Why Traditional Selling has Failed Us in Insurance

Selling insurance is challenging, but try being a buyer.  To most buyers, everything looks alike.  There’s a lack of differentiation in buyers’ minds from agency to agency and policy to policy.

Insurance to them is pretty much just insurance.  It’s all basically the same.

So this is one of the two big problems that agents confront.  The other problem is that, most of the time, someone else already has the prospect’s account.

Insurance salespeople have the same story:

• They called on a prospect.
• They had a good rapport.
• They listened carefully to their prospect.
• They put together a great proposal.
• Everything looked good.
• Then, a few days later, they learned they had not gotten the business.
• They got rolled by the current agent.

This was the seed, the critical role of the current provider, that later germinated into The Wedge (the tactical process for taking out the provider, and for taking out your competitors if you are vying for an open account).

One of the questions I had been trying to answer was HOW TO GET YOUR PROSPECTS TO SEE WHAT THEY ARE NOT GETTING WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING BAD about your competition.

Traditional selling doesn’t address this dilemma with any specific solution.  It was one of those sales barriers that traditional selling works around or deals with only conceptually, leaving it to the salesperson to figure out how to break through the barrier on a case-by-case basis.

If you are going to bust an existing relationship, then you need to go into your sales call prepared with the knowledge of why your prospect needs you, and how your prospect is being underserved by the current provider.  If you are competing for an open account, you need the same clear picture of your strengths.  You have to be able to get your prospects to acknowledge and understand HOW they are being underserved by your competitor, and how they will be better served by you.

Doing this kind of pre-call research will enable you to find the specific proactive services that you provide and your competition doesn’t, and that will enable you to proactively control your prospects’ experiences, making their future more predictable.

To learn more about The Wedge sales process or attend a powerful live workshop designed to train you on using these techniques at The Wedge Workshop.