You’ve been a preneed agent for a while now and you have the hang of the job. You’ve been making sales and you feel comfortable talking about the options and products you offer. It’s time to graduate from the dry, scripted calls you were probably trained to use. Here’s why:
They are impersonal.
Any good preneed agent knows that selling preneed insurance is absolutely dependent on the relationship built with the client. Preneed insurance is something everyone can benefit from, but it’s not an immediate benefit and it’s not an obvious need (for most people). Therefore, you have to be the one who educates each potential client as well as foster trust in the relationship so they, personally, come to understand the benefits you are offering.
Scripts don’t focus on need.
Clients who are considering preneed insurance (or who’ve never considered it before) want to be listened to and really heard. Although you may be “listening” to the words they are saying on your call, are you really comprehending and internalizing the meaning of those words? Do their responses cause you to adjust the conversation or personalize it in any way? Not if you’re reading from a script!
You seem inflexible. A key component of successful sales is the flexibility an actual agent can offer. Despite many industries moving toward automation, the preneed insurance field is still run by knowledgeable, flesh-and-blood agents. This is because people like customization and personalization. Show that you can be flexible and that you have adjustment power by ditching the script and focusing on what you can do for the client.
People hate robots.
Compare a public speaker who reads their speech from a sheet of paper to a speaker who makes eye contact with their audience, speaks with a natural flow and intonation, and uses gestures to emphasize a point. When you read from a script, even one you are familiar with, you sound like a recording and people notice. In this age of technology, clients are hyper-sensitive to the amount of ads, spam, recordings, and commercials that they experience every day. Don’t just be a billboard: be a confidant and a comrade.
You’ll make more sales.
Research shows us that scripted sales calls get hung up on more often than personalized calls. Contacts lead to sales only if you actually make contact. Your plea will fall on deaf ears if you rely too heavily on an impersonal, robotic script. If you’re looking to schedule a face-to-face, if you’re looking to get a call back, if you’re looking to make a sale, you’ve got to go off-script.
Going off-script can be alarming, uncomfortable, and quite a transition. However, as the seasons and the weather change outside, try implementing a change of your own—it could be the shake-up that your sales game needs right now. Everyone wants more sales, but not everyone is willing to do the work and make the changes necessary to achieve those goals. Be the minority who does what it takes.
