Every sales conversation finds you talking to clients about the excellent services you offer as an insurance broker or agent. But, you’ve quickly discovered that sharing how awesome you are can get you nowhere fast.
For some reason, people seem to go into the twilight zone with a glazed look in their eyes. Or if they are on the phone, you can tell that they’ve stopped listening to what you have to say.
Your pre-canned talk scripts and presentations are missing a few core elements to make you successful. Here are some essential truths that can help turn things around.
Five Essential Truths You Must Know
- Essential Truth #1: It isn’t about you. It is about them—your prospective customers. While this may sound counterintuitive, your conversations shouldn’t focus on selling products to others.
- Essential Truth #2: Your customers are interested in finding products that meet their needs and their problems. But, they won’t be interested in what you’re selling until they have a desire to solve their problems.
- Essential Truth #3: You need to engage your customers in conversations that allow them to discuss their business challenges. Sharing a list of memorized talking points does not allow dialogue and turns people off.
- Essential Truth #4: You need to define your customers’ pain points so you can provide answers to their burning questions. When you know what keeps your customers up at night, you can easily guide conversations towards the solutions you offer.
- Essential Truth #5: You need to showcase the value your knowledge and expertise brings to their company. Share how they can count on your services to make a difference year over year.
If you reflect back to the beginning of your journey as an insurance broker, you may recall that identifying your customers’ problems helped identify the products to sell in the first place.
These same issues can help you market and sell. Understanding what annoys, frustrates or hinders your customer gives you psychological ammunition that you can use to create trust and form relationships.
Once you are armed with this knowledge, you can start conversations so they creatively focus on your customers’ problems. Since most people like to talk about themselves, your discussion should create lots of dialogue that allow them to tell you about their problems and any potential objections.
By shining the spotlight on your prospects concerns, you’re creating a bridge that eventually leads to the products and services you provide. But it doesn’t happen overnight. This form of relationship marketing takes time to build—just like a friendship.
Think about the friends you trust. You connect with them because they get you. They understand what you struggle with and why. They empathize with you, and sometimes they even show you ways to do things that can ease your pain.
Now that you know the secret to connecting with customers and prospects, how can you tweak your sales conversations to increase engagement, and eventually convert to sales?