. What questions do you have for me about that? It forces them to respond because that's an open ended question instead of a closed ended question. Does that make sense? Do you have any questions? What questions do you have for me? Forces them to ask you questions and gets them re engaged.

The eighth thing that I'm going to touch on, we're making great progress here. The eighth thing I'm going to touch on is basically a way to approach the call. Right.

And how to approach the call. Like the mindset that you need to have when you jump on this call. Right. There's basically three different things that I want to touch on here. And the first one is there are actually four different things approaching the call with human first. So the person on the other end of the line is the top priority. It's not making a sale, it's not getting commission check. It's not being at the top of the leaderboard. It's who's this person and how can I serve them? Right. Who is this person? How can I serve them? That's the way that you want to approach the call. The second thing is essentially seeking to understand before being understood. Right? So whenever you're on the other line with somebody, seek to understand who they are, what they want, why they're, why they are the way they are before you try to get them to understand what you're trying to do, what your product does, all these different things, just that one line. If you keep that in your mind, seek to understand before seeking to be understood, that will make you a ton of money. You want to be positively or politely assumptive. Not positively politely assumptive. So what this means is like you want to assume, yes, assume they can meet now, Assume they have the money, assume they can buy. Assume they want to talk to you. Politely. Assume that. Right? So I'm not being pushy, I'm being politely assumptive. Perfect, Ms. Jones. And just, just to check here, was there any reason that we wouldn't go ahead and get this set up today and get that coverage for you in place? You see, I'm assuming that we're going to get the coverage in place. I'm not wishy washy. I'm very confident. I'm assumptive, but I'm polite about it. I'm not being pushy. I'm not trying to hard close them. Politely assumptive. And the third thing here is valuing your own time when you're approaching the call. So your time as a salesperson, your time as an insurance agent is extremely viable. If you actually break down your dollar per hour, it's a lot higher than most people think, right? It's close to, you know, 60 to $100 an hour for really, really solid agents.

So don't waste, don't waste your money. Don't waste your time on people that are, you know, bs. Don't waste your time on people that don't have bank accounts, on people that aren't serious. Focus on valuing your time. The ninth thing I want to touch on here is selling the coverage and then justifying the price. A lot of people, they sell the price and then they match it with the coverage. So, Ms. Jones, how much were you looking to spend here on Life Insurance?

30 bucks a month.

50 bucks a month? Not a lot. I don't have a big budget for it. When you ask people how much they're willing to spend, you're basically being like, so how long of a plane ride are you looking to take to get to your vacation destination? No, we want to sell the outcome, right? And then figure out, justify the way to get there. Do you want to go to Thailand? Yeah. How long is it going to take? 30 hours.

Well, if I get to go to Thailand, I guess it's worth it, right? So I'm just, I'm selling the outcome, I'm selling the coverage and then justifying the price.

I want $50,000 in coverage. Perfect. How much does it cost? 250 bucks a month. Ooh, but that 50,000, though, I might have to make that work. So you're selling on emotion. Sell the coverage amount with emotion and then justify the price with logic. Right. Make sure you give the coverage amounts before you give the price to them. Number 10, understanding your consumer. So so many people get into this business and get into this industry and they don't even know like who they're selling to. They don't even know like who their avatar is, what they deal with on a day to day basis. And so they, they, they get into these interactions and these, you know, confrontations sometimes with their, with their clientele base because they don't understand them and they don't realize what the person on the other end of the phone is coming to with the call, is bringing to the call, right? So I want you to picture something.

My average viewer here is anywhere from 25 to 35 years old, right? So some of you guys are older, some of you are younger, but let's just say 30, 30 years from now, right? Let's say you're 30, 30 years from now. You just retired, you're 64, you've been working at a factory your whole life. You made 20 bucks an hour. You raised a family, you took care of your kids, your kids didn't go to college. Your kid or kids are blue collar, you're blue collar. You live in Texas, for example, you love watching football on the weekends, you love going to your grandkids, you know sports games, all these different things, right? These are your hobbies, you care about your family, you're religious, you go to church, you're sitting at home on a Saturday night relaxing, and you get a call.

Now this person is, even though they're, they're following up on something you requested information on, they're trying to talk to you about dying. Now, nobody, I promise you, no matter how old you are, you don't want to feel old. You don't want to feel like you're about to die. Even when you're 65, you're gonna have the same mindset that you do now.

When somebody calls you up and wants to talk about you. Dying and then you paying to pay to die.

There's some, there's some hurdles you have to overcome there, right? So we need to come to the call with a bit of tact. These people are being telemarketed to constantly, on a constant basis. We have to stand out from the horde of other people that are doing this. And to do that, we have to understand our customer and we have to be empathetic towards their day to day experience and who they are as a person. So really like, look into who your customer is, understand them as a person and come into the call with empathy, realizing like, hey, this is what they're going through and this is how I can best serve them. And if you do that, not only are you going to help people, but you're going to make a lot more money because people like to do business with people that they feel like, understand them. So understand them and they'll do business with you. And the last thing I want to touch on is actually one of the most potent, powerful sales techniques that you can possibly learn. And it's a little bit more advanced because usually you can't script it, but it's storytelling, right? Particularly when somebody gives you an objection. So this is actually something that we talked about on our morning training today at our agency. And basically.

When you get to a certain level where you have all the word tracks down and you have your script memorized, you can start to use stories and you'll collect these stories as you go. As you're, you know, going throughout the industry, you'll learn these different things and you'll have these different experiences that you can use. So an example, one my business partner uses, because it's a real story, this actually happened, you don't have to make it up, but you can, you can use other people's stories. A client told him that he needed to think about it, right? And he basically goes on the story. He, he says, yeah, I mean that makes perfect sense. No worries at all. I had this client back, back in North Carolina when I used to do this thing face to face, you know, back before the pandemic and all that stuff. They used to send insurance people out to your house. And I went out to this house and, you know, it was in the mountains in North Carolina. And I pull into the driveway and there's a guy there just alone, right? And I walk up to him, I'm like, hey, you know, I'm here about the life insurance. And he kind of gives me the cold shoulder. He's like, no, I Can't talk to you about this. I can't talk to you about this. You're gonna have to talk to my wife. So I end up talking to his wife. She's inside, and as soon as I start talking to her, she comes outside and starts crying on my shirt. And tears are streaming down my shirt, right? Notice the imagery. And, you know, I had. I was so confused. I didn't know what was going on. And so I asked this lady, like, what. What's going on? Why? Like, you know, why are you crying? She's like, well.

You know, my husband has terminal cancer, and he just got diagnosed. Now, this guy was in perfect shape. Worked out five times a week, drank a gallon of water every day, went on hikes, went on runs. Super healthy guy. Didn't work around chemicals, nothing like that. Just, you know, bad luck of the draw. Just got stuck with terminal cancer, had six months left to live. And so here. Here I am in the mountains of North Carolina, and this lady's crying on me, asking what I can do to help her, right? And it turns out I couldn't do anything because they could only afford 40 bucks a month after paying for the cancer treatment, they were going into debt. They were losing the house, they were losing the car, all these different things. And a few months earlier, funny enough, one of the people from my company had come by to the house and tried to get them coverage before he had gotten the cancer, and they told him that they had to think about it. And while this is an extreme example, I don't want this to happen to you or your family. And so I've seen these situations. It's not uncommon. I'm sure you've seen these situations. Is there any reason that we wouldn't go ahead and get this set up today and get your family protected?

Do you see how powerful that is? Guys like those stories, closed deals. That works almost every time, and it's true. And if you. If you say it from the heart, if you're not just, like, saying that to be manipulative, it works every time because you're actually looking out for the person and you're actually helping them. So that is the 11th thing. Storytelling. You guys can use that story. You can have your own story, whatever you guys want to use. But those stories, the storytelling to overcome objections is my last closing technique or sales technique of the day, and that is by far the most potent one that we went over. So, ladies and gentlemen, hope you guys got some value from this. If you did leave a. Like, if you guys want to learn more about working for our agency, where you get daily sales training like this, you don't have to pay for leads and basically we give you all the resources you need to make six figures over the phone. Put together a 30 minute training link below in the description, check it out. If not, wish you the best of luck and that's it. Bye.