SALES AND MARKETING
SALES IDEAS
Dealing With Procrastinators
Try these tips for closing a sale with hesitant clients.
Julie Britt
Illustrate the cost of your
client’s indecision.
There are times when your normal sales processes don’t work, because the
prospect won’t make a decision. You may be inclined to give up on these procrastinators and move on to more decisive prospects. But what you should do is
take a more direct approach, according to a 12-year MDRT member who spoke
at the 2008 NAIFA Convention and Career Conference.
David Appel, CLU, ChFC, managing partner of Goldwasser Appel Insurance
Advisors in Newton, Mass., spent more than two years with a real estate developer who had not yet decided to buy the insurance he was offering him. “I decided
that if this gentleman was going to become a client of mine, I had to do something totally different than I’d ever done before,” he said.
Appel decorated a toy Tonka truck with $1 million bills and photos of the
prospect’s real estate holdings. He also attached two unsigned checks—one for
$30 million made payable to the IRS and the other for $50,000 made out to the
insurance company. He added a note: “Dear Bill and Sue, you spent a lifetime
building, growing and accumulating a significant estate. I want to be the one to help you to pass
it on to the next generation. Oh, and Bill, by the
way, there’s still time to decide which of those two
checks is going to get signed.” He sent the package to the prospect, scheduling it to arrive during
the prospect’s weekly family dinner. “I had no idea
how Bill was going to react to this little gift, but after two and a half years, I didn’t care,” Appel said.
Bill called Appel shortly after receiving the gift,
saying, “David, I opened up your gift in front of
my entire family Friday night after dinner, and
you’re absolutely right. I’ve been procrastinating
on this much too long. Come to my office Monday and pick up a check and have me sign whatever you need me to sign.”
“A child’s toy truck helped me close a $30 million life insurance sale,” Appel said. “I’ve used this
idea and variations of it multiple times since then
and I hope . . . it can help you [with] one of your
tough clients.”
“I DECIDED THAT IF
THIS GENTLEMAN WAS
GOING TO BECOME A
CLIENT OF MINE, I HAD
TO DO SOMETHING
TOTALLY DIFFERENT
THAN I’D EVER DONE
BEFORE.”
—DAVID APPEL, CLU, CHFC
Tell your client it’s now
or never.
Appel described another way to deal with procrastinating clients.
He calls this the “I surrender; I’m throwing up the white flag”
letter idea: “Dear Bill and Sue, after being in the insurance business
for 16 years, I don’t know what you, as the client, want the ending to
be—to have life insurance or to not have life insurance. Please give me
a call Tuesday so we can get this thing squared away one way or the
other. And if I don’t hear from you, I’ll call you.”
That letter is likely to generate a phone call most of the time. “You’ll
get that client that you never thought you were going to get and gain
that insurance sale you never thought you were going to gain,” said
Appel, a former president of NAIFA-Boston and a member of the
NAIFA-Massachusetts board.
“It’s amazing how many times when you step out of the box, you
can make things happen,” he said. “Your clients and our clients need
to understand why we’re passionate about this business and why we
get up every day to do the things we do. They need to understand
why the products that they put into place today will eventually affect
everyone that they love. And your clients, most importantly, need to
understand why they need to put our products into place today—
when there’s no medical reason to do so.”
