These simple insurance sales tips can help you increase your commission!

Selling insurance can be tricky, especially if you’re a young or inexperienced insurance agent. Insurance can sometimes be expensive and isn’t a product that the customer can see, hold, or touch. This can make selling insurance a challenge for some agents, but these insurance sales tips can help! To increase your commission, you need easy-to-implement information. Here are 10 awesome insurance sales tips for those agents that are new or simply want to take the next step in their career:

1. Build trust and confidence by dressing professionally

Here’s the first of our insurance sales tips: in the insurance world you’re selling trust. Your customers need to have confidence and faith in you if they are going to buy from you. A professional appearance conveys success. To your customers, someone who looks the part of an insurance agent must know what they are talking about, so dressing professionally will help people to take you more seriously.

2. Demonstrate knowledge and avoid slang

While this one should be obvious, it’s still included in our list of insurance sales tips because of its importance. Always use proper vocabulary and don’t use slang words or terminology that you would use in text messages, online chats, or emails with your friends. When building a career as an insurance professional you must use words that will build and maintain trust with your target audience.

3. Find a way to relate to your customers

Good salespeople already know this insurance sales tip: always find common ground with your customers. Perhaps you are 25 years old but your prospect is 63 years old and about to retire. What could you possibly have in common? You may both have the same favorite sports team, perhaps you have lived in the same state, or maybe you both share a love of your friends and family. Find common ground and use that to build a rapport with your customers that will boost long-term brand loyalty.

4. Learn from your experienced co-workers

Everyone must start somewhere. One of our great insurance sales tips is to learn from your experienced co-workers, even those that aren’t necessarily tech-savvy. A fellow insurance agent at your company might not be as good with computers, but he or she has been working in insurance for decades longer than you have. With age comes wisdom and experience. Ask more experienced agents questions and learn to take advice and constructive criticism. In the end, it will make you a better insurance agent.

5. Listen and watch yourself talking to clients

For those of you looking for insurance sales tips that you haven’t already tried, here’s a good one: listen and watch yourself talking to clients. The point of doing this is to hear and see yourself exactly as your customers see you. Record a message to yourself at work as if you were leaving a message for a client and then listen to the playback. Do you sound confident and professional? Record a video of yourself (on your phone or tablet) as if you are talking to a customer about a new insurance policy. Pay close attention to what you are doing that might be distracting or detracting from your overall presentation.

6. Listen to your customers

When you are a young and hungry insurance agent, you likely want to demonstrate your knowledge at every possible opportunity. However, as any experienced insurance professional will tell you, sometimes it’s more important to listen than to speak. Give your customers your undivided attention and be sure that you know the answer to the question before answering. If you don’t know the answer, don’t pretend. In those cases, inform them that you don’t know but are making a note of their question, will find the answer, and will let them know as soon as possible.

7. Prepare yourself for lots of hard work

Being a young or inexperienced insurance agent might make you feel inadequate on occasion. While this is understandable, there is a solution. To combat the lack of knowledge or experience, you must be willing to read more, learn more, and perhaps even work more than your colleagues. So, keep brushing up on your insurance knowledge and practice those sales scripts after hours, you’ll be glad you did.

8. Don’t use insurance jargon just to sound smart

Throughout my career, this is something that I have seen repeatedly and is something you will want to avoid: don’t use industry-specific terms or jargon just to prove your intelligence. When using the proper insurance terminology makes sense or is relevant to the conversation, go ahead! However, as a new insurance agent, you want to avoid looking like an overly eager insurance salesperson by using terms you may not fully understand yet. Stop for a moment and think about what buying insurance is like. Customers generally don’t know all of the terminologies, so you can relate to them as a fellow outsider trying to help them find the best possible solution to meet their needs and budget.

9. Pay attention to your customers

One of the best insurance sales tips is knowing when to sell and when to remain silent. Sometimes there are details that require an explanation prior to the insurance purchase. On other occasions, an explanation is not necessary until after the sale has been made. Learn to recognize the difference (which might take time) and ask your more experienced colleagues for their insight on this topic. Doing this will help you to become a more successful and effective insurance agent.

10. Proofread all customer communications

While you may intentionally (or unintentionally) misspell a word or phrase in a text message or email to a friend, in the workplace you must use proper vocabulary, spelling, and punctuation at all times. Messages to customers that contain errors come across as being unprofessional and reduce both trust and credibility. So make sure that you proofread every email and text message before sending.