5 Out-of-the-Box Ideas for Selling Final Expense Insurance

Final expense can be among the most rewarding life insurance products to sell. However, it isn’t the easiest to discuss. What are some life insurance selling tips for final expense insurance?

This type of life insurance can be easy to learn, with low face amounts, low premiums, and simplified underwriting. The target market and need for final expense coverage are extensive. Although, it can be hard to segue into and give a final expense sales presentation.

There’s an art to selling final expense insurance. Let’s review five out-of-the-box methods you can utilize to enhance your success!

1. Consider Leads Outside Your Target Market

Your target market for final expense is low-to-middle-class seniors, ages 50 and above. But don’t limit yourself to this age demographic!

There can be sales opportunities for final expense with people under the age of 50. This includes gift purchases, like a grandparent buying a policy for their grandchildren.

In your low-to-middle-class target market, the need is great. According to the National Funeral Directors Association, the projected cremation rate is 63.4 percent and the burial rate at 31.6 percent. You can reduce or remove the biggest challenge in funeral planning such as:

• Using a funeral planning worksheet to calculate service costs
• Offer affordable policies and pricing options to your clients

Why only consider final expense for your target market? Think about final expense insurance as simplified whole life that you can offer to any of your clients!

Ask yourself these questions:

• “Are you working with upper-middle-class seniors?”
• “Do their grandchildren have juvenile policies? If not, why not?”
• “Do you have middle-aged, middle-class clients that could benefit from permanent insurance along with their term insurance?”

They’re likely earning more and thinking more about their future. You can find carriers who will offer up to $100,000 in a simplified format. Why not use it to your advantage?

2. Build Rapport with Final Expense Prospects

Some agents avoid having “the death conversation” with their clients. One of the best ways to talk to clients or prospects is mention the obvious issue and use a personal approach to address it.

Building rapport can be easy when you share a personal story. For example, you might talk about a family member or friend who passed away. You can explain how you and your family handled the quick financial and emotional decisions that followed.

Ask the questions:

• “Do you think that if all of these decisions were made and paid for in advance, the family would feel relieved?”
• “Would they be grateful to know for sure that they were following their loved one’s wishes?”

Your final expense presentation should guide the client through all the details clearly and simply.

Aside from the obvious purchase of leads, there are many ways to develop final expense lead sources through rapport. Here are two:

• Hold life insurance seminars or Q&A sessions at local churches and community events.
  • Present them as free public education by an expert in the industry. In this way, you can reach many people at once and in person.
  • You can also offer free insurance reviews by appointment. You can also send follow-up letters to answer any questions.
• Build your profile in the community by contributing to and volunteering at local community events and causes.
  • You can sponsor a local youth sports team or offer educational sessions to small, local businesses who would like to offer voluntary benefits to their employees.
  • You never know who you’ll meet at food banks, your local library, or community events.

3. Aim to Make Customers Your Clients for Life

If you’re just in for a sale, your prospects are going to know. Instead of just talking about funerals, why not use this opportunity to make your customers your clients for life?

Using tools and resources is one of the best ways to stay on top of all your client information.

Did you know Ritter has a short, but effective, one-page fact finder that helps you gather all the relevant information you need to uncover sales opportunities?

When you fill out a fact finder, like the one-page Ritter Fact Finder, you’ll collect information. This includes your client’s current health conditions and any medications they take. This process will help you determine which final expense policy may work the best for that particular client.

You’ll also collect financial information to help you and your client decide how much premium they can realistically afford. You can review their current insurance policies and insurance needs. Also, you can check if other household members need or want to update their insurance coverage.

The average premium on a final expense policy is usually less than $50 per month. Your target market of low-to-middle-income clients may need assistance in determining if they can fit these monthly premiums in their budget. (They may even believe life insurance costs way more than it actually does!)

Consider the following alternative ideas for sales:

• For healthy clients on a budget, consider simplified issue traditional life insurance, instead of a final expense policy. A traditional whole life product may have more underwriting questions and disqualifying conditions. It may also offer an even lower premium for healthy clients.
• While reviewing the insurance needs of other family members, consider final expense products for younger adults who have chronic conditions and may find it difficult to qualify for traditional life insurance products.
• Discuss the living benefits that many final expense policies now offer. Several policies offer critical and chronic illness riders, terminal illness riders, and even term riders for spouses and children. You may be able to meet more than one insurance need with the same product.
• Clients could be interested in a traditional whole life product for their children or grandchildren. Traditional whole life products can build cash value and provide guaranteed insurability in the future.

4. Understand Final Expense Underwriting

All final expense policies offer simplified underwriting. Simplified underwriting refers to underwriting that requires no medical or physical exams.

With this type of underwriting, policies can usually be issued within a matter of days. It can even be instantly with telephone underwriting or an e-application process.

Because final expense underwriting is so simplified, an agent can almost always determine if a carrier will accept a client. They can simply review the medical questions on the carrier’s application. In addition, many final expense carriers’ underwriting processes are similar.

There are several uninsurable conditions that often disqualify clients for a traditional final expense policy. You should always have a guaranteed issue product available for clients with these types of conditions:

• A heart attack or stroke within the last 12 months
• Cancer within the last two years
• AIDS/HIV
• Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS)
• Congestive heart failure
• Oxygen use
• Residing in a nursing home
• Not being able to perform all the activities of daily living (ADLs)

Did you know that there are guaranteed issue final expense carriers that offer a chronic illness rider on the policy? For clients who have significant medical issues, the benefits of a rider such as this could seal the deal.

If you have clients who do not have any of these major health conditions, but who have other conditions like:

• Diabetes
• Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease without oxygen use
• Alcohol or drug use
• Taking narcotic pain medications regularly

These may make an insurance carrier pause, but they’d probably make good candidates for graded or modified final expense coverage. For graded and modified final expense policies, carriers reduce the death benefit for the first several years of the policy.

Underwriting can vary by carrier. Determining which carrier will underwrite your client’s medical condition more favorably will be the next step.

Carriers often have underwriting “niches” that may help you place a client into a level benefit policy over a graded or modified policy. Two examples include:

• Level death benefits for clients who have had a heart attack more than 12 months, but less than two years, ago. Most policies will not offer level benefits for this condition, unless it has been at least two years or more since the heart attack.
• Level death benefits for clients with diabetes who are using insulin and have not experienced any complications, such as diabetic neuropathy.

Agents who are familiar with these types of product niches can quickly determine the best carrier for the client in question. With healthier clients, or clients only taking basic maintenance medications, a level benefit final expense policy with standard or preferred rates is possible.

Level benefit policies offer the most cost-effective premiums and have more riders available than graded or modified policies. The full death benefit of these policies will be paid from the first day the policy is in effect.

There is even a carrier who will offer non-smoking rates for smokers during the first several years of the policy to encourage the client to quit!

Since smoker rates can be significantly higher than non-smoker rates, this can be a great benefit to clients who smoke to encourage them to quit for good. If the client does not quit smoking during that time, the policy’s face amount will be reduced.

5. Perfect Your Final Expense Sales Pitch

Once you have reviewed the client’s health and financial condition, completed the application, and discovered the type of coverage the client qualifies for, it’s important to offer payment options that meet the client’s budget.

An effective way of closing a final expense sale can be offering the client three coverage and monthly payment options.

For example, offering death benefit amounts of $7K, $10K and $12K, with the corresponding monthly payments, can help the client determine how much they’re willing to spend. It also clearly demonstrates to the client how a small premium difference could purchase several thousand dollars more in coverage.

Don’t forget to take advantage of the additional marketing tools that are available to help you with final expense presentations!

There are life insurance sales tools and programs out there that you offer funeral planning services, including:

• Customized photo presentation
• Assistance with locating local funeral homes
• Travel arrangements
• Floral services

Usually, you can even offer these services free to all prospects, whether they purchase an insurance policy from you or not!

If you’re selling final expense insurance, there are multiple ways you can think outside the box for new leads and new sales. There’s nothing wrong with using a final expense appointment to simply sell a final expense insurance policy.

But, with your clients’ best interests in mind, delving deeper and exploring coverage gaps can lead to additional sales opportunities and help you set up long-standing, mutually beneficial business relationships.

Here at Ritter, we’re committed to supporting you every step of the way in your insurance agent journey. Register with us for free today to access numerous tools, resources, and information to keep you at the top of your game!