The causes of objections when selling insurance

It is an important fact in human nature that each person’s mind tends to build and live in its own mental world and to resist invasion. Therefore, there is in most people a strong predisposition to oppose proposals that they believe will commit them to an unusual course of action or require a reordering of ideas.

The person to whom any type of proposal is asked adopts almost instinctively a defensive attitude. The more experience a person has had with salespeople, the more this defensive attitude will develop. 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 does not fit in with his current background of experiences. But if the idea is presented to you as a continuation of the monthly check you usually give your wife, your mind travels a track that leads to a “Yes” answer. Remember that you are the engineer who is following the potential customer’s train of thought, and if the signals indicate that the train is heading to the “No” track, you must be able, through knowledge of the underlying causes of the objections, change your train of thought so that your mind travels the “Yes” path.

Of course, it is difficult to determine the true basis of the objections in an individual case. However, in general, they can be due to any of the following reasons:

1. Prospects fear – probably fear of investing too much of your surplus in insurance or fear of starting something that cannot end without financial loss.
2. Lack of will to change your shopping habits. – the potential customer may have a certain plan that they follow when purchasing other commodities. 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 examine other proposals.
3. I don’t like some feature of politics – this may be due to a positive dislike 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. You can be persistent in trying to sell a policy that obviously doesn’t fit the potential customer’s needs.
5. Incomplete understanding of what insurance will do. – If the presentation of the case in favor of the insurance has been defective, the prospect may not realize the true function of the insurance and objections will arise due to ignorance. The potential customer may not actually see the need for insurance or feel that they cannot afford it.
6. Any personal reason not to buy insurance – the potential client may feel that the type of insurance or the insurance program proposed by the agent does not suit their needs. The agent may not have been able to ascertain the prospect’s actual insurance needs and therefore cannot suggest an insurance program that meets these needs.
7. Fear of general commercial conditions – the prospect may fear panic or hard times, assuming, of course, that at such times all unnecessary expenses must be eliminated. Such an outlook fails to realize that, in a panic, insurance is doubly valuable. It may be the only estate left to a family if the breadwinner dies during the period of business uncertainty.

Remember this: “best possible community service” rather than “highest possible commissions” is the motto every top insurance agent works under.