How to Conduct Virtual Consultations During OEP

/ by

The short window for the OEP should motivate you to conduct as many virtual consultations as possible in the preceding months. 

Virtual consultations save many hours of travel time, enabling you to squeeze more appointments into your schedule. More appointments lead to greater sales. 

As your first consultation nears, you’ll want to focus on what you want to say without worrying about technology getting in the way. In fact, technology should be an asset. 

Your potential clients will expect a seamless experience, especially when you meet with them virtually, and it’s crucial for you to deliver on their expectations. 

We’ll explain how you can conduct virtual flawlessly during OEP with every appointment to keep you at the top of your game.

Shortcuts:

What Your Clients Expect from a Virtual Consultation

Tried-and-True Tips for a Productive Virtual OEP Consultation

Quality Screen-Sharing Is Key to an Effective Healthcare Insurance Sale

What Your Clients Expect from a Virtual Consultation

Customers carve time into their personal schedules to meet with you. For that reason, you need to respect every minute of their time. From the sales perspective, you need to hit the most critical points while staying within the scheduled timeframe. 

To successfully meet client expectations, consider the appointment from their perspective. Your first impression can make or break a sale. 

Take a moment to reflect on what you expect from a salesperson when you’re buying something. Be sure to deliver on that and bring a little extra.

Here are some things customers expect during a sales appointment:

  • An appointment that starts and ends on time
  • Courteousness and respect
  • To make good use of their time
  • To learn more about what’s being offered
  • To get answers to their questions
  • A deep understanding of their needs
  • Solutions to their problems
  • A product or service that makes their life better
  • To be led through technology and not feel encumbered by it
  • Easy access to information after the sale

How would you rate yourself based on what your customers expect from a consultation during OEP? More importantly, how would your customers rank your performance?

The right tools, a meaningful and impactful presentation, and practice will help you put your best foot forward.

How to Conduct Virtual Consultations During OEP With Success

Of course, customers are interested in what you have to say, but they’re just as interested in the overall experience. 

With a quality screen-sharing tool like CrankWheel, you can meet customers’ expectations for a seamless experience starting with the first minute of the conversation.

While virtual presentations make it possible to make phone sales and eliminate travel times, health insurance isn’t a straightforward product like clothing or food products. The health industry’s complexity makes it necessary to add visuals to lend clarity, explain complex concepts, highlight features and benefits, and show comparisons. 

A strong health insurance presentation requires you to share your screen with customers in real time. Clunky technology that isn’t user-friendly and eats up valuable time never makes a good first impression. 

Fortunately, with CrankWheel’s screen-sharing tool, you can get right down to business as soon as your appointment begins. Within minutes, your customers will start talking openly with you as if they were sitting right in front of you, regardless of which device they’re using. 

How CrankWheel Enhances Virtual OEP Consultations

With our screen-sharing tool, you can provide a seamless customer experience from your first words to your last. 

Here’s why CrankWheel’s screen-sharing tool sets health insurance agents up for success:

  • Customers can view your screen on any electronic device – desktop, mobile phone, or tablet
  • Customers can join in quickly and easily using a link – no complicated installs or meeting codes
  • Customers view clear, high-quality images
  • Agents can transfer control of the slides to customers to allow interaction
  • Agents can share slideshows and videos and record their appointments
  • Videos play smoothly and without glitches
  • The software supports low bandwidth requirements and older devices
  • CrankWheel is compatible with Chrome, IE, Safari, and Firefox
  • CrankWheel is available for Windows
  • CrankWheel offers a CTA widget to initiate an instant demo for inbound and outbound leads

Overall, CrankWheel takes care of the technical aspects of your consultation, allowing you to focus on your presentation and engaging your customers. 

Using CrankWheel Effectively During Open Enrollment

Before promoting a virtual consultation, you need to handle potential objections to using technology during a health insurance consultation. 

Whether customers voice concerns or not, your clients may have the following fears or objections about virtual appointments:

  • Needing to pay for technology they don’t already have
  • Not understanding how technology works
  • Being unsure whether the technology will work on their device
  • Feeling unsure about using technology
  • Having fear about security

You can successfully dispel all of these fears by sending out an email before your scheduled consultation about how easy it will be for them to view your presentation electronically. 

Simply inform them that you’ll be sharing your screen with them to increase their comprehension. They won’t need to download or install anything; they will instantly see your presentation in their browser window. 

To alleviate their fears about security, you could tell them they won’t need to put in any personal details to view the slides. 

Preparing for an Effective OEP Consultation

It’s always best to warm your customers up to help them become more comfortable speaking with you. Show customers consideration right from the start by asking them questions about whether this is still a good time or if they have found a private space to talk with you.

An effective sales tactic is to get the customer to say “yes” right at the start of your presentation. 

A good way to get an early “yes” is to ask them a question. For example, you might ask, “If I could solve your healthcare problems and help you feel confident in your health insurance plan, is that something that would interest you?”

Not only is this a good lead-in to a health insurance sales appointment, but it’s also bound to elicit a “yes.”  Furthermore, you can circle back to this question at the end of your presentation when you ask for the sale. 

Another way to approach the beginning of a health insurance consultation is to ask an open-ended question such as, “What do you hope to gain from our appointment today?” Regardless of their answer, you can assure them that you can meet their needs. 

Beyond sparking the customer’s intrigue about how you’re going to solve their health insurance concerns, where do you start? You must sell the prospect on your expertise and your business within the first twenty seconds. 

By learning more about who you are and why you sell health insurance, you position yourself as a qualified expert. A slide highlighting your experience and qualifications will drive home your expertise. 

A good next step is to add a slide that shows a short outline of what you plan to present. This will give the customer a road map of where the presentation will lead and when you will conclude it. 

After making introductions and setting the stage for the consultation, it’s time for the information-gathering part of the appointment. 

This is a good time to elicit the customer’s problems and frustrations with their current plan and to draw out the benefits and features they’re most interested in. 

A common question health insurance salespeople have is whether they should prepare a script to accompany their sales presentation. A sales script is a useful tool but be aware that customers may perceive it as robotic or canned. 

It’s okay to use a written sales pitch to rehearse your presentation—just don’t read it verbatim. Pause naturally, allowing customers to interject with comments or questions that could prove insightful. 

You may find points where letting your customers control the presentation is helpful. For example, you might allow them to input their preferred deductibles, maximum out-of-pocket expenses, or other information themselves. 

You never know what a customer is going to say, so it’s wise to be flexible and switch things around if the conversation naturally takes your presentation out of sequence. CrankWheel makes it easy to customize a presentation, as you can change slides as you go or insert a video that gives greater insight into one of their questions. 

Using this information, you can show how your recommended plans meet their expectations for a health plan. 

Storytelling is always a good way to help customers envision how a specific product will benefit their lives. Using slides, you can tell stories about how real or fictitious customers have gotten better coverage or pricing. Customers often relate to stories about how a product could potentially apply to their own situation. 

A story may also elicit concerns about a personal situation that negatively affected them. For example, they may recall a time when their health insurance didn’t pay enough for a prescription drug, or they had to pay too much to see their preferred physician. Be sure to empathize with them as you start narrowing down the best recommendations. 

As you wind down your appointment, return to the question you initially asked them at the beginning of the consultation. For example, you might remind them that they’d said a healthcare plan that could solve their problems and help them feel confident in their health insurance plan would interest them.

From there, you can recap all the ways the recommended plan(s) do precisely that. 

A good question to ask at this point is, “After everything we’ve talked about and thinking about the problems you are trying to solve, are you confident our product meets those needs?”

Providing all goes well, they’ll be ready to buy right away. 

Tried-and-True Tips for a Productive Virtual OEP Consultation

We’ve put together some proven sales prospecting tips for a productive OEP. Incidentally, most of them apply to any virtual consultation or presentation, whether it’s office selling or selling from home. It will be helpful for you to review them even if you’ve been selling for many years.

  • Be sure you both have the correct time zone if you’re selling out of your area.
  • Conduct the consultation from a quiet space as you’ll be expecting the same from them. 
  • Use the customer’s name when talking to them, which shows you are interested in them. 
  • Use your webcam and encourage them to do the same. (According to Gong, salespeople close 41% more sales when using a webcam.) 
  • Practice your presentation until you’re confident in delivering it.
  • Break the ice by asking about something that’s personal to them (children, grandchildren, pets, their occupation, etc.)
  • Show empathy if they start talking about a health insurance concern, the lack of available coverage, or other sensitive matters. 
  • Learn the features and benefits of health insurance plans well so you can talk about them expertly. 
  • Explain insurance terms they may not understand. 
  • Plan to speak for about 60% of the consultation and allow the other 40% of the time to learn what’s on the customer’s mind. 
  • Be prepared to do an on-the-spot consultation for a customer who is ready to talk right away. (CrankWheel makes this possible)
  • Wrap up the appointment early if the customer seems ready to make a sale. Don’t try to add fluff or keep on gabbing to take up the entire meeting time. Customers will appreciate you respecting their time. 
  • If the appointment runs over, ask if you can have a few more minutes of their time or give them an opportunity to schedule a second appointment to continue the conversation. 
  • Follow up regularly with customers to update them on information and ensure they’re happy with their plan and your service. 

Quality Screen-Sharing Is Key to an Effective Healthcare Insurance Sale

We live in a health-conscious society, and today’s health insurance consumers typically know what they’re looking for in a health plan. 

Customers have more choices for health plans than ever before. Virtual consultations are an effective way to help customers make decisions, solve problems, and enhance your relationship with them. 

More importantly, screen-sharing will help you close deals faster and with greater confidence. 

With CrankWheel’s high-quality screen-sharing tool, you can convey expertise and understanding. Clients will quickly see that they’re speaking with someone who can solve their problems and recommend the best health insurance plan for them during OEP and beyond.