In this article, we’re going to talk about the best ways to cross sell insurance.

First, we’ll start off with two techniques to cross-sell.

You can use these strategies whether you’re selling life insurance, Medicare (Supplements or Advantage), or property and casualty insurance.

Then, I’ll show examples of how my agents are cross selling insurance.

Bottom line, my goal is to help you develop cross selling strategies in insurance sales presentations you run.

Let’s begin!

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• 2 Strategies
• Examples
• When To Start
• What To Sell

Top 2 Insurance Cross Selling Examples

There are really two best-practices when it comes to learning how to cross sell insurance.

Let’s discuss them below…

Cross Sell Insurance After The First Policy Is Closed.

The first approach you can do is cross-sell immediately after the first sale.

For example, many agents like to make a sale and get the business closed. Then, before they leave, they do the old “Colombo Close” as follows…

They say, “Oh, by the way” and offer some sort of product on top of the original product.

This approach works well with Medicare Supplement sale.

For example, you’ve just saved money on the client’s Medicare supplements by replacing it with a better policy.

Now, you’re in a position with the saved money they now have, you can allocate some or all of money towards selling a final expense plan.

2. Policy review meetings

The second way to cross sell insurance products is at a policy review meeting.

Commonly, people think cross selling means you got to sell it on the first call.

This is not necessarily the case.

Perhaps you go back to your existing clientele.Maybe you’ve picked up some new products. You want to cross sell life insurance into your current book of business.

Say you are selling Medicare Supplements. The client mentions that they’ve got money in some sort of retirement vehicle that they’re not quite happy with.

Now, sell annuities, and you liked the idea of what your products can do.

So, you go back and have a conversation. You see if you can move some of that money over to your annuity product.

Cross Selling Insurance Products Examples

Let’s review examples from agents I’ve trained to sell insurance on how they effectively cross sell.

I will further explain under what conditions we will do so and what different lead products could compliment with the first original sale to help cross-sell other products.

Final Expense Clients

Nowadays, many agents sell final expense.

And the final expense sale offers numerous opportunities to sell multiple insurance lines.

Cross Selling Medicare

Always ask your final expense leads if they are on or eligible for Medicare coverage.

Thankfully, our final expense prospects are enrolled in Medicare via an Advantage plan 80% or more of the time.

Final expense prospects are prime candidates for:

• Special Election Period Medicare Advantage replacements if the client qualifies, or
• Annual Enrollment Period prospecting at year’s end.

Further, if you’ve sold final expense for a while, you should prioritize visiting all active clients to review their Medicare coverage.

Learn how they feel about their plan, then show them your options.

Many will take you up on it!

Cross Selling Life Insurance With Grandchild Coverage

You could also cross sell at the time of the original sale with a grandchild policy.

For example, you could use a term rider on some of the products that you represent.

Or, you could write their grandchild a standalone policy with Mutual of Omaha’s Children’s Whole Life Plan.

It is a very easy application process. It pays well, and helps bump your average premium per house.

Plus, it’s a whole life insurance product so they don’t have to worry about their grandkid hitting the 20- to 25-year-old mark where the term insurance rider lapses.

So, the whole life ensures that they have something for the long-term.

Selling Cancer, Indemnity, Annuities

Also, you can pivot to an indemnity product, like selling cancer insurance or hospital indemnity products. Or you can fact find for annuity.

You can be like my agent up in Wisconsin who learned that annuities are all over the place, even on final expense leads.

He began to ask about them consistently and saw a lot of annuity business come in – approximately a million within his first 12 months of asking.

So, just ask. It’s amazing what happens when you do.

Medicare Clients

Now, let’s take a look at what happens if you sell Medicare.

It is kind of a similar setup here.

Turning 67+ Medicare Prospects

The easiest way to cross-sell for Medicare is on “turning 67 and older prospects.”

These are people who’ve had Medicare Supplements for a number of years, but they’ve had price increases.

They like their Medicare Supplements, don’t want to drop coverage, but don’t appreciate the price increases they experienced.

This is where we come in as Medicare Supplement specialists.

We offer them the exact same coverage because all coverage with supplements is homogenized.

If the client medically qualifies, you can get them the same kind of coverage at a lesser rate per month.

Found Money

The difference between what they’re paying presently for the current policy versus what you’ll save them is what we call “found money.”

Found money in the insurance business is basically where a client doesn’t think he can afford a policy.

However, through replacing existing coverage and freeing up premium dollars, we find the resources to afford the cross sold insurance policy.

With the found money concept, you can also suggest sales of final expense, which is probably the easiest and most common way to get more business. You can also suggest cancer indemnity plans, as well.

When you save your Medicare Supplement clients money on their premiums, often they are willing to spend found money more often than dipping into savings.

At the end of the day, if they’re still spending the same amount of money, but they’ve got $10,000 in burial insurance that they didn’t have before, they are going to be very happy.

Annuity Clients

With annuity sales, we teach our agents to do is to fact-find, not just for annuity sales but also for Medicare and final expense prospects.

And through that fact-finding process we discover if there are opportunities for non-annuity sales.

With our annuity prospecting strategy, some have money and some don’t. That’s why you want multiple options available to make the sale.

If you ask good questions and figure out what else their insurance situation may provide, you may find other opportunities again for final expense.

You can cross-sell all sorts of products to your annuity prospects.

For example, life insurance, single-pay life insurance, Medicare products, indemnity, long-term care. The list is endless.

When To Start

The moral of the story is that cross-selling is something you should seriously consider.

However, I advise cross selling insurance only when you have someone advising you on how to do it effectively.

I wouldn’t go bonkers with doing too much cross-selling, especially if you’re brand new to selling insurance.

Understand that the most productive, successful agents often only represent and sell one product.

It takes a lot of brain power, effort, and energy to remember just one product line.

That’s why the most experienced agents that tend to be the best at cross selling insurance products. They paid their dues on the first product, and can now comfortably add additional products.

What To Cross Sell In The Insurance Industry

I like the idea of cross selling renewal-driven insurance products in combination with high first-year commission products.

It’s nice to get residual earnings on top of high first-year income sales.

If you’re selling final expense or annuities, consider cross-selling Medicare supplements just to keep you afloat if you have a poor life or annuity sales month.

Medicare business pays for life if you sell Medicare Advantage. With Medicare Supplements it pays six years and beyond in most states.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this training, and I hope it gives you some ideas on how to cross-sell and when and where to do it.

If you’d like to learn more about what I can do for you, click here to review how I train and recruit agents to sell final expense, mortgage protection, Medicare Supplement, and annuities.

And make sure to check out my many Agent Success Stories and best-selling insurance sales books.