Being in the insurance industry is an opportunity to serve a lot of people. However, as the industry keeps evolving, so do the challenges that insurance agents keep facing daily. It’s important to be conscious of these challenges so that you can tackle them objectively. This will also help you to come up with a comprehensive strategy that will guide you as you tackle them.
This article talks about the 7 challenges that you’re likely to face in your career as an insurance agent and what you can do to fix them.
1. Lead Generation
Insurance sales come with lead generation challenges. For example, you might find it difficult to convince prospects that what you’re offering is a necessity. This is because a large number of people don’t plan for the unexpected. Therefore, it becomes difficult to convince them to buy insurance products.
Solution
One way to generate leads is by identifying a niche market. A good example of a niche market is newlyweds. How do you identify them? By networking with wedding planners, bridal shops, floral shops, and other people in the wedding industry.
Another way to generate leads is by looking for ready referrals. Ready referrals do not necessarily have to be individuals. It could also be networking organizations, such as the Association of Kenya Insurers (AKI) and The Association of Kenya Professional Insurance Agents (AKPIA).
The third way to generate leads is by leveraging technology to get leads in less time. For example, if you have a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, you can identify old and closed prospects that you forgot about. You can get in touch with them to find out if they’re now ready to buy.
2. You Focus Too Much on Product Knowledge and Not Enough on Offering Solutions.
We all understand that the majority of Kenyans are facing many short-term and long-term financial challenges, from making ends meet, to paying for their children’s school fees. Therefore, they don’t make insurance policies a priority. However, a lot of insurance agents don’t leverage on this to sell the value of insurance products to customers.
Solution
You should deviate from the traditional way of selling the benefits of insurance products to customers, and focus on selling how valuable these insurance products are to their financial wellness. For example, if a customer wants to buy third party insurance because it’s cheaper, explain to them how it would be costly for them in the long run in case they were responsible for an accident, where they’d be responsible for paying for repairs from their own pocket.
3. Lack of Commitment from Prospects
You are always sending out quotes and following up on your leads every day. However, the results of your efforts don’t show when you evaluate your sales’ performance. It’s not unusual to lose some contacts along the way. It’s just that you’re really coming up short and need to do better to meet your sales and financial goals. The problem here is that you might be wasting your efforts on dead leads.
Solution
Redirect your efforts to the customers who are promising. These customers will show interest in what you’re selling by asking for solutions during the sales process. You want more of these customers and less of those who ask you to contact them at a later date but when you contact them they are still not ready to commit. How do you identify promising customers? By asking more questions that can help qualify them.
4. Your Listening Skills are Worse than Your Talking Skills
Your product knowledge is so vast that when you meet a client, the product is all you talk about. You want to come off to your prospects as knowledgeable so you can prove to them that you’re qualified in what you’re selling.
However, it’s important to note that customers buy insurance policies for personal reasons, not because of the reasons you or the insurance provider is selling. Also, keep in mind that your sales pitch is probably similar to what the prospect has already heard from your competitors, so the prospect is likely to quickly lose interest.
Solution
Avoid filling your sales pitch with unnecessary information and go straight to the solutions. You can do this by focusing on learning more about their needs instead. How? By asking your prospects questions. This will ensure that every response you give provides an answer for their needs. It will show that you’re actually offering solutions to their needs.
5. You Aren’t Prospecting Enough
An insurance agent’s day is always full. It’s full of meetings with existing clients and insurers. It’s also full of claims follow-ups, paperwork, and so on. The problem is that you can focus so much on doing these tasks until you don’t make time to prospect. If you don’t look for new leads, your business is likely to fail.
Solution
Make prospecting a priority. Ensure that you always schedule time for prospecting every day. This will help you focus.
6. You Avoid Having the Budget Discussion with Your Clients.
You don’t know your prospect’s budget, if they can afford what you’re selling to them, or if they need a tailored solution that suits their finances. The problem is that you’re avoiding or putting off asking them right out for the fear of losing their interest.
Solution
While a lot of people avoid talking about money, it’s still crucial to talk about your prospect’s budget with them. This will help you understand your prospect’s needs more so you can focus on solving their problem with a fitting solution. It would also save you a lot of time that could be wasted selling on assumptions.
7. You Aren’t Leveraging Technology
As previously discussed, you’re probably focusing your efforts on dead leads. The problem here could be that you aren’t using an effective customer management system (CRM) system. If you were, you’d be able to know which contact you need to shelve and which ones you need to continue following up.
Solution
The upcoming Agencify app will help you qualify and classify your leads based on priority, to identify which ones are potential clients and which ones need to be shelved. Talk to us to learn more about this upcoming insurance management platform. To reach us, please send an email to dennis.njenga@agencify.insure or call 0768 759 399.
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