Thinking about selling health insurance from home? If there’s one thing that’s great about selling insurance, it’s that you can easily do it from the comfort of your own home. For those equipped with an entrepreneurial spirit and great organizational skills, you will likely enjoy the freedom that working from home can provide.
You can customize your working hours and reap the rewards of your time and effort right away. If you are driven to make an impact in people’s lives, selling insurance from home can be a profitable and fulfilling business.
As a health insurance broker, you have a lot of freedom when it comes to managing your schedule. You decide when you want to work, where you want to work, and your hard work helps you increase your income. You are in charge of your future – and you don’t have to be hired with a big brokerage firm to start selling (or to be successful).
SEE ALSO: Insurance Lead generation tips for Insurance agents
What is the best way to sell health insurance?
When you’re just starting out, you may not be able to commit to an office space (or even a shared space), but many successful insurance brokers start working from home. What matters is how you set up your office space at home, and what you have to help you do your job more effectively.
Many insurance brokers operate from home successfully. Having a home office certainly reduces overhead costs, but there are downsides. If you have family or pets, you will need to designate a specific room to be your office – a room away from any noise or distractions – and your family will have to respect your working hours.
How can I start selling health insurance from home?
Have all the tools at hand that you will need to be successful before you start your call. Aside from basic office supplies and mail-ready marketing materials, you’ll need an up-to-date computer that’s already equipped with the necessary software and applications to help your customers find and sign up for insurance plans.
If you sell health insurance as an insurance agent or broker – through face-to-face meetings, phone calls or online channels – you will need an Accident and Health (A&H) or Full Insurance Agent License (which includes Life, Accident and Health).
Do I need a license to start selling health insurance from home?
The benefit of obtaining a health insurance license is that you are considered qualified to sell other life, accident and health products. This means that you are open to more opportunities when you have a backlog of client base. If you sell (or promote) health insurance through affiliate programs – by sending traffic to an advertiser (usually an insurance company’s website or product comparison site), and letting them do the sale and services, there is no requirement to obtain a license.
This can only be done online. Once you join an insurance partner program, you can create referral links that send and track traffic to the insurance company’s website. When someone clicks on the link to request a quote or make a purchase, you earn a commission as an affiliate marketer.
How to start selling health insurance from home
- Set up your home office. One of the biggest problems working from home is the distractions from TV, beds, fridge, pets, and everything else you’d rather do than work. In a traditional job, the environment helps keep you focused on getting work done. Bring a similar environment into your home to ensure that you are productive. The office will also be useful if you choose to have clients visit you for meetings.
- Choose a specialty. Insurance brokers can handle as many types of insurance as they choose, but becoming an expert in health, life, home, auto or supplemental insurance will make you the “go to” in this field, and thus make you more competitive. You can even divide your major into a niche, such as group benefits, long-term care insurance, or employee protection insurance. You can always branch later.
- Communicate with insurance companies. Building relationships with insurance companies allows you the flexibility to negotiate the best deals and packages for your clients. Brokers have the option of working as a standalone broker, allowing you to create options for your clients from multiple insurance companies, or working with a single insurance company, letting you choose only from plans offered by a particular insurance company.
- Put more time on qualified leads. Understand and create a qualification method so you will be able to quickly and simply create value for qualified leads at the right time, and create unqualified leads that can waste your time (and you). This will be applied to a cold decision, or to a referral from a long-time consumer. Get to know the most qualified potential clients and focus 80% of your time with them.
- Ask for referrals. The best marketing for your business is word of mouth that your satisfied customers will post to promote your business. Insurance sales agents also get many new accounts through referrals, so it is important that they maintain regular contact with their clients to ensure that the client’s financial needs are met. .
- Comply with government licensing requirements. Most states require insurance brokers to be licensed before they can legally sell insurance. They may also ask you to continue your education and possibly retake exams and obtain new certificates every two years. Contact your state’s insurance department to learn about its requirements.
- Use your relationship building skills as a selling tool. Insurance is notoriously difficult to sell. Comedians even use insurance sales as step-by-step jokes. Your potential customers know the importance of getting insurance but often don’t consider it as important as paying the bills that will affect them immediately. A hard sell will not work. The consumer in the “information age” is more likely to respond to advice and advice than to react to sales.
- Do not over script. When you first start out, it’s tempting to carry out or write your calls. However, one problem with practicing or using a rigorous scenario is that you just forget to focus and you look robotic. As a skilled marketer, it’s important to understand how to pay attention, why on your feet, and adapt to new information. Instead of rehearsing or scripting, be professional in what you offer, absorb the outcome that is identified for each touch, and specialize in listening to the problem they are trying to solve.
- Stay in touch with previous leads. Just as you would with new leads, take the advisor approach with previous leads as well. Use the new developments in health reform and the specific contribution to establish a connection with a previously closed potential. Adjusting budgets, changing the economy, and changing decision makers. Unless specifically said otherwise, stay in touch even after rejection.
- Provide value in every bit, and create multiple touches in a very cool way. Be helpful and add the price in each contact. Don’t talk about the product, talk about the benefits. Do not ask the answer ahead of time.