Sales vs Ego

“Great salespeople are relationship builders who provide value and help their customers win.” – Jeffrey Gitomer

Recently i got exposed to the might of a well known Insurance company whom i met to upgrade employees life insurances. Though i must confess, policies structure did not impress me much, what captured my attention was their sales team, which inspired me to assess the key difference between IT Sales and Insurance sales.

Think of this as a challenge that insurance sales team faces even before they have met you:

• Trust deficit - Be it traditional plans, ULIP, or general insurance, we all have bore the brunt of wrong sell, clarity, diminished returns etc. So even before a lead lands, client is already vary of the sales methods of an insurance provider.
• Long lock ins and maturity - Money spent in the saving policies have a long lock in, deeming the money unusable for a long time.
• High fees - Be it fund management charges, mortality or morbidity charges, one purchasing insurance have to deal with higher charges compared to other tangible investment options.
• Complicated return formula - It requires lot of hard work in cracking the actual ROI, as the formula is complicated and depends on multi year calculations.
• Hidden charges

So, even before a lead is generated, a customer has already made their minds to not buy. Having said that, there are two key differentiators in the insurance sales team that we don't have in IT:

• Patience
• Persistence.

In IT, some of us are always looking for a quick fix. By the time, we have shared a proposal, we assume our proposal to be the best a customer can get, even knowing 10 different variations and costing structures that could be shared.

What insurance sales team has showed me is that their is more than one way to make a client comfortable, taking repetitive steps to meet clients and educate them and wait.

Of course, there are few things that they could do differently, pressurizing customers to take the policies and selling them more than what they an afford. Prefer long term relationships than short term gains.

Summary

I have been holding out to reach some of my peers due to an inflated ego, and "what will they say". However the whole insurance episode have inspired confidence, to be comfortable in your skin, accept to take a No as an answer and still keep working on predicting and solving their problems. Its an iterative process one that you keep working on till you find the right solution for both.

As a CEO/ Sales professional/ or a developer, our egos can not be bigger than our company, whose steady health defines a greater success for all the people attached to the company.

So, chuck the false #ego, do the #groundwork, keep #positiveintent and never #fear are the key learning that i would instill in me and my team to ensure a greater experience for our clients.