Hi everyone and welcome to this week’s protection update.

This week, I’ve been on the road at the various roadshows in Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh and I very often don’t really know what I’m going to talk about in the protection update until about midway through the week.

We’re in Manchester and Birmingham, I ran a very short session which was really about how we can think of ways to raise the bar with the advice and recommendation we give to clients.  I had a bit more time up in Edinburgh.

What do I mean by raise the bar?

Well, I think it’s sometimes a minefield of information to tread through to be able to pick a product and recommend it based on its merits of suitability to the client, compared to everything else which was available.

Very often you can request a quotation for protection cover and get around 50 different products appear on Solution Builder?

How on earth do you pick one?

Is the safe ground just thinking about the cost of the protection cover?

It very often is, and I’m not saying cost isn’t a very important factor.  It obviously is.  But is it the main factor most of the time?

I’m not sure it is and let me explain what I mean.

Do you agree that when we buy things, we often get a choice of different prices?  Different prices usually stem from different versions of that thing you want to purchase?

Some are cheaper, some are more expensive and some are in-between.

Think about this… Are there things that you buy, where you don’t buy the cheapest version of?  You pay a bit more.

Why do you buy things which aren’t the cheapest version?  Is it because it’s better quality and do you think that extra spend is worth it?  Do you appreciate the value of something that comes with greater quality?

Very often when we appreciate the value of something, we will pay for it.

Just think about the typical spending habits of normal people there are things that people will pay a premium for because they feel it’s worth it.  If you look at someone else, they might not feel the same.

So why am I talking about all of this?  What’s the key point?

Compare Quality Client Facing Sales Aids

We’ve recently launched our ‘Compare Quality’ client facing sales aids and I spoke about these this week.

Just to remind you, I’ve added the links to this week’s protection update and I’ve got an example of one I prepared earlier in this podcast.  These are already on the adviser site and you can even brand them to your own business.

Click here for the Compare Quality Checklists/Compare Quality for Critical Illness

What these sales aids will do is help you understand other things which are important to your clients beyond the main headline benefit.

That means when you do your research, you can factor these points in so that you can end up tailoring a more bespoke solution that really does work for your clients because it can factor things in which they told you were important.

Lauren Brady did ask a really good question at the Manchester roadshow and it was based on a real observation of trying to use these sales aids with her clients recently.

Lauren felt that just putting these in front of a client could be a little bit overwhelming in terms of all the many considerations.  What’s the best way of positioning them?  How much time should we take to explain each and every feature?  Should we leave the client to figure it out?

Now we have tried to write the descriptions in plain English that any normal person would be able to understand, but still, if you look at the Critical Illness sales aid; there are 15 check boxes… that means individual 15 points of consideration for the client so is it fair and reasonable for a client to be able to make properly informed decisions without some kind of a steer?

So, Lauren; thank you for making this point.  It’s a good challenge and we do need to think about how best to use these types of tools and sales aids in the context of our interactions and discussions with clients.

I would suggest that in the first instance; we need to get familiar with what these sales aids are actually asking.

Critical Illness Quality

There some checkpoints which are obviously important such as the quality of critical illness conditions.  So, if you agree, you could look to give your client that steer.

Explain that all products come with a good baseline of core coverage.

But not all products are exactly the same and you do get what you pay for which means some products have a broader range and are more claimable.

If this is an aspect which is important to you, I can factor that in to my research for you.

Children’s Cover

Another one I’d point out is to pay attention to whether your clients have children.

If they do, there is a big swing in the quality of children’s cover when you look across the market.  Some policies don’t cover children at all where as some policies at the other end of the spectrum have been designed to cover things which children do suffer.

Remember this is coverage for children, but it’s designed to give the parent a payout.  That can be very important if you have to take some time off work for your child and we’re able to make sure you get the best coverage in this particular area.

Congenital Conditions

Another one related to children and the family are conditions that children are born with.  We’re also talking about pregnancy related complications.

If this is important to the client, we can factor it into our research and make sure there is good cover in this area too.

The quality of coverage for congenital conditions does differ massively across the market and if your clients are starting a family; I’d be thinking this is an important one to mention to your client.

Remember, it’s just money on the table when they need it the most.

Access to GPs

And finally, I’ll mention one more because it’s topical.

We all know it’s been difficult to get a doctor’s appointment during this past couple of years, so ask the simple question; would having access to GP appointments on your mobile phone be important to you.

I ask because some products don’t offer this at all whilst others do.  But for those that do offer this, there are differences and I can look to find a solution which gives you a good quality coverage in this area.

All the client needs to do is tick the box.

Ultimately advice and recommendation is an opinion business.   We all have our favorites providers, products, features and benefits, which inevitably filters through to your advice and recommendation and the conversations you have with your clients.

What I think is amazing is that all the hard work has been done for you.

You don’t need to scour the market to find out who does what.

If you can find a way to get some responses from your clients, (perhaps by using these compare quality sales aids), you’ll be able to score all the providers in Solution Builder and produce the compare quality report.

And that means you’re making recommendations based on things your clients said were important to them and you’re not focusing on things which are completely irrelevant to them.

But I think the first step is to get familiar with these sales aids yourself.  Ask yourself which are the points which stand out for you.  Make sure you’re happy that each question makes sense.

And that’s going to help you give your clients a steer.

Perhaps ask them to consider a manageable 3 main points you’ve picked out.  Not necessarily what I’ve just mentioned, but 3 that you think would be relevant considerations for them.  Ask them for a binary yes/no response as to whether we should include these things.

Another idea might be to just ask them to tick up to 3 boxes.  Again, what we need to do is keep the conversation light and manageable so the job can be done quickly?

You might even want to just ask the question rather than hand over a sheet.

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter as long as you can capture a response from your client.  If you do, you’re going to be able to tailor the recommendation you make for them.

I’m convinced that there is a good idea in here because Protection Guru have done all the hard work to independently evaluate all these components of these different covers from across the whole market and you can produce these reports easily and effortlessly as part of your research on Solution Builder.

Can I ask you to think about it?  Let me know your thoughts.

Ask your clients to have a go at filling in one of these check sheets.  Tell them that you’re trying out this new thing with clients to help you give even more tailored and bespoke advice and ask them how they found it.

The questions are different on each of the Life Cover, Critical Illness Cover and Income Protection sales aids but the underlying concept remains the same which is to help you tailor protection solutions to them based on things that they said were important.

If you use the compare quality tool within Solution Builder, you will naturally see higher premiums because your clients will be taking more tailored solutions.

Higher premiums mean higher commission.  And I don’t make any apologies for saying that because its higher commission for delivering better client outcomes?

And from a compliance point of view, the reason for recommendation becomes even more obvious and clear.  You’re demonstrating a level of expertise that they just couldn’t achieve without you.

If you want to watch the recording of the webinar where we launched these sales aids, I’ve added a link to this protection update and you’ll also see how these work in line with the compare quality tool in Solution Builder.

Click here for Recording of Compare Quality presentation 

We’ve never had this much richness and diversity in the product solutions we can offer to our clients.

Products aren’t getting worse; they are getting better and better but that means your job isn’t getting any easier.

So, make use of the great resources that are available to you because that will put you in a place where you’re demonstrating a level of expertise that the client simply cannot achieve without you.

So, there we go… that’s it for another protection update.

Have a great weekend everyone and for those of you in South Wales, Brentwood and Durham; I’ll see you at the roadshows next week!