HIGH TOUCH IN HIGH TECH

Wouldn’t you like hundreds and thousands of young people to be your clients?

Can you imagine how many prospects there are in their late teens, 20s, and 30s?

Think about it.

Decades of potential fees and commissions lie waiting in this demographic.

But the life insurance industry as a whole isn’t doing a very good job of reaching them, is it…

No worries.

It’s NOT about the sales pitch.

USA Today just laid it out for all to see.

Insurers are doing a poor job of reaching millennials:

Faced with slumping sales, life insurers throughout the developed world are targeting young adults for a massive infusion of little-risk income. Trouble is, their would-be customers distrust their objectives; see their products and sales methods as antiquated; and aren’t thinking about death, given their record life expectancies.

That kind of sums it up.

With such a horrible disconnect with their future customers, one would think that life insurance will go the way of the dinosaurs in just a few short years.

But the fact of the matter is that millennials will need life insurance for their families, their businesses, and their charitable pursuits.

And they will buy it from us brokers if we can modernize (meaning PERSONALIZE) our approach to them.

But personalize in a high-tech environment.

It IS about the people.

I am a second-generation life insurance salesman.

Believe me when I tell you that I know how to pitch the virtues of buying life insurance for peace of mind.

Doesn’t work here.

Let me tell you what will work:

• Getting online. Sales people who can manage electronic relationships with their clients will be able to connect with them. Consumers who like to be wired can be contacted via wires. As hard as this may be to believe, face-to-face appointments with their vendors is just not that important. This may be a tough idea to swallow for those of us who were trained to make personal presentations, but it is true.
• Your company is secondary. These are people who switch vendors for their internet connection, their smart phone, and all their other amenities at the drop of a hat. They switch jobs a lot.  Do you think it really matters that your insurance company is 100 years old? Or that their rating is A+ and not just A? If you come across as a company man, you will lose credibility.
• Short-term is a good starting point. People with an expected mortality of over 100 tend to think that time is on their side. It is hard to relate to ideas like locking into long-term guarantees. Fine. So think short-term, get something in place, and build from there.

RELIEF = High Tech AND High Touch.

It seems that every time the life insurance industry comes across a problem like this, they start tinkering with their products.

Fine. That could help a bit. But it only goes so far.

The real tinkering should take place in our sales and marketing approach.

Insurance sales people need to restore the trust consumers once had in us.

We need to connect with people on their terms.

You’ve heard the saying, High Tech/High Touch?

Well, we need to be high touch via high-tech.

What do you think? How have you been able to reach millennials?

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