Other People's Wheels - The Best P&C To Life Cross-Selling Conversation

When I was growing up, my dad used to tell me that there was no need to reinvent the wheel if I could tweak someone else's wheel and make it my own. In other words, you don't have to start from scratch if someone else has already crafted something great that you could adjust for yourself. Save yourself the time, effort and energy of creating, testing and tweaking and use what others have already tried and perfected. That's exactly what Best Agent Ideas is all about, and I had a perfect chance to put into practice when I was reading this month's issue of Advisor Today.

I came across two articles that highlighted two different strategies for increasing life insurance sales from two different agent's. One, written by Ray Vendetti (who I had the pleasure of spending a little time with earlier this year) went over a great way to make the transition form auto insurance to life insurance. The other was the feature article for the month that shared great sales ideas from successful agents. Bruce Udell shared an easy 5 minute conversation that focused on asking clients and prospects the right questions in order to get better results.

While both articles shared great strategies to improve your life insurance sales, I found that for me and my style of selling, combining the two would give me the best results. We all have our own communication style when working with clients. While Brian and Ray's life conversations work great for their style, they weren't quite right for me. You need your conversations with clients to sound like your words, in your voice. Memorizing someone else's script or questioning sequence doesn't guarantee the same success for you as the person who developed it if it sounds like you're just reciting something you memorized. You're far better off doing a little tweaking and making the technique your own. Here's what my new Vendetti/Udell auto to life cross-selling conversation looks like:

Cross-Selling Life From Liability Conversation - Vendetti:

• How did you choose those liability limits for your car insurance?
• They may or may not be the right limits for you. Liability coverage protects you in the event that someone sues you. It’s designed to protect the assets that you’ve worked so hard to accumulate over the years. So, if you have $300,000 in assets and $100,000 of protection, how will those limits work for you if you are sued?
• If we were to take a few minutes to come up with the amount of assets you have, we could then set your liability limits at the right amount to protect you and make also make sure you’re not buying more than you need. How would that work for you?
• Let’s run through your assets real quick and see what we come up with.
• Do asset worksheet
•          You have a total of about $xx in assets. If you want to protect them all, you should have at least $xx amount of liability coverage, does that make sense?
•          How much of your assets would you like to protect? Your liability coverage options are…
•          It looks like you may also need an umbrella policy if you want all of your assets to be protected.

The Pivot - Udell:

• By the way, do you mind if I ask, do you have a will?
• What does it say about who gets your assets if you die?
• What would your wife do with the assets, would she need to get a monthly income from them?
• How much income would she need?
• How important is it to you that she has that $xx of income?
• How much money would she need to have to produce $xx of income per year? What amount of money would you need to generate that income? (help them find the answer)
• If you had all of those assets invested, what kind of safe interest rate do you think you could get?
• If you could get 5% each year, it would take $xx to generate the $xx of income that you want your spouse to have.
•          Right now, you have $xx of assets, which will produce $xx of income. That’s quite a bit less than the amount you said your family needs, maybe we should set up a time to look at ways to fill that gap if it really is important to you, what do you think?

By combining the best of what works for me from both the Vendetti and Udell ideas, I was able to create a 5-10 minute conversation that I can have with every new and existing client that has auto insurance (which should be just about everyone!). The Vendetti idea helps me start the conversation and the Udell idea helps me end it. It's a great example of the power of other people's wheel's and how using the best agent ideas can work for you. Don't be afraid to tweak a conversation or presentation to fit your style or even combine presentations to make it work for you. We're all in this industry together, and by sharing great ideas we can all succeed and help our clients succeed!