Selling insurance from home: How to keep prospects engaged

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Selling insurance is not an easy job. It can be exhausting to be in constant contact with new people to build up your customer base. A more exhausting part of the job is to deal with the number of rejections for every sale you eventually make.

how to sell insurance from home

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are around 500,000 insurance sales agents in the US. Each year, there are over 50,000 job openings for insurance sales. Most of those job openings are not the result of new jobs being created. They are the result of rapid turnover. People learn pretty quickly if they are cut out for the job or not.

During the pandemic, selling insurance from home was no longer a privilege for solo practitioners. Both field agents, as well as telesales agents that dialed from their offices, became confined to their makeshift home offices.

After having adapted to working from home, many office workers are reluctant to return to the office. And it applies to insurance sales as well.

Working from home has created a better work-life balance for people. And that is pretty significant. According to a Vertafore survey, work-life balance is the second most important reason for leaving the insurance industry, a close second behind higher compensation.

Table of contents:

Pros of selling insurance from home

Challenges of selling insurance from the comfort of home

What you need to succeed when selling insurance independently

How to keep prospects engaged when you review the insurance policy over the phone

Pros of selling insurance from home

You can sum up the benefits of selling insurance from home in one word: Flexibility. To give you an idea of what flexibility means, here are a few examples:

  • Efficiency
  • More personal time
  • Easy to get started
  • Your home is where your heart is
  • The freedom to experiment

1. Efficiency

If you were selling by seeing people in person, this is a given. By using the latest communication technology, you can cover more ground, so to speak.

You don’t have to drive to visit prospects at their location. But for the office worker, working from home kills the daily commute.

2. More personal time

The efficiency means that you have more personal time. Your commute is driving the kids off to school if even that. This extra me-time means that you can get your mind off work for an extra hour.

When you are not concentrating on work, your subconscious is puzzling the pieces from work together and you might have that Eureka! moment when you least expect it.

3. Easy to get started

You don’t need much to start selling insurance from home. A computer and a headset. That’s it. … and, of course, Internet connection.

But it’s the software tools that you have set up on your computer that make all the difference. If you’re interested in reading about what tools you should use for telesales, check out our article on the best tools for cold calling.

4. Your home is where your heart is

Speaking of flexibility. When selling insurance from home, you are not bound to live in the same physical location all the time. You can sell insurance remotely from a hotel room or a co-working space.

You set the hours and you can set the location of your home office. Calling from a cloud dialer costs the same wherever you are in the world.

5. The freedom to experiment

Although your cat might be begging for attention, you won’t be bothered by colleagues or bosses. This means that you are free to experiment. The ways people are engaging with each other are changing rapidly. Cold calling replaced door-to-door cold knocking.

Allocate a few hours each week to try to find new channels or mediums to engage with prospective customers. Instead of a phone call, you can try to engage with people through IM apps.

Try adding Instant Messaging apps to your prospecting routine. Although it might not be a good platform to take from cold outreach to closing the deal, it’s ideal to use messaging apps for the cold open and move the conversation from there to a voice call.

Challenges of selling insurance from the comfort of home

It’s not all a walk in the park. Although insurance sales from home have many upsides, it will still be draining to dial people without any other human interaction during the day. And you will still hear the word No more often than the word yes.

Finding leads

If you are new in the game and are working independently, you will eventually drain your network. You won’t sell the same insurance policy twice to your distant cousins. You should buy lists of leads.

Make sure that they are as fresh as possible. You can tell that the list you bought has gone sour by the number of people who are less than thrilled to be answering to the tenth insurance call that week.

Deliver your pitch over the phone

One of the biggest drawbacks of remote sales versus in-person sales is that you are relying on your voice and your words. You can’t use body language to emphasize your points and you can’t read the prospect’s body language.

Some salespeople have a magic touch when it comes to selling insurance over the phone and can draw pictures with their words. But the rest of us need good tools to explain.

Keep the prospect engaged

Insurance policies can be complex and we need to be able to articulate what different terms and conditions mean without the prospects wandering off in their minds. It’s hard for the prospect to keep track of the conversation, especially when they are listening to what you are saying but their eyes might catch something of interest.

Go over the policy

The prospect might want to know the difference between different policies. And you are required to go over the policy, bit by bit. This is where enhancing the call with visuals comes in. Instead of sending emails with PDFs attached, use CrankWheel to allow the prospect to see your screen in an instant.

Selling insurance to seniors

When you are selling insurance to senior citizens, you are faced with some obstacles. You might have to slow down and be ready to repeat. You might have to speak up as well. And forget about troubleshooting someone into a Zoom meeting.

Use apps that are easy to connect to. Don’t try anything that involves downloading, registration or setup. That actually is a good thing to keep in mind, no matter the demographic - any extra steps will kill the flow of the conversation that was already going on.

What you need to succeed when selling insurance independently

When you are selling insurance as an independent agent, you will need certain infrastructure in place in order to become successful. You will need to build credibility around the brand that is you. Anything that makes you stand out and that creates trust will help you.

Check out our guides on the Do’s and Don’ts of selling insurance remotely and the top skills you need to sell insurance.

Sales enablement material.

Start out by creating templates for your insurance email marketing. Have all the relevant information in the footer and have the text for the most common subjects ready. Create relevant PDFs with your branding. Get a tool that helps you send automatically emails for cold outreach.

Screen sharing software

Seriously, if you are not already using CrankWheel, it is a tool used by thousands of insurance agents. You can share your screen to any device (desktop or mobile) so your prospects can be anywhere.

You can record sessions for compliance, you can see how your prospect engages in your material and you will be alerted if they have switched over to another tab.

Establish your presence online

By having a presence online, you are creating awareness of your services as well as creating lead magnets for warm inbound leads.

Schedule a demo of instant screen sharing

Website

Way too many agents don’t have their own personal websites. Start establishing yourself online to create credibility. There are multiple no-code solutions available out there that make website design easy with intuitive interfaces.

  • Remember to plug in the most relevant Google tools to your website (Analytics to see how many visits you have, Search Console to see how people find you, and Ads to drive paid traffic).
  • Sign up for Google my Business to get the local listing in place.
  • Write some copy about the most common questions people ask you about during calls. Most likely there are thousands asking the Internet the same questions.

Social Media presence

Become a go-to source for content related to insurance. Explain insurance jargon and answer frequently asked questions. Social Media platforms are also search engines.

  • The algorithm makes sure that people who show interest in specific topics will get suggestions about topics they have searched for.
  • Find a platform that fits your personality. Don’t overthink your content strategy, to begin with. Think quantity over quality. You will see what catches the algorithms’ attention and soon enough, your content will spread organically.
  • Once you have crafted your secret sauce of content, stick to it. Just remember to continue with incremental experiments.

Participate in Online communities

Participate in online communities through groups on social media, online forums or on Reddit. Just remember to treat carefully, coming on too hard might get you banned.

You should contribute to the communities and get to know the other members. If you share your expertise in insurance and people’s reaction are to get your info, ask them for a direct message.

Becoming a member of online communities is not a quick-win strategy. People are quick to sniff the salesman if you go in too eager to sell.

Collect reviews

Put some time and effort into collecting reviews and star ratings. Whenever you know that you have a happy customer, ask that person to leave a review. And offer them some incentive for taking the time, it can be a mug or a t-shirt with your logo on it or a gift card.

But remember that you are not offering them a gift for a positive review but as a thank you for taking the time.

When you end a session in CrankWheel, the viewer is automatically redirected to a landing page that you can choose. It’s ideal to collect reviews on the platform of your choice.

Gather testimonials

When you send a thank you email for the best reviews, ask the happy customer to record a testimonial. You can offer them an even cooler gift in return. Edit the best testimonials together into a brief video that you can use on your website or play in a sales call.

How to keep prospects engaged when you review the insurance policy over the phone

To keep the prospect engaged, don’t go for a video meeting platform with screen sharing capabilities. Go for a dedicated screen sharing application.

Get CrankWheel. You can get the plugin for Chrome and Edge for free in the respective web stores or start a screen sharing session through your dashboard.

Start a screen sharing session. You can share a browser tab, program window or your full screen. When you have selected what you want to share, you can copy the URL to the meeting, use your customized URL that you can simply tell them or send a SMS to their mobile with the link.

Your prospects will only need to click the URL and then they are in the session. They will not be asked if they would like to sign up and they will not need to download any plugins.

The preview window on the top of your CrankWheel interface will show you what they see. This can come in handy if they have a slow internet connection - you can always count on that you are talking about what they are seeing. If they go to another browser tab, you will get an alert.

The preview window will also show you where their mouse pointer is moving and if they are viewing from a mobile, you can see where they are zooming in.

If you want to share a video or customize the landing page, you click on Actions and select the video or landing page that you have configured in your dashboard.

It’s a good idea to press the record button under the preview window. Then you will record what goes on on the screen during the session as well as your voice which is recorded through the microphone input on your computer.

Now you can go through the policy point by point. Your pointer will be visible as a green dot on the viewer’s screen so they can always follow what you are reading.

When you have stopped the session, the browser window that the viewer used will automatically redirect to a post-session page. You can configure that page to be your website, social media page, or a review form.

Try CrankWheel for free