4 Steps to Every Final Expense Sale

Sensible, simple, succinct, and smart. There are four significant things every agent selling final expense insurance should do for more sales. Do you know what they are?

Having your sales process down pat is vital before calling up a client and pitching them plans to help cover the costs associated with their own demise. Discover how to bring up the subject of final expense insurance with confidence and convert more prospects into clients through these basic steps!

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1. Ask the “Magic” Questions

There’s one important thing you must do to gain a complete understanding of your clients’ financial situations, allowing you to see if there are any hidden coverage gaps. Asking questions gives you an idea of what type of policies they could afford.

What are the magic questions for selling final expense? They’re the questions that dive into your clients’ health, family, current insurance policies, and assets. Using an “icebreaker” such as the one-page Ritter Fact Finder helps you get the answers you need.

Once you’ve gathered all the background information, there are two sets of qualifying questions you should pose.

  • Have you or your family been involved with or assisted in paying for a loved one’s funeral? How were the expenses handled?
  • Have you thought about your final wishes? If you pass without insurance, who will take care of your arrangements and more importantly. How will they pay?

These inquiries will help to get the client thinking about related past personal experiences and if having some sort of final expense coverage is important to them.

2. Educate Like No Other

In Life Happens and LIMRA’s 2017 Insurance Barometer study, consumers indicated they considered the following very or extremely important factors when buying life insurance:

  • Easy to understand (83%)
  • Ability to chat with a person (66%)
  • Ability to pick insurance type from suggested categories (64%)
  • The company selling the policy is well known (64%)

As humans, we’re hesitant to leap into the unknown. (Heck, sometimes, just figuring out what to make for dinner can be a struggle.) As a well-informed agent, you can help individuals feel comfortable finally springing forward and satisfying their coverage needs for their end-of-life plan.

What should you explain about final expense? Start by going over the basics. Emphasize the stability of a final expense policy — it’s guaranteed their rates will never rise, their benefits will never get cut, and their plan will never be canceled. Additionally, discuss the different types of final expense plans out there — level, graded, modified, and guaranteed issue — and what you believe they would qualify for and why.

A client will most likely stay loyal to the agent who went the extra mile to walk them through the details over the one who cornered them into buying a product they weren’t entirely sure they wanted.

Learn the basics of this product in Ritter’s Final Expense 101 Webinar!


3. Pre-Qualify Sales-Qualified Leads

There are two phases to pre-qualifying your sales-qualified final expense leads. The first is qualifying them based on their health, and the second is qualifying them based on their budget.

By Their Health

Not everyone is eligible for simplified issue final expense insurance. Certain conditions can disqualify an applicant from coverage. These conditions may include, but are not limited to, AIDS, cerebral palsy, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, dementia, diabetes, heart attack, and Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS).

Certain conditions can disqualify an applicant from final expense coverage.

If simplified issue final expense won’t work for a client, then a guaranteed issue policy is the way to go. These policies come with a higher premium.

If your client is relatively healthy, or has some health issues that wouldn’t preclude them from a policy, you can move onto the phase of pre-qualifying.

By Their Budget

Qualifying for a policy based on health doesn’t matter if your client can’t afford it. Before you start writing, you must find out which plans fit into your client’s budget.

One way you can do this would be to ask your clients what monthly premium they could afford to pay right now to protect their family later. If they aren’t sure, simply start saying available monthly premium amounts, from highest to lowest. As you announce them, watch your clients’ body language and listen to their reactions to see which price is “right.”

Qualifying for a policy based on health doesn’t matter if your client can’t afford it.

Another way to pre-qualify final expense leads based on their budget would be to work backward — ask them if they’re aware of how much end-of-life services cost. If not, inform them of the average costs of cremations or funerals. Then, go over available policy payout amounts based on your clients’ final wishes, and ask them how much coverage they’d be interested in having.

4. Turn to Each Carrier’s Final Expense Sweet Spots

At this point, if you’ve determined a prospect can qualify for and afford a final expense plan, you can write them into a policy. Doing so is a whole lot easier if you know each carrier’s Final Expense Sweet Spots. That’s where having the back-office support of an experienced, full-service field marketing organization, like Ritter Insurance Marketing, comes into play.

Ritter’s carefully crafted Final Expense Sweet Spots will tell you if a carrier:

  • Offers preferred, level, modified, and graded ratings
  • Accepts paper applications or has an e-App
  • Features “Just in Time” contracting
  • Requires a telephone interview at the point of sale
  • Accepts the most common health conditions — such as previous heart attack, cancer, COPD or diabetes — and when
  • Provides anything else “sweet” or worth noting

To view them, all you need to do is register with RitterIM.com for free. Once you confirm you’re logged into the site, visit the “Ritter’s Many Final Expense Carriers and Their ‘Sweet Spots’” news post. You will not be able to view Ritter’s Final Expense Sweet Spots unless you register with their site.

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Whether you’re new to selling final expense insurance or not, there’s always room to grow. Refining your sales strategy could be exactly what you need to sell more!

Want to learn more about getting final expense leads or ask for plan recommendations from an expert? Talk with a life insurance specialist from Ritter Insurance Marketing today!

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