Conquering Sales Calls: Innovative Strategies for Insurance Agents to Tackle and Prevent Customer Objections"

Salespeople in all industries generally and insurance agencies especially know that a sales call is the foundation of their growth and success. They require a host of soft skills, a great deal of patience and politeness, and determination to drive the sale home. However, even the most seasoned of salespeople have all heard the dreaded following objections:

“No.” “No, thank you.” “I’m not interested.” “Right now is not the right time.” “Try back in a few weeks.”

Objections. We have all heard them. They are the bane of every salesperson’s existence and can demotivate even the most seasoned professionals.

Guess what? Customers hate saying “no” too. It feels unkind and rude to tell someone no when they seem to have gone out of their way to reach out to them. Even worse if that salesperson seems to have gone out of their way to tailor or product or service to customer.

When my manager asked me to develop a solution to help insurance agents overcome objections during sales conversations, I was excited to tackle what seemed to be the impossible. I scoured the internet looking for evidence-based solutions to this conundrum. At first the results seemed bleak, all that turned up was salespeople giving their own unique solutions that had never been tested in the field thus making them unlikely to help an entire insurance organization transform their sales conversation strategy.

But then I stumbled upon a solution that made such intuitive sense it struck me that it was not more widely known or harnessed: rather than try to overcome an objection, prevent them from ever occurring in the first place.

This strategy is all about listening closely to the customer and pick up on hints that they are becoming disinterested in the product or service you are describing to them. If there are pauses or silences during the conversation, if they mutter things that express unsurety (e.g., “ummm, uhhh, sigh, etc.), or if they start to actually say they are unsure of what is being offered to them or how it would benefit them, the customer is hinting that they are going to say the dreaded “no”.

So what should you do when a customer is using one of three conversational tactics described above to object your sale? Ask them about their unique needs and concerns in regards to your product or service space. You can inquire if they are worried about the price, unsure about switching to a different service provider, or other key aspects that tend to be common concerns in your sales area. The more you glean from them what their needs are, the more you can personalize what you are offering to their unique needs. We all know personalization goes a long way is securing a successful sale, so listening closely and tailoring what you offer to your customer will make it way more likely to keep those objections at bay and result in you (and your manager) to cheer and say “Yay!”.

Erin Spottswood is an associate of Kountless Business Solutions https://www.kbsolutions.online/ where innovative strategies and advanced data analytics combine to unlock your business's full potential.

Want to connect with me directly to chat about how I applied this technique at a major insurance carrier? Contact me via email at erin.l.spottswood@gmail.com

Want to learn more about the science behind this technique? Read this interesting research article that goes into more detail here https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0261927X231185520