How to Sell Insurance - Value vs. Price – 14 Sales Tips

What do computers, monkeys, and my 7 year old grandson all have in common?

They can all sell insurance on price alone.

A professional insurance salesperson (like you) must be able to connect with prospects and help them understand and internalize the value of the insurance you’re selling.

If you only sell insurance on price, you will eventually be replaced because:

1. There will always be another company with lower rates.
2. When people buy from you just to save money, they’ll leave just as fast.
3. A call center employee can quote more people faster and cheaper than you.
4. A website can give millions of quotes per second even faster and cheaper.

I’m not an idiot. I know that price is the primary driver of insurance sales. But I also know that selling on price alone will be the downfall of you, your agency, and the entire agency sale model.

Here are 14 tips you can implement today to sell insurance on value.  Not one of these tips takes more than a little conscious effort.

1) Talk About Claims

When shoppers come to you for a quote they’re only focused on one thing – the price.

It’s your job to make them recognize and internalize the fact that they’re making a decision about more than just how large of a check they’re going to write every month.

Explain the claims process and how your agency helps guide customers through it as smoothly as possible. Use a specific example of how your process helped a previous client have a better experience.

Find every way possible to talk about claims – it’s the best way to get people thinking outside the price box.

2) Ask Why They Bought That

When you find out what kind of car, home, motorcycle, etc. the prospect owns ask them: “What made you choose that one?”

It’s very rare that someone responds with, “It was the cheapest.” Instead, they’ll say, “It had the best crash test ratings” or “It’s is in a really great neighborhood with amazing schools” or “After all these years of working hard, I deserve a few nice things”.

An expensive insurance policy is certainly not as cool as a brand-new Harley but getting prospects to answer this question aloud will remind them that they don’t make every purchasing decision on price alone and you will activate the part of their brain that makes more value-oriented decisions.

3) Ask about the worst accident they’ve seen

What’s the worst car accident you’ve ever witnessed? Seriously… stop reading this article right now and think about it in your head…

Got it? Have you re-lived it in your mind’s eye?

Now tell me you don’t care about anything but saving 15% off your car insurance.

Of course this example is geared toward auto insurance, but you could adjust the concept for property, life, disability and just about any other type of insurance.

4) Ask About Communication Preferences

During your sales conversation, ask your prospect how they like to communicate with companies they do business with. Do they prefer to use the phone, send emails, meet face-to-face, online accounts, text messages?

Once you understand how they like to communicate, it’ll be a lot easier to frame the benefits of your agency around that. Make sure your prospect knows that you’ll be there to communicate with them in the way that fits their life.

Don’t brag about your iPhone app if the prospect doesn’t have a smartphone and don’t oversell the convenience of visiting the office if your prospect is more of an “I’ll do it online” type of person. In either case they’ll perceive that they’re paying extra for benefits they don’t value.

5) Educate Your Prospects

No matter what your prospects tell you, most of them don’t understand how insurance works. If you can explain it to them in a way that makes sense without being condescending you’re already providing an incredible amount of value!

When clients see how well you understand insurance they’ll feel more comfortable about the decisions you’re guiding them to make and they’ll feel more confident you’ll be a positive resource in the event of a claim.

Experts don’t just spit out a bunch of terminology. The mark of a real expert is the ability to explain a subject to anyone regardless of age, background, or education. Don’t lecture; ask questions and engage.

6) Explain The Discounts

When you identify discounts your prospect qualifies for, take time to explain how much money each discount saves, why they qualify, and why the carriers offer that discount.

People love discounts, and when they see how well you understand discounts they’ll trust that you’re getting them all the discounts they’re entitled to and will see the value in buying through an agent like you.

Explain to prospects that you regularly check their policy to make sure they’re getting every discount they deserve.

7) Talk About Your Experience

If you’ve been in insurance for a while, find ways to get this point across to every prospect. One way to do this is by identifying something that your prospect is very experienced in to make a comparison.

If you’re brand-new, that’s okay too. You can reference the combined experience of all your coworkers. “In our agency, we have over 30 years combined experience in insurance.”

If you’re inexperienced and so is everyone else, well… I guess you can just skip this one.

8) Explain That Having an Agent Doesn’t Raise The Price

Okay, so YOU know it’s not more expensive to have an agent but everyone else doesn’t.

In fact a lot of people assume buying through an agent is more expensive. (Of course, it doesn’t help that some rotten insurance companies have developed marketing plans around this lie)

Explain to prospects that agents are field underwriters who allow carriers to provide more accurate rates for every risk. There’s a lot more room for fraud when people get insurance through a website and that makes the honest people pay more.

A good agent who understands rating criteria and discounts can be a real asset when it comes to getting the cheapest price. Make sure your prospects know this.

9) Explain Your Licenses and Certifications

Most people have no idea how hard it is just to get licensed to sell insurance. They also have no idea how many hours of continuing education you’re required to keep up with and some of the advanced designations have taken you years to achieve!

Don’t be afraid to toot your own horn. Just find a way to work it into the conversation naturally.

10) Ask About Their Last Claim Experience

It’s probably already part of your quoting process to find out about the last insurance claim. Ask a follow-up question like, “How did your claim experience go?”

Sometimes you’ll get lucky and stumble into someone who had a bad experience and your claims handling processes might offer clear advantages.  But even if they had a wonderful experience, forcing your prospect to mentally “re-live” the claim experience will pull them further from the “only price matters” mindset.

11) Ask About the Potential Cost of Not Buying

Compare how much money someone could save by not buying your insurance policy with the potential cost of not buying it.

“If you don’t buy this life insurance policy you’ll save $25 a month… But what’s the potential cost of being diagnosed with cancer after making that decision?

“If you don’t purchase higher coverage limits you’ll save $10 a month… But what’s the potential cost of becoming disabled in a major accident after making that decision?

When you pose questions like this, make sure you let the prospect think through and answer themselves before stepping in. It’s important for them to internalize the point of the question.

12) Ask Questions and Listen

It’s hard to sell the value of your products and agency when you don’t know what’s most important to the client.

We’re inclined to believe everyone else thinks just like we do. Most salespeople mistakenly believe the product features and benefits most appealing to them will also appeal to our clients and this can lead to selling the WRONG value.

To find out what product values to focus on ask more questions. Here’s an example: “What’s the second most important thing to you about insurance? I’ll assume price is number one…”

13) Help Clients Earn More Discounts

I’m not talking about identifying new discounts or educating clients about discounts (I mentioned those both earlier). I mean actually helping them get discounts that they don’t currently qualify for.

Will an online defensive driver class save your clients some money? Email them a link to a website where they can earn it online.

Client can’t afford life insurance at the smoker rate? Connect them with a local or online program that can help them quit.

Can a home security system drive down the price of their policy? Refer them to a local security company.

BONUS TIP: try to get your clients a discount with the other service to deepen your value even more.

14) Don’t Apologize For Your Price

I get it. I know everyone wants to save money on insurance – me too. I also know most of your sales happen because of saving people money. But guess what:

Sometimes nice things cost more.

Does the Mercedes salesperson apologize because you can’t get an S-Class for the same price as a Kia Forte? Of course not, he believes it’s a better car and it’s worth the extra price.

If you don’t believe your product is better than everyone else’s and worth the price either convince yourself otherwise or don’t expect long-term success.

I’m confident that local insurance agents will survive against threats like online direct writers and call centers but it will not happen unless you can sell value.

Start selling more VALUE today or we’ll all face the consequences tomorrow!

Requote Challenge

Okay, you’ve got about 17 full work days left for the month of November to hit your sales goals.  Where do you stand right now?  (Not sure?  GO FIND OUT.)

If you don’t have a sales goal, now would be a good time to figure one out.  That’s right, I’m not going to tell you to wait until a brand new month and do a bunch of testing to figure it out.  And the reason why is because you don’t have time for that!

After November there is only ONE month left to hit your sales numbers for the year.  If you delay on figuring out your goals til then, you’re going to hurt your production and the odds of actually getting what you want.

So first, make sure you have a November sales goal and then find out where you stand on sales so far this month.

Got that together?  If you have NOT hit that number yet, then you’ve only got a few more days to make it happen.  If you’re worried about how to do this, then take today’s challenge!

For this week, I want you to do a RE-QUOTE campaign.  That means going through all the quotes that have been run over the past few months and following up.

I know it sounds tedious.  I know you’re not going to sell them all.  But guess what?  The odds are you WILL sell some of them!  That’s just part of the “numbers” game when it comes to sales.

So if you need more sales, you’ve got to find ways to make them happen.  Run an audit of past quotes, dig out old quote sheets, look back at sales records for people who said that might want a cross line quote in a few months, these are all prospects!

Don’t bury your head in the sand and hope for the phone to ring.  MAKE it ring!

Doug’s Take: You’re So Vain, You Probably Think This Post Is About You

I am so fortunate to be doing what I am doing, for SO many reasons. But one of the coolest reasons is that, given the role I fill with our agency locations, I get to see salespeople at their most vulnerable. By vulnerable I don’t mean weak and frail, I mean open and completely honest.

If you are an agent, I have a strong suspicion you have a distorted perception of many of your competitors. You think they are: smarter than you, more experienced than you, more articulate than you, have more resources than you, are more qualified than you, have better agency support… the list goes on.

When you compare this perception you have of them to what the voice inside your head tells you about yourself, it’s amazing you muster up enough courage to compete.

And, because of the role I fill, I happen to know what that voice inside your head is telling you. I know because I get to hear agents open up and share those thoughts.

·         I'm intimidated by the thought of asking my clients for referrals.

·         I’m not sure how to effectively cold call.

·         I don’t really know if my clients think I do a good job.

·         I’m not sure I really deserve the success and income I have achieved.

·         I don’t know how I will acquire the knowledge and skills to compete in the future.

·         I work “hard,” but seem to tread water, and I don’t know how to start moving again.

·         I can see the industry changing around me, but I’m not sure what to do about it.

·         Sometimes, I feel like a pretender.

Well, guess what?  That “intimidating” competitor has the same voice inside her or his head. I know because sometimes that’s who I’m talking to. Yes, you are the “intimidating” agent to many of your competitors.

During my first meeting with an agent, I ask four questions.

1.     What is going well for you right now?

2.     What is challenging for you right now?

3.     How do you define your success over the next 12 months?

4.     What can I do to help you the most?

It is trying to answer the first three questions that brings out the vulnerability I mentioned above.

Here is another cool thing about this role I fill with agents: by just having someone who is genuinely interested ask the questions and help them start talking through their answers, I can immediately see the relief on their faces and the hope and confidence start to build.

It’s the answer to the fourth question that would likely surprise most agency managers and sales leaders. When I ask what it is that I can bring to our relationship that would benefit them the most, the most consistent answer given is “continue to push me to do the right things and then hold me accountable.”

The very thing agencies fear putting on their agents the most is the same thing those very agents most desire.

By pushing an agent and holding her/him accountable for results, confidence is bound to replace the insecurity. And we all know what happens when a salesperson competes with justifiable confidence.

The Long Hot Summer

It's July 1st, and I am already hearing people make excuses for not pursuing their business objectives. I have heard things such as:

• “We can’t do anything because of vacation schedules.”
• “Everyone is in summer mode so let’s reconvene in September.”
• “No one will pay attention during the summer.”

Oh, really? I don’t know about you, but Iowa State Bank still wants my mortgage payment this summer, not to mention that HyVee & Fareway both demand cash or a credit card when I am paying for groceries.

On vacation indeed! Sure we’d all like to kick back and take it a bit easier during the summer. And some of us might even get to take off a wee bit of time to go on vacation. But putting off business development planning and initiatives until the fall or holding back from any sort of sales simply because it is summer, well, that’s plain nutty.

In these most difficult of times, the agencies that rise to the top and survive (and maybe even thrive) will be those that are serious about their growth and willing to do what they need to do to reach their goals. They acknowledge summer, sure, but that doesn’t mean they withdraw from sales and marketing activities.

Want to get ahead? Why not engage in some sales "green time" or prospecting right now while your competition might be kicking back. We're taking a look at our social-media strategy, revisiting our PR efforts and doing what we need to do to grow our business.

Into the pool everyone.

Using a Will Forces IRA into Probate – Bank Advisor’s Mistake

Mary, a widow, had contributed to her IRA for many years. It grew to over $275,000. She chose to make her contributions to a bank, whose name will not be mentioned, to make sure her IRA would be safe and not exposed to Market risk. Mary had one son, Erik, and a step daughter from her deceased husband. Her bank advisor recommended that she name her estate as beneficiary so her will would pass her IRA to Erik after her death. Sounds reasonable, but this advisor’s advice would eventually cost Erik unneeded time, expense, and risk.

When Mary passed; her IRA became part of her estate and subject to the terms of her will. Her intention was for Erik to inherit all of her assets. When her husband died eight years earlier, he left some of his estate to Mary and a big chunk to his daughter from his prior marriage. In Mary’s mind, it only seemed fair that her son received her IRA and other assets to create balance, in light of the fact, that her step-daughter had already received a sizable amount of inheritance when her husband died.

Neither Mary nor her son Erik, were aware that naming the estate instead of Erik would force her IRA into probate, along with her other assets. Probate can be expensive and during probate, anyone can file a claim for some or all of Mary’s assets, putting Erik’s inheritance at risk. You can guess the rest of the story; Erik’s step sister challenged the will and claimed that she is entitled to some of her step mother’s IRA.

This is not an unusual situation; In fact, it’s common to make this mistake! In this case, Erik’s inheritance is up for grabs.

Advisors Action Plan:

Look for IRA beneficiary documents that are structured for failure. Fix the problem and you will be the trusted advisor.

10 Questions - Please review prior to our meeting

I will be meeting with each Field Representative over the next two weeks to review our agency goals. We will discuss the process to establish your individual 2012 goals and timeline.



Here are 10 questions designed to help you get on track.

1. What goals did you accomplish in the first quarter of 2012?
2. Why are these goals significant?
3. How do they make you feel?
4. What goals did you not achieve that you had intended to?
5. What changes do you need to make to achieve them?
6. In what area(s) do you need coaching or training?
7. For the next 90 days, what further progress can you make toward your 90-day goals?
8. What are your new 90-day goals?
9. What are you resisting doing?
10. How can you use your personal strengths to accomplish three needed actions each week to achieve your 90-day goals?

The ‘Perfect’ Insurance Sales Pro

Every new or seasoned insurance professional has the image of a "perfect salesperson" in mind. The image is of someone who consistently achieves high sales and has a large base of loyal clients who liberally refer business.

The most important trait of the perfect sales professional is the ability to form genuine, close relationships with clients, relationships that result in repeat business and referrals. These sales professionals prove to be an invaluable addition to any insurance sales team.

Those who are especially good at forging client relationships tend to appear to their clients not so much as a “salesperson” but rather a sales consultant. They make it their business to learn as much as they can about a client’s business. And what they cannot learn from their research, they learn at an initial meeting by asking all the right questions about a prospect’s financial needs. They go the extra mile by spending time getting to know their clients and prospects, and it makes all the difference. The extra 30 minutes spent learning about a client or prospect carries a tremendous ROI.

One way insurance sales professionals build relationships with clients is by presenting their insurance products as a solution to a client’s problem. By presenting the insurance product that is the best available solution to a client’s individual needs, a sales professional can show his attentiveness to the client’s problem. The insurance sales professional answers all of the client’s questions and offers useful information, even if it is not directly related to the sale.

After the sale, this sales professional maintains contact with the client, offering the same kind of consulting help they did during the sale. Clients are generally loyal to such a sales professional—not because the insurance products are superior or the financial solutions are cheaper relative to the competition but because they possess excellent client-relations skills, problem-solving abilities and the willingness to spend time on a client, even if it doesn’t directly result in a sale.

Good client relationships turn into loyalty. Loyalty turns into repeat business and referrals.

Free Online Home Inventory for Homeowner Insurance

HomeZada announces a new FREE subscription for homeowners to create a home inventory securely online. Insurance companies recommend that homeowners document their possessions and keep these records current and safely stored away from the home in case of disaster. HomeZada provides a FREE integrated online and a mobile solution for a home inventory.

“HomeZada is quick and simple in creating a home inventory through a predictive process that eliminates data entry and focusing on a photo based approach with either a digital camera or iPhone or Android apps. A few key tags to the photos that are securely stored in the cloud and people have a well-documented home inventory in no time at all,” said Elizabeth Dodson, co-founder.

With the recent rise in natural disasters and extreme weather causing billions in property damage, various government agencies are educating the public on the need to have family emergency preparedness plans in place. These family plans, documents, and contacts are securely saved in HomeZada’s cloud solution where they are accessible by multiple family members anywhere via computer or mobile phone.

Most homeowners don’t know the value of their possessions; therefore they may be significantly under-insured. HomeZada provides multiple dashboards to quickly see the value of possessions by key categories or by room. People can instantly print a home inventory PDF and have a deeper discussion with their insurance company about the right amount of coverage for their contents.

The new FREE Essentials package includes many other features to manage a home including over 150 maintenance and landscaping best practice checklists. These home maintenance alerts are automatically presented by month or season in HomeZada’s news and alerts page which keeps people well informed on key maintenance tasks around the home.

In addition, the Essentials package includes the ability to save important property documents online such as insurance policies, mortgage documents, property taxes, appraisals, remodeling plans and permits. There is also a contacts directory to keep track of emergency contacts and other regular home services providers where everyone in the family can access the central online directory.

Why people buy life insurance

As you meet with new prospects and conduct client reviews over the next month, try using this basic approach to life insurance coverage. You may be surprised at what you uncover.

I am often asked how to decide on what to sell a prospective client. Believe it or not this comes from even the veteran agents. There are so many companies with so many products, we'd have to hire additional support staff just to keep up with the changes.

But who I am kidding, additional support staff would take away from our commission, right? We’ll save that argument for another blog article.

So when that person sitting in front of you, worried if you are going to force them to buy something like the last guy, asks you what you think they need, the basic question you need to ask the prospect is this: “Well, are you in protection mode or are you in giving mode?”

When they look at you funny and ask what you mean, explain that people buy life insurance for one of two reasons.

Reason one: People buy life insurance because they are looking for a way to protect the people and the things that they love. Hopefully, they love their spouse, their children and anyone else using the household income. They love them enough to provide money in case of an untimely death.

Perhaps they love their home so much that they want it paid off and protected from having to be sold. Business owners may love their shop so dearly that they want to protect it from having to be liquidated. They may also want to protect some of the key people in that business, so if they die, it won’t be disastrous to the company.

Those wealthy folks challenged with the estate tax want to protect their assets from going to Uncle Sam.

Address your prospect again. “You may be in protection mode.”

Reason two: People buy life insurance to give to the things and the people that they love. But now the kids are grown, the house is close to being paid off, the business debt is very little — the need to find fulfillment through giving sets in.

People may want to leave a legacy to their church or favorite charity. Perhaps they want to set up a trust fund for their children or grandchildren. You see, we exist in a time of abundance. People have money, but are happier if they can do something for the ones they love.

Money magazine’s survey on money and happiness found that if people make charitable contributions on a regular basis, they are happier, exude confidence and are more content than those that do not. They are in giving mode.

As you meet with new prospects and conduct client reviews over the next month, try using this basic approach to life insurance coverage. You may be surprised at what you uncover. Protection mode or giving mode: Why people buy life insurance.

How to Sell Disability Insurance

Seven Time-Tested Tips for Selling Paycheck Protection

1. Say “Paycheck Protection.” Don’t tell me what it is. Tell me what it does! Most
people cannot envision being disabled but they can understand the importance
of protecting the paycheck – their most important asset. Change your client’s
perspective by using one key phrase!

2. Sell the Need with Stats. The likelihood of being disabled during your working life
is much more common than you would think. Use statistics to emphasize the
likelihood of being disabled when meeting with clients.

3. Sell to Business Owners. Insure the Golden Goose! There are many good
candidates for DI, but business owners need the most protection. Protect business
owners’ paychecks with individual disability insurance along with a Business
Overhead Expense (BOE) policy to protect the business. Only 5 percent of business
owners have a Business Overhead Expense policy.

4. Tell the Previous and Potentially Declined, Yes! Height and weight? Abnormal
labs? Heart surgery, diabetes, sleep apnea, hepatitis and multiple medications?
The chances are great that our brokers can find a carrier for your clients with health issues. Health issues are no longer a reason not to seek DI.

5. Sell Multi-Life Cases. Sell three or more lives from the same workplace or
organization, and your clients will receive major discounts. Females can save up to
45% on their annual premiums! Why sell one case if it’s better to sell three?

6. Overcome Price Objections: Compare the Cost of DI to Home and Auto
Insurance. Use our Annual Protection Review (APR) sales script to help clients understand that disability insurance is actually more affordable than home or auto insurance.

7. Ask The Question: Do You Have Paycheck Protection? Most agents don’t sell DI
because they don’t ask the question. Start a dialogue about DI.

DI Plus Accident

12 Key Facts About Classic Car Coverage

Classic car owners are passionate about their vehicles, keeping them as showroom pieces in their homes or driving them around to catch people’s eyes. Whether kept indoors or occasionally driven, however, these vehicles need to be insured against everything from water damage to collisions.
While cheaper to insure than standard vehicles, classic cars has estimated annual premiums of up to $2 billion and is a great nice for independent agents and brokers to break into.

Here are 12 important facts about Classic Car coverage for both insureds and agents alike:

1) Coverage Is Cheap. The premiums for Classic & Collectible Car coverage are much cheaper than Standard Auto policies, with most insureds paying just 25-33 percent of what they would for a comparable policy on a daily-drive vehicle. For collectors with just a single classic car in the garage, worth in the mid-five figures, an average premium is likely to be in the $200-$400 per year range, depending on the liability requirements of the state where the insured resides.

2) Limited Use Expected. The reasons for the substantially lower rates are twofold. First and foremost is that usage of these cars is expected to be strictly limited to special occasions—they are not meant to be used for the daily commute or taking the kids to soccer practice. But in addition to usage restrictions, another factor helps keep premiums low: Insureds tend to take very good care of their cars, treating them more like a painting—or beloved family member—than a mode of transport.

3) Agreed Value Policies. Another key characteristic of collector-car coverage is that policies are Agreed Value, not Actual Cash Value. Markets that play in the space will have a range of valuations they will accept from clients based on the make and model of a car. Clients whose proposed valuations are much higher would need to have the car independently appraised.

4) Indie Agents: Find Business at Car Shows. For independent agents and brokers looking to break into the Classic Car niche, one of the best bets is to attend a local event for enthusiasts of the hobby. Ron Fiamma, vice president/director of private collections for the Private Client Group division of Chartis, estimates there are 10,000 car shows every year—from the popular “Concours d’Elegance” in Pebble Beach, Calif., “to a handful of guys getting together in a McDonald’s parking lot. People are so passionate about their cars that it’s easy for a broker to stroll around and use an icebreaker like asking how someone got started collecting. With only a limited amount of knowledge, a broker can infiltrate this market pretty easily. You don’t have to be an expert.”

5) Racing Excluded (with One Exception). Some carriers allow collector cars to hit the track in very specific and controlled circumstances—basically for a leisurely spin around the circuit. But all carriers exclude actual racing—with one big exception. Six months ago, Chartis made available a new, nonadmitted, physical-damage endorsement “as an accommodation to top clients who race,” says Fiamma.

6) Common Claims. Many classic car claims stem from incidents that occurred on the insured’s own property. “Many claims have nothing to do with collisions, but are related to storage issues—something falls in the garage or there’s flooding or rodents or a hazard from construction going on next door,” says Hagerty. Engine fires are another frequent source of insurer payouts, as well as water-damage and flying rocks when a car is being transported.

7) “Rat Rod” Submissions. Rising. One widely seen trend is an increase in insurance submissions for “rat rods,” heavily modified vehicles that harken back to the designs of 1950s hot rods. The insurance challenge: finding an accurate value. The pros: clients often fix the cars themselves.

8) Billion-Dollar Market. Just how big is the Classic & Collectible Car niche? No one is quite sure, with estimates of annual premium ranging from $500 million to $2 billion—although the majority of industry experts feel $1 billion is a pretty accurate estimate.

9) Good Investments. While an unabashed love of classic cars is what really drives collectors to spend millions or even tens of millions on the hobby, the purchases often prove to be good investments as well. Indeed, given the low returns on more traditional investment plays, some underwriters report collector cars are becoming even more popular these days as buyers view them as a way to park money in a relatively safe investment—while also getting a lot more enjoyment than what a stock or bond provides.

10) An Argument for Combining Regular, Classic Cars. It is highly recommended for high-net-worth clients to combine both classic cars and regular-use vehicles on one policy. By insuring classic cars as part of a personal-lines account that includes regular-use vehicles on the same policy, the insurer has a clearer picture of vehicle usage, resulting in broader coverage for the insured. Other advantages include the efficiency of maintaining one agent, carrier, policy and bill for all cars as well as savings, including the potential benefits to your regular-use automobiles through multi-car pricing.

11) Giant Auto Insurers Play in This Space, Too. Auto-insurance giants are also playing in the classic car space. Among them is State Farm, whose Antique policies are for vehicles at least 25 years old, and its Classic policies are for cars at least 10 years old and produced on a limited basis. As with other Classic Car programs, physical damage is on a stated-value basis and usage is restricted to exhibitions and parades, resulting in low liability premiums.

12) Repairs Can Trump Replacements. Often times, repairing a damaged classic car can cost less than replacing it. A Chartis client drove his Ferrari Enzo—one of 400 made—into a wall, deeming it a total loss. But the client refused payment, requesting he wanted the car back. Chartis paid to send the car to the Ferrari factory in Italy for repairs, and flew the client to Italy twice to oversee the work and test the repaired vehicle on Ferrari’s track. Writing a total-loss check would have cost Chartis two-thirds as much.

Let’s Meet: How to Schedule an Appointment.

Personally, I don’t want to be invited to have a beverage, quick chat or lunch. Recently, I received a have-a-quick-chat email and didn’t respond. Don’t misunderstand me: I’m happy to follow up if I’m informed why I might be interested in such an invitation in either the subject line or the first few lines of an email invitation.

The email I received went on about what a certain insurance policy did and how it worked, and I could not be bothered to read further. If the writer had explained in the first line that he wanted me to refer the insurance company to our clients or offer this insurance policy, I might have responded.

This email came back to mind during a call with one of our agents. Our agent explained that his customer service representative (CSR) was not being very successful when it came to calling prospects for an appointment. I asked the agent if his prospect knew why the CSR was calling.

Our agent said, “My CSR was calling to book a follow-up meeting to an appointment that had already occurred.” The agent went on to say that some of his clients/prospects had asked that he, rather than his CSR, call to schedule the appointment. (I said that I would be out of business if I made every call to schedule client and prospect appointments.) I explained that I thought that this was more about the process (client engagement) than the person making the call.

I told our agent he needed to do a proper needs analysis with the client or prospect that included asking him for the three biggest improvements he wanted to make and his three biggest roadblocks to success. Then, he needed to make his insurance policy the solution to the client’s or prospect’s problems. When the client engagement process is done properly it makes the appointments a lot easier to secure.

I told our agent to send out an email in advance of having the CSR call for an appointment. It could go something like this example, which we use in our business:

Dear Prospect,

I hope this email finds you well. I am writing in follow up to our last appointment when we discussed your insurance coverage and protecting your family/business.

Ninety days have passed since our last conversation and I’m wondering how you’re progressing. I’m going to take the liberty to have my customer service representative call you to schedule a convenient time for us to have a conversation.

Kind regards,

Doug Myrick

With a letter such as this, you give your client or prospect a clear understanding as to why you want to have a conversation and you are treating him with respect.

How to Network, Part 1

“Go forth and network” may be one of the most hackneyed pieces of advice you can hear in the business world. Whatever it is you seek—a prospect, a client, a promotion, a new career—networking is usually offered as the answer. But according to Vickie Milazzo, successful businesswoman and author of “Wicked Success Is Inside Every Woman,” many people are not networking the right way.

“I see many people investing a lot of time and energy into meeting new people and making those people like them,” explained Milazzo. “The problem is, they’re making connections with the wrong people or they’re approaching the right people the wrong way…or both!”

Milazzo began her professional life as a nurse and later started a company that consults with attorneys on medically related cases. She built up her company by cultivating relationships with a select group of people who could help her achieve success, in her case, attorneys.

“To see good results, you need to know what type of person can help you and where you can meet these individuals,” she said. “You also need to build meaningful relationships once you do meet the right people. It’s all about being smart and being selective.”

Here are five tips from Milazzo on how to network most effectively:

1. Don’t just socialize—select. Traditional networking holds that every new person you meet is a networking contact. But unless you and your new friend have professional common ground, your efforts will be wasted.
2. Make sure your group makes sense. Understand that even among professionals, not all networking contacts will be beneficial. You must build a personalized network of colleagues, clients, consultants, vendors and acquaintances you can call on for advice, information or referrals. “It’s worth it to research the makeup of a group before you join or the guest list of an event before you RSVP,” said Milazzo.
3. Aim higher. It may be comfortable to spend time with people who share your interests, etc., but when it comes to networking you need to get to the people who can help you, and they may not be at your level or share your interests. According to Milazzo, “If you impress someone who is more successful than you are, they’ll have a lot more influence than someone whose position is equivalent with yours.”
4. Know when to cut ties. Don’t waste time mining a dead prospect. No matter how selective you were on the front end, don’t make the mistake of spending time with a group if you aren’t seeing the results you desire.
5. Target your networking efforts. If you cast a wide net, you can catch many potential contacts, but it’s difficult to build a significant relationship with any one of them. According to Milazzo, if you zero in on one or two, you can build stronger, more meaningful relationships. “You’ll get to know their wants and needs and they’ll have a better understanding of yours.”