IIf you plan to build your career as an insurance agent in India, you should know the dos and don’ts of the business. While being aware of what you need to do is crucial to become an insurance agent, it is equally important to know the mistakes you should not make while starting your career as an insurance agent.
This article will take you through a few such mistakes, which you should always avoid to kick-start your career and progress in it.
Most Common Mistakes While Becoming An Insurance Agent
- Not knowing your prospective clients: The first mistake many new insurance agents make is not evaluating and understanding prospective clients. Even if you pitch the right products in the right way but to the wrong prospect, all your hard work will go in vain. You need to have the right leads so your pitch won’t get wasted. You need to reach out to those people who need or are looking for insurance at the moment or if it is necessary for them so that you can make them realise that buying the insurance you are pitching can help them in the long term.
- If you don’t listen, you cannot sell: One of the biggest mistakes most newbie insurance agents make is not listening to the client’s requirements. As an insurance agent, you need the patience to listen to the client’s requirements thoroughly. If you are in a hurry to pitch your product and sell it, most often, clients will get disinterested in your products. You need to be patient enough to understand what the client needs and provide them with the right insurance plan so they cannot refuse it. So, to understand and offer that kind of service, you need to have patience, and you need to listen.
- Ignoring planning: Most insurance agents fail in the starting phase of their careers due to a lack of planning. If you want to become popular in the insurance industry, you need to plan things accordingly. Just visiting clients or calling them without an agenda can ruin the lead altogether. So, it is crucial to have a plan for how you can help the client with their insurance needs. It would greatly help if you could offer the prospective client a complete picture. Prepare to explain how they can easily buy the insurance policy from you, how you will be helping them select the right insurance plan, how to pay the premium, calculate the premium and renew policies, claim settlement and everything. This would make the client more interested in what you are pitching.
- Not having a sales script: Another huge mistake you can make is not having a sales script. Improvisation is always the key to a great conversation and sales pitch, but at the beginning of your career, you need to have a script so that if you face some new questions, you do not fumble. It is important to be confident enough when speaking to the client, and a script in your hand can be of great help when calling the clients.
- Becoming a salesperson: While the job of an insurance agent is to sell insurance policies offered by the insurance company they work for, if you sound like a salesman to the prospective client, they are not going to buy the insurance policy from you even if they want to. Insurance is a necessity and luxury good that you can sell with some aggressive sales pitch or flowery language about the product. You need to establish why the prospect needs the insurance policy, how it will help them save their hard-earned money, or help during the financial crisis or in a similar situation. Once you can make the prospect understand the risk they will be taking without buying the insurance policy, they will automatically want to buy the policy.
Conclusion
While the procedure for becoming an insurance agent in India is simple, starting your career in this field requires you to understand these mistakes well so that you do not end up doing the same. If you avoid making these mistakes, you can build your career as an insurance agent in a shorter time than others.