Are You Selling Or Educating?

Are You Selling Or Educating?
By Kelly Donahue-Piro
President of Agency Performance Partners
Co-Founder of Agency Appeal

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of college students at Bryant University. If you don’t know Bryant, it’s a top business college in the country and the price tag certainly goes along with it. I walked in expecting to find the energy of sales, marketing finance and more but what I got was disappointment. It turns out college wasn’t much different even when you were in a top school for exactly what you wanted to study.

I asked the group of 30 or so students how many of them knew what they wanted to do when they graduated. Only 3 hands went up. Ok, I get it. I’m not sure at 20 I didn’t know either. More importantly, if I did know I would have never guessed being an insurance consultant would be my dream job, but it is. So I started asking more general questions of the team. How many wanted to go into marketing, finance, economics; all received a few hands in the air. Then I ask, who wants to go into sales? I have never seen hands go down so fast in my life. It’s like I asked who wants to go to prison. I think by asking if anyone wanted to go into sales I was offending them.

So I hit a nerve, I then asked how many of you want to own your own business. 50% of the class shot their hands up like they won the lottery. Funny but true, if you own your own business you better have some sales skills or your business won’t be here too long. It got me thinking, why do we hate sales but so many people want to own a business? To me, they are very close in proximity.

If we take this to insurance we certainly see a distaste for “selling” insurance. We want everyone to come to us, listen and believe whatever we say. That’s not the case! We have to get over the idea of selling someone as being a federal crime. When you look up synonyms for selling here is what you find:

Trading
Transacting
Vending
Transfering

None of these words have quite the same reaction, but if you use the S word, brace yourself. People don’t like it.

What we like to do is replace sales with educate. If you passionately educate someone on not smoking are we not selling them on our way of thinking? We are! Now it’s hard to get passionate about Umbrella insurance or is it? I get fired up explaining to them how their auto policy is not enough and how a little extra coverage can be so your wages don’t get garnished. Wooooooooo! But I love the challenge. I’m passionate about it and that helps the client get passionate too.

For many account managers or customer service reps they get super cringy at the sales word. Now, I think this is total BS because I have seen them sell their pants off, when they want to. Have you ever seen an account manager convince someone not to lower their coverages to save a few bucks? They go into straight up beast mode and rarely do they let the person decrease coverage. It’s just not going to happen. I often wonder what would happen if they applied those same tactics to new business or selling more to a current client? I have a pretty good idea and it would be astronomical sales.

The main point is we are all in sales in one way or another. Just because you don’t identify sales with selling a client on keeping their coverages doesn’t mean it’s not sales. Reframe your thinking and get rid of old bad habits. Who knows you just may like sales after all!

About Kelly Donahue-Piro

As a dynamic public speaker and consultant I have spent the last decade focusing on how small business owners can capitalize on opportunities within their reach. With over 5 years experience in the local insurance agent sector I can bring training, marketing and technology to your agency that helps you effective and efficiently grow your agency. My specialties include consulting and coaching on upselling, account rounding, agency culture change, sales scripting, executive level coaching and benchmarking as well as agency retention skills. Contact me today to learn more about how I can help your agency grow!