As an insurance agent, cold-calling is inevitable. Love it or hate it; it’s part of the job. For many people, it can feel like a painful experience. Agent Pipeline has compiled a list of tips that can make your cold-calling more successful, and, in turn, less painful and more enjoyable.
Offer Value in Your Call
When you’re making cold-calls, you are interrupting someone’s day.
There’s no way around it. The prospect didn’t ask for the call, and you don’t know what you might be interrupting when they answer. To make this interruption smoother, always have something valuable to the client to offer initially. This could be something as simple as a health tip or offering a more financially friendly solution to their health insurance needs. Make the call about them and what you can do to make their life better. This will make your message and call more impactful to the prospect.
Stay Focused
You must remain focused while making cold calls – don’t stop or give up until you reach your goals. Don’t lose focus or take breaks. Becoming distracted could both cause you to spend way more time than necessary on cold-calls, and the calls may be less useful to the prospects.
Learn to Accept Rejection
Don’t succumb to the discouraging feeling of rejection get to you – keep going. It is no secret many cold-calls end in denial. Perfect your cold calling technique so that you are unphased by rejection. Get to a place where you can continue making cold calls confidently and effectively after rejections – focus on meeting your daily goals.
Keep Going
You might not like cold-calling, but it is harder to get started again if you take breaks or stop midway through. Keep pushing until you meet your goals for yourself; you’ll find it less painful. If you can do it in one sitting, you do not have to worry about it for the rest of the day.
Set Mini-Goals
Set goals for yourself, and reward yourself when you meet them. Set goals for how many leads you get, how many people are interested, and how many sales you make. You can even get other agents at your agency in on it – have little competition for something like a gift card for Amazon, Starbucks, Dunkin, etc.
Be Conversational
You’ll need to be warm and conversational when making calls. While they can be a great guideline, they never read directly from a script. This comes off as robotic and not personable. Rather, give yourself instructions instead of an entirely written script. This helps you to retain your personality and emotion when calling. You’ll come off as more caring & human, which is what prospects want.
Cold-call in the morning
Studies show that people answer the phone most often between 10 –
11:30 am. Be more successful and get more connections by scheduling your cold-calling within this block of time. It also gets it out of the way for the rest of your day. If it’s your least favorite part of the day, it can motivate you to keep going and finish in the morning.
Leave Effective Voicemails
Yes, the majority of your calls may go to voicemail. Never go without leaving a voicemail. Show that value that you would start a cold-call within the voicemail, and the prospect may be more likely to call you back. If you’re leaving effective and valuable voicemails, you will be much more successful in getting responses from people who may not have picked up the first time.
Have Enthusiasm
This is vital with any type of sales, including cold calls. You need to be enthusiastic about your products if you want the prospects you are reaching out to be interested, especially if you’re interrupting their day like a cold-call.
Learn How to Address Common Objections
Learn the most common objections that are given to you about your insurance products from prospects and come up with practical ways to address them. You’ll usually hear them more than once a day. Agent Pipeline has resources on combating common objections and what they often are in their Resource Center.
Have More Information
During cold calls, people often try to find the quickest way to
get off the phone. Have to leave behind marketing materials that you can send over to prospects if they ask – or you can offer it to them. Prospects who review these materials are more likely to call you back than those who do not.
Grab Their Attention Immediately
You need to be able to catch their attention seconds into the call. Have an impactful opening statement that will get the prospect interested in what you have to say.
Don’t Go Immediately Into the Sales Pitch
If a prospect answers a sales call, tell them why you call and show them how you can help them. Ask a few questions and then tailor the rest of the call to fit their needs.
Remember the Call is About Them
The key to having successful cold calls is making the call about your prospect. Of course, you have goals, but make the call all about your prospect. Find a way to provide them with coverage that fits their needs. If you can submit your contact with actual value, then you will be more successful.
Ask the Right Questions
Asking the right questions can get you the valuable information you need to help the prospect better and assess their needs. Asking questions can reveal a lot about the prospect’s situation to help you better sell to them.
Practice Makes Perfect
Being great at cold-calls involves a lot of practice. You can use sales role-play exercises, rehearse scripts, and work on your enthusiasm either with a teammate or alone.
Be Understanding
Be considerate of your prospect’s time. If you aren’t too pushy, you could earn either some more phone time or be able to schedule a callback at a later time. If you show you value the prospect’s time, they will trust and respect you more.
Plan Questions in Advance
Part of a well-thought-out call outline includes pre-planned questions that get you the information you need and lend themselves to a thoughtful conversation. Once you have someone on the phone, you want to make the most of it, so ensure you capture all the information that you need.
Stick to Necessary Information
You don’t want to be too nosy. Only ask questions that help you qualify the prospect and help you to combat their objections of uncertainty.
Follow up
Regardless of the call’s outcome, always do a follow-up. Check-in with a call, email, or whatever their preferred mode of communication is. If they don’t answer a call, leave a voicemail with your contact info, letting them know you’re checking in.
Learn From Your Mistakes
When a cold-call doesn’t go right, learn from it, and move on. Take every mistake as a learning opportunity.
Reward Yourself
Set goals for your cold-calling and reward yourself when you reach them.
Try More Than Once
Sometimes it takes more than one attempt to reach a prospect. Don’t give up after one failed call. Schedule follow up efforts through different channels to reach a prospect.
After reading all of these tips, your cold-calling experiences will become less painful. If you need more information on cold-calling and prospecting, visit www.agentpipeline.com or call us at 800.962.4693 today!
