The total insurance penetration in India standing at just 3.49%, according to the 2018 Economic Survey. Of that amount, 2.72% can be put in to life insurance basket. However, the India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) had reported earlier that the life insurance industry will grow by 12% — 15% annually over the next five years.
selling life insurance policy
This marks good news for agents and marketers of life insurance policies. But a lot of hard work and data digging is required to target the right audience with the right products and pricing.
Selling Life Insurance Is Hard
There are a number of difficulties facing life insurance brokers and it is not so difficult to find a lot of people switching teams later in their career.These are reasons why it’s become really difficult for you to hit those targets.
Customers aren’t exactly thinking about their death
Getting new customers for life insurance policies is often a tiresome convincing task. And that’s more psychological than anything else. Because truth be told, not everyone is going about thinking about the aftermath of their deaths. Especially when they belong to a certain income bracket.
While they may jump at other insurance policies like health insurance, vehicle insurance, house insurance, they may take a minute longer to consider your life insurance offer. This is why your sales team has to be top-of-mind, something that won’t happen without automation.
Your company has a inefficient acquisition process
There’s a lot of legacy technology involved with lots of insurance companies, which you can mostly attribute to the regulations that abound in the industry. However it can not be an excuse for lack of innovation, especially in the area of customer acquisition.
Some agents rely on the stressful and outdated strategy of cold-calling and house visits . This is not to discard the effectiveness of these methods but to stress the fact that it can be almost useless when backed by technology. You also need to stop and consider the likelihood that your competitor has probably reached out too. So, what do you do differently? How do you get ahead?
On the other hand, life insurance companies who adopt online acquisition models often experience certain difficulties . For example, customer experience becoming impersonal and mechanical..
A lack of automation and technology driven sales leads
an automated CRM software can be the last mile connectivity to acheive target . It provides you with a holistic path to executing your sales strategy. A lack of it thereof means lower policy sales and renewals. It also deprives your sales team the opportunity to fully engage prospects, upsell, and cross-sell via automated and personalized communication.
An Integrated CRM Solution Is The Way Forward
Of India’s around 55 major insurance companies, 24 of them are focused on life insurance. This means there is a lot of competition for customers who are already hard to get. Adopting a fully automated insurance software will help make selling life insurance a lot easier.
How to sell life insurance as Proprietor?
Get leads from different channels
An automated insurance CRM software of your company allows you to capture leads from both online and offline channels for access in one place. These include your regular insurance aggregators like PolicyBazaar and MyInsuranceClub. You can also followup on policy inquiries from prospects on your digital assets like website, blog, social media channels, and PPC campaigns.
With this, you have an idea of where your leads are coming from. You also know the ideal rules of engagement, and what strategy is best for following up to ultimately close the prospect.
Assign leads to relevant departments automatically
As your prospects pass through your digital acquisition funnel, it is only ideal to adopt an automatic means of distributing leads. For one, it helps to avoid ambiguity and foster clarity of tasks, such that you can save ample time in reaching out to prospects.
On the other hand, you can reduce the communication gap between insurance agents and the prospect as everyone knows who they’re responsible for. According to the EY Global Consumer Insurance Survey, 44% of customers had no interactions with their insurers in 18 months.
Track customer activity in real-time
An good insurance CRM software will enable your commpany to integrate with important marketing and sales tools such as Google Adwords, Facebook, IVR tools, etc. From the moment a prospect lands on any of your digital assets, you’re able to track their other activities. As a result, companies can provide insurance salespeople with little bit more background information about leads, you’re also able to give them live-action details.
For instance, you can notify agents when leads visit certain pages on your website. For example, when they click a link to the FAQ section of your Life Insurance web page. You get a faint idea that they’re definitely interested in the specifics of your life insurance policies, perhaps in comparison with your competitor(s). Simultaneously, you can assign the next task to the concerned agent, so that the process can remain hot.
Up-sell and Cross-sell
There is a really great chance that your insurance company does more than sell life insurance policies. So, why not kill two birds with one stone by cross-selling or up-selling your products. Someone who just bought a life insurance policy could also be interested in getting a health policy. With an automated platform, you can achieve this. Since you already have all their details and transaction history in one place.
Digital Insurance
Automation is proving a lifeline for many businesses. The same is true for the insurance industry. It is the fastest way insurance companies can penetrate this market. Adopting an automated insurance CRM and sales execution platform will ensure that that company is staying ahead of the competition.
There are many companies who are providing automation driven CRM tools for insurance sector with features to enhance overall experience of all stake holders including sales,marketing,operations and CUSTOMER
How to sell life insurance as individual ?
About LIC
The Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) is a biggest name in life insurance industry. The company was the first life insurance company formed in India and as such it has the largest customer base. LIC has over 2100 branches operating today. Customers have an inherent trust in the plans offered by the company and so they readily buy LIC insurance policies. Due to this many individuals seek to become an insurance advisor and sell LIC policies.
How to sell LIC policy?
To sell a life insurance policy of the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), you need to become an advisor with LIC. To become an advisor the following steps are required –
- You need to register for an agency with LIC directly under a DO (development officer)
- Attend a classroom training for 25 hours at a LIC training institute
- There would be an exam conducted by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA)
- You would then have to clear the examination to get a license to act as a LIC advisor.
Once you get the license, you can sell LIC policies to your contacts by visiting them one-on-one.
New way to sell LIC Policy: Become a PoSP
Instead of becoming an advisor with LIC directly, you can become a PoSP(Point of Sale Person). Many companies give complete online support for selling insurance policies to your clients. from finding the plans suitable for your client to help them with their claims, such companies gives you online assistance. These companies are having apps and websites to take care of the whole process online .
When you sell online, your customers can buy the policy directly from the app and pay the premiums online. The policy is issued at the earliest and your hassles are also reduced.
Your clients can also compare the plans offered by LIC and other different life insurance companies. Thus, by comparing, clients can buy the best policy at the lowest premium rates. Also, the features of every policy are available at your fingertips on the these kinds of apps.
Advisros get regular renewal reminders and can track your sales on the app. These apps also helps advsiors to provide claim assistance to your clients. Thus, these apps help you sell insurance the paperless way. You just need to focus on selling the policy to your contacts and Mintpro would do the rest.
Selling insurance policies of LIC
LIC policies can be sold in two ways – online and offline. Let’s understand how these methods work –
Offline mode of selling LIC policies
You can sell LIC policies by visiting your clients. You need to explain the plan details to your clients. Once the client agrees to the policy that you recommend, you should help your clients fill up the proposal form. After the form is filled, collect the premium.
Then, you need to visit the office of LIC for getting the policy issued. It is a cumbersome process as you have to physically visit the company premises for entering in the policy details which you have sold.
Online mode
Rather than visiting your contacts physically, you can become a Point of Sale Person (PoSP). Mintpro allows you to sell LIC policies online from the comfort of your own home.
How to sell LIC policy online?
To sell LIC policies online, you can follow these steps –
1.Create a list of all your contacts including family, friends, relatives and acquaintances and then approach them
2.Try and understand the financial requirements of your contacts before telling them the details of the policy. Once you get the financial requirements you can understand which policy would be suitable for them.
3.Once you understand the requirement of the client, recommend the suitable LIC policy. It can be an endowment plan for savings oriented needs, child plan for child’s future planning, pension plans for retirement planning or unit-linked plans for creating wealth
4.Once the client understand that the product which you are suggesting meets his/her financial needs, he/she would buy the policy from you. When the client agrees to purchase the plan, help them fill up the proposal form online. The form should be filled with required details and the details should be correct. If the client does not understand any part of the form, elaborate and explain him/her about it so that the form is filled after complete understanding.
5.After the form is filled, help your clients pay online premiums and help them get the policy thereafter.
Important things to know for somoene selling life insurance in India
Plenty of Opportunities for selling life insurance policy
If you are serious about selling life insurance for a living, there is a positive thing about it . It is a job seeker’s market. Things have changed with the rise of the Internet. Today’s life insurance agents need to specialize more than ever.
There might not be any sign in the window, but the agencies are hiring and will most likely consider you regardless of what line of work you were in before. It may cost money for an insurance company to train a new agent, but it’s still cheaper than paying a salary for what is, again, a position that relies almost exclusively on commission once the training period ends.
Be Prepared for Rejection
The actual execution of the job of a life insurance agent can be disheartening, at least in the beginning. The first lead you contact is going to say no. The second lead is going to say no.
A successful, late-career insurance salesperson could make more than $150,000 in salary, commission, and profit-sharing.
With time , after you’ve shadowed the established agents in the office long enough , you make your first sale and garner the majority of the premium for yourself.
Hitting the Books
The best agents are the ones with the most and most respected designations be it CEO ,ASM ,ZSM And RSM etc. Dozens of hours of study and instruction, followed by an exam, separate the less committed and less ambitious life insurance agents from the ones truly devoted to the career. Combine ethics with real-world education—and persistence—and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t grow.
The Bottom Line
If business is your goal, there is plenty of opportunity for someone seeking a career in insurance sales. That said, it is going to be a tough thing, especially at first. Agents have to have thick skin and be able to handle rejection. After all, they’re all selling the same products, for the most part. So if client service and relationships building aren’t your thing, you might want to look for other options.