Disability income proposal system — Software featuring:

• Sample salary continuation, BOE and buy-sell sales tracks;


• Specimen buy-sell agreement;


• Target premium money purchase ability;


• Package disability illustration, automatically including regular occupation and residual benefits;


• Active businessowner matrix, which automatically adjusts occupation classification; and


• Competitive policy comparisons.

Disability income and business disability policies underwriting guidelines and rates for class A and B occupations (Form 8654)

Financial Calculations — Ohio National's illustration software with which to project future growth of business value and future income.

What to do:

When doing case analysis and developing product recommendations, be sure to ask for help from your General Agent/Trainer or advanced sales, pension or DI specialists. Among the points to keep in mind are:

• Who is the primary decision-maker? You should gear your recommendations to that individual.


• What is the prospect's primary concern or objective?


• What are the problems or constraints to be aware of in this case?


• What is the prospect's financial commitment to addressing this problem?

Try this! While the type of case you're working on and solution you recommend determine how you prepare casework and develop product suggestions, keep these principles in mind:

• Sell benefits, not features. People care more about what a product can do for them than how it works. Proposals should clearly link a prospect's needs and wants with corresponding benefits and product features.

Try this! To be sure you're putting the emphasis where it belongs, think — benefits, features, and proofs.

• Benefits are what a product can do for the prospect.


• Features produce specific benefits.


• Proofs are sales illustrations, visuals, or brochures that explain how features benefit the prospect.

• Sales illustrations are projections based on current assumptions, they're not guarantees. The only promises a life insurance company can make when it sells a product are the contractual guarantees. Death benefits are too important to risk because of misrepresented or misunderstood product performance.

  Do this! Always tell the truth. Inform prospects and clients that an illustration's costs and benefit projections can change. They're not guarantees of performance.

• Stress benefits and value, not price. Prospects should look at the bottom line, but not stare at it. You're not selling price; you're selling benefits, and the added value of doing business with you and Ohio National.

  The trouble with "I can get it for you cheaper" sales habit of selling product numbers is that if someone comes in with lower numbers, you have nowhere to go. Both you and the prospect lose, since what really counts in any purchase is the value of what you get, and the relationship you establish, not necessarily what you pay.

• Match the prospect's ability to pay. Your proposals should reflect the information brought out in the initial meeting and in fact-finding. Prospects' "financial commitments" are just as important as their "needs and wants commitments." The desire to satisfy needs and wants will not be strong enough to get people to buy unless your recommendations are appropriate and comfortably affordable. Protection that is needed, but which cannot be maintained, is no protection at all.
• Don't oversell. Some people have more needs and wants than wallet. So, take the long view. Address the prospect's most pressing concerns, such as income protection for wage earners, but don't try doing too much. Make a mutual commitment to deal with other issues later.
• Prepare alternate solutions. Be ready to show alternative solutions in case your prospect feels your primary recommendations don't fit his or her situation, or if your proposal is challenged by a competitor.

  Try this! Prepare no more than two alternate solutions. Showing more than that creates confusing choices that can delay the buying decision, erode your credibility, and, possibly result in your losing control of the case.

• A picture is worth 1,000 words. Graphs and illustrations reduce complex concepts into simple pictures that dramatically depict how your proposed solutions work and the benefits of your products. This saves time and detailed explanations, and captures and holds the prospect's attention. As one producer comments, "Since I started using computer graphics in my presentations, my sales ratios have improved dramatically. In fact, my average commission increased 40 percent, from $2,500 to between $4,000 and $4,500, just from the use of graphics!"

As you build skills with the business insurance sales process, keep in mind that your products and services are flexible selling tools which can assist in developing cases and closing sales. Thus, the better you understand your products and technical developments affecting the various business solutions we've described, the more creative you'll be in matching them with your prospects' needs and concerns.