What’s in your critical illness toolkit? 

If you are a plumber, a financial plumber, and you are going on a job, you don’t arrive with a single monkey wrench expecting to fix everything with it. You don’t know when you go on a job as a plumber what might be needed. You carry a complete toolkit so that whatever the problem is, you have the relevant tool handy. 

When it comes to critical illness insurance, it’s the same principle. We don’t know what questions might get asked. We don’t know where the conversation might go. So, we need a toolkit. We need the right tools to be able to answer whatever questions may come up from the client. So, I’m going to share with you some of the things I carry in my critical illness sales toolkit. 

The first thing I always have is a list of illnesses. When we start talking about critical illness, the client is likely to say, “So, what’s covered?” We can try to remember the list of 20, 30, 40 different things, or we can have a list available. And we say, “There you go. Here’s an example of the kind of things that are covered.” Run your finger down that list and say to the client, “Do you know anyone who has suffered from any of these things?” Invariably, the client will say, “Yes, I know somebody who had a heart attack [or cancer or a stroke].” 

Next question, and it’s a leading question: “Tell me, John, that person who had that heart attack ― did they know they were going to have a heart attack before they had the heart attack?” John says, “Of course they didn’t know that.” “OK. And do you think when they had that heart attack, a quarter of million dollars or a half-million dollars would have been a useful amount of money to help them get their lives back in order?” “Of course it would be. Nobody would say no to that.” “Well, that’s what I do. I deliver money when somebody has a life-changing illness. John, you don’t know if you might have a heart attack or cancer in the same way the person you talked about didn’t know.” 

When you are showing this list of illnesses, the client might say to you, “Yes, but what does a heart attack mean?” You might try to memorize that the definition of a heart attack is the death of a portion of the heart muscle, typical chest pain and characteristic electro-cardiac changes. You don’t need to know that. All you need to know is that you have in your toolkit the relevant technical definition so that you can say, “Look, if you meet this criteria, the insurance company will pay.” That’s all you need to know. Carry the technical definitions as part of your toolkit. 

Bhupinder S. Anand, ACII, Dip PFS, is a 26-year MDRT member from London, England, United Kingdom. Hear more in the new episode of MDRT Presents: