Trends On How to Sell Insurance Over the Phone

Overview of CrankWheel

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with screen-sharing expert Gilsi Sigvaldason, co-founder of CrankWheel^®, for an exclusive interview on current and future trends related to how to sell insurance over the phone.

CrankWheel is a unique software solution designed to help sales teams across various industries sell faster and more effectively over the phone. While CrankWheel can be used by any sales team, our discussion focused on how it transforms how health insurance agents sell policies to prospective clients. The software is also famous for sales in other industries like financial services, B2B sales, customer support, education, real estate, healthcare, technology, and non-profit organizations. The bottom line is that by walking prospects through policies visually, tools like CrankWheel are transforming how to sell insurance over the phone for modern agents.

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According to Gilsi, the inspiration for CrankWheel came about 8-9 years ago when he and his childhood friend and co-founder were both at a crossroads in their careers. Gilsi had been selling insurance for about 15 years and was looking for ways to improve and modernize his sales process. His friend had just left Google, and together, they devised the idea for CrankWheel. This screen-sharing solution would allow insurance agents to walk prospective clients through policies, comparisons, and other visuals over the phone in real time.

Selling health insurance can be a rewarding career for those who keep up with the current trends and strategies for selling insurance over the phone in today's remote selling environment. Solutions like CrankWheel are transforming how insurance can be sold remotely by enabling agents to visually walk prospects through policies, comparisons, and presentations during calls via instant screen sharing. This approach helps agents build trust, engage prospects, clearly explain policies, and drive higher sales conversion rates. With tools like CrankWheel, learning how to sell insurance over the phone no longer relies solely on verbal descriptions to close deals.

A McKinsey report found that insurance agents spend 50-70% of sales calls just trying to schedule in-person meetings rather than closing deals. However, visual selling solutions help agents progress further during initial calls.

The key benefit of CrankWheel is that it eliminates the friction of scheduling in-person meetings or sending emails back and forth. Agents can instantly share their screen with a prospect directly from a cold call, inbound call, or lead and walk them through a personalized presentation on the fly. This helps build trust and rapport faster than explaining complex policies over the phone. According to experts, how to sell insurance over the phone used to rely on verbal descriptions, but visual selling is becoming the new standard.

Since launching the software, CrankWheel has expanded globally with paying customers across five continents. However, the sales process and need for visual selling tools are essentially the same regardless of geography. At its core, CrankWheel is about helping agents close more sales by better connecting with prospects.

Demo of CrankWheel's Features

Next, Gilsi gave me an overview demo of CrankWheel's interface and features, including:

• Instant screen sharing – Agents can instantly share their screen with a prospect by sending them a simple text with a link or copying and pasting a URL into a chat—no need to schedule meetings in advance.
• Mobile optimization – The screen-sharing experience is mobile-friendly and optimized for smartphones and tablets. No app download is required.
• Viewer tracking – CrankWheel provides real-time notifications when a prospect engages with or steps away from the screen share so agents can pace their presentation accordingly.
• Post-session redirects – Agents can choose where prospects land after a screen share ends. This is commonly used to direct them to a contact form, educational materials, or referral pages.
• Security – The software is HIPAA and PCI-compliant and built with enterprise-grade security.
• Flexible integrations – CrankWheel integrates with various insurance sales tools and Zapier to create a seamless sales tech stack.

How to Sell Insurance Over the Phone in Healthcare

It was clear from the demo how quick and easy it is for both agents and prospects to begin a screen-sharing session in real time on any device. Just a quick text and confirmation code, and we were off; our presentation was underway. I can not stress enough how exciting it is to have an application compatible with all browsers and devices. This is especially important when working with clients who are not very technical. How to sell insurance over the phone has changed with solutions like Crankwheel that enable screen sharing and visual presentations during calls.

Challenges for Health Insurance Sales Agents During Open Enrollment

With Medicare's Annual Enrollment Period and other open enrollment seasons coming up, I asked Gilsi what some of the biggest challenges are that health insurance agents are facing:

• Explaining complex policies – It's tough to explain policies thoroughly over the phone alone. Visuals are key for prospects to understand coverage, comparisons, rates, etc.
• Building trust and rapport – Prospects, especially elderly ones, need to build trust with an agent before making a purchase. Screen sharing helps humanize the agent.
• Overcoming tech barriers – Many older prospects hesitate to download and install apps or software to begin screen sharing. CrankWheel's instant and mobile-friendly access overcomes these barriers.
• Losing leads – Valuable leads are lost when prospects don't want to schedule in-person meetings or deal with complicated screen-sharing setups. CrankWheel's frictionless experience prevents this.

CrankWheel helps agents overcome all of these challenges so that agents can easily learn how to sell insurance over the phone by making real-time visual selling seamless for agents and prospects. No other coordination is needed beyond a quick text or click of a link.

According to Forbes, “Visual content can help insurance agents better explain complex policies and drive higher engagement during sales calls. Agents who incorporate visuals see sales conversion rates improve 60-80%.”

Success Stories and Results

Gilsi shared several examples of insurance agents who have seen tremendous results after switching to CrankWheel. The solution has helped them :

• Independent agents in the U.S. increased sales by 40-80% by showing prospects visuals impossible to convey over the phone alone.
• Some agents now use CrankWheel for 60-80% of their calls rather than pre-booking meetings.
• SDRs use CrankWheel to give short policy presentations and build trust with prospects on cold calls.

The key to these results is that visuals build trust and understanding faster than verbal explanations alone. Agents can have meaningful sales conversations on the first call rather than playing endless phone tag.

Future Trends and Predictions

Looking ahead, Gilsi predicted that remote selling will continue increasing. However, he believes human agents will remain crucial, as people still strongly prefer buying from other humans, especially regarding more complex products like insurance.

While AI and other technologies will become more prominent, the key will be using tools like CrankWheel to help human agents sell better. The most successful agents will embrace solutions that allow them to connect with prospects faster and more conveniently.

After learning tips for selling insurance by phone, please read our article, Email Marketing Software: 13 Powerful SEO Boosting Ideas, for strategies for driving leads and sales through email campaigns. Our article 13 Best Email Marketing Software For Small Businesses provides valuable insight into using email marketing automation. With the right technology, insurance agents can optimize phone and email touchpoints to engage prospects across channels. Combining phone sales best practices with robust email marketing enables insurance agents to nurture relationships from the first call to conversion. Check out our email marketing software article for more insights.

Key Takeaways

Learning how to sell insurance over the phone is critical for insurance agents who want to boost sales in today's remote environment. Here are a few key takeaways from my discussion with Gilsi:

• Visual selling tools like CrankWheel will become essential for insurance agents to explain policies effectively.
• Real-time screen sharing builds trust and improves conversion rates dramatically compared to phone-only sales.
• Solutions that make the sales process extremely quick and easy will win. Friction kills deals.
• The key is equipping human agents to sell remotely better, not replacing them with technology.
• Agents should be ready to meet prospects on their channel of choice, whether by phone, video, in person, etc.
• Open enrollment season shows the need for sales tech to deliver fast and convenient visual selling experiences.

Thanks again to Gilsi for sharing his insights on the insurance sales industry. Solutions like CrankWheel will be game-changers for agents during open enrollment seasons and beyond. I hope the conversation on current trends and strategies discussed in this article for selling insurance over the phone has been helpful. The future is bright for agents who embrace visual selling technology to connect with prospects in real time across any channel.

To experience CrankWheel as an insurance agent, start a free 14-day trial here.

Listen to our Software Spotlight podcast episode featuring CrankWheel: Childhood friends Gilsi Sigvaldason and his co-founder created screen-sharing software CrankWheel to simplify sales calls and demos. Integrating email, calendar, and tools to capture interactions effortlessly, CrankWheel’s timeline visualizations help agents sell faster by sharing screens on any device without prospects downloading anything.