What keeps producers up at night, keeps me up too!

The November 2013 issue of National Underwriter has a long and very interesting piece by Jamie E. Green titled “2013 Independent Producer Survey.” Mr. Green describes the methodology as a random survey of “3,000 financial sales professionals licensed to sell insurance products in the United States.” He indicates that the producers were selected from a “proprietary database of more than 1.2 million licensed professionals” and were invited by e-mail and online promotions to participate in the online survey. The results “represent responses from financial professionals who have sold at least one insurance product in the last 12 months.”

There is a lot of interesting information in this survey. But when I read it, I zeroed in on one question in particular: the first. “What Keeps Producers Up at Night?” the heading in the article or, as it was set out in the survey, the most challenging aspects of selling insurance. The most cited, by 55% of responses, was “Prospecting for new clients.” This was followed by “Clients don’t recognize the need for insurance products” at 34%, and “Clients have negative opinions of insurance products and/or the insurance industry” at 25%. (While the piece doesn’t make clear how many challenges could be identified, clearly more than one could be because just these top three exceed 100%.)

I worry about those same issues, because I see how those concerns lead some producers to engage in sales practices that can lead to disciplinary actions against them and sanctions against the carriers whose products are sold. We see prospecting materials, lead cards, seminar invitations, radio spots, and social media posts that are designed to avoid mentioning insurance or insurance products. It is our regular task to tell IMOs and producers that they must disclose clearly that they are in the business of selling insurance and that responding to the call to action will mean contact by an insurance producer and that the solicitation is part of an insurance sales process.

Of course, we only see a small fraction of the materials that are out there and knowing that so many producers are afraid of their own industry and go to such lengths to hide that fact from prospects leads to a compliance nightmare, making sleep difficult. Carriers and trade associations have spent tremendous amounts of money and effort to combat negative stereotypes.

But the vicious cycle continues. Producers are afraid that they will lose sales if they are honest about selling insurance but failing to openly discuss the industry and products. This can lead to sales practices that bring further negative publicity to the industry and make future sales more difficult. The only way to stop the cycle is to confront that fear and discuss openly what is being sold and why. It may not be easy at first, but looking a little further down the road, it is the way to address all three of these producers top three concerns.

And while compliance was identified by only 18% as a “most challenging aspect,” a focus on what is good about the insurance industry and its products in prospecting and sales would also reduce the need to worry about advertising compliance. That could help us all sleep better at night.

Previous
Previous

NAFA “Cautionary Tales: Enforcement Actions from State Insurance Departments” has good advice

Next
Next

RIP “Stinky”