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OPPORTUNITY: Portfolio Based Selling

Posted by www.psmbrokerage.com Admin on Thu, Mar 19, 2020 @ 12:02 PM

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Tags: Sales Tips, Medicare Advantage, Medicare Supplement, tips on selling insurance to seniors

Selling Your Way Out of a Crisis

Posted by www.psmbrokerage.com Admin on Thu, Mar 19, 2020 @ 11:42 AM

Selling Your Way Out of a Crisis

Selling Your Way Out of a Crisis

The time for you to start climbing out of the hole that you find yourself in is now. There is no benefit from waiting to begin your recovery. It doesn’t help you to wait until things settle down, watching them get worse, feeling a sense of dread, allowing yourself to be disempowered by events.

Take Back Your Power

When events and circumstances beyond your control derail your goals and plans, the fact that you can do nothing about the root cause of the challenge can make you feel as if you have no power. Even though you feel as if you are powerless, you are not. While you may not control the root cause of a crisis, you can manage your response. You can determine what you believe, and you can manage your reaction.

There is every reason to maintain a mindset that is positive, optimistic, future-oriented, and empowered. Being confident doesn’t require that you pretend nothing is wrong in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Instead, it is the belief that you are going to succeed despite the challenges you face. An even more empowering belief system is one that believes adversity is a gift, one that stretches you, that causes you to grow, to improve yourself—and your company and your clients.

Your mindset is critical because it is what will determine your actions. Nothing gets better unless you make it so.

Build Your Plan of Action

In a time of great crisis, especially one that impacts your business, it doesn’t pay to treat extraordinary circumstances like things are business as usual. Instead, it’s business unusual, which means you need to do things differently. That starts with a plan of action.

When a crisis harms your sales, improving your results means more activity and greater effectiveness. Your plan needs to require massive action in response to the crisis that causes a loss or reduction of sales. There are only four ways to grow revenue, and you should use as many of them as possible, starting with selling more to your existing clients, communicating with them at a higher frequency, and making sure you retain them.

You also need to acquire new clients, ones who can give you new revenue—and potential growth. However much prospecting you were doing before the crisis, you need to double your effort and increase the number of opportunities you create. There are always clients who need help recovering from their own crisis, and identifying and helping them recover helps you recover.

When you have the power to do so, raising your prices increases your revenue. The last way to grow is to acquire a competitor. This sales strategy is useful for those with the resources to do so but denied to most sales organizations.
Not only will you feel better having made a plan to recover, taking action will provide you with a sense of direction, a sense of certainty that you are going to be able to rebuild.

Improving Your Effectiveness

When every opportunity counts, improving your effectiveness is critical. You want to do everything you can to ensure your win. Speeding up your recovery means slowing down, focusing on the fundamentals of effective selling, and doing the work necessary to ensure you win big deals.

You may not have built a territory and account plan, targeting your dream clients and developing a pursuit plan. Now is the time to be clear about who your dream clients are and tighten up your theory about why they should change and how you can help. Your sporadic approach to prospecting needs to be driven instead by a valid prospecting sequence. You might also have lost your discipline around creating new opportunities and building a pipeline. When new opportunities from existing and new clients are critical to your recovery, focusing on building a pipeline is the only way forward.

Under normal circumstances, you may have been lax in your pursuit of opportunities, going through the motions of sales activity without being intentional about the outcome of each interaction in the sales conversation through which you are leading your prospective clients. If you are going to sell your way out of a crisis, you need to treat every opportunity as if it is critical, planning your sales calls, following your sales process, and using the methodologies that are proven to increase your results.

The key to improving your win rate, in good times and bad, is to improve your effectiveness. If you want better results, you have to improve your ability to produce better results, something that is as true for sales managers as it is for their sales reps. Better sales leaders get better results from their sales teams. Better salespeople win more—and better deals.

It has been said that one should never waste a crisis. Use this one to improve your effectiveness, taking more action, and improving your efficiency in the fundamentals of good sales.

Create a War Room

A war room is a place from which to plan, communicate, and adjust your approach as things change. Your competitor is not your enemy, and most of them won’t respond as aggressively as they might need to. Instead, your enemy is the poor results that come with an economic crisis.

In a crisis, more communication is necessary. Feedback as to what is working, what isn’t, and what adjustments you need to make is critical. When something is working, you want to do more of it, making sure everyone is aware and has access to strategies and tactics. When something isn’t working, you may need to find another way by making adjustments or making changes to your approach.

Most importantly, you want a visible place to keep score. Your progress will be slow if it isn’t significant enough to track and communicate. In complex B2B consultative sales, we tend to measure our results less frequently than we should, especially when sales cycles are long and decisions require building consensus. That won’t do as you sell your way out of a crisis. You are going to need to measure sales effectiveness more frequently in B2B sales.

The First Rule of Getting Out of a Hole

The first rule for getting out of a hole is to stop digging. Maybe you have been too lax about sales prospecting and sales effectiveness. You may have been able to grow because your vertical was increasing, a rising tide lifting all boats. When the water recedes, you can see the stumps, the companies that were only growing because their market was growing.

Increasing your revenue means selling more. You do not benefit from waiting for the crisis to end before you decide to improve your sales results. The way out of any crisis is always to sell your way out. Get moving.

Source: https://thesalesblog.com/2020/03/17/selling-your-way-out-of-a-crisis/

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Tags: Sales Tips, tips on selling insurance to seniors, phone tips, COVID-19

COVID-19 Selling Remotely and Helping Customers be Prepared

Posted by www.psmbrokerage.com Admin on Tue, Mar 17, 2020 @ 04:34 PM

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Tags: Sales Tips, tips on selling insurance to seniors, phone tips, COVID-19

COVID-19: Agent Scripts & Tips

Posted by www.psmbrokerage.com Admin on Tue, Mar 17, 2020 @ 10:00 AM

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Tags: Sales Tips, tips on selling insurance to seniors, phone tips, COVID-19

Top 5 Viewed PSM Guides of 2019

Posted by www.psmbrokerage.com Admin on Mon, Dec 16, 2019 @ 03:01 PM

Additional Updates:

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Tags: Sales Tips, Medicare Advantage, Medicare, Medicare Supplement, Leads, Medicare Sales, tips on selling insurance to seniors, Social Media Marketing, online sales

What to consider when selling Medicare Supplement insurance

Posted by www.psmbrokerage.com Admin on Tue, Mar 28, 2017 @ 12:45 PM

What to consider when selling Medicare supplement insurance

What to consider when selling Medicare Supplement insurance

When you commit to selling Medicare Supplements, you’re trading the higher commission you may have earned selling final expense or other insurance products for the opportunity to amass a book of business that will eventually give you exponential residual commissions.

That is the biggest pro of selling Medicare Supplements.

The challenge of selling Medicare Supplements centers around three areas:

Cultivating enough trust over the phone to enroll a senior in a plan.
The annual need for check-ins (via phone, email, or card).
The initial low commissions you make starting out when you don’t have that many clients and have to pay for leads.

Good reasons to specialize

Here are a few reasons that make Medicare Supplements a lucrative product to sell:

Renewals can eventually compound to very large commissions.
Agents can sell this over the phone more easily than other insurance products.
Due to the continued required amount of service work every year, there’s the potential for more referrals.
It’s easier to sell Medicare supplement products to seniors and then cross-sell them a final expense plan with the savings, than it is to sell a final expense plan initially and then cross-selling Med Supp.

Agents who may be weighing final expense insurance sales versus Medicare supplement product sales will see obvious differences between commissions, the learning curve it takes to get up-to-speed to sell, the amount of annual service required, and the sales environment.

A more experienced agent will not look at these two types of insurance in terms of having to sell one or the other, and may decide instead to sell both. If you’re catering to seniors in both instances, why not offer both products?

Source: http://www.lifehealthpro.com/2017/03/21/what-to-consider-when-selling-medicare-supplement

Additional Updates:

Express: Mutual of Omaha weekly product updates - View
VALUES Quote of the week - View
Skyrocket your Med Supp sales by selling online - View

Free Med Supp online quoting tool for PSM agents - View

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Tags: tips on selling insurance to seniors, medicare supplement insurance

How one agent overcame a fear of cold calling

Posted by www.psmbrokerage.com Admin on Thu, May 14, 2015 @ 10:33 AM

blog pic William J. Howery is a former Air Force Intelligence Officer. He retired in 2012 as a Lieutenant Colonel and began his career as an insurance agent with Physicians Mutual that same year. He has a bachelor’s degree in communication from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a Master of Business Administration from Norwich University. He is currently enrolled in the Certified Financial Planner ® course at Syracuse University. Will speaks near-fluent German, is married to a native German and has a 2½-year-old daughter at home.

LHP: As a relatively new agent, what are some of the biggest challenges and struggles you face?
WJH: When I first started, I had no real experience in insurance, sales or cold calling, and call reluctance sidelined me more often than I care to mention. I just didn’t know how to handle the objections, and I was taking the rejection personally. I’ve since learned how to overcome call reluctance. The objections no longer bother me the way they did. I’m still working to be better at keeping my pipeline full. I know that I need to have a good mix of prospecting approaches. I just need to get a strategy and be more intentional in my prospecting.

LHP: Why do you think the “survival rate” is so low for new agents, especially in the first few years? What tips, advice or encouragement would you offer to other new agents who might be struggling?
WJH: I think work ethic and cash flow are perhaps the two biggest obstacles for new agents — the former having a dramatic impact on the latter. Being an insurance agent offers a great deal of freedom, and the income potential is simply amazing. What many new agents don’t understand is that with the newfound freedom comes a great deal of responsibility. When new agents aren’t making enough sales, it’s very hard to generate the income needed to stay afloat. Then they start thinking: “This insurance business is much too unpredictable. I can work at XYZ and earn more money each week.” I have had those same thoughts. However, what I’ve learned in the last two years is that discipline and consistency pay dividends. For those who treat their insurance business with the same commitment that they give their jobs, the sales will come. LHP: Talk a bit about the current state of the Med Supp market. How is it changing, and what are your predictions for the next few years? WJH: I see the Med Supp market as a great opportunity! I’m always amazed when I visit with a prospect just one or two months from their birthday and find out that they have never been contacted by another agent. That, to me, illustrates the vastness of the market. I don’t know if there are enough agents out there to meet the demand.

LHP: How do you adjust your sales approach for each prospect based on age, income, gender, etc.?
WJH: I have found that asking questions helps me to zero in on their needs as well as identify important clues on how to handle them. Some people just want the facts; others want to be more relational, and some just want to get it all over with. I’m sensitive to the cues that I’m given and adjust accordingly, while making sure they have the information they need to make informed decisions. I make it a point to make sure they feel like they’re in the driver’s seat and not just having a product pushed on them.

LHP: How do you expect the demographics within your client and prospecting base to shift in the coming years, and how will you adjust as more boomers retire?
WJH: More and more seniors are choosing to continue working beyond 65, so those who have decent group coverage are choosing to postpone their Medicare Part B enrollment and Medigap coverage. Many of the baby boomers are still energetic and active contributors in the workplace, and they’re not ready to hang up their hats. That shift will naturally require me to adjust my prospecting to include more people who are beyond 65 years old and perhaps eventually make them my primary focus.

http://www.lifehealthpro.com/2015/02/24/how-one-agent-overcame-a-fear-of-cold-calling...

Source: lifehealthpro.com

Additional Updates:

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Tags: Sales Tips, Success Tips, Cold Calling, tips on selling insurance to seniors, sales advice

5 Ways to Sell to Seniors

Posted by Jeremy Davis on Fri, Jun 20, 2014 @ 08:14 AM

Medicare Supplements

As longevity increases and more Baby Boomers advance into their senior years, those 65 and older are the most prevalent demographic on many advisors’ prospecting lists. With such a large pool of potential clients looking for retirement and financial advice — and also likely to make referrals to their friends and family — you can’t afford to miss the mark. Try these strategies on for size:

Differentiate yourself online: You might think digital marketing is most effective when targeted towards younger generations, but a 2014 Pew Research Center study shows that 59 percent of seniors today are increasingly Internet savvy.
Be an educator: By providing education to the senior community, advisors establish themselves as experts and earn credibility and trust.
Be available to communicate often: Meaningful conversation is a surefire way to earn a senior’s trust, whether you’re discussing their finances or their children and grandchildren.
Be patient, not pushy: Many times, people get impatient when they’re working with seniors, and it’s the first thing that will kill a sale.
Make your business senior-friendly: Your office and presentation style should be tailored to seniors; handicap access, for example, speaks volumes to your elderly clients when they meet with you for the first time.

http://www.lifehealthpro.com/2014/06/13/5-ways-to-sell-to-seniors?ref=hp-carousel

Source: lifehealthpro.com

Additional Updates:

Medico Medicare Supplement release

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Tags: Medicare Supplement, med supp, tips on selling insurance to seniors

Medicare Blog | Medicare News | Medicare Information

OPPORTUNITY: Portfolio Based Selling

Selling Your Way Out of a Crisis

COVID-19 Selling Remotely and Helping Customers be Prepared

Sell Remotely - YourMedicare Telesales

Wondering About Medigap?

Coronavirus Symptoms and Prevention

COVID-19: Agent Scripts & Tips

Top 5 Viewed PSM Guides of 2019

What to consider when selling Medicare Supplement insurance

Express: Mutual of Omaha weekly product updates - View

VALUES Quote of the week - View

Skyrocket your Med Supp sales by selling online - View

Free Med Supp online quoting tool for PSM agents - View

How one agent overcame a fear of cold calling

5 Ways to Sell to Seniors

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