B2B Insurance Agent Sales and Marketing Best Practices: Overcoming Prospect Objections

B2B insurance sales can be a difficult task even with a relatively eager agency prospect. There is a budget approval process that includes CFO review, buy-in from key team members, schedule coordination, legal review, and finally writing. These are just a few of the many challenges inherent in any B2B sale. Add to those hurdles, a prospect who is a good fit for your insurance solution, but has objections to your value proposition, or a high-level relationship with a competitor in the “C-level” executive, and we’ve just listed some of the main obstacles in a B2B insurance sales cycle. How can these objections be overcome and an agreement reached? Here are some tips to help you overcome objections and create an easier path to the sale:

  • Anticipate common objections and have responses ready.
  • Create a list of bonus points to tap into: Your elevator pitch may only be 30 seconds long, but there are many nuances to your value proposition that you should have in your back pocket.
  • Have examples of successes with customers who are similar to your prospect and be ready to share them verbally and in writing (customer case studies).
  • Drop the name when it’s relevant, but if you’re going to do this, make sure you’re on solid ground.
  • Understand competing insurance agency solutions and proposals, and determine how and why your solution is superior. Your superior solution could simply be the service you bring to the table.
  • Find a methodology to create a unique value proposition, differentiating you and your agency from your competitors. Often the best way to do this is articulated in the following bullet point.
  • Sell ​​by telling stories. The stories are more interesting and the information conveyed is much stickier. You may not remember the details of the last meeting you attended, but I bet you remember all the salient details about “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, and that story goes all the way back to Aesop.

By following these few tips, B2B insurance agents, or almost any B2B sales professional, can improve their conversion rate and create an improved sales cycle. B2B selling is as much an art as it is a science, it’s a numbers game and therefore it’s quantitative, but it’s also definitely a qualitative process that requires constant review and self-assessment.

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