As an insurance agent, a significant part of your job is to help customers find ways to minimize their financial risks. But to do this, clients need to trust you enough for them to put their financial security in your hands.
Having a license as an insurance agent is not enough to look credible and trustworthy to a client; you also need to make yourself reliable, capable, and professional, above all.
Selling Medicare insurance or any other policy is not easy, but you can make it a little less complicated by establishing a client-agent relationship based on trust:
1. Be knowledgeable
The most important part of being a reliable insurance agent is having the knowledge to provide solutions for your clients. When your client asks questions about the policy, you need to able to answer accurately and with full confidence. To do this, you must be an expert on the matter. Know everything that there is to know about the policy, the process, and everything in between. Granted, you won’t have all the answers from the top of your head, but having an established knowledge of the fundamentals should be enough to answer most client questions.
2. Keep an open line of communication
Another great way to make yourself a reliable insurance agent is to maintain open communication with your clients. You don’t have to make yourself available 24/7, but making prompt responses and checking up on your clients from time to time will help maintain your good relationships with them.
3. Ignore competition
A professional insurance agent should never speak badly about their competition. It’s not a good sales tactic and it will make you look unprofessional (and awfully petty) in the eyes of your client. Instead of talking bad about your competitors, show off your strengths and focus on what advantages you have over the competition without trash-talking them.
4. Always deliver
One of the most crucial parts in establishing yourself as a trustworthy agent is always making sure that you deliver. Selling yourself as an insurance agent often comes with highlighting your best assets, but ensure that you can keep your promises and provide whatever it is that you advertise. At the same time, don’t oversell yourself nor overcommit. If you fail to deliver even at least once, you can lose the trust that you’ve worked so hard to build with your client.
5. Be honest
As it is in other aspects of life, your client needs to know that you are honest with them so they know that they can trust you. Be realistic about the problems you can solve and those you can’t (but are working on currently) to maintain transparency. It seems counterintuitive, but being transparent about your business is something that clients are looking for nowadays. By knowing something is not “too good to be true,” they are more likely to trust you and the products and services that you offer.
As in an insurance agent, one of the trickiest parts of the business is maintaining a strong relationship with your clients. For this reason, use these tips to establish and maintain trust with your clients as you help them secure their finances and their future.