Case #1: DI Broker, Bob Damato
About a year ago, Bob Damato was nearly killed by an unexpected stroke. Fortunately, he survived. However, his doctors delivered some disturbing news: They believed he would regain use of all functions – EXCEPT SPEECH.
Have you ever stopped to think about how you might do your job as an insurance professional if you were unable to talk? That’s exactly the dilemma that Bob had to mull over. As an insurance agent, he could more easily work without the ability to walk – then he could without the ability to talk!
Fortunately, Bob believed in disability insurance – so much that he had taken the time to invest in paycheck protection for himself years earlier.
Instead of losing everything, his disability insurance coverage bought him the valuable time needed to retrain his brain to communicate. Here’s good news: Bob is now back in action and just contacted us about placing a disability insurance case for a client last week!
If Bob ever had any doubts about the value of disability insurance, those doubts are now erased forever. Share this story with everyone you know, and if you haven’t already done so, get paycheck protection for yourself!
Case #2: Advisor Ed Miller
First Command District Advisor Ed Miller is not a disability insurance sales veteran. But that didn’t stop him from winning First Command’s 2011 DI sales contest, sponsored by Disability Insurance Services (DIS).
He explains, “For many years at First Command, our primary client base was made up of active duty military, so most clients did not have a big need for disability insurance. Their benefits took care of them. In 2005, we started working with more civilians and it quickly became clear that they had a much greater need for paycheck protection.”
Still, he didn’t really achieve DI proficiency until 2008 when First Command partnered with DIS. “Selling DI can be a little intimidating if you don’t work with it very often,” Ed says. “Then I realized that I don’t have to be an expert. I simply start the conversation, ask a few questions and gather the client’s info. I let Tom Helbing at DIS do the heavy lifting. He has so many ideas to solve client challenges and he takes care of the technical details. With Tom involved, it’s very easy.”
Ed’s contest win in 2011 was the culmination of preparation, practice and good timing. Ed believes that it’s his fiduciary responsibility to make clients aware of the risk of disability and to encourage them to protect their paychecks. So, since 2008, he’s made sure to include income protection questions in his conversations with clients. It’s part of his everyday practice. To prepare for these DI conversations, he taps into DIS sales tools and tries a few different techniques to improve his success (see more on his techniques below). And, in 2011, just as the contest came to fruition, Ed was working closely with a neurosurgeon client who ultimately purchased three policies. The fortuitous timing of the sale gave him the extra premium he needed to secure the win.
Ed’s DI Sales Tips:
- Tell every client about the risk of disability and the need for paycheck protection.
- Talk with conviction and tell personal stories about people you know who have had positive or negative disability experiences. You have to believe in the product.
- Ask your client how his or her family will sustain its lifestyle if income stops. It’s important to bring the family into the discussion because it’s an emotional sale and many clients care more about protecting family members than they do about protecting themselves. Also, a large percentage of a client’s income goes toward funding the family’s lifestyle.
- Help clients understand that the risk of disability is high by presenting disability statistics and using comparisons.
- Don’t forget about spouses. They often need income protection or a critical illness insurance policy too.
- If budget is scarce, get details on the employer-sponsored plan, and at the very minimum, encourage your client to participate in that. If some budget is available, consider supplementing the employer plan with IDI or CI.
- Get Tom and DIS involved with the details. He can help you figure out the best solution for every client’s situation.
Want more great DI sales advice? Download our Why Sell DI Training Power Pack here!
