What you should have in your waiting area instead of magazines

Picture having to numb your mouth and stomach with chemicals, take a pain medication more addictive than heroin and put a syringe into a tube stretching to the back of your throat just so you could eat — because you’re not able to swallow.

That’s what Darren W. Ulmer, CFP, CHS, had to do to avoid losing any more weight during his treatment for cancer in his throat. Clearly, the eight-year MDRT member from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, knows firsthand the value of critical illness insurance, which provided his family with two checks for more than $100,000 each and eased the financial burden of his sickness.

How can you help clients and prospects understand the impact of a condition like Ulmer’s, and how critical illness insurance can help? One technique Ulmer suggests is replacing your waiting-area magazines with a scrapbook of articles and personal stories about the financial and emotional stress of critical illnesses like cancer.

“The conversation usually starts by us talking about something they found interesting in the book,” he says. “Then I ask them, ‘What if you couldn’t work for a year or two because of a serious health issue, something such as cancer or a heart attack, where even if you wanted to go back to work, you physically couldn’t? I would like to show up at your home with a get-well card and a get-well check. How big would you like that check to be?’”

This approach results in clients creating the need and determining the amount that feels right to them without first discussing premiums or statistics that may put them at a distance. Hear more in Ulmer’s 2017 Annual Meeting Focus Session “Hanna’s letter to Santa and other great conversations about critical illness insurance”

See another way to use metaphors to help people understand these products

Written by Matt Pais, MDRT Content Specialist