19 Tips Every New Insurance Agent Should Know

Selling & Staffing

Dec 13

One of the hardest jobs out there is sales. And one of the hardest sales jobs is being an insurance agent. You have to get personal with people quickly and sell them something that they need but cannot see. And if that did not make it hard enough, there is the fact that the only thing people are more jaded about than insurance companies is lawyers.

That said, if you are new to being an insurance agent, get used to reminding yourself that you are selling something that everyone needs and that everyone knows they need even if they do not like it. So sit back and take a few minutes to read some tips that will ease your transition into the world of the insurance agent.

Dress Sharp

Every customer is not exactly crazy for a sharply dressed insurance agent, but every customer usually assumes professional dress is a reflection of professional behavior. People may talk about not judging a book by its cover, but that does not change the fact that, when it comes to dress, almost everyone does.

In fact, studies have famously shown that people take about five to seven seconds to establish their first impression of you. And once that impression is set, it is very hard to shake. But studies also have shown that if you dress well it can positively affect:

What people think of you
Your own confidence
Your ability to think about details

It sounds absurd that dressing well could affect so much, but it turns out that the adage, dress for the job you want, is really true. If you want people to respect your professionalism, then dress professionally. If this is new territory for you to consider, then take a look at these tips for dressing well:

Invest in having your suit fitted to you
Keep your clothes clean and ironed
Black belt with black shoes, brown belt with brown shoes
Dark socks with slacks

This is not a comprehensive list but it will get you started. The more you can project a sense of confidence by the professional way you look, the more people will see you as someone to trust, and someone who cares about their sense of professionalism. If you can embrace this, you will go a long way toward establishing an impression of reliability with your clients.

Find a Mentor

You may not have been an insurance agent before, but someone else has. In fact, a lot of people have, and most people are willing to share what they have learned, and pass on some tricks of the trade to someone who needs help.

Find someone who has been in the business a while, someone with whom you really connect, and learn from them. Schedule time once a week to:

Talk on the phone
Have coffee
Meet for breakfast

Having someone to bounce problems, failures, ideas, or even triumphs off of is invaluable. Mentors can talk you up when you are down, talk you down when you are too cocky, and help you troubleshoot a problem that you cannot seem to solve.

Sometimes you will be able to find a mentor in an agency for which you work. This is a great arrangement. Sometimes you can find a retired insurance agent that is willing to help you out. If that person is retired, it does not matter what agency they used to work for. If they know the trade and are willing to help, take advantage of it.

Speak Clearly and Avoid Slang

Almost all of your important communication as an insurance agent is verbal. If you cannot make yourself understood in clear and friendly terms, then you are going to have a hard time with it. Dressing well gets you in the door, but that is all it does. Once in there you have to sell yourself and a policy without relying on euphemism or slang.

Slang can occasionally denote a trade that a person is in or a job that a person does because there are sometimes idiosyncratic phrases that go with certain professions. But more often slang denotes youth. And with youth comes inexperience. Clear speech, on the other hand, can indicate:

Confidence
Forthrightness
Trustworthiness

Confidence

What comes next is going to sound judgemental, but you have to understand what creates an impression. When a person mumbles and cannot get through a sentence without saying “umm,” it does not inspire confidence because that person sounds unsure of his or her own words.

However, people who speak clearly (not perfectly, but as if they know the words that are coming out of their mouths) sound confident that what they are saying is true. In turn that inspires confidence in others. You naturally want to believe someone who speaks well, even if you do not agree with what they are saying.

Forthrightness

Speaking clearly is one skill. Doing it while maintaining a friendly and open demeanor is another. The person who can combine the two can be very persuasive and personable because speaking clearly is only as good as your ability to invite people into the conversation.

A lot of this has to do with the tone that you use when you speak and the demeanor that you have. If you cross your arms and scowl, people will feel like they are being scolded even if you are speaking words of encouragement. If you constantly look off to the side when you talk, you look, at best, unsure, and at worst like you are lying.

So when you have mastered speaking clearly and confidently, put that skill together with a smile and a relaxed but not careless demeanor. Then look people right in the eye when you talk to them and keep it there when you listen.

Trustworthiness

If you are a new insurance agent, there is a chance that you are also a young one. If that is the case, you need to be especially careful to avoid slang. Because of your youth, you will need to work extra hard for the customer’s trust.

People will be less likely to trust you if you use words like:

Dude
Totally
Bru
“Like” between phrases

These kinds of things are associated with youth, and in the mind of the customer, youth means inexperience. So stay away from slang and speak clearly.

Market Who You Are

If you are an insurance agent you have only two ways to market yourself. You can market the insurance company for which you are selling, but this only works if you are a Farmers agent or State Farm agent, etc. If you work for an agency that sells multiple companies then you only have one thing left to market: yourself.

Make yourself the brand and the image of the agency you represent by selling your

Personality
Bearing
Punctuality

From the way you carry yourself to your mannerisms to the way you are always exactly three minutes early to every meeting, the only thing that will set you apart from the rest is yourself. And that is a good thing, because that means that all you have to do is be you.

Trade on the Agency’s Experience

If you are a new and, in all likelihood, young insurance agent, do not let your youth and inexperience become a liability. If you have started out in an agency with other agents and an established presence in the community, you have a great opportunity to make your inexperience irrelevant by trading on the experience of the agency.

How do you do that? Simply reference the agency’s experience as it is appropriate to the conversation with phrases like:

“I am supported by the years of experience this agency has in the insurance business”
“Our agency has a combined experience of 50 years in the insurance world”

Establish that you are not doing this on your own, but rather with the support of an experienced agency behind you and your inexperience will not be an issue.

If it is the case that you are starting an agency on your own, then look for unique ways in which you can capitalize on the experience of others. If you are selling for a specific company, like one of the major insurance companies, then you can reference the support and training that that company gives you.

Be Enthusiastic

Youth does not always have to be a liability. Youth can be one thing that age cannot be so well, if it be it at all: enthusiastic! Young people can be enthusiastic more convincingly than older people can. It is just a fact of life. It is much more rare to see a happy elderly person ready to go conquer the world.

But if that world conqueror is young, it makes perfect sense. Young people have, as it used to be said, vim and vigor. And what is more, people like to see that. There is something comforting about a young person who is happy to be working. It reminds elderly people of when they felt the same way.

And even if they never really did feel that way, as long as they think they did once upon a time:

You catch them in a nostalgic mood
They are more likely to listen to your proposal because you have been able to break through their defenses

Craft Your Phone Voice

If customers make their first impressions on your physical appearance, then over the phone, all they have to go off of is your voice. So if you want to win over customers when you are speaking on the phone, you need to craft a good phone voice. Not everyone has it right off the bat.

A good way to get started is to:

Record yourself talking on the phone or a whole phone conversation
Listen to what you sound like and figure out what you can change
Make the changes in a realistic and systematic way

Not many people like the sound of their voice when they hear it in a recording. It is a strange phenomena, but most people do not like to listen to themselves talk. However, if you can get past that, you can think objectively about how you sound and make improvements.

As you listen to your voice try to focus on the unnatural pauses you make or the words you repeat too many times. Also, pay attention to the tone of your voice. If it is different from your normal tone, ask yourself why and try to make changes so that you do not sound strained or bored. You want your phone voice to be natural and engaging.

Be Ready with Questions

When you are making cold calls, there is a fine line between being prepared and being stale. Sometimes if you go off of a script that you know really well, you can sound stale. But on the other hand, if you do not have anything prepared at all you can be caught by surprise by something a potential lead says and forget what else you needed to say.

A good place to start is a script. With a script in front of you:

You can feel confident
You do not have to worry that you will forget what you need to say
You will remember what you need to ask

As long as you can keep your voice loose and natural, a script is a good tool.

But after you have gone through the script multiple times a day for days on end, it can get generic and sound rote. You may want to transition to an outline. With an outline you can keep it loose and chatty without losing track of the questions you need to ask or the main points you are trying to get across.

Learn to Identify Buying Triggers

Everyone has them. They are the moments or events that cause a person to want to buy. An emotion is usually attached to one of these events. As you learn to sell, you need to be able to identify what a potential customer’s buying trigger is.

Triggers of potential customers can be need-based, such as:

They just bought a house
They are looking at a car for junior
They have been evaluating their stamp collection

All of these events bring up a need for some kind of insurance.

But there are other triggers as well. Some customers have triggers that are value based, such as:

Price
Convenience

Other triggers are distinctly emotional. These triggers can include:

Guilt over feeling like they do not have adequate coverage
Fear of being left out if they do not have a certain kind of insurance
Security of knowing that their belongings are insured

In order to get good at selling insurance, you need to be able to identify people’s buying triggers. This is no easy task and it takes a lot of practice. It helps to spend time observing someone else make a sale, so you can focus solely on the person on the other side of the desk. What is the moment when they decide to buy?

Practice Selling

But practice when you are not on the hook to sell something. In other words, you need practice, but you do not want to go to every call as if it is a practice session. So when do you practice?

There are a couple of things you can do. You can either:

Practice your sales pitch in front of the mirror, or
Practice selling in a role play scenario with a fellow employee

The mirror is a great critic, which means it is brutal. It shows every flaw. So if you want a good way to practice your pitches, then the mirror is a great place for you to start.

However, there is more to a sales call than simply making the pitch. There is an ebb and flow to the conversation as you interact with the potential client and respond to questions, comments, eye rolls, or gasps when they see the price.

One way to get used to this unpredictable scenario is to practice with a fellow employee, preferably one who can be a little creative and is willing to throw a curveball or two into the conversation.

Be An Open Book

If you want to win over the trust of potential clients with an eye toward making a sale, then be an open book. Also referred to as transparency, the idea is that:

You have nothing to hide
You answer questions thoroughly and honestly

You want clients to know everything you know about the insurance world as it relates to them. If you think there is a policy that will be good for them even though it may not be the biggest sale of your life, you want them to know that.

If there is a policy that is not going to be good for them even though it may be great for you, you want them to know that as well. Be an open book. Sometimes this will mean turning down a big sale. But that will pay dividends in the long run as you earn the client's trust to tell them the truth no matter what.

Have an Active Social Media Presence

There is a lot to be said for using social media to draw attention to yourself. Social media does not always have to be vain. You can use it to help people find you so you can sell them good insurance that will benefit them if something were to ever happen.

When it comes to what you should put in your professional feed, here are a few examples:

Insurance tips
Weather alerts as they relate to heavy storms, for example
A selfie from an insurance conference or a networking group meeting
Posts that highlight your involvement in the community

Let people see the personable side of you as it relates to the business of helping people find the best insurance policy for their needs.

Have an Active Real Life Presence in Your Community

It is good to see business people giving back to the community in whatever way that they can. You know that you care about your community because you started a business to serve it.

But people on the outside do not always see it that way, so if you can be involved in volunteer projects or community programs, that will show how much you care about the community in which you do business. You can be a part of things like:

Coaching a kid’s sports team
Playing a positive role in local government
Volunteering at a local non-profit organization

And of course, as you go to these different things to help your community, you can highlight them on your social media account of choice.

Another way to be a part of your community is to network with other businesses and highlight the fact that you buy local.

It is All About the Relationship

Being an insurance agent means that you are in the business of beginning and maintaining relationships with a lot of people:

You get to know more about them than just what insurance they need
You understand their insurance needs
You watch out for them and always make sure they have the best protection

Of course there is an exchange of goods and services involved, as with all businesses, but relationships are still at the heart of this one. If you are in it just to make a sale, then you might rethink your profession. Yes, the sale is important, but the sale happens (and keeps happening) because you made the relationship happen.

Stay Away from Jargon

When you are talking to potential customers (who potentially will be in relationships that you will have for a long time) you want to keep the communication about things that they understand even though you may need to talk about concepts that they do not understand. In order to do this you have to stay away from insurance jargon, like:

Subrogation
Mitigation
Litigation

These terms will only serve to alienate your potential client when what they need to know are the concepts behind them. Find ways to communicate those concepts without getting lost in the technical language.

Listen to The Customer

This is not another lesson about the customer always being right. If customers were always right they would not need you. Customers come to you for their insurance needs because they are not always right and they do not know everything about the insurance world, or even all the ins and outs of what they need.

But neither do you until you have heard from the customer. Your role as an insurance agent is like the role of a guide. You have to:

Help the customer understand the confusing world of insurance
Guide them through bewildering choices and terminology
Give them the tools and information they need to make the decision that is best for them

But in order to do that you have to know what your customers need. And in order to find out what your customers need, you have to listen to them. And then you have to keep listening. It is easy to get into a one-size-fits-all (or at least most) mentality. But that may not be helpful for the people you are trying to help.

The only way that you really know if you are meeting their needs is if you have truly heard and understood what those needs are. Therefore, listen!

Find Out What You Have in Common With Your Clients

One way to establish a relationship with potential clients is to find points of common interest. There are so many ways in which you can do this. The challenge is to think of your feet in any given situation and relate to what you see no matter how different it may seem.

For example, say you are meeting with an elderly couple about their homeowners policy. You yourself are young and you are looking for points of common interest. What do you do?

If they bring up grandkids then you can interact by talking about your grandparents if they are still alive, or memories of them if they are not
Ask them questions about what insurance was like when they were your age

Pay Attention to the Stock Market

If you are young and you want to build an impression of being serious, astute and reliable, then try this little trick: pay attention to the stock market. There are certain clients that love to talk about the stock market and rate financial acuity as a kind of prowess.

Of course, you will need to do more than simply pay attention to the market. You will need to know something about it, so do not start talking about the market until you know what you are talking about. But once you do, it is an instant smart talk generator with the right person.

Attend Insurance Industry Conferences and Events

Invest in your continuing education as an insurance agent and make it a point to attend conferences related to the insurance industry. The industry is always changing and getting more complex. The time you take to keep abreast of the changes is time well spent.

Another benefit to conferences is that you get to interact with fellow insurance agents and learn tips and tricks from what they are doing in their regions and localities.