The causes of objections when selling insurance

It is an important fact of human nature that each person’s mind tends to build and live in its own mental world and to resist invasion. Therefore, there is a strong predisposition in most people to object to proposals that they believe will commit them to a course of action that they are not used to, or that will require a reordering of ideas.

The person who is asked for any kind of proposition almost instinctively adopts a defensive attitude. The more experience a person has with salespeople, the more this defensiveness develops. In army parlance, the more it has been bombed, the more defenses it has erected, including barbed wire barriers as well as listening posts.

A prospect may flatly refuse to consider life insurance, as such, because the idea doesn’t fit with their existing pool of experience. But if the idea is presented to him as a continuation of the monthly check he is in the habit of giving to his wife, his mind travels a path that leads to a “Yes” answer. Remember that you are the engineer driving the prospect’s train of thought, and if the signs tell you that the train is on the “No” track, you should be able, through knowledge of the underlying causes of the objections, to to change your train of thought so that your mind travels the path of “Yes”.

Of course, it is difficult to determine the actual basis of the objections in any individual case. However, in general, they may be due to any of the following causes:

1. fears of prospects – probably afraid of investing too much of your surplus in insurance or afraid of starting something that you can’t finish without financial loss.
2. Unwillingness to change your purchase clothes – The prospect may have a certain plan that he follows when buying other products. You may be in the habit of comparing prices before you buy, and therefore won’t close the insurance deal until you’ve had a chance to look at other proposals.
3. I don’t like some feature of the policy – this may be due to positive aversion or prejudice arising from incomplete knowledge of what the policy will do.
4. I don’t like the agent – the agent’s attitude may not be pleasant. He or she may persist in trying to sell a policy that obviously doesn’t fit the prospect’s needs.
5. Incomplete understanding of what the insurance will do – if the presentation of the case in favor of the insurance has been faulty, the prospect may not realize the true function of the insurance, and objections will arise due to lack of knowledge. The prospect may not really see the need for insurance or feel that she cannot afford it.
6. Any personal reason for not buying insurance – the prospect may feel that the type of insurance or the insurance program proposed by the agent does not suit his or her needs. The agent may not have been able to ascertain the prospect’s actual insurance needs and therefore may not be able to suggest an insurance program that meets these needs.
7. Fear of general trading conditions – the prospect may fear panic or hard times, assuming, of course, that in such times all unnecessary spending must be eliminated. Such a perspective does not realize that in the event of a panic, insurance is doubly valuable. It may be the only estate a family has left if the breadwinner of the family dies during the period of business uncertainty.

Remember this: “Best possible service to the community” rather than “Highest possible commissions” is the motto by which every top insurance agent operates.