Take the Pain Out of Cold Calling: Our Expert Guide

Cold calling is not nearly as bad or difficult as it sounds. Every agent from time to time will find themselves cold calling a contact or list of contacts. Its just one more tool insurance agents have to marketing their products to new customers.

Cold calling may bring to mind a lot of uncomfortable images, such as flipping page by page through the phonebook or getting yelled at by the person on the receiving end.

Making Cold Calls Can Be Very Rewarding

Here are a list of cold calling tips I have compiled myself and from our agents. If you have a additional cold calling sales tips that you would like us to include here, email them to us.

Tip #1: Know Who You Are Going to Call

Picking up the phone book might sound like a courageous and aggressive sales move. That “I can take on the world” feeling will end wasting hours of your time.

If you have them, always start off with calling referrals first. Then work through your friends to gather more contacts, find old business cards, find old contact lists from tradeshows/conventions, lists from past events you attended, past business relationships, etc…

Any list of people that you have access to and they have some semblance of a relationship to you is ideal. Go after these before you start cold calling from bulk lists.

Tip #2: Who You Talk to is Critical

You need to get whoever makes the buying decisions on the phone. Personally, I can remember spending 30 minutes on the phone with someone and eventually closing them only to discover in the last second that they will have to check with XYZ person first, because they are the one that actually makes the purchasing decisions.

When you get a contact on the phone, very kindly ask if they are the one who makes the insurance shopping decisions. If the person who makes the buying decisions is not available, then leave a message for them. Don’t waste your precious marketing time on people who don’t have the authority to buy insurance from you.

Additional rules to follow for leaving messages. If you are calling a business, don’t bother leaving a voicemail. Its highly doubtful that the person in charge will return your call. If you are leaving a message at a residence, make sure to include your name, company, and reason for calling. Keep it brief and friendly.

Tip #3: Start the Call Off Fast

You need to set the pace of the call right from the start. These aren’t people who are close friends, so they are going to give you about 5 seconds to get to the point before they become frustrated.

This is also not a time to start off with typical pleasantries like “Hello, how are you today?”. Get right to your script (see tip #4) and set the pace for the conversation. Run through who you are, why you are calling in the first 30 seconds of the call. You need to show that you are professional and concise.

Tip #4: The Best Cold Callers Started with a Script

Scripts are not a waste of time. Even the best phone sales people in the industry (of whom I know some amazing closers) started off with scripts. Some of these top agents still use scripts to this day, however for them its more of an loose outline so they don’t forget important points.

If you are starting off though, you will need to write a detailed outline of what you want to say. You don’t need to write everything out word for word, but include as much information as you can. This will help out tremendously when you run into contacts that try to rush you or interrupt frequently.

Over time though you will need to rely on it solely as an rough outline. You don’t want to sound like a robot as you speak.

Tip #5: Explain Why They Need to Choose You and Provide Examples

The key to an insurance sales call is to make your product sound like the best value in the industry. There is such fierce competition between the 420,000 insurance agents in the US, that you must separate yourself from your competitors.

Start off your pitch with a statement like, “I believe my company can offer you the same or better coverage then you have currently, for less.” Even if you don’t really know that for sure, you now have their interest. Plus, now you have them thinking that maybe shopping around isn’t such a bad idea after all. Its quite possible that they are overpaying and you as the agent stand to help them save a fortune.

If you are cold calling, the number one thing you have working against you is the fact that you have no trust or history with the contact. This means you need to build history by being professional, knowledgeable, and most importantly giving them examples of happy clients you have served.

When choosing examples to use with your contact, try to think of clients you have served in similar situations to theirs. Explain the needs of those clients, what product you provided for them, and how it has greatly benefited them afterwards. Mention how much money you saved them and how you have maintained a good relationship with them ever since.

To be believable though, you need to be as specific as possible with your examples. When people lie, they tend to speak in generalizations. The more specific and detailed you are in the examples you provide, the more likely it is that your contact will take you at your word. In the end, tell them exactly what they want to hear: How much money are you going to save them?

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