Translating Concepts Into Actions For Insurance Sales Success

When you begin to learn how to sell you’re learning at a conceptual level. Everything you read and hear sounds pretty good. After all it has worked for other people it should work for you, right? n nWell, yes and no. Yes, it has worked for other people. But you aren’t other people you’re you and what worked like gang busters for someone else may be a total flop for you. nnThat doesn’t mean you are a failure, or that you can’t sell. It does mean that you haven’t taken a concept and learned how to adapt that concept to fit your particular situation and your particular attitudes and skills. And it means that you’re having trouble translating a concept into actions. nnIt’s easier for you to translate sales concepts when you’re very clear about who you want to attract and what you do. You may think that sounds like a duh, but I’ll bet if you’re currently having problems that your problems start here. You see you need to be very clear about specifically who you want to sell to so you can learn enough about those people to know exactly what they want and why. Then you need to be able to communicate to them in terms of the big thing they want to get when talking about what you do. nnWithout this underlying understanding within you it’s impossible to convey it to prospects. Plus prospects don’t care a whit about products, so you should never talk to them in terms of products you should talk to them in terms of desired outcomes. When you’re using a prepared presentation provided to you by the source of your products the focus is on the product not the prospect, and that puts you in a bad position with your prospect.nnInstead of focusing on your agenda and what you want focus on the prospect. As you learn about a new selling concept ask yourself how you would feel if you were on the receiving end of this idea. If you don’t think you’d feel comfortable you won’t feel comfortable when you try to translate that concept into action.nnWhen you try it you’ll see your prospect’s negative or uncomfortable reaction, and then you’ll know for sure it just isn’t right for you and your situation the way you’ve implemented it. So what do you do, trash the idea? No, recognize you don’t have it right yet because when you do it will feel like you and the prospect are in step moving together to the closed transaction like an army marching in cadence.nnIdentify how you could adapt this sales concept to better fit you and your prospect. There may be parts of your prepared sales presentation that have value and that you will want to work into your sales conversation at the appropriate time, but unless you’re holding a group sales conversation with four or more people tank the presentation and learn how to translate selling concepts into real selling conversations. You don’t hold selling conversations when you’re doing all the talking and following a script. You do hold selling conversations when the prospect is doing all the talking and you’re guiding them along the path to the end they want.n