As we started down the path of building insurance scripts for coverages we had to stop and think – WOW there are a ton of coverages that every agent has to understand, learn how to communicate and bind.

It seems easy when you have been in the industry for so long, but for a new insurance team member we need to provide them resources and tools on not just what the coverage is but also how it can help our clients.

We add even a bit more complexity as every carrier has its slant on how the coverage works! However, at Agency Performance Partners we believe one thing – we can do hard things!

While mastering coverage can be hard it’s also incredibly important! When a client binds insurance coverage with us there is an implicit trust that we listen and build a policy that works for them. We do this by listening and educating.

When we struggle to communicate coverages and share their value the client misses out on important coverages. Agents must take their role seriously. It’s our job to Look, Educate, and Encourage clients to have the coverages we recommend. In a hard market, many agents struggle to ask clients to pay more – however, we disagree with this position.

Instead, we believe you need to educate, despite the rate, what people need on the worst days of their lives. To take it one step further, we believe agents need to passionately make recommendations to encourage clients to increase coverage.

Too many agents checklist the ask rather than passionately educate.

In this blog we will review the following concepts:

The need for agency coverage standards
How to look at a client’s profile and know what to recommend
The ideal script to explain any coverage
- How to introduce and engage the client
- How to recommend the coverage
- Expect a no and work to review the value
How to overcome an objection
Keys to communicating coverage clearly
Work through any limiting beliefs on coverage

Why Your Agency Needs Insurance Coverage Standards

Brene Brown says it best – “Clarity is Kind”.

When your agency identifies clearly what is the baseline policy you will write or rewrite it empowers your team to be impressive.

Many agents feel for the clients and instead of standing strong to be the trusted advisor they can often acquiesce to a client’s pricing demands. Agency Standards help your agency make clear recommendations to clients. It also assists your team to hold strong on recommending coverage standards.

So what goes into insurance coverage standards? We have a few recommendations:

Personal Lines

Rate Increase $
Rate Increase %
Auto Liability Minimum
Auto Deductible
Rental Car Reimbursement
Towing
Repair/Replace
MedPay/PIP
Glass
Home Liability
Water Sewer Back-Up

Commercial Lines

Rate Increase $
Rate Increase %
EPLI
Cyber

Re-Marketing Standards

Open Claims?
Minimum Premium
Monoline
Do you want to keep them as a customer? Define what this looks like.
Pets
Property Type
Home Activities (daycare, bike ramp, diving board)
Roof Age
Electrical
Plumbing

Now, many agencies use this as a starting point and keep adding! When you have any agency standard please remember these are the minimum coverages that you would write – we always recommend higher.

Once you define your agency standards the next step is to roll them out to your team and explain why the agency wants to provide the right coverages for their clients. We need as an industry to stop complying with the rate game.

Instead, we need to advise and be there on the hardest days of our client’s lives. Your team may need scripts (hey that’s why you’re on this blog!) to help educate and encourage your client’s success.

Empower your team with the standards they need to have the coverage conversation!

Preparing to Explain Insurance Coverage

The first step in how to explain any insurance coverage is to have a plan! At APP we love the LEE philosophy:

Look
Educate
Encourage

Look at the Client Account

For new business or existing clients your first step is to look at the client. Remember, they are a person, not a policy. When you look and listen to your client you can see a lot of opportunity. Where many agents fail is when they look at their clients like a task or transaction. We need to do better than that!

For many insurance agents, their superpower is their ability to know their clients. When you know your audience it makes it easy to make recommendations. You can find the little things about their life or business that can make a big difference. Your next step is to review what they currently have. This begins by knowing the policy and the coverages for that carrier.

It’s amazing what happens when you combine the coverage standards with taking a moment to review the policy. Lightbulbs and recommendations are starting to come together so we can get to the next step in education.

Educate the Client

This is where the scripts we will outline just a bit later in this blog will come in handy! However, you need to take the time to bring the coverage to your client’s attention. Remember being a great service professional means you have to have the heart of a teacher!

The best teachers take the time to listen and explain to clients what they need not just want.

When you educate a client so many great things occur:

You protect the agency from E&O claims
The client has learned something new
We empower our client with knowledge so they can make the best decision for their policy
We get to practice the more we do something the better we do
We plant a seed for the future

Education is the key to coverage success!

Encourage The Client

Many agents get comfortable with explaining coverages but they sometimes fail to take the next step which is to encourage the client to move forward with the coverage. When you get an objection, too many agents just say okay and document the file. To get to the next level and protect the client we need to stop and ask the client to rethink their decisions.

One of the outstanding features in our How to Explain & Sell Coverage course is we not only have coverage explanation sheets for over 60 coverages but we also have how to overcome common objections. (YES WE DO!) So when a client says, “I don’t want to pay more for my insurance” your team will know exactly how to encourage them to rethink this decision.

Now, we aren’t talking about pushy sales. We are talking about encouragement! Encouragement is helping people see through limiting beliefs of challenges. When we encourage our clients we get the benefit of helping them take a second review of their decision. At the very least our clients know we are passionate about protecting them and this coverage!

Ideal Insurance Coverage Recommendation Script

Our hope is by now you can understand the need to move from just focusing on price but really driving the coverage conversation. Not everyone will say yes however, we can educate every single client with the right plan.

The better the script the more yes’s you will get! When you deliver the information with kindness and confidence your team will start to convert more recommendations into endorsements.

We have a few scripts that we recommend based on the different interactions you may have with your client.

Start Of A Client Call

This is my all-time favorite. It works so well for two main reasons:

You get the client permission upfront when you speak with them
You remember to do it!
It can become an easy routine after a few weeks

“While I have you on the phone, if I find any coverage weaknesses or missing discounts may I bring them to your attention?”

Yes! To this!

We do add in the discount nugget to pique the client’s attention. In many instances, you can look to cross-sell at the same time.

Our recommendation is to make this a habit after you start a conversation with a client. Just like you answer the phone the same way each time, you can insert this after you update contact information.

Just think, if you did this on every single phone call – what opportunity would become available?

New Business Opportunity Insurance Script

New business is a fresh start. It’s an opportunity to share where people have coverage weaknesses. It’s also an opportunity to capitalize on updates that the incumbent agent may not be aware of. However, some buyers come into the sales process looking to save money. Who wouldn’t want to save money right?

Savings and education are two different things. When you save someone money you can make some of that back up by writing the best policy the client can get. On new business we have the following script that we love to encourage increasing coverage:

“While we are reviewing and quoting your insurance, if I find any coverage weaknesses or missing discounts may I bring them to your attention?”

Kinda similar right? We love a good routine and pattern here at APP.

Renewal Review Insurance Script

Renewal reviews may be the hardest thing to launch but the best thing for your team, agency, and client. It solves all major challenges however, it is an uphill battle to get started. Once you get the renewal mojo down you need to make the call not about price but about updates and coverage.

Lots, and lots of coverage. Let’s be honest $10,000 water sewer backup is not the same $10,000 of 5 years ago. Clients need to know this.

So when rates are on the rise how can we still encourage coverage? Here is our script:

“While we are reviewing your insurance, I want to make sure we have no regrets in the event you have a claim. I’m going to make some suggestions along the way of both discounts and coverages you may want to increase, so on one of the worst days of your life when you need to use the policy it has what you need.”

While this script has a few more words in it – it gets the point across. You care, and you want to make sure this policy is done right, not fast, and not cheap.

Insurance Script on How to Overcome an Insurance Coverage Objection

For many insurance agents asking and getting the client’s answer is where we stop. We ask, we document, and we move on. I’m going to ask YOU to hit YOUR potential! Really encourage the client to think about the important coverages they need. What this looks like is another all-star APP acronym:

Confirm
Engage
Neglect
Teach

Better known as our CENT principle. This works on new business, cross-sales, coverage increases, and more. It’s the ideal way to ensure your client takes a re-think to your recommendation. All too often clients are quick to say no – it’s an instinct not a rational response.

This will help you get them to engage in a coverage conversation. Here is how CENT works as an insurance script to overcome the I’m not an interested objection.

“I’m Not Interested Right Now.”

Confirm: I understand completely
- I understand. Completely.

Engage: You’re on the same team
- I’m sure you weren’t thinking about moving your policy today.
Neglect: What would happen if we neglected this opportunity?
- However, I’d hate to see you spend more money and time on your insurance than you have to.
Teach – The best teachers ask questions
- Looking at your account, I think I can save you a few hundred dollars and some valuable time by only getting 5 pieces of information. Why don’t you let me take a look?

Here is the awesome news. Our How to Explain and Sell Coverage course has the top objections for every coverage and how to overcome them built into each document!

How To Communicate the Value of Coverage Clearly

Communication is key, and we don’t always communicate coverage clearly. We talk in circles or use insurance jargon people don’t understand.

Remember when you are confused you lose so we need to stop and speak like we would to our best friend to get buy-in on key coverages.

Because of this in our coverage documents, we always outline the following:

2 Sentences and a Question: Make it a Conversation

I have heard way too many agents puke up coverage. They talk and talk and talk. They are talking AT the client not TOO the client. To stop this you need to break everything down into 2 sentences and a question.

Umbrella coverage sits on top of your other insurance. It’s your emergency plan. Have you heard about this policy before?

You want to connect and engage with the client not puke coverage on them

Nana Principle

Imagine your sweet dear grandma. If you used words like comprehensive would she understand? No! You need to break down insurance as if you were speaking to your nana. Nice, slow, stories and explanations. Not complicated insurance terms.

Also, you probably wouldn’t use scare tactics that would keep Nana up at night you would use stories to illustrate not terrify!

Be Concise

When I’m nervous I talk too much. I know this and it’s a terrible habit. One I would love to break. I become disorganized and jumbled in my head and then talk in circles. This means the client has no actual idea what I’m saying.

Sometimes we may need to end a call and do our research or place a client on a brief hold to be able to organize our thoughts. Remember when you confuse you lose! Also, the coverage sheets we have in our How to Explain & Sell Coverage will help you speak clearly to your clients.

Tell A Story to Illustrate the Coverage

While many people may not understand liability limits, lawsuits, or complex insurance lingo almost everyone loves a good story! Stories help you illustrate times the coverage comes in need.

When you tell a story you invite the client into an experience, they can literally see how the coverage will help them. In our How to Explain & Sell Coverage course we have claims examples to help empower everyone from new to experienced agents on claims examples that can help your client understand coverage.

Always Talk About Pricing In Monthly Amounts

This is a secret trick I learned a while ago – when you are saving people money you talk about it in a full amount. When you are asking them to spend more the increase is in a monthly amount. It just makes the investment seem more reasonable.

You will be amazed at how many more yeses you get when you share how little of a monthly investment most coverage improvements are!

When Someone Is Not Interested – Ask Questions

All too often when an agent faces adversity and a client is not interested we just stop and don’t explore the why or encourage a client to rethink their initial decision.

We have to move beyond just asking and documenting to really encourage a client to move forward. I learned a long time ago that when someone says no – you want to understand why they don’t want to move forward. You can say something like:

I’m surprised to hear that most of my clients add on this coverage may I ask why you aren’t interested?

What I have found is this opens up a dialog with your client and ensures they clearly know what they are declining.

Limiting Beliefs on Coverage

In my experience agents can often have limiting beliefs that stop them from being able to really educate a client with or without an insurance script.

These beliefs include:

No one has time to discuss coverage: I always ask, does the client have a stopwatch on you or do you feel overwhelmed so asking seems like a luxury?
No one has money for more insurance: If you can’t afford the coverage you can’t afford the claim. We need to encourage people to prioritize protection.
No one cares about insurance: This may be true – until they have a claim. We need to care for them so when they need it they care for us

We need to make coverage simple, easy, and passionate so the client understands what they actually need.

Conclusion

Insurance coverage may not be sexy or fun but it is important. As insurance professionals, we all need to invest in learning how to educate our clients to encourage them to move forward with the coverage they need. That all starts with us having confidence and a plan on how to review vital coverage information.

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Insurance Script: How to Explain Any Coverage