Phil Jeynes Blog

In my role I am lucky enough to deal with hundreds of mortgage brokers and IFAs up and down the country.

Sometimes it’s to give training on the sale of Protection, often it’s to see their service in action first hand, so that I can better understand their business and how our services might help.

What this means is that I have a good understanding of what works and what doesn’t when it comes to selling life cover to customers who, on the whole, didn’t know they either wanted or needed it when they picked up the phone or walked into the adviser’s office.

Obviously some of the nuances come down to a particular adviser’s manner and charm, but there are some extremely common themes among those who sell Protection well. Here are three of the easiest to implement in your business today:

They introduce the concept early. “It’s a mortgage you want and it’s a mortgage I’m going to get you, as part of my service I’m also going to make sure that if anything happens to you or your partner during the term of that mortgage…”. If you pitch Protection as an add-on at the end of the core sale, that’s exactly how your customer will perceive it. Make it part of your process from the first time you talk to a new client.

They tailor their advice. Why are we pushing life cover onto a single person with no dependents? Yes, it’s cheap but do they need it? Income Protection and/or Critical Illness Cover is a much more relevant product choice and shows that you’ve taken your client’s specific circumstances into account.

They don’t settle for all or nothing. In an ideal world everyone would buy a range of Protection products but, in the real world, budgets don’t stretch far enough to do the full job. A typical example is to quote a client for Life and Critical Illness Cover for the full balance and term of their mortgage; if this is too expensive we ditch the CI and just sell the Life Cover. The best advisers simply reduce the CI element to fit the budget – better advice, better protection and more commission.