Challenges of Selling Personal Insurance and How to Overcome Them

TLTR: Selling personal insurance can be a challenge for any agent. This article explores the methods by which you can excel at selling such policies.

Selling personal insurance is a demanding path to take in the industry. When it comes to this line of insurance, it’s best to be patient and take the long view.

Common types of personal line insurance coverage include homeowners, flood, renters, automobile, earthquake, umbrella, life, and health. But marketing and persuading people to buy such insurance policies can be challenging.

For one thing, encountering customers that qualify for some of them can be difficult. And it’s not uncommon for your promising leads to having already been contacted by other insurance agents.

And even when you find promising prospects, many either don’t want to talk about insurance or they just don’t want to contend with the details of the coverage that you’re selling.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Let’s take a closer look at some of the sales challenges you’re apt to encounter and how to tackle them.

Challenge 1: Approaching Different Generations For Personal Insurance

People are individuals, but there’s a general difference in the way you should approach selling insurance to different generations. When communicating and selling to Baby Boomers, for example, you should be more proactive and focus on in-person sales.

Millennials, on the other hand, were raised with personal computers and smartphones. As with most everything else they buy, they prefer to find and purchase their insurance online. They may not ask you many questions or communicate with you as much as boomers due to a tendency to Google information for themselves.

Go ahead and accommodate Boomers, but it won’t hurt to encourage them to take advantage of the convenience conferred by the internet. With younger clients, you’re more likely to need to prove yourself.

No matter how good they are with online research, it’s no substitute for your experience and expertise where personal insurance coverage is concerned.

Make sure they come to that conclusion on their own by being as helpful as possible to them.

Challenge 2: Customer Service in Personal Insurance

As per a report by Microsoft, about one in three people say that the most important aspect of customer service is speaking with a knowledgeable and friendly agent.
As an insurance agent working with personal lines insurance, you need to ease your existing and potential clients into incoming changes such as new rules, online features and such. Do not shock them with a plethora of changes or new substitutes.

It’s also important to keep customers’ needs in mind. Most agents give clients acceptable service, but do many of them provide service that really sets them apart? Reworking your customer onboarding experience, streamlined insurance processing services, and attention to what the client communicates are great starting points if you want to give your clients value.

You should also learn to express genuine concern and listen to your clients. If you’re sincere, they’ll see you’re making an effort and they’ll appreciate it. It’s the best way to cultivate customer loyalty.

Challenge 3: Insurance Customers and Current Events

The pandemic has affected everyone’s daily lives in countless ways. That includes purchasing insurance, according to CNBC. They report that while people are less inclined to purchase personal insurance such as fitness or travel insurance, they’ve been buying life insurance policies in droves.
This is primarily due to the ongoing situation with the pandemic. People are increasingly becoming aware of the financial risks associated with mortality and are taking necessary precautions.

As an agent, you should do your best to help people understand the importance of personal coverage such as life and health insurance and help them make an investment for their future. Regardless of whether any global calamity is temporary or permanent, it’s important to keep yourself and your clients updated as well as prepared.

Have you experienced challenges while working the personal lines? Let us know in the comments below.

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