Tips to Reach for the Beach

As you work toward qualifying for Sales Leaders Roundtable, use these sales concepts to help achieve your goals. Check back often as new ideas are added frequently throughout the year. If you have a sales tip you'd like to share with your colleagues, just e-mail it to robert.fraass@mutualofomaha.com for consideration.

These sales ideas are for producer use only.

Disability Income Insurance Sales Ideas

• Many people think a life insurance policy is all they need to ensure their family keeps their home. But share this statistic with clients: Only 3 percent of home foreclosures are the result of a death in the family. Meanwhile, disabilities account for 48 percent of all home foreclosures. Let your clients know that DI insurance is the best way to ensure that a family can keep its home should misfortune strike.
• When explaining DI to clients, don't use the phrase "if you become disabled." Instead, use "too sick or hurt to go to work." More people can identify with being out of commission because of illness or injury rather than the idea of becoming disabled in the long term. Likewise, don't oversell DI as "disability income insurance." Instead, call it "income protection insurance."
• Clients who have a health insurance plan without DI only have half of the coverage they need. Health insurance pays for medical professionals and hospital and medical bills, but what pays if a disability prevents your clients from working? Stress that bills incurred because of health issues aren’t fully covered if they don't have DI.
• Keep in mind that many employers offer short-term DI coverage, but not many offer long-term coverage. Sell the idea that a combo of both can give your client peace of mind that any eventuality will be covered.
• The "business card" concept: Ask your prospect to pull out their business card. Then tell them to turn it over and write down the names of three people who would pay their salary until age 65 if they became disabled. Most people will find it hard to come up with three names. Then hand them your business card and let them know that you can fulfill this need.
• Sell the idea to your clients that a disability income policy from Mutual of Omaha never misses a day of work. The policy works for a client 24 hours a day, seven days a week - paying them for their time when no one else will because they are disabled.
• Don't explain disability income insurance to clients as a "supplemental product." Impress upon them that DI is just as important as life insurance coverage. Unless every client you have is financially able to retire today, they need income protection. And they need your help to determine their options and availability for coverage.
• Explain to your clients that if you’re younger than age 35, chances are 1 in 3 that you’ll become disabled for at least six months during the course of your career. Men have a 43% likelihood of becoming seriously disabled during their working years. Women have a 54% likelihood.

Life Insurance/DI Cross-selling Ideas

• Use this quick checklist of items to review with every life insurance application to ensure speedy underwriting
  1. Answer all questions, even if the answer is "none" or "not applicable"
  2. Complete all signatures and dates
  3. Submit all necessary forms
  4. Complete and/or schedule all age and amount requirements
  5. Attach a cover letter when required
  6. Complete the Fit program checklist when appropriate
  7. Request an attending physician statement (APS) on impairments such as diabetes, cancer or tumor, coronary artery disease, or any other potentially ratable or uninsurable impairment. Also, always request an APS when the primary physician is listed on the application and the client is older than age 65 or when the face amount is more than $1.5 million.
  8. Collect two months of premium for bank service plan (BSP) mode applications
  9. Submit applications to the designated division office manager or office staff associate for their review and signature
• Use MAX to run a cross-sell report to find clients with life insurance but without DI, or vice versa. Develop your relationship with these individuals to address their additional unsolved needs.
• Collect newspaper articles and other stories about real-life events, like a car accident or catastrophic illness, which dramatically alter people's lives. These stories illustrate how disability and premature death are real events that affect the lives of real people. If you haven't already, collect these stories and show them to your clients when the time is right.
• Identify customers' needs for life and disability with a factfinder. A key part of this analysis is to compare how much a family needs to live on with the amount of income the family would have if breadwinners were disabled or had died. The Interview Summary (MC33174_1008) is one example of a needs-analysis tool.
• Your empty-nester DI clients might have unmet life insurance needs. Many have purchased term life to cover their needs until their children left the house. If they didn't "invest the difference" last time, the cost to renew their term insurance may help them see the wisdom of permanent insurance this time. Talk to these folks about Mutual of Omaha's Guaranteed Universal Life or Legacy Single Premium Life to meet their life needs.

Critical Illness Sales Ideas

Help clients understand that critical illness insurance helps people cover unexpected critical illness expenses including:

• child care
• time away from work
• domestic help for activities such as cooking, cleaning, laundry
• Needed home modifications
• Transportation and lodging costs to seek the treatment