9 Tips for Selling Final Expense Life Insurance

Are you thinking of selling final expense life insurance? If yes, then you’ll be happy to know that final expense is a lucrative area of insurance to get into.

For one, the US is experiencing a population explosion among seniors. Stats show that by 2050, the number of seniors will increase by 50% and makeup 20% of the population.

If you wondering what this has to do with final expense life insurance, it means that the market is growing at a rapid rate. Besides this, unlike most other types of insurance, final expense insurance also pays out renewal commissions. This can allow you to build up a healthy stream of passive income. 

However, final expense insurance can be a tough sell. Nobody likes talking about death, and reminding prospects of their own mortality can feel difficult.

Fortunately, with the right approach and methods, you can be highly successful as a final expense agent. Read on for our top tips for selling final expense life insurance.

1. Keep Up With Developments in the Funeral Market

One of the less frequently talked about tips for selling final expense insurance is to keep up with developments in the funeral market.

If you are in the know about the current funeral market trends, this will allow you to better connect with your leads. 

For example, statistics show that cremations have been consistently trending upward over the last ten years. This trend is predicted to continue over the next 20 years. One of the primary reasons for this is that cremations are far less costly than burials.

As people increasingly choose cremations over casket burials, it would come across as insensitive to assume that your clients are going to opt for burial. If this choice does come up during discussions around final expense insurance, you’ll look a lot more clued up if you demonstrate an understanding of current trends.

2. Don’t Be Afraid to Incur Expenses

Another top tip for selling final expense insurance, as well as most other types of insurance, is don’t be afraid of incurring expenses.

Selling insurance comes with fewer upfront costs than a lot of other ventures. However, just like most other businesses, you get out what you put in. 

Therefore, try to reinvest some of your commissions into things that will help grow your insurance sales career. This could be things like:

• Ongoing insurance sales training
• Branding
• Marketing
• Buying leads

Not only are these types of expenses tax-deductible, but they are vital for building and sustaining growth.

Besides reinvesting a portion of your commissions into your business growth, you should also try to begin your final expense life insurance journey with some capital at your disposal. This way, you can invest in the right training from the get-go and launch your business with all the tools you need. 

Having some capital to use will also help you kickstart sales through purchasing leads.

3. Partner With a Trusted Lead Vendor

Speaking of purchasing leads, another important tip for final expense sales agents is to work with a trusted lead vendor.

Lead quality is always important in insurance sales, but it’s even more critical when it comes to final expense insurance. As we said above, final expense can be a tricky sell. If you’re working with low-quality leads who aren’t all that interested in the product, then you’re going to be facing an uphill battle. 

Besides being a waste of money, low-quality leads can also eat up a lot of valuable time. Instead of spending 6 hours working 30 bad leads, you’ll be much better off spending 2 hours working 10 high-quality leads, even if they cost a bit more.

Unfortunately, a lot of lead vendors out there will try to sell you extremely poor leads while claiming they are top quality. To avoid being ripped off like this, look for a vendor that supplies proof of lead quality.

This could be something like audio recordings or pdfs of interactions with Facebook leads.

4. Focus On Final Expense

As a new insurance agent, the idea of selling multiple different types of insurance can be very attractive. In theory, selling various types of insurance is a good idea, as you have a wider target market and you can cross-sell products to your clients.

However, in reality, this strategy isn’t always the most effective, especially if you are just starting out as an insurance agent.

As a new agent, it can be hard enough to figure out and sell one type of insurance. Selling multiple insurance types involves more work, more time, more marketing, and more organization.

Therefore, if you’re a new agent, we would advise that you keep your focus on final expense life insurance, to begin with.

Once you have mastered the product type and have all of your systems down, then you can start looking around at other types of insurance to sell.

5. Have Pre-constructed Responses and Opening Lines

This is another tip that holds true for all types of insurance, but it is particularly helpful when selling final expense.

Because final expense sales are sometimes tougher than other insurance products, it’s essential that you have a set of effective opening lines and responses ready to go. 

For example, clients will say they don’t want final expense insurance because they already have life insurance. For these clients, you can have a prepared response on why final expense insurance is still a must, as it pays out immediately and can’t be used up by creditors.

Some agents thrive on improvising in the moment, but most of us do better if we have some pre-prepared material to work off of. This is especially helpful in the beginning. Once you have been selling for some time, you’ll probably have a number of openings and responses automatically memorized.

However, when you are starting out, it can be very hard to keep everything in your head. Therefore, dedicate some time to formulating a comprehensive set of introductions, phrases, and rebuttal responses for different scenarios.

6. Invest in You

One of the top tips for selling final expense insurance is to invest in yourself. Having the right skillsets and knowledge is the most critical factor for success and can be the make or break of your career. 

Insurance is one of the few lucrative fields that have low barriers to entry when it comes to educational requirements. However, while you can become an agent with a minimum of education, this doesn’t mean that you should.

Here at InsuranceSales101, we have seen firsthand how insurance sales training can accelerate agents’ careers. It is often the differentiating factor between failing and thriving agents. 

Whether you are just entering the field or already established but not seeing the results you want—training is the key to unlocking new levels of success. 

Pro tip: Make sure that you do your due diligence when picking a training program, and select one that doesn’t force you to accept contracts from uplines. 

A big issue in the insurance industry is that training programs often exist solely to tie agents into specific uplines.

We don’t believe in this system, which is one of the reasons why we created InsuranceSales101. We provide high-quality training so that you can effectively prospect and sell final expense insurance products with no strings attached. 

7. Don’t Focus Solely on Your Target Demographic

Traditionally, the final expense insurance market is comprised of individuals over 50. While this is still the primary target demographic, things are starting to shift a little.

Dubbed by Vox as the “death-positive generation,” millennials are showing an increasing desire to plan their funerals and shield loved ones from the costs. Findings reveal that 15.8% of Americans aged 18-39 feel that people should plan their funerals before turning 40. 

Therefore, you might want to increase your focus to include younger target markets as well.

8. Contract With Multiple Carriers

A big part of being successful at selling final expense life insurance is giving your clients the best deals and truly serving their needs.

If you only contract with one of two carriers, you won’t be able to do this. Instead, you end up forcing the same set of overpriced, inferior policies on every lead you meet with. 

Not only does this reduce the chance of sales, but it also increases the likelihood of chargebacks. After you underwrite a client’s policy, other agents are still going to call them over the following years. 

If these agents have a wider range of products, there’s a high chance the client will replace your policy with a more advantageous one. When this happens, you’ll receive a chargeback and have to pay back any advanced commissions.

9. Be Organized

Last but not least, be organized. Organization is absolutely key for successful final expense insurance sales. To effectively work with high numbers of leads, you need to have a strong system in place to streamline things. 

You have to know exactly what needs to happen with each lead at any given moment, whether that’s following up in 30 days, getting rid of the lead, or submitting an application.

One of the keys to getting organized is utilizing a good CRM solution, which is why we recommend several insurance CRMs when signing up for training with InsuranceSales101. 

Become a Top Selling Final Expense Life Insurance Agent With the Right Training

Final expense can be a very profitable type of insurance to specialize in. However, closing sales can also be harder than with other types of insurance.

The key to overcoming this barrier and becoming a top-performing final expense life insurance agent is training.

InsuranceSales101 offers training designed by final expense agents for final expense agents. Whether you’re a seasoned agent or new in the field, our training will teach you the strategies you need to close more sales and achieve success with final expense. 

Check out our training program today.