5 powerful questions to make Life Insurance field underwriting super easy

This article is designed to make life Insurance underwriting - which is one of the hardest things to do - the easiest.

One of the most challenging areas of a tele-sales call is health underwriting. What do I ask? Where do I place them? What's the right carrier for this condition?

This is not an easy thing to sort out, especially when you work with multiple carriers.

Worse yet, when we get this part wrong, it breaks down the prospects trust, and even if you can resolve it with another carrier - it may be a bit bumpier than it would have been if we got it right the first time.

So how do we resolve this? How can we make our field underwriting fast, seamless, and getting us on the right track - to make the right offer? Lastly, how do you make it look professional and easy - so the prospect has a good experience - and sends you more referrals?

Know your tool bag

Your carriers are your tools. You don't use a hammer, when you need a tape measure. The same is true here - you don't offer an IUL for $400k, when all they need, and qualify for, is a $10k guaranteed issue final expense plan.

So, how do we increase the odds of making the right offer, the first time, and closing more deals?

It starts with knowing your tools. Know your carrier. What are each carrier protection limits? Age range? Most importantly, what are their underwriting requirements?

Just knowing these basic things will improve the offers you make, which will, in turn, make you better at your job, leading to more closed deals.

Now, if you're looking to be great at your job - an elite high-end carpenter has a very different working style than a general jack-of-all-trades handyman. The same with a high producing insurance professional.

Here's the difference. A high performing agent will go through each carrier- find the pros, cons, redundancies, and similarities - then, he will select maybe three to five main carriers that serve 85-95% of the marketplace, and he will offer those plans as the spearhead.

Also, we will study the underwriting for each of those main carriers, find out first what questions they have in common, then when he finds the one-offs of those specific carriers, he'll add just those questions in, also.

In this way, a high producing agent is getting mostly all of the underwriting done for his main carriers, at the same time, with a few simple questions.

His preparation and experience allows him to be productive, where most newer agents, or lower producing agents, are not as prepared and seasoned, so they don't match the experienced agent's results.

Simplify what's awkward

I'll just say, it's weird and uncomfortable talking about our imperfections and illnesses. Who wants to do that? Better yet, who wants to share their most vulnerable secrets and insecurities publicly, and with strangers. Oh yeah, and by the way, it's often on a recorded line, for everyone to hear. Yet, that is what we ask prospects to do, and boy - are we nosey.

Just putting myself in the prospect's shoes - it's pretty awkward.

So, how can we make something uncomfortable, much more comfortable? It starts with being organized and prepared.

When we are going through the Pre-qualification section- instead of going through a round of "40 invasive questions," at this point, before we even find out which plan may best work for them, do a pre-check of their health.

How do we do that?

Start health questions with these words: "like," "any," "what about," “how about,” and "anything else."

Do you have anything like ... diabetes, heart disease, stroke?

What about ... alcohol abuse, drug abuse, etc.?

Any ... depression, anxiety, mental illness?

How about … HIV, Aids or anything like that?

Anything else?

By starting your underwriting pre-check with the listed introduction words will allow you to get the insight you need quickly, without making it awkward, and narrow in on what they qualify for medically, and close more deals.

Don't gamble - Use good judgment

Let me ask, what hurts as bad as getting rejected? Not many things in life are equally painful. So why do we continue to put our prospects through it, when it can be completely avoided?

Using techniques, like in the above, can help you as the professional to not make an offer, that will get a prospect declined.

If a prospect says I just beat cancer last year and I am in remission, would your first thought be, let me offer a fully underwritten IUL, or Term policy?

Or

The prospect says "oh yeah, I'm in great health, I'm just an "insulin dependent" diabetic, but otherwise I'm in great shape. Do we say to ourselves, "oh, so-and-so company has a pilot program for managed type 2 diabetics, I'll try to place them there?”

There's two "words" wrong with that thought process of - "managed," and "try." Neither are good words to protect the prospect from getting declined and rejected.

When we pursue the above listed action - we are gambling. High producing agents don't "gamble" they use "good judgment." A "managed" diabetic would not be on insulin - that would be uncontrolled. Controlled would be on medication. Therefore, it would be a gamble to do most things other than "Guaranteed Issue," for those who had cancer within the year, or insulin diabetic, and that's what high producing agents understand.

So, to wrap this up, with good preparation, understanding your carriers, understanding how to ask tough questions and not make them awkward, and using "good judgment" with underwriting, you will make much better offers, and close a lot more deals.

If tips like this are helpful to you, we have a tele-sales master course, that is an all-in-one plug-and-play system that helps agents to close two-five life insurance policies a day. If this is interesting to you - check out our free 5-minute webinar that breaks down our master course and gets you closing deals from anywhere.

Hoping you the best in your life insurance business.

Happy Closing!