How to end client procrastination

We need to get our clients to stop thinking in the world of probability and start thinking in the world of consequences. Our clients think our business is only about the probability of death, but probability stops once the actuaries price our product.

In other words, their mindset is, “What are the chances I will die in the next year, the year after, or the year after that?” Since the answers are three noes, they procrastinate on protecting their families. I tell them they are simply asking the wrong questions. It is not a question about the chance you will die. The question is what happens to your family if you do die!

Supporting their thinking is a list: “I eat right; I work out; my family history is good; I don’t use tobacco; I drive safely, and I don’t jump out of airplanes.” This is their license to put us off and at the root of most objections. You see that the list applies to me too. If the plane goes down on my way home, this list doesn’t mean a thing. The last memory my family will have will be this: My dad died in a plane crash, but he did the right thing.

We need to tell our clients and prospects in a straightforward way, “You do not hire me to work in the world of probability; you hire me to work in the world of consequences.” If we establish value congruence, we become more valuable to our clients and prospects. Therefore, once I complete a fact-finder and see I have work to do, I will tell my prospects that there are obviously items to address for them. But we need to share value congruence.

If we do, I know I can help them. If not, they need to work with someone else. Value congruence has three parts:

1. “If I die or you die, our families will be OK. That is important to me. Is that important to you?”

2. “If our spouses die, again our families will be OK. That is important to me. Is that important to you?”

3. “We put away money every month so we will never have to come to our children in our old age, knock on their door, and say, ‘I am sorry — I didn’t do what I needed to do. You need to take me in until I die.’ That is important to me. Is that important to you?”

If we get three yeses, I can help them. If they waffle later in the process, I can circle back to these things and ask them what has changed since we had that conversation.

David L. Alarid is a 31-year MDRT member from Newport Beach, California. Read more in Alarid’s 2015 Annual Meeting presentation, the “Life insurance objections clinic.”

For more ideas for getting more yeses

• Read “Overcoming objections“
• Watch “Build trust by welcoming objections” with Top of the Table qualifiers Tony Gordon and Alessandro M. Forte, Dip PFS.
• Listen to “Strategies to handle objections.”