Don’t give your Insurance Sales presentations on autopilot

By the time someone reaches the stage in their career where they own their own insurance agency they are generally an experienced, accomplished, professional insurance agent. When you've been in sales for a number of years I find that sales presentations become second nature. Really, most people can probably do them on "autopilot".

I'm an instrument rated pilot and fly frequently. I'm relatively experienced and I fly using my instrument skills pretty often. I practice a lot. I think I'm fairly accomplished.

So, you can imagine my shock recently when I went flying with a friend to practice some instrument flying and performed very poorly. That day was some of my worst flying ever! Why did this happen to me?

I was in a stressful environment, not because I was "under the hood" but because I was flying with someone I really wanted to impress with my abilities. This was the start. But the real issue was that I had not practiced "hand flying" the plane in instrument conditions for a number of months. On "autopilot" I was fine! But under unusual conditions, and without any recent practice, my performance was, to be generous, not good.

As salespeople we face the same issue. Perhaps we are delivering an insurance sales pitch in front of a prospect who has a business we don't understand. Maybe the prospect is a really difficult personality. Perhaps we just haven't sold this insurance product in a while. Whatever the cause, when you can't sell on autopilot, and must revert to making it up as you go along, disaster lurks!

The fix for flying - and selling - proficiency is regular practice. Even for old grizzled veterans like us! And practice, to be beneficial, needs to include new, unusual and tough challenges to keep us sharp. Some ideas are role playing the sales process with younger producers while asking them to imitate their toughest prospects. Maybe practice cross selling life insurance with a colleague who is someone whose good opinion you value. How about asking a good, trusted, customer to help you by throwing you curveballs?

I think we all need more practice than we get. Some of us never practice at all. But practice makes perfect, and you will close more sales with it. Long term sales pitch practice and honing is critical to our success as salespeople and the better, tougher, more realistic the practice the better!