Why Is Insurance Sales Training Important?

At Zywave, we know that new insurance brokers benefit tremendously from the time they spend in training. They learn to be efficient, find and nurture leads, and close more sales. In other words, they start producing for their agency a lot sooner than they would have without the insurance sales training.

Unfortunately, many agencies have no insurance sales training program in place at all. They may feel that training takes up time and money that they don’t have. Or they may not be familiar with any quality training programs. Whatever the reason, these agencies are missing out on huge opportunity to turn each member of their team into a super producer, generating big business for the company.

Focus on Phone Calls

Phone calls are an important tool in any insurance agent’s arsenal. They present an opportunity to engage with a prospect or customer in a personal way. You can address customer concerns, highlight your value-added services, and show your enthusiasm for your products, all without leaving your desk.

For the agency owner, they also present a valuable training opportunity. Many companies monitor or record phone calls for training purposes. There’s no reason that insurance agencies can’t do the same. By listening in, owners can discover where and how their agents are succeeding. They can also identify areas in need of improvement and then target those issues in their insurance sales training program.

Getting Started with Call Monitoring: Be Sure You Are Following the Law

First, let your staff know that you will be listening in on some of their phone calls every week for training purposes. Make sure that they understand that your intent is to identify the strengths and weaknesses in your agency’s sales techniques so that you can effectively train all your producers to make more money.

You should also ask all team members to sign a consent form, allowing you to record or monitor their calls. Federal law prohibits recording a phone conversation without the consent of at least one party.

In most states, single-party consent is enough to make the recording legal. But 12 states have expanded beyond the federal consent law to require that all parties participating in a call give their express consent. These states include: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Washington. (Since states can change their laws at any time, we strongly encourage you to check your own state’s laws before starting a call monitoring program.)

Now, just because all parties have to provide consent, that doesn’t mean that your callers have to provide written consent. It is sufficient for the insurance agent to ask callers, “Do you mind if I record this call? We use the recordings for training purposes.” If the caller agrees and you capture that on the recording, then that is enough to satisfy the law.

Alternatively, you can use a call monitoring service, or install call recording software. Those products will automatically play a pre-recorded message to all of your callers, notifying them that their call is being recorded.

4 Simple Steps to Training Agents with Call Monitoring

1. The agency owner, or perhaps a training manager, should commit to listening to a minimum number of calls per month. For larger agencies, this may be 20 calls. In smaller businesses, you may only listen to 5. What’s important is that you set a goal and stick to it.
2. Choose a few calls to showcase as examples of great insurance agency sales technique and play them at your next staff meeting. Choose a few others in which you’ve identified missed opportunities. When you sit down with your team, ask brokers to name the mistakes that were made in the call. Did the broker fail to overcome objections? Did he not spend enough time listening to the caller’s concerns and reflecting them back? Could he have asked more questions?
3. Use those mistakes to create effective sales scripts as a team. Be sure to come up with several scripts to meet various possible scenarios. For example, you should identify your most frequently asked questions and come up with agreed-upon answers. You should also list common objections and develop scripts to overcome them.
4. Monitor more phone calls and measure the improvement. Then you can report back to your team, congratulate them for their successes, and strategize around the improvements you still need to make.

Even though it may feel awkward or intimidating at first, agencies that make listening to their phone calls a part of their insurance agency training process experience many benefits. Agents can improve their sales and service skills, the agency can make more money, and your clients will have a better overall experience.