7 Tips to Easily Sell Medicare Supplements Over the Phone
Selling Medicare supplements over the phone can be an effective business. However, there are a few differences between selling via the phone and selling face-to-face. In this article, we’ll look at seven key points you should consider if you’re moving into this interesting business.
It should be obvious – but I’ll say it anyway – that we’ll be assuming you’ve already obtained a license to sell insurance in your state. If not, that’s where you should start. Make sure you have all the credentials and that you’re fully compliant before you do anything else. With that established, let’s dive in.
Shortcuts:
- Create an Effective Script
- Know Your Supplement Plans Inside Out
- Consider Using a Phone Dialer
- Dive Into Leads Quickly
- Be Personable
- Have a Closing Strategy Ready
- Expand Your Reach
1. Create an Effective Script
The first rule of remote selling conversion is creating an effective script. It should help you lead the prospective customer through the conversation in a structured and relevant way. However, it doesn’t mean you need to stick slavishly to the same lines all the way through on every call.
Instead, a good script should be a tool to guide you, nothing more. The person you’re talking to shouldn’t feel as if you’re talking using a script at all. The chat should feel unforced and natural.
When you begin, it’s vital to establish whether you’re talking to a genuine prospect. During the early stage of the call, you should build a rapport with the customer. At the same time, make sure to find out what their situation is. Can you help them? If not, continuing with the call will be a waste of their time and yours.
Assuming you continue the call, you should be aiming for a flowing conversation that goes both ways. Nothing will kill customer satisfaction faster than if you talk at the prospect non-stop. Ask questions and invite them to participate. If the topic of conversation begins to veer off course, a well-prepared script will help to steer it back onto the right one.
2. Know Your Supplement Plans Inside Out
Whatever you’re selling, it’s vital to be an expert on the merchandise. And when it comes to life sciences and healthcare industry services, it’s crucial. You should already have mastered every detail there is to know about the supplements you’re offering.
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First, it’s vital to ensure your prospect understands the basics. Start by checking if they know the difference between Original Medicare Part A (for hospital expenses and skilled nursing care) and Original Medicare Part B (for other healthcare expenses including doctor visits, outpatient surgeries, lab work, etc).
Once you know you’re both on the same page, you can begin asking relevant questions to find the right Medicare Supplement insurance plan to offer. You’ll need to know as much as they’re willing to share about their healthcare situation. You should, of course, be certified to sell various plans (you are, aren’t you?), so finding a plan to suit the prospect’s budget should be straightforward.
Don’t forget to consider the remaining gaps in the coverage. You should be familiar with several ancillary plans to help fulfill all your client’s needs.
3. Consider Using a Phone Dialer
Automating processes can be an excellent time saver. While you might be interested in using a phone system for medical office setups, all you need is an auto-dialer.
This is an automated system that automatically dials your prospects’ phone numbers. These tools generally have built-in pause and hold functions to enable smooth transfers of calls.
They can help you stay ahead of your competitors and save time as you’ll no longer need to enter phone numbers into your systems manually. All you need to do is wait for your prospects to call you and then jump on the lead.
Be sure to build trust early on the call by a screen share on the phone. Make sure to use a screen sharing app that allows your client instant access on any device without any installation prompts.
4. Dive Into Leads Quickly
Time is of the essence when you do get a lead. A fast lead response time can be the difference between making a sale and losing out.
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No matter how sharp your insurance selling skills are, if you leave it too long to contact a lead, you’ll lose the sale. Around half of all sales are secured by the vendor which gets there first. Make sure it’s you.
5. Be Personable
It’s a golden rule of sales that you should be building a rapport with your prospect. That means letting your friendly personality shine through. It takes time to develop the skill of projecting personal warmth on a phone call. After all, when all someone has to go on is your voice, they can’t see the kind of facial expressions and hand gestures you’re using.
It’s a good idea to use them anyway because it will help you inhabit your genuine conversational self. If you talk but don’t smile or use your usual physical expression, that will come across in your voice. Believe it or not, you will actually sound less friendly and enthusiastic than usual. Which isn’t ideal, particularly when you’re trying to communicate with difficult clients.
It can also be worthwhile showing a personal interest in your prospects’ lives. Keep it polite and professional, of course. You don’t want to appear intrusive. But a little cheerful curiosity about the customer’s children or grandchildren won’t go wrong.
If you can offer a relevant anecdote from your own life, so much the better. And it doesn’t have to be anything complicated or hilarious. Has your co-worker just brought you a coffee? That’s a wonderful opportunity to talk about how much you love a latte.
One tip often given is to call your customers by their first names. It can be effective, but a word of caution here: it can sometimes backfire. Depending on the age of your prospects and the communities they’re from, some people have a marked preference for being addressed using their title (e.g., Mr, Mrs, Doctor). It’s best to stick with the honorifics unless you’re sure you can switch to something more informal.
Free to use image sourced from Unsplash
6. Have a Closing Strategy Ready
In e-commerce, the best operators never try to make a sale without being able to follow through with good customer service and effective inventory management procedures. Even though you’re in a different field, having every detail of your process planned out is just as vital.
You should never go into a call without knowing how you will close out the deal. Nor is closing something that happens exclusively at the end of the call. You should be building up to it from the start.
All the way through, you should be doing the following:
- Listen to the customer
- Ask relevant questions
- Think about how you can help the customer’s specific situation
Then, when it’s time to offer the customer some options, make sure to:
- Limit the offers you make to several excellent ones
- Emphasize how the value of the options makes the price worth it
- Summarize points that have already been agreed
Finally, you should have a closing line that asks the customer for their business. Offer them the opportunity to enroll online, explaining the advantages of doing it that way. If your prospect isn’t yet ready to commit, ask if you can get back in touch in a few days. That way, the call can still be a success even if the sale isn’t made right away. As long as you have a plan for moving forward, you have something to build upon.
7. Expand Your Reach
While there are a number of hidden marketing strategies that can help land you new clients, a simple approach is sometimes the best. Here are a few ideas to help you expand your reach.
Free to use image sourced from Unsplash
Call outside of work hours
Not everyone in the market for Medicare supplements will be able or willing to talk to you during the working day. Even if you mostly look to sell to seniors, you can’t assume they’ll be available. Plenty of older citizens these days have full and active lives and will be much more receptive to a chat in the evening or at weekends.
Consider additional state licensing
If you’ve been licensed in your home state for some time, you may want to think about getting a non-resident license to sell in another state.
This does involve getting licensed all over again with all the concomitant paperwork and compliance, of course. You should always double-check the rules for the state you’re considering expanding your work into. It takes time and effort, but some people find that it’s a fantastic way of meeting their revenue and customer service goals.
Leave a message
If you can’t get through to your prospect, ensure to leave them a voicemail message. Explain briefly who you are and why you’ve called, and tell them you’ll call back a few days later. That way, when you phone them again, they’ll know what to expect.
You Can Make That Sale!
It doesn’t matter whether you favor product-led or emotional selling – you can and will sell insurance over the phone. There is a growing market for Medicare supplements and many potential clients waiting for you to guide them toward the perfect product for them.
About the author
Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad, an AI-powered cloud communication softphone system for better and easier team collaboration. She has over 10 years of experience in content writing and strategy. Currently, she is responsible for leading branded and editorial content strategies, partnering with SEO and Ops teams to build and nurture content. Grace Lau also published articles for domains such as Startups Magazine and Emerging EdTech. Here is her LinkedIn.