The Perfect Sales Pitch For Agents to Close More Deals

Instead of giving our readers a regurgitated generic sales pitch that can be easily found on Google and I'm sure you know the ones we're talking about. The Premier Media Solutions Team is going to give you the real deal sales pitch that will make the difference between average agents barely making ends meet and 6 -7 figure agents.

1. The Open & Intro

The first two seconds are the most important part of a phone call. So as the agent you have to make sure you nail it right on the head each and every time. As an agent you have to remember that the prospect on the other end of the line does not know you at all. So in order for them to be engaged with you, you have to start the call off with high energy. Obviously you don't want to sound fake or insincere but you want to sound excited and as if you already know the customer. Prospects respond positively to people they can relate to and that they like. Many agents try to over complicate the opening & intro then ultimately end up messing it up. The purpose of your opening and intro is to introduce yourself and the reason for contacting the prospect. The best thing you can do in sales is K.I.S.S. it.

Keep

It

Simple

Stupid.

K.I.S.S.

A simple opening and intro can go like this:

Hey [prospect name] , this is [agent name] reaching out to you about affordable [industry vertical] insurance programs in [prospect state]...

The key is your energy and tonality. I'm sure you've heard your spouse or significant other say "it's not about what you said but HOW you said it, that got me upset".. The same rule of thumb goes when selling insurance and connecting with consumers over the phone.

2. Rapport Building

For the agents new to sales who may not know; rapport building is the cultivation of a relationship with someone by asking questions or making statements that establishes trust and mutual likeness. This is the number one problem that agents have and they don’t even know it. If you do not do this part of the sales process in the beginning, it is almost guaranteed that you will not close the deal. And the reason why is because the customer does not trust you. It is true that people buy from other people they like, but it is PROVEN that people are more likely to buy from people they TRUST. I can like your personality all day long but if something in the conversation felt off to me as the prospect, I’m not buying because I don’t trust something. 99% of objections / complaints that are brought up towards the end of the call can be avoided by simply building strong rapport starting from the beginning of the call and continuously doing it throughout the call as you find out more about the prospect.

Rapport Building Questions:

Now, did you grow up in [prospect state]?

How long have you lived [prospect state]?

Is retirement all that it's cracked up to be?

What did you retire from?

I see on the quote request, you have a [prospect vehicle], that must be a sweet ride. How long have you had it?..

Remember to be genuine. We all know when someone sounds like they simply want something from us and are pretending to care about the conversation. Don’t be that agent. Also, rapport building doesn’t stop at the beginning of the call. It is a tactic that is used all throughout the call starting from the beginning.

3. Qualifying

Agents often think that they are the only one’s qualifying somebody on a sales call… This is the farthest thing from the truth. Your prospect has been qualifying you since the moment they answered the phone. They are subconsciously making the decision as to whether or not they want to work with you. So when you start qualifying it is important to include your prospect, meaning you want to be interactive not interrogating. When asking your prospect questions you want it to be in a conversational manner. Asking 7 questions back to back and interrupting your prospect while they are speaking is the fastest way to lose a sale. As an agent you should ask open-ended questions that will make the prospect go into more detail as they explain their answers to you. This is great because you want your prospect speaking the majority of the time while you ask the majority of the questions. Don’t let that go over your head… Another general rule of thumb in sales is whoever is asking the questions controls the conversation. So when the prospect answers your open-ended questions, they will pretty much tell you exactly how to sell them, this is a proven fact. Don’t over complicate it. Now you can’t go around asking irrelevant questions that won’t push you towards assuming the close. You have to ask the RIGHT questions. Oftentimes agents will ask questions they think are relevant because it's industry related questions or “sales questions” that they got from their sales guru… An example of bad questions health insurance agents often ask are:

“How much could you afford for a health policy?”..

“How’s your day going?”...

“Do you know anyone that could benefit from our affordable health programs?”..

“Why are you looking for health insurance?”...

“What policy do you currently have?”

Those are all TERRIBLE questions to ask and clear signs of an inexperienced and/or underperforming sales agent.

The reasons why these are terrible questions to ask is because they lack the conversational aspect, they know you don’t really care about how their day is going so why bs it? The questions lack sincerity, you are not getting enough or even the right information out of them when they answer the questions, the way these questions are phrased gives the agent a higher possibility of the prospect putting up a wall and thus the prospect will trust the agent less as the conversation goes on.

The right way to phrase these questions would be:

Do you currently have a health insurance policy?...

[If yes] Which company do you have it through?

Nice that’s a great company, how much are you currently paying with [current insurance company name]?

And is that for an individual or family plan?

Typically when you ask the first question, the prospect will automatically answer follow up questions 1 and 3

When asking how much they are currently paying for it, you can get an idea of how much they can afford without directly asking them.. Because before directly asking them how much they can currently afford, you want to find out WHY they are inquiring on new policy options. Most of the time, it has nothing to do with wanting a cheaper monthly policy but rather a better policy for their situation. Sometimes, the prospect will outright tell you why they're looking into a new policy but in the event they don’t, you will want to ask why in the right way.

Do you NEED your new policy to do or cover something that your current policy with [insurance company] doesn’t?

You really don’t want to move away from this question until it's fully answered because this is the whole reason why the customer is looking for a new policy in the first place.

WHO do you know that could use a new health insurance policy?

This is the proper way to ask for a referral. As the agent, you don’t want to ask if they know someone, you want to ASSUME they already know someone [because they do, everyone always knows someone else].

Questions that are phrased in the manner above promote conversation, easy transitions, no bs, and these questions will make the prospect automatically give more information than asked which is ideal because it shows that the customer has their wall down, is more receptive and trusting of you.

4. Presentation

Now that you have all of the information about the customer you need in order to offer them the right policy it's time to transition into the presentation. In the sales process, agents typically excel at the presentation. Explaining features and benefits along with incorporating the customer’s why are the simple ingredients for creating a presentation. A presentation can vary depending upon the customer’s why, it could be because their current policy doesn’t have maternity coverage, prescription coverage, substance abuse coverage or their deductible is too high. When incorporating the customer’s why in your presentation, make sure that you press pain on it so the customer sees that the policy you recommend is the only solution to their problem.

5. Trial Close

Sales gurus and inexperienced / underperforming agents think that a trial close is asking if there are any questions the customer has, or if there is any reason why the customer wouldn’t put the policy into effect today… Again these are horrible questions to ask because the agent is opening themselves up to objections and/or complaints that the prospect was most likely not even thinking about before you asked. The proper way to trial close is to get the customer to positively agree with you at least 3 times before assuming the close.

6. Assume The Close

This is the easiest part of them all, which is closing the deal. As an agent, you want to assume the customer is ready to pull the trigger and put the policy into effect. The way you want to do this is by starting to take the “customer’s order”. For example, “Great, the address I have on file to mail your policy to is, 123 main street, New York, New York 10001 is that correct?”... and continue on in that fashion to get the rest of the information needed from the prospect.

These are the tactics that you want to use when creating the perfect sales pitch for insurance agents to close more deals. Some things you want to keep in mind when selling over the phone is to always smile, keep a mirror on your desk to see your facial expressions, and have a notepad and pen to take notes while speaking to your customer. We hope this helped and that you close more deals! If you want to make life easier for your agents and take prospecting out of the equation so they can focus on closing, fill out our contact form for more information about our inbound calls or schedule a meeting below. We frequently have promos running for agencies that need more calls and bigger pipelines.