This new regular series features content designed to help advisers develop their soft-skills. Former adviser and industry consultant, Jim Prigg, has created a service called KnowledgeMaster to help advisers improve client relationships and referrals. In this article, taken from the KnowledgeMaster library, Jim talks about how to use conceptual pull, rather than product push, to improve insurance sales…
Ever noticed how certain things ‘stick’ in your mind? Things like Nike’s ‘Just do it’ or Coke’s ‘Things go better with Coke’. What about music like the Hill Street Blues theme or Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus?
Then there are pictures and symbols like KFC, Mercedes or the Qantas flying kangaroo that we immediately recognise.
Can you recall the smell of freshly baked bread or the aroma of fish and chips that cause us to salivate as the glorious flavours waft through the air to us?
The mind quickly associates with the senses certain immediate impulses so that we automatically conjure up the picture or place of our learning experiences. We intuitively react to our previous conditioning, don’t we?
Many potential purchasers base their acceptance and perception of life insurance on previous conditioning.
‘Insurance’ connotations
The sale of insurance conjures up pre-conditions, past experiences and personal experiences of what people think of those products and how they affect them. Yet advisers still talk of the word ‘insurance’ and all its negative baggage the actual word can conjure up for potential customers.
The word ‘insurance’ conjures up thoughts that relate to:
| Negativity | Sorrow |
| Morbidity | Dejection |
| Death | Tragic accidents |
| Suffering | Pain |
| Personal loss | Hardship |
| Bad experiences | Economic loss |
| Lost opportunity | Fear |
| Expenses of death | Personal grief and grieving |
| Negative media coverage |
Is it any wonder people don’t want to talk about the word ‘insurance’?
Rather than push the product of insurance, what if there was a way to instil a positive impression about the product?
Why not give positive conceptual names to what the product can do for people?
That means substituting a positive name of what the product is or does that is a benefit, not a guilt sodden piece of mental baggage.
The response is amazing for two reasons:
- People will tend to forget the stigma of the word insurance.
- Secondly they increase their appreciation of what the products can do for them by embracing the positive conceptual names.
Mindset change
- Conceptual pull relates to ideas not products
- Concepts are easier to understand, emotionally charged and give a positive mind-picture of their effectiveness
- Conceptual pull equates to problem solving and agreeable solutions
- The concept can tell what the product will do for people
If you can change people’s perception by talking about:
- What the product does
- How it helps people
- The positive attributes of its application and acceptance
- Working examples and case studies
- Supportive news articles
…then you can alter their conditioning and hence their buying habits.
Here are some positive, happy, humorous and engaging names for the various types of insurances for you to use in your verbal and print based presentations…
Life insurance becomes:
| Creating instant assets | Personal risk management |
| Lifestyle protection | Leaving a legacy |
| Asset protection | Peace of mind contract |
| Comfort provider | Wealth protection |
| Lifestyle protection | Future lifestyle guarantee |
| Loan protection | Dreams and goals protection |
| Estate creation | Estate protection |
| Estate equalisation | Mortgage redemption |
| Home protection | Poverty prevention |
| Condolence cash | Bereavement benefit |
| Business continuance fund | Family education fund |
| Family security | Family protection |
| Contingency fund | Loan killer |
| Fiscal safety net | Financial safety belt |
| Obligation remover | Financial umbrella |
| Debt resolution plan | Debt redeemer |
| Lifestyle continuation | Children’s future fund |
| Obligation fulfilment fund | Dollars of dignity |
| Loan killer | Saving grace |
| Debt reduction fund | Dollars of dignity fund |
| Debt clearance fund | Instant cash |
Trauma insurance becomes:
| Quality of life cover | Dread disease cover |
| Recuperative protection | Continuation cover |
| Survival cash | Living benefit cover |
| Cover for the unexpected | Lifestyle cover |
| Medical recovery fund | Compliment your super plan |
| Back on the road cover | Recovery fund |
| Peace and prosperity planning | Post diagnosis cash fund |
| Portable protection | Baby-sitting fund |
| South Seas tour fund | Last party fund |
| Debt reliever | Cover for the unexpected |
| Insurance for the living | Quality of life cover |
| Asset protection | Investment protection |
| Financially transmitted debt cover | Dignity fund |
| Dollars of dignity fund | Another chance fund |
| Return to life cash | Quality of life cover |
| Mortgage vaccine | Debt demolisher |
| Time out cover | Education fund saver |
| Instant cash | Income capitalisation |
| Respite and rest fund | Corporate buyout solution |
Income protection becomes:
| Financial health cover | Wage generation |
| Lifestyle maintenance | Guaranteed sick leave |
| Guaranteed future income | Bill killer |
| Mortgage neutraliser | Gearing protector |
| Wealth protection | Salary saver |
| Salary substitute | Income defender |
| Income stream protection | Mortgage vaccine |
| Debt demolisher | Grocery guarantee |
| Lifestyle protection | Welfare shield |
| DIY welfare | Illness income stream |
| Creditor repellent | Feedbag filler |
| Lifestyle safety net | Income safety net |
| Centrelink repellent | Clayton’s pay |
| Kids sport continuation fund | Income stream protection |
| The prescription a doctor can’t give you | ‘Choice of better doctor’ insurance |
The object of this exercise has been to establish that insurance is a good thing by emphasising what it can do for people.
By giving insurance products positive conceptual names that describe the benefits it puts it in a much more value based perspective for clients.
This way people grasp the concept and the good it can do, rather than bathe it in the negativity that the word has accumulated over the years.
Action plan
- Choose three conceptual pull expressions for each product you feel comfortable with. Instead of using the ‘I’ word (insurance), practice using these words and phrases in your conversations and presentations.
- Over the next 10 interviews with people you talk to about insurance, substitute positive conceptual words and expressions from the above list (or create your own). Log the reactions of the people you talk to.
- Ask them questions on how they feel about what the product does for them. Explain the benefits of what the product does in simple terms.
This article is reproduced with permission from Jim Prigg CEO and founder of Knowledgemaster Pty Ltd.
Jim Prigg is the CEO and founder of KnowledgeMaster, an online resources company that delivers practical communications, interaction, sales and soft skills tips for advisers, dealer groups and product manufacturers. Jim says there is a raging indifference and ignorance to showing people in a practical sense the real face to face skills they need to sell insurance, which prompted him to create the KnowledgeMaster insurance series. It is not about compliance, technical or product knowledge, but the capability to inject emotion and empathy into the sales process. Rather than tell people what to do, KnowledgeMaster shows them “how to” do it. This means having access to practical scripts, interactive reports, successful communications ideas and just as importantly actions and activities at the end of each topic so we can help people to learn.
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