The following speech was my Club President’s opening
address at AIA Toastmasters Club’s NFNF chapter meeting on 28th January
2021.
Club members, colleagues, my fellow Toastmasters,
welcome to our NFNF chapter meeting.
As we consider the events of the past year and
developments in the industry, I would like us to remember that we are financial
services consultants, not insurance agents.
As consultants, we are experts in our field. As agents, we would be mere salesmen. As consultants, we leverage our credibility to
offer solutions. As agents, we push
products. We are not here to sell life
insurance. We are here to sell the idea
of what life insurance can do for people.
We are in AIA Toastmasters Club to refine that
concept, so every one of you can go out and be more effective in your
work. This means moving away from
presentations, and toward connecting with clients. This means finding the right words to convey
profound statements to them, so they intrinsically understand that you have
their interests at heart. They say a
picture paints a thousand words. The
right word, at the right moment, in the right place, implies a universe of
emotion even a picture fails to convey.
Find those words.
You could tell your clients that as long as one person
– a spouse, a child, a parent, anyone – depends on their continued income, they
need life insurance.
You could tell your clients that whatever excuse they
offer for skipping coverage will sound selfish and ridiculous to the people
they leave behind, their grieving widows and orphans.
You could tell your clients they are not buying life
insurance because they are going to die, but because the people they love are
going to live. And how do they want them
to live?
You could tell your clients that life insurance is a
means to engage in estate planning before they have made enough money to
provide for all their needs and family.
You could tell your clients that the only person best
placed to take care of them in old age is the person they are now, because
there are no guarantees with people.
Master the art of the pithy statement, and let clients
think through the consequences of their own decisions. Then deliver for them. We work in an industry where we are among the
few people who deliver good news while others suffer pain and loss. That is why we invest time becoming effective
communicators. That is why we are in
this programme.
Over to you, Toastmaster of the Day.
Commentary: The Distinction between Consultant and
Agent is Not Semantic
The Life Insurance Association of Singapore’s own
Protection Gap Study found the average critical illness shortfall per
economically productive adult sits at S$264,586. That gap did not open because agents ran out
of product to sell. It opened because too
many conversations stayed transactional, closing a policy rather than building
an understanding of what a family stands to lose.
Every pitch should begin with a statement that is
short, declarative, and aimed at a single emotional truth rather than a feature
list. A prospect forgets a comparison
table by the following morning. He does
not forget being told who pays the price for his hesitation.
An excuse that sounds reasonable to the person making
it sounds indefensible to the family left holding the consequence. A consultant softening that truth to spare a
client’s feelings in the moment is not being kind. He is deferring a considerably harder
conversation onto people who will never get the chance to have it with the
client at all.
Stop presenting.
Start connecting. Find the
sentence that makes the consequence real, and trust the client to conclude
himself. That is not motivational
filler. It is the mechanism by which a
S$264,586 gap gets closed, one honest conversation at a time.
Terence Nunis, DTM | Division Advisor, District
80 Division M | Club Advisor, AIA Toastmasters | Past President & Founder,
Awesome Toastmasters
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