For many P&C insurance agencies life insurance is something you may bump into from time to time when someone asks you to deliver a quote.
But for most, mainly P&C agents, they leave a lot of money on the table by not having the intention or the right process to include life insurance into the new business or renewal review strategies. In this blog we will help outline the problem, determine how to have an intentional process that includes life insurance and provide some talking points for you to share with your team.
Why Is Life Insurance An After Thought For P&C Agents?
Life insurance is the perfect additional policy for any P&C insurance client. There are so many upsides that we must miss because it’s too good to be true!
- There is incredibly limited service work
- While Personal Lines and Small Commercial can be transient in nature, not many people cancel their life insurance. So you have a client for life!
- It’s the one policy we are all guaranteed to use if we keep it our entire life
- Many people simply do not have enough life insurance, and the thought of leaving their family in financial peril keeps them up at night
Seems like the perfect dessert to the main meal or your P&C policies, right? Well not exactly, because all together too many agencies neglect to insert life insurance into the mix. Here is the common feedback we receive on why agents miss the mark on including life insurance:
- The pace of the quoting and transaction is very different than a P&C policy
- Some Account Managers and agents aren’t licensed in life so they feel uncomfortable talking about it to tee up to a specialist.
- Many agents do not carry a life insurance policy that has enough coverage and it’s very difficult to sell something you do not personally believe in
- Talking about death can be uncomfortable and so we often avoid topics that make us cringe
- There are a variety of “interesting” health questions that need to be asked so the awkwardness can increase
Our message to agents is this – the juice is worth the squeeze. Life insurance is very profitable for agencies and as members of a team we have to push aside the challenges and focus on how we can increase our life insurance sales.
How to Boost Life Insurance Opportunities at Your Agency
There are two easy and simple ways we like to increase the life insurance opportunities at mainly P&C insurance operations.
Conducting Renewal Reviews
If your agency is not conducting renewal reviews, what are you waiting for? By proactively reviewing the accounts annually you can boost retention, find opportunity (such as life insurance) and limit remarketing. By conducting renewal reviews you are actually treating your current customer like your next opportunity. Insurance renewal reviews are a great time to simply ask the question, “Where is your life insurance so we can note that on your account?”
Opportunities in Personal Lines Renewal Reviews
For personal lines account managers and agents there is a strong opportunity at renewal review to make sure of the following:
- They have life insurance
- They have enough life insurance
- They have life insurance separate from their employer (in case they lose their job or change jobs then due to health issues they may not qualify for life insurance).
Asking these questions sparks the conversation for the account manager to either move forward and help get them a quote or pass the opportunity on to someone on the team. For those agents who are not licensed in life insurance you can still ask the questions and warm up the opportunity. Practice makes perfect, and don’t worry about the client asking a slew of detailed life insurance questions you aren’t prepared to answer. If that happens you just need to pass the opportunity to the specialist.
If your agency needs scripts on cross selling life insurance and other products please visit our online store for additional scripts.
Opportunities in Commercial Lines Renewal Reviews
It can be stated that perhaps commercial lines has the greatest low hanging fruit for selling life insurance. Many business owners have assets and understand the importance of protecting them and their family. In addition, many business owners are not aware of the business implications of a passing. Things like buy sell insurance, key man insurance and even the opportunity to provide a low cost group life insurance policy to their team may not be common knowledge to them.
As you review in detail accounts and go over everything from payroll to sprinklers, we must add in the intention of discussing life insurance for the business owner, their family and any business partners.
Have you been struggling to get your team to be proactive and take on these account rounding opportunities? Review our AppX Retention program for more information:
New Business Opportunities
As we welcome new clients to our agency we need to also make sure they understand that you also can provide them life insurance. A great deal of your clients may never have been educated that you sell life insurance. At the point of sale you statistically have the highest likelihood of success so let’s make sure we add it in!
Our AppX Sales program encourages new business agents to shoot for 4& Score. This means for every new client we must educate them on 4 line of coverage we recommend. By having a goal for recommendations we start including life insurance much faster.
If you would like your team to focus on recommending 4 policies at the time of sales take a moment and review our AppX Sales Program:
Who Should Be Focused on Life Insurance at a Primarily P&C Insurance Agency?
The bottom line is that everyone should. In a sales culture everyone should be proactively looking for more opportunity to best protect our clients. While there may be a specialist who understands the policies and who binds coverage every single person can have the intention to find opportunity. Simply put, we can all educate our clients and make sure they are best protected.
For agencies that have highly competitive producers, set a life insurance referral goal. Additionally, agents can work together to help scratch each other’s back when it comes to inter-departmental referrals.
The Ideal Script For Approaching Life Insurance
You may be thinking “This all sounds great but what do I say? I’ve never approached life insurance before and well the fear of the unknown makes me resist jumping in.” Don’t worry while do have our lengthy scripts in our online store we will not leave you hanging!
At AGENCY NAME, we like to make sure we are doing the best job for your and your family. This includes making sure we have the best information about all of your insurance. May I ask, where do you have your life insurance so we can note this for your file?… SILENCE!
- I don’t have any: Thank you for letting us know. Life insurance can seem overwhelming but it can be often be much simpler and way less expensive than people think. I would like to set you up with our life insurance agent to discuss some options for you that may make sense for your family and budget. What’s the best way for them to contact you?
- I have it through work: Excellent, I’ll note that in your file. One quick note, did you know that if you ever change jobs your life insurance does not come with you? In the event your new employer didn’t offer it and you had a health condition you may not qualify. We always recommend carrying a personal policy as well just in case. I recommend we review your options and I can get a preliminary quote done for you today.
- I have a separate policy with X: That’s great news. Some of our home and auto companies also add in a discount when combining in a small life insurance policy. You can never have too much life insurance and it can reduce your premiums. I’ll go ahead and look in to that option as I’m reviewing your quotes.
Conclusion
Life insurance may be awkward to quote and discuss but a client of yours not having it is really the worst case situation. In insurance we need to break out of our comfort zone and make sure that we face the challenging conversation with clients so we can best protect them. The only way to become more comfortable with inserting life insurance into your process is to do it and practice. Let’s make this year a banner year for new life insurance opportunities.
