Sales Methodology

Introduction

CRM

Needs Analysis

Hospital Presentation

Extras Presentation

Summary

Close

Picking Policy Guide

Maintaining same level of hospital cover (and excess)

The first thing we ideally want to do is to maintain someone’s same level of hospital cover. Remember, anyone can save customer money by slashing their hospital benefits. The only time we want to cut someone’s cover is when we move them from Gold to Silver Plus, but we don’t really want to move people from Gold to Silver or Silver Plus to Silver.

If we reduce customers level of hospital cover, we give them an extra decision to make when switching; “Is it the price reduction worth reducing my cover?”. We want to make the decision to switch seem as logical as possible when we go to close, so we want to take this question asway from them.

Lowering the monthly premium

Take it for granted that everyone wants to save money. But sometimes after you have done your needs analysis you will have many options to pick from, ranging from $600 saving a year all the way up to costing more money. Now generally, the lower premium you see on the CRM, the lesser the extras benefits are going to be. This is why, when selecting policies, if you have the options of:

  1. Saving the customer $500 per a year, but decreasing their extras benefits, or
  2. Saving the customer $200 a year and improving their extras benefits

Then always pick the option that saves them money AND improves their benefits. Just like we learned in picking hospital coverage, we don’t want customers asking themselves if the price reduction is worth the reduction in extras benefits. If we can save a customer money AND improve the benefits they use, then the only real question at the back of the customers mind is going to be if they trust you enough to want to switch.

Improve extras benefits on the services that customer uses

Like we have learned previously, customers will often switch if we can save them money AND improve their extras benefit, so picking the right extras plan consistently is going to be crucial if you want to get consistent sales.

You will not be able to know what extras plan is going to be best, if you do not do a thorough needs analysis. As a bare minimum we need to know:

  • What services customers need coverage for
  • How often they use services in a busy year

But ideally, we will also need to know:

  • How much those services cost (cost of physio visit etc)
  • If customer is going to a proffered dental provider
  • Know if they will be willing to switch dentists

The reason we need to know how often customers use services, is because how often someone use a services is going to dictate if we are going to be looking for a plan with higher yearly limits or higher extras rebates.

As a rule, if a customer is using services 7 times or less times a year, we will generally not be too concerned what the yearly limit is, and more concerned about the rebate. For example, if a customer is with Bupa, and they have a $700 yearly limit on physio, but only get a $21 rebate when they go, nib Core Extras with a $350 yearly limit would be better for them because they get 60% back:

  • 7 x $21 = $147
  • 7 X 60% ($54×7) = $350 (yearly limit hit at $350)

As you can see, it is crucial that you gather as much info as possible during the needs analysis, so you know what to look for. So on one screen we will have the customers extras plan up for us to look at and the other screen will be displaying our cheat sheets, where we can start to look at the differences between the two policies you are comparing.

Dental

This is the stage where you want to be paying attention to the customers location and asking ourselves the following questions:

  • Does the customer live near a dental centre where I can give them no-gap dental? (Like a nib dental centre, AU dental centre, pacific smiles dental etc)
  • If the customer is not going to a proffered provider, how much are they getting back on a check-up, clean & fluoride?
  • Can I beat how much they are getting back on their check-ups?
  • Does the customer need major dental work? Are there any sub-limits I need to be aware of?
  • If the customer needs crowns in the future, what is their current rebate vs the rebate I can give them?

Orthodontics

  • Has the customer already started treatment?
  • What is the customers yearly limit?
  • What is the customers lifetime limit?
  • What options do I have, that can beat it?

Optical

If the customer uses optical, you might also be asking yourself:

  • What is the customers current yearly limit?
  • Does their limit differ between single vision & multi-focal lenses?
  • What limits can I offer?
  • Can I offer them a special discount if they go to Specsavers or OPSM?

 

Physio/Chiro/Osteo/Massage/Podiatry/Other Natural Therapies 

With these services, you want to be asking yourself:

  • How often does the customer go per year?
  • What is the rebate the customer the customer gets back when they go?
  • If they go X amount of times, how much would that be?
  • Is their yearly limit enough for what they need?
  • What is the rebate that I can offer? Is it more or less than theirs?
  • What is the difference in the rebate? Can I offer them more every time they go?
  • What is the difference in the yearly limits? Will it matter to the customer?

One of the biggest traps we can fall into as sales agents is getting too comfortable with selling the same health fund over and over again. If we start picking policies which we feel comfortable selling, and NOT health funds which are best for the customer, then we will ultimately get less sales and higher cancels.

This principle is akin to a lesson from Dale Carnegie’s seminal book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” particularly the story about fishing with bait that appeals to the fish rather than what the fisherman likes. Just as a successful fisherman uses maggots instead of cake because that’s what fish prefer, we must choose health insurance policies that align with the specific preferences and needs of our clients, not just those policies we are most comfortable selling.

So before you go straight to your favourite policy, just ask yourself a few questions:

  • Is 60% back on check-ups really right for this customer?
  • Would the customer benefit by paying a few dollars more to get No-Gap check-up and cleans?

Step 1: Introduction

Introduce Self & Purpose of Call

Remember, customers are judging you from the very moment that they pick up the phone. If you sound nervous, or uninteresting, customers are not going to want to speak to you and you will get the objection “I’m busy” more and more. Remember, often the objection “I’m busy” is just a polite way of saying “I do not want to speak to you”, people who are genuinely busy rarely pick up their phone. You need to sound energetic and lively from the first second of the conversation.

Ask Motivator Question

A motivator question is a question that asks the customer what their primary reason for taking the call is. Are they looking to:

  • Save Money
  • Increase their extras benefits
  • Get better gap cover?
  • Increase their level of cover?

People’s motivators are different, don’t ever assume that people always just want to save money, for some people saving $20/$30 a month is insignificant compared to having the right level of cover.

The motivator question is a good way of steering the conversation, so the customer can think about what they would like to improve around their policy. Remember though, for a lot of people, the motivator answer will be the first thing that springs to their mind.

Motivator Example: “So John, just out of curiosity, what prompted you to want to compare today?”

Clarify Answer

Q) What should we do when customers tell us their motivation answers?

A) We want to repeat them back to the customer to acknowledge to them that we’ve understood and are listening to them, as it creates a much better customer experience

QA/Privacy Disclaimer

Remember you have 120 seconds to tell customers the QA disclaimer at the beginning of the call. The QA disclaimer should be brief and said confidently “I just need to let you know that this call is recorded for training and compliance”.

Ask Broad Open Question

You can almost guarantee that 99.9% of people who have health insurance will say lowering the cost for their motivator answer. Asking the BOQ will get the customer thinking about other aspects of their cover that they do not like.

Asking these questions is going to get customers to start really thinking about what they don’t like about their current health fund. It is the first step in them considering the possibility of switching. Think of it like planting a switching seed, which will grow throughout the call into a huge sales oak tree.

Example: “So John, besides lowering the cost, is there anything else you’d like to improve on your policy?”

Set The Scene Of Call

Remember, customers might have never compared before, and they certainly do not know what the Health Deal sales methodology is, so have to always be letting the customers know what is going to happen next. If we tell customers beforehand what is about to happen, they will be much more inclined to follow us.

Setting the scene of the call can be as simple as saying: “Ok, so what I can do now, is ask you a couple questions, we’ll see what you need…and what you don’t need, we’ll build a policy which best suites you from our panel & compare it to what you’re getting now.” This lets the customers know that you’ll be asking more questions of them for the purpose of helping them compare their cover.

 

Step 2: CRM

Ask Qualifying Questions in CRM

Once we have completed the introduction section of the sales methodology, we will naturally move onto the CRM section of the methodology. We will break down this section into 5 sections:

1. Customer Details
2. Customer Information
3. Partners Information
4. Family Information
5. Government Rebate

Customer Details

Customer details requires us to capture 3 pieces of information:

1. Medicare Card Status
2. Location
3. Policy Type

Medicare Card Status: Health Deal can only sell to customers who have a green or blue Medicare card in other words, we can only sell to Australian citizens or permanent resident. This is why we ask this question first, therefore if customers are not citizens are permeant residents, we should terminate the call in a polite way.

In terms of scripting, if someone has an Aussie accent we would say “Ok, so bit of a silly question, but I’ll just confirm that you are an Aussie citizen or permanent resident” if someone has a foreign accent we will instead say “Ok, can I just confirm that you are an Australian citizen or permanent resident”

Q) Why do you think we would preface our question with “bit of a silly question…” when speaking to someone with an Aussie accent & not with someone with a foreign accent?

A) We want customers to start trusting us from the very beginning of the call, and if ask this question with a straight face to some Aussies they are going to think we are stupid, the customer could be thinking “Of course I’m an Aussie citizen’. We want customers to think we are credible throughout the entire call, if customers think we’re dumb, then they are not going to trust us to switch their health insurance.

Location: Capturing the correct postcode and suburb is very important. Prices of health insurance vary state by state, meaning the price of one policy is completely different depending on which state you live in. Capturing the correct suburb is also important, as it allows you to see what dentists are located near the customer or what hospitals they might go to.

In terms of scripting for capturing the postcode and suburb, we will say to customers “Ok customer, I can see you’re in XXXX State, can I just grab your postcode please?” and when they give you the postcode, you then follow that up with “Ok, cool and that’s XXXX?” and read out a random suburb name, the customer will then correct you with the right suburb they live in.

Policy Type: The last thing we need to capture under customer details is “policy type”. This is simply so we can see if we are looking for a single, couple, family or single-parent policy. The scripting for this question is as simple as “OK, and in relation to the policy, is it just for you, you and your partner or the whole family?”, the customer will then give you the answer you require.

Customer Information

In this section of the CRM we have quite a lot of information to fill out, however, we will use Vicidial to our advantage and fill in most of the info ourselves without asking the customer. In this section, we must capture quite a few details which we will go through one by one now:

Title: Do not ask customers for their preferred title at this stage. Any man you speak to should automatically be listed as Mr and any woman who is looking to compare couples or family cover put as Mrs, any woman looking to compare single cover put as Miss.

The reason is that we want to limit the number of personal questions we ask customers. We do not need to know a customer’s title to perform a health insurance comparison, so asking needless questions like this has the potential to get customers back up and lose trust.

First Name: DO NOT ask customers to confirm their first name, simply copy and paste the name from Vicidial into the first name box in the CRM.

Last Name: Again, do not ask the customer’s last name as it is not relevant to comparing health insurance. If you see a last name in Vicidial then copy it into the last name box, if you do not see a last name in Vicidial, then simply leave this box blank.

Email: Do not ask customers to confirm their email at this stage. You should leave this box empty as you can capture this information later on in the call when the customer wants to receive a quote.

DOB: Capturing the customer’s date of birth is important, as a customer’s age will affect the government rebate tier that applies to them, and as a result will change the price they pay for their health insurance. Customers who do not have hospital insurance could also be affected by lifetime health cover loading, and as a result, we won’t be able to quote them an accurate price without the correct DOB.

Customers can be naturally weary of giving away their date of birth, and this is why we must ask the question in a way that allays their fears and gives them a reason for why we are asking this question. So we will always ask a customer’s date of birth by asking “Ok, so the price of health insurance is dependent on two things, that is your age and income, for those purposes can I please grab your date of birth?”. Asking the customer this way lets the customer know beforehand why you need their date of birth, as you’ve told them the date of birth affects the price of the cover. If you ask the question in this way, you should rarely get any kickback from customers about giving their DOB.

Gender: Use your common sense, DO NOT ask customers their gender, just select this yourself. Again, if you ask a middle-aged man called Steve to confirm this gender he is going to think you are thick, and you will lose a heap of credibility with him.

Does the customer currently have health insurance? This is pretty self-explanatory, click either YES or NO depending on whether the customer currently has health insurance at the moment or not.


Customer’s Health Fund: This is where you select the customer’s current health fund. If you can not see the customer’s current health fund in the drop-down menu, then ask your team leader. There are a handful of health funds in the market which do not appear in the drop-down menu such as “Apia, Suncorp & Raiz” simply ask your TL what do and they will inform you switch health fund you need to select. (Suncorp/Apia = nib & Raiz = Phoenix)

Have you had continuous hospital coverage for the past 10 years? This question is designed to capture if people have lifetime health cover loading or not. One of the biggest reasons why sales agents have customers who cool off is because they do not apply the correct amount of lifetime health cover loading. It is VITAL we ask the customer “continuous HOSPITAL coverage” and NOT “Continuous health insurance”. If the customer is not sure, then we must dig a little deeper to find out if they have LHC or not. We can do this by:
1. Getting the customer to give you their policy name, work out how much they should be paying via privatehealth.gov.au and see if it matches up with what they are paying. If the customer is paying more than what you have calculated, then you KNOW that the customer MUST HAVE LHC.
2. Get the customer to log into their online account and check their profile if they have LHC applied or not.

What is your Lifetime Health Cover Loading Percentage(%)?: If the customer has not had continuous hospital cover for 10 years or hasn’t had PHI since they turned 31, then loading will apply. Our CRM system allows you insert the correct amount of LHC which is applied to the customer so you can give them a correct price. Some things to note:

• If you leave this field blank, then the CRM will apply the maximum amount of loading for their age
• Individuals can not have odd numbers of LHC%. So if you are speaking to a couple who say they have a 15% loading, you need to put 10% + 20% or 0% + 30% to get to 15% LHC.
• Remember with couples & LHC, you always add together and divide by two to get the LHC %.

Partners Information

When filling out partners information, you want to do this at the same time you fill out the customers information. Some things to note:

1. After you’ve asked the DOB question to the customer, you would immediately ask them for their partners DOB after you have received theirs.
2. After you’ve confirmed the customers health fund you would ask “I take it that is for your partner too?”
3. Make sure you capture the partners LHC information correctly. They may have different circumstances to the customer.

Family Information

If you select family or single parent as the policy type, then you will be presented with a new field called “Family Information”, and the CRM will ask you either 2 or 3 questions depending on how old the eldest child is on the policy.

How many children will be covered by this policy?: This is straightforward, ask the customer how many children need to be covered on the plan. The maximum number of children allowed on our system is 10, however, if you are speaking to someone with 11+ children, we can still sell these policies.

What is the age of the eldest child to be covered by this policy?: This is a dropdown box that asks if the eldest child is below 21 or aged 21-25.
• If the child is 0-20, then there is NO difference in the price if the kid is in university or not university across all health funds.
• If the child is 21+ then adult dependant cover comes into play, whereby if the child is 21+ and not in university, the price of the health insurance will increase by 25% with nib
• If the child is 21+ and not in university then HIF will not come up as an option to sell
• If the child is 23 or 24 then you can not sell Australian Unity
• If the child is 21-30 AND is in full-time university, then you can sell any health fund.

Government Rebate

The overwhelming majority of customers you speak to will have the Australian Government Rebate applied to their monthly premium. Asking a customer’s income is similar to asking for their date of birth, as in, customers will often get defensive about it if we ask in the incorrect way. That is why we always ask the AGR question like this “OK, so in relation to your government rebate, that is dependant on your annual income, would you say at the moment it’s below $93,000?”. Notice how we pre-frame the question by letting the customer know we need this info so we can apply the correct rebate. Also, take note that WE DO NOT ask the customer “What is your annual income”, this is a very private question for a lot of people.

If the customer says they earn above $93,000, then we follow it up with “Is it between $93-$105K” and ask customers with brackets of income, instead of asking them to specifically name their income.

Find Customer Policy

We use PrivateHealth.gov.au to find customers’ policies. Finding policy names can be tricky if you don’t know what you’re doing. But here are a few tips that you need to be following:

• Ask the customer if they know their policy name (Most people don’t)
• As a general rule all other health funds will not display the name of the policy on their card – so don’t get a HCF or NIB customer to run around trying to find their card for the name, because it won’t be on there.
• You should ask the customer to:

  • Find the draw/filing cabinet in the house that has all their information.
  • Log into the member area of their Health Funds website to find it there.
  • Ask them if they have their Health Funds app on their phone and see if they can find it there.

Once you have the policy name, you can now go through the process of finding the policy on the website.

As we have learned in previous training modules, there 3 types of policies:

• Hospital Policies,
• Extras Policies, &
• Combined Policies

The general rule to find each type of policy is:

Hospital Policies: If the name of the policy is “______Hospital, _____Excess” it is generally a hospital policy.
Extras Policies: If the name is “_____Extras” it is usually an Extras Policy.

Combined Policies: If the policy has one catchy name, with no mention of the words “hospital” or “extras” in it, then it is usually a combined policy. Eg Advantage Plus, Black & White Deluxe, Family Plus, For Settled Families ect

Workout and Confirm Price of Policy

Once you have found a customer’s policy you ought to give them a brief rundown of their policy and use their motivator / broad open question answers to your benefit when describing their policy if applicable. For example, “I can see why you’re looking to improve your dental; it looks like you’re only getting $300 per year!” or “Wow, I understand why you’re looking to lower your monthly cost, this policy is costing you $500 per month!”

Working out Pricing:

1. Find Raw Monthly Price from SIS
2. Ask whether the customer pays monthly or fortnightly
3. Deduct the government rebate % from the raw monthly
4. If the customer pays fortnightly, you must deduct the rebate from the monthly amount, then multiply by 12 months in the year, then divide by 26 fortnights in the year…..(DO NOT DIVIDE THE MONTHLY AMOUNT IN TWO)

Once you have worked out a price, tell the customer and agree on the price before you move on to do your Needs Analysis.

You want to agree early on in the call on what the customer is paying so that when it comes time to present your policy, the customer will have context when you outline the price of the new policy. Never fully trust the customer if they tell you a price, often they are wrong. So make sure you work out the correct price every time!!!

Step 3: Needs Analysis

Set Scene of Hospital Needs Analysis

As sales agents need to always be letting the customer know what is about to happen next on the call. Remember, the customers we are speaking to might have never run a health insurance comparison over the phone before and if we just start asking them what they want covered on the plan, they could get confused.

This is why it is important for us to frame the needs analysis. We can do this by simply saying:

“Ok, so now I’m going to ask you some questions about your Hospital and your Extras to see what you need and what you don’t need, to make sure you’re covered for the things you need, and not paying for things you don’t, OK?”

Starting with Hospital cover, I’m just going to read you out a list of about 10 or so services, and I’ll ask you to give me a yes or a no, on if you would like them to be covered as a private patient or not.”

Doing this not only tells the customer why you are about to ask some questions but also informs them how to respond to your questions.

 

 

Conduct Thorough Hospital Needs Analysis

Some things to look out for in hospital needs analysis: 

  1.  If the customer is on silver plus / gold, and they say yes to anything in silver plus (like joint replacements), don’t go through the rest of the questions as we know the customer will require a silver plus level of cover and everything below will be covered anyway. 
  2. If the customer wants to remove services from their plan, then have a two-way conversation around it. For example, if a 60+ year old is on Silver Plus/Gold and says NO to joint replacements and cataracts, don’t just agree and move on. Spend some time with the customer to get to know if this is truly what they want. Explain that they are covered for these services at the moment, and if they remove them, they will have to serve a 12-month wait period to add it back on if it’s pre-existing. You can say something similar to “OK, I know you want to remove joint replacements from the plan, but I need to let you know that you’re currently covered for Joint Replacements, and if you remove it now, and add it back on later, you’ll need to wait 12 months to gain access to it again if it’s pre-existing. Because we have 6 health funds on our panel, 9 times out of 10, I’m able to save customers money without having to remove things like joint replacements from the plan. Are you sure you want me to remove it, or would you prefer to keep it, and still see if I can save you money?
  3.  Customers who are brand new to health insurance and you know will have large lifetime health cover loading, you need to make the customer aware of the price differences between bronze, 
Recap Answers

It is important that you recap the customer’s hospital needs analysis answers. Doing this lets the customer know that you have heard their needs and gives the customer assurances that you will be looking for a policy that will be relevant to them.

It might sound something similar to: “OK John, just to recap I’ll be looking for a Silver Plus level of hospital cover for you, something that is going to get you covered in a private hospital for things like joint replacements, cataracts, cancer treatment and more, I’m just not going to be concerned about including things you said no to, like pregnancy, weight loss surgery and in-hospital psych, sound good?”

Set Scene of Extras Needs Analysis

After we have finished the hospital needs analysis, we will naturally move over to the extras needs analysis, but again, we must always set the scene of what is going to happen next. So we will let the customer know what is about to happen, by saying “Ok, so moving across to your extras, I’ll need to see what you’re using & not using, but to begin with, what extras do you actually claim on, on a yearly basis?”

Ask Motivator Question

After we have finished the hospital needs analysis, we will naturally move over to the extras needs analysis, but again, like we have learned in previous sections of training, we must always set the scene of what is going to happen next. So we will let the customer know what is about to happen, by saying “Ok, so moving across to your extras, I’ll need to see what you’re using & not using, but to begin with, what extras do you actually claim on, on a yearly basis?”

The question of “what extras do you actually claim on, on a yearly basis?” is our motivator question. The Health Deal extras needs analysis questions are quite long, in fact there is 18 different extras options which we can ask about. Asking this question serves two main purposes.

Purpose One (Money)

The VERY BEST answer a customer can give us on the motivator question is “dental, optical and occasionally a little bit of physio” or “not much”. The reason being, is that if customers only want dental, optical and physio, then a whole range of our extras immediately become competitive.

Often if a customer is on hospital & extras, and they want to stay on the same level of hospital cover, we will find most of our premium savings by cutting off a lot of services on the extras that the customer does not use. For example, if a customer is on a mid or high level of extras, but they only dental & optical, they are paying for dozens of services which they don’t use like chiropractors, podiatry and much more. Often, we can cut off a lot of these unused extras from their plan and improve on the services they do use like dental and optical.

So getting the customer to say they only actually claim on a few services highlights to themselves that they are over covered on extras.

Purpose Two (Finding Customer Value)

The second reason why we ask the motivator question before conducting the extras needs analysis, is that it gives the customer the opportunity to tell us as salespeople what is important to them. Health Deal has dozens and dozens of different extras policies to sell, all with different yearly limits and rebates on different extras. Asking this question, gives the customer the opportunity to tell you what is really important to them.

If you ask the question “what extras do you actually claim on, on a yearly basis?” the customer will always start talking about what is most important to them first. This gives us valuable information, as we can now start to build a profile of what the customer needs. If for example the customer starts talking straight away about chiro, then we know that chiro is very important to the customer and we can start to think about how we can improve their chiro benefits on their current plan.

Note: You always want to have sticky note on your pc ready to write down the customers motivator answers, so that you don’t forget to highlight it during the extras presentation.

Conduct Thorough Extras Needs Analysis

The overwhelming majority of customers who decide to switch health funds DO NOT decide to switch based on cost alone, nor do they switch based on extras benefits alone. Customers decide to switch based on perceived value. What “value” is will be different from customer to customer, but as a general rule, you should regard value as: Policy Premium PLUS Extras Benefits.

This means that customers will generally NOT switch health funds, if we only save them money, and they often wont switch if we increase their extras benefits & their premiums massively. As a general rule, we always want to be lowering customers premium, as well as improving their extras benefits….on the services they actually use. For example, it’s no good improving a customer’s physio benefits if they never use the physio.

It’s our job as sales agents to discover the value for customers when selecting policies, but we will not be able to know where to look, if we do not conduct a correct extras needs analysis. The more information you can gather during the extras needs analysis, the easier it will be for you to not only find a suitable policy for the customer, but to also sell them the policy well enough that they will want to sign up.

Here is the breakdown of questions you need to be asking

  • General Dental
    • How often do you go for your check up and clean?
    • What dental practice do you go to?
    • Are they a proffered provider? Is it free when you get your check-up?
    • Are you getting back around $XXX at the moment from (Health Fund) – Work out using customers policy
    • Would you be open to switching dentists?
  • Major Dental
    • Do you have any major dental work coming up, like crowns, bridge, root canals?
  • Orthodontics
    • Do you need coverage for braces at all?
  • Optical
    • How many people are wearing glasses at the moment?
    • (if yes) – Do you guys go to Specsavers or OPSM?
  • Physio
    • How often do you go to the physio in a busy year?
    • How much does the consultation usually cost?
  • Chiro/Osteo
    • How often do you go to the chiro in a busy year?
    • How much does the consultation usually cost?
  • Natural Therapies
    • Do you regularly use any natural therapies like remedial massage or acupuncture?
    • How often would you go in a busy year?
    • How much does it usually cost?
  • Podiatry
    • How often would you see a podiatrist in a bust year?
    • How much does that usually cost?
    • Do you claim that on your health insurance or do you get a letter from your GP to write a care plan for you? (They can get 5 visits a year)
  • Orthotics
    • Do you need coverage for orthotics?
    • How often would you usually replace your orthotics?
  • Speech/Eye/Occupational Therapy
    • Do you need coverage for any speech, eye or occupational therapy?
    • How often would you go in a bust year?
    • How much doe sit usually cost?
  • Medical Appliances
    • Do you need coverage for any medical appliances, like CPAP machines or blood glucose monitors?
    • How often do you usually replace them? How much does it usually cost?
  • Hearing Aids
    • Do you want coverage for hearing aids on the plan?
    • How often do you need to replace your hearing aids? (If they current use them)
    • If they want to remove hearing aids, have a two conversation around it, are they happy to wait 1-3 years to add it back on the plan?
  • Psychology
    • Does anyone require psychology on the plan?
    • How often would you per year?
    • Do you claim all of these on health insurance, or do you get 10 visits through Medicare per year as well?
  • Non PBS Pharmaceuticals
    • Do you have any scripts which cost more than $41 per script?
    • How much do they cost per script?
    • How often do you need to replace them?
  • Lifestyle Products
    • Do you need any lifestyle products like quit smoking or weight management?
  • Dietetics
    • Do want dietitians covered on the plan?

Throughout the extras needs analysis, you need to write down the customer’s number of visits, the cost of those visits, and sometimes even their current rebate. So your notepad might look something like this:

  • Dental X2 – $80 @ Smiles Dental – Doesn’t want to change
  • Major – Has 2 crowns coming up
  • Optical X 1 (Specsavers 2 for 200)
  • Physio X 6 ($90 a visit) – $30 back – Melbourne Physio Clinic
  • Chiro X 3 ($60 a visit) – $20 back
Recap Answers & Positive Pre-Hold Statement

Once we have completed the hospital and extras needs analysis, we reach the stage where we need to place customers on hold so that we can choose a policy for them. Like always though, we need to make sure we are making the customer aware of what is about to happen next (we always want to set the scene).

Once we have finished with the extras needs analysis, we should always do a 3-second recap of their answers, so that the customer feels re-assured that you have listened to them and then give them a positive pre-hold statement, so they are more willing to stay on hold whilst we look for a policy.

So for example, if the customer gave the below for their extras needs analysis:

  • Dental X2 – $80
  • Major – Has 2 crowns coming up
  • Optical X 1
  • Physio X 6 ($90 a visit) – $30 back
  • Chiro X 3 ($60 a visit) – $20 back

We would say something like:

“Alright, thank you for that information, just to recap you want to be covered for dental, optical, physio and chiro. Now I know you go to Smiles Dental and you don’t want to switch dentists, so I’ll look for a health fund that improves your checkup and clean rebate, I’ll also be looking to improve your rebates on chiro and physio too because I know that’s important to you, I’m just going to pop you on hold now, so please give me about 90 seconds so I can properly asses the health funds on our panel and I’ll get back to you as quickly as possible ok, and remember if I do find something better, you will never have to re-serve your wait periods if you decide to switch”

The previous statement does a few things that will help you in your calls:

  1. It lets the customer know what is about to happen next (they need to hold)
  2. It lets the customer know you have heard their concerns about their extras requirements
  3. It makes the customer excited to hear what you come back with (saving money & improving benefits)
  4. It plants the seed of switching in their mind whilst they are on hold.

Step 4: Hospital Presentation

Post Hold Snapshot & Applause

Every single presentation you ever make as a Health Deal agent, (no matter if its hospital only, extras only or combined), will always start with a “Post-hold snapshot & ask for applause”.

If we put ourselves in the mind of the customer, they may have been on hold for 2 or 3 minutes at this stage, and they may be wondering if it’s still worth waiting on you to present a policy. The positive post hold statement is designed to re-engage the customer again and get them excited to hear what you have to say.

The secret to a good post hold statement though is to be short, quick, and vague. We do not want to feature dump on our post-hold statement & tell the customer too much information. If we tell the customer too much information at the beginning, they have less incentive to want to listen to your entire presentation. Keeping things short & vague will make the customer want to hear more of what you have to say.

Scripting

Hi <Name>, thanks for holding, right, I believe I’ve found you a brilliant solution for you here, this policy will do a few things for you, it will:

  • Improve your………(Dental)……………………………………..
  • Improve your………(Physio)…………………………………

And on top of that it will SAVE YOU A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF MONEY OVER THE COURSE OF THE YEAR, now as a quick snapshot, how does that sound so far?

You will notice that we are very vague on post hold snapshots, and we specifically DO NOT:

  • Tell the customer how much they are saving
  • Tell the customer the price of the cover
  • Tell customer about extras rebates
  • Tell customers about extras yearly limits

Again, the post hold needs to be short & sweet. You will have plenty of opportunity to “sell” later on in the call.

 

Asking for Applause

Asking for applause is a really important part of the snapshot. What do we mean when we say “asking for applause”? Basically, it’s the last part of the post-hold statement that says “Now, as a quick snapshot, how is that sounding so far?”.

We want the customer to say “Yes this sounds good” throughout the entire call. The more the customer agrees with you and physically says YES this is a good deal throughout the call, the more logical decision it will seem to say yes when you ask them to switch. We call this “Collecting Yeses”, and we want to be doing it throughout the entire call.

Introduce Health Fund

The reason we always introduce the health fund before “selling” the policy is that we need to build trust in the brand, to reassure the customer that the health fund we are selling is credible. Giving a good introduction to the fund should put the customer’s mind at ease and make them more receptive to switching.

Most customers you will speak to will probably only be able to name about 3 or 4 health funds. Remember, everyone has heard of Bupa, Medibank and nib but after that people tend to struggle to name many more. So if you are selling HIF, AU or even nib sometimes, there is a good chance that the customer has never heard of the health fund.  For this reason, we need to give a few strong statements about the health fund we are selling to instil trust in the customer.

Policy Name

This should be pretty self-explanatory, but after we have introduced the health fund, we will just let the customer know what policy they are selling as well as set the scene for how the presentation is going to play out.

This will sound something like “Now, the policy I recommend you switch to is called XXXXXXXX and XXXXXXX. What I will do is start off by explaining the hospital cover, and then move across to your extras, but if do you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to shout them out, ok?”

This statement lets the customer know what policy you intend to sell them, but more importantly lets the customer know how you intend to explain the plan. If you are selling hospital and extras, a lot of customers will be more interested in hearing about the extras, so giving them this heads up that you will be explaining extras after hospital will put their mind at ease and make them more likely to you give you their full attention.

Exclusions & Restrictions

You will notice that every exclusions and restrictions statement has “You are covered as a Private Patient in participating private hospitals for ALL PROCEDURES with a Medicare Item Number up to 100% of the Medicare Schedule Fee, except for the following exclusions:” in the text, let’s break this statement down.

Private Patient in Participating Private Hospitals: You must say participating private hospitals. Each health fund has agreements with a variety of hospitals across the country, and no health fund has agreements with 100% of hospitals. We must let the customer know its “participating” private hospitals, so they are aware of this fact. 

Up to 100% of the Medicare Schedule Fee: Earlier in training we learned that health funds by law only need to cover 25% of the Medicare schedule fee and Medicare will always pay 75%. Gaps occur when doctors charge above and beyond the scheduled fee and we as sales agents will never be able to know if a customer will have an out-of-pocket or not. This is why we have to say “ Up to 100% of the Medicare Schedule Fee” rather than just you will be covered.

“ALL PROCEDURES with a Medicare Item Number up to 100% of the Medicare Schedule Fee, except for the following exclusions:” With 36 different clinical categories and literally thousands of different procedures available to have, it would take too long to read out all of the inclusions, so instead we say as a general rule everything is covered, except for the exclusions and restrictions.

Imagery & collecting yesses

Firstly, before reading out the exclusions and restrictions, we always want to say to the customer “So please stop me, if you need cover for any of these things” and then preface each exclusion with a “No”. If you say this slowly and deliberately, customers are much more likely to understand you and hear clearly what you are saying to them. If the customer is not 100% sure about what is and IS NOT covered on the hospital plan, then the customer will always want you to send a quotation to them, so they can read over it. 80% of your sales should be made on the first call, and using techniques like this will limit the amount of people who need to see everything in writing before making a decision.

Once you have explained the exclusions of the policy, you then need to summarize the inclusions for the customer using lots of imagery. Remember, we have just spent 20 seconds or so reading out lots of EXCLUSIONS to the customer, so they might be asking themselves “What am I actually covered for then?!”. We will recap the inclusions with the following statement:

“What this means for you for (Name of the customer), is that for EVERYTHING ELSE WITH A MEDICARE ITEM NUMBER, such as XXXXX, XXXXXX surgery, god forbid XXXXXXX, you will be covered, private patient, private hospital, shared room, ok? So, do you feel comfortable with that level of hospital cover?”

Always remember to ask the question “So, do you feel comfortable with that level of hospital cover?” after you have summarized the inclusions. This will be the 2nd YES, we get from the customer after the post hold statement.

Wait Periods & Portability

How we explain wait periods, will vary slightly depending on the type of customer who we are speaking to. But they can be broken down into 4 different types of customers:

  • New to health cover
  • Switching same level
  • Downgrading hospital cover
  • Upgrading hospital cover

We will look at each customer profile and explain the subtle differences between them.

New to Health Cover

Explaining wait periods to people who are new to health cover is super easy & pretty straight forward. All we need to say is: “In relation to your wait periods, it’s just 2 months for a new condition and 12 months for anything that is pre-existing ok?”

Switching Same Level Cover

With customers who are switching health insurance (which will be the majority of your sales), you must convince them that they will not re-serve any waiting period that they have already served, even if it’s pre-existing. We will always give a real-life example to customers to reinforce this notion, as re-serving the hospital wait periods is one of the biggest fears customers have about switching health funds. For this reason, this is the script we will say to customers who are switching health funds:

 “Now, in relation to your waiting periods, please bear in mind when you switch from <Previous Health Fund> to NIB you will never have to  re-serve your waiting periods for anything you are currently covered for on your current hospital policy, even it’s a pre-existing condition.

That’s called Portability, and all funds have to abide by federal law – this is part of the Private Health Insurance Act of 2007.  So for example, let’s say you switch to nib today, and then 3 weeks later your Doctor tells you that you need to have a Knee Reconstruction urgently, it won’t be an issue, because you’ve already served your wait periods with <Previous Health Fund>, ok?”

We can alter this script depending on the customers level of hospital cover, so for example if the customer is on gold and we are switching them to a silver plus, we might use the example of joint replacements instead of joint reconstructions. If we are selling a couple or family policy, you could even use their partner instead in the example, to give them maximum reassurance.

Downgrading Hospital Cover

As a general rule, we do not want to downgrade people’s hospital cover, except for when we are switching old people from gold to silver plus. However, there will be times when you speak to people who cannot afford to keep health insurance, and they want to lower their cover so they can keep the cost affordable. In these rare scenarios, we must always tell the customer the implications of downgrading their hospital cover. This means you need to make them aware that if they cut services off their plan, they will have to re-serve the wait period on the services they chop off if they were ever to upgrade again.

Upgrading Hospital Cover

When we upgrade customers’ hospital cover, we still need to tell them that they will not re-serve any wait periods for anything they are currently covered for. However, we need to let them know they will just serve wait periods on the things they are currently not covered for, which will just be 2 months for new conditions and 12 months anything pre-existing.

 

Excess

Explaining excess is super simple, you just need to be aware of the excess level you are selling, then read out the script in the cheat sheets.

The way we explain excess will change slightly depending on if we are selling to a single or a couple/family.

Single Policy Excess

Now in relation to your excess, this plan comes with a $XXXX excess, which you only pay once per year and only if you go to hospital. So let’s say you have the worst year of your life and get admitted into the hospital 5 times in the one year, you’ll only pay the excess once.

Couple & Family Excess

This is pretty much identical, with just one slight difference:

 Now in relation to your excess, this plan comes with a $XXXX excess, which you only pay once per person, per year and only if you go to hospital. So let’s say you have the worst year of your life and get admitted into the hospital 5 times in the one year, you’ll only pay the excess once.

Lowering Excess

If a customer is lowering their excess, for example going from $500 to $250, then we must tell the customer that the new excess will kick in after 12 months for anything pre-existing. This would sound something like this:

Now in relation to your excess, this plan comes with a $XXXX excess, which you only pay once per person, per year and only if you go to hospital. So let’s say you have the worst year of your life and get admitted into the hospital 5 times in the one year, you’ll only pay the excess once. Just be aware though, because you are lowering your excess, your new excess will kick in after 12 months for anything pre-existing.

 

Ambulance

It is super important that you explain ambulance correctly on the call. Ambulance coverage differs from policy to policy, and will also change depending on the state. For example, Tasmania & Queensland give their residents free ambulance. For these reasons, you need to read the ambulance box of the official scripting on each policy.

Note: Even if the customer lives in Tasmania or Queensland, you still need to tell the customer that their ambulance is covered by the state.

Check In & Transition

Before we move across to explain the extras, we must always check in with the customer and collect our 3rd YES.  So after we have explained the ambulance we will always say to the customer “Ok, now before I move across to your extras, would you like me to re-explain anything around the hospital, or are you quite happy with that?”

WE DO NOT SAY:

  • Does that make sense?
  • Is that straightforward?
  • Any questions so far?

The reason we say “or are you quite happy with that?”, is that it gives you a much more positive response from the customer, despite finding out the same information as if you had just asked them “Does that make sense?”. Both questions are essentially finding out if the customer is following along ok, but asking “Are you quite happy with that” adds an extra layer of positivity to the question.

By this stage, we will have collected our 3rd YES from the customer and will be well on our way to softening them up to close the sale!

Step 5: Extras Presentation

Positive Snapshot Statement

When we begin our extras presentation, we will always start with a positive snapshot statement. We will do this regardless of whether we are selling extras only or hospital and extras. A positive snapshot is just a brief statement designed to get the customer excited to hear what you have to say.

You will find all the positive snapshot statements within the cheat sheets. The positive statement or core extras for example is:

“Ok, so moving across to your extras I think you’ll be quite happy with these because these extras give you a massive 60% back on all of your extras claims! What this means for you, is that every time you swipe your green nib card at the dentist or physio, 60% will be coming off that bill, every time, up to your annual limit.”

Compare Extras In Depth Using Comparison Wheel Technique

When selling extras we will always use the “Comparison Wheel” method. The comparison wheel is a 3 step method we use to effectively sell extras:

  1. Tell the customer what to think
  2. Explain the rebate & yearly differences using imagery
  3. Ask for applause afterwards

Tell Customer What To Think

When we are explaining an extra benefit to a customer we will always tell them what to think before you tell them the features & benefits. A few examples of this would be:

  • “Ok, moving across to your physio, I think you’re going to love this, because……”
  • “Your wife is going to love the physio on this plan because….”
  • “You’ll be super happy with your new dental, because…”
  • “For me, the podiatry is a huge win because…”

You will see that all of these statements are designed to tell the customer that they should have positive thoughts about what you’re about to tell them.

Explain Rebate & Yearly Differences Using Imagery, Positive Language & Math

One of the biggest traps agents fall into when explaining extras is they just ‘feature dump”, meaning they say “You have $200 for optical with Bupa, and nib will give you $250, you have $300 for physio at the moment, and nib will give you $350, you get $300 for chiro at the moment and nib will give you $350”. Just reading out the differences to the customer is not going to get them excited to switch.

To excel at health insurance sales, you need to get the customer emotionally invested in wanting to switch. You want them to envisage not only using their health insurance in the future but also being excited to use their health insurance in the future. There are a number of ways we can do this, but it mainly comes down to three things:

  1. Using language with lots of imagery
  2. Using lots of positive language
  3. Using small amounts of math

Use of Imagery

When we say “use lots of imagery”, what we mean is talking in a way that makes the customer think of a scenario or imagine an action or feeling. Examples of using imagery would be:

  • The next time you’re at the physio and paying your bill, what you’ll do is take your green nib card out of your wallet, swipe it on the HICAPS machine and a massive 60% will be coming off that bill….you said your physio charges about $90, so that means $54 will be coming off your bill and there will be $10 less leaving your bank account every time you go to the physio as Bupa only give you $44 at the moment. Over your 10 visits a year, that’s $100 less leaving your back pocket!

As you can see this example is laden with imagery, we’re talking about bank accounts, back pockets, swiping green cards etc. Speaking in a way similar to this will really make the customer understand how to use and benefit from their extras plan.

Positive Language

We always want to use positive language when selling extras. If we do not sound excited or enthused about the new extras policy, then why should the customer? Positive language is basically just another word for saying use lots of adjectives or superlative adjectives (describing words). So we wouldn’t say “You get $1000 major dental limit” Instead we would say “You get a MASSIVE $1000 major dental limit”. Examples of positive language to use on the extras comparison would be:

  • Huge
  • Massive
  • Awesome
  • Amazing

Use of Math

We want to use math during our extra presentations, but only sparingly. Overuse of math will lead us into feature dumping, but math combined with imagery & positive language will often lead to a very persuasive reason to switch. When we talk about the “use of math”, we mean the simple differences between the rebates and explaining it to the customer. Let’s say you are offering a policy with a $31 rebate on chiro and the customer currently gets a $23 rebate on chiro, and the customer says they go 5 or 6 times a year.

We should not expect the customer to automatically know that they are going to be $8 better off a visit and $40-$48 better off a year. If we put ourselves in the mind of a customer, we are probably not looking at two computer screens with each policy on there side by side, we probably won’t have a calculator in front of us or a pen and paper and instead we’ll probably be trying hard to concentrate on listening to what the sales agent is trying to tell us. For this reason, do not expect the

customer to automatically understand the dollar difference in rebates and to be able to work out for themselves the yearly benefit, this falls on you to do this for the customer.

You can see how we do this in the example we learned previously about the physio visit differences between nib and Bupa:

The next time you’re at the physio and paying your bill, what you’ll do is take your green nib card out of your wallet, swipe it on the HICAPS machine and a massive 60% will be coming off that bill….you said your physio charges about $90, so that means $54 will be coming off your bill and there will be $10 less leaving your bank account every time you go to the physio as Bupa only give you $44 at the moment. Over your 10 visits a year, that’s a $100 less leaving your back pocket!

In this example we do all the math for the customer, so they do not have to sit there and work it out for themselves.

Ask for Applause Afterwards

The final part of the comparison wheel is to make sure you always ask for applause after big wins on the policy. Asking for applause is just another word for testing the waters or fishing for buying signals. Essentially, we want confirmation from the customer that they are happy or pleased with what we have just told them. The theory is if we can get the customer to say “yes, that sounds good” multiple times throughout the call, then they should be more likely to switch when we attempt to close them.

The way we ask for applause should be subtle in the extras presentation. Let’s say for example, you are giving someone $300 more physio limit and $30 more on their rebate and you ask them with a genuine tone of curiosity in your voice “So, do you think that physio is going to be better for you?” you will sound stupid, because OFF COURSE that is much better. Instead, we will tell them it is better and prompt them for a YES, for example, “So, I’m sure you’ll agree, that’s much better, yeah?” or “So that’s a huge win for you on physio, yeah?”

You only need to do this a handful of times on the extras presentation and only on the services that are big wins for the customer. So you wouldn’t do this method on services the customer does not use or is not interested in.

 

Wait Periods & Portability of Claims

The only time customers will serve a wait period on extras is when they are gaining access to higher limits, for example if a customer switches from $600 major dental to $1000 major dental, they will gain access to $600 from day 1, and they will have to serve a wait period for the extra $400.

Note though, customers will have to serve wait periods on the services they are not already covered for, and any claims they have made in the year will follow them across. So for example, let’s say a customer has used $200 worth of physio in the year, and they switch, that $200 will be deducted from their new fund’s physio limit.

Scripting

As we can see in the cheat sheets, the scripting for explaining this is relatively straightforward.

“Wait periods on extras, work the same way as hospital, so nib won’t make you re-serve any wait periods for anything you’re already covered, just bear in mind they’ll take into account anything you’ve claimed in the policy year, so for example: If you used $100 of your Physio during your current policy year, that $100 will come off your Physio limit on the new policy as well for the new policy year.

The only thing you’ll need to serve a wait period on is for services you weren’t already covered for or when you’re gaining access to higher limits.”

If the customer is new to health insurance, then you must explain what services have 12-month wait periods and explain the rest have 2 months, you can not give the impression that there will be no wait periods for the customer if they will have to serve them.

Step 6: Summary

Summarise 3 or 4 Benefits of Policy (Relating to Motivator Answers)

The summary is one of the most important aspects of the Health Deal sales methodology, however it also the EASIEST section of the methodology to forget to do. One of the biggest mistakes that sales agents make on the job, is that they go from extras presentation straight to close and this often ends with the customer asking to receive a quote, instead of agreeing to sign up to a new health fund.

Why is the summary so important?

Let’s put ourselves in the mind of the customer for a second. By this stage of the call, we might have been speaking to the sales agent for a good 40 minutes or so, we have gone through a needs analysis, waited on hold, had the hospital and extras explained in detail….and it could all seem quite overwhelming to some customers. Customers who are not 100% sure what they are signing up to, will always want to read over a quote before making a decision.

The summary is designed to prevent this. The summary should short and sweet and perfectly sum up the benefits of the plan before you go to close the sale. By summing up the highlights of the plan before you close, you are reminding the customer of all the good aspects of the plan and preparing them to say YES to a switch.

Explain

The Health Deal methodology for Summary has two parts:

  1. Summarize at least 3 benefits of the plan
  2. Check-in before the price reveal

Summarize Three Benefits

Once we have finished explaining wait periods & portability on the extras presentation, we will immediately go on to summarize or recap the policy for the customer. Ideally when summarizing we want to include the benefits that were relevant to the individual customer, so for example if chiro was a big thing for the customer and we are able to improve their chiro, we would mention this in the summary. However, for your first few weeks on the phone, it is perfectly fine to use the scripting that is in the cheat sheets.

Check In Before Price

Check-In Before Price

Once we have summarized three benefits of the plan for the customer we will always check in with the customer and ask them “Now before I get to the price, is there anything around the policy you would like me to re-explain, or are you quite happy with that?”. This is a crucial part of the call and is one of the most important sentences you need to deliver during the presentation.

Essentially what this question does is ask the customer, “Aside from the price of the health insurance, DO YOU LIKE THIS POLICY?”. Now, if the customer agrees that they are happy with the policy, and 10 seconds later you tell them that the policy you have just explained is cheaper than their current policy, it becomes a no brainer for them to switch. But you need to get the customer actively involved in this process, by making them verbalise that they like the policy you have presented.

Scripting Example

The summary will change depending on a number of different factors, but you can use the pre-written summaries in the cheat sheets to your advantage.

“So just to recap, if you switch to nib:

  • you’ll be moving across to one of Australia’s largest health funds,
  • you’ll be covered for thousands of procedures such as ……, …….. and …….
  • you’ll be covered for emergency ambulance nationwide
  • AND nib will give you back 60 cents of every dollar you spend on extras,

Now before I get to the price, is there anything about the policy you’d like me to re-explain, or are you quite happy with that?”

Explain Price & Yearly Savings

Step 7: Close

Explain Price & Yearly Savings

Whilst you have customers on hold you always need to work out the fortnightly/monthly savings, and then the yearly savings as you will use these sums during your close.

After the customer has said that they are happy with the plan in the summary you will tell the customer:

“Great, well if you like the policy, I’m sure you’re going to love the price, because….

At the moment, you are paying <$$$$$$> a Month/Fortnight with <Current Health Fund>, when you switch across to NIB, that is going to fall all the way down to <$$$$$$$$> a Month/Fortnight, which means there is <$$$$$> less leaving your bank account every single month/fortnight, or <$$$$$$> per year!”

Because this is a crucial part of the call, where you need to be sounding your most confident, you do not want to be doing these sums whilst you are talking, so always make sure you have these figures written down and ready use during your close.

 

Ask The Closing Question

Once you have told the customer the yearly savings, in the same breath you always need to ask the closing question which is “Now, do you believe that this is going to be a better solution moving forward?” and then remain silent until the customer gives you a response.

At this stage of the call, we have given a summary to the customer, and have got them to tell us that they are happy with the plan, we have then just told them the new plan is actually going to be cheaper than their existing plan and told them how much they will be saving a year. Following this up with the closing question should elicit a positive response from the customer more often than not.

The key to closing though, is to stick to the script, speak confidently and not to overtalk during this section of the call. Too many agents decide to try and “re-sell” the policy at this stage, and all this will do is put doubt in the customer’s mind. We’ve purposely been funnelling the customer into saying YES at this crucial point throughout the entire call (post-hold snapshot, hospital exclusions, extras presentation & summary). So make sure you stay silent after you have asked this until the customer speaks.

Explain Switch Over Process

Once the customer has given you a YES, you then need to jump right in with telling the customer the switching process. DO NOT wait for the customer to say “YES, please sign me up” as this will only happen once or twice a week. If you wait too long before jumping in, the more likely scenario is that the customer will say “YES…….but I just need to see it in writing” or some other excuse. The reason is, the customer at this stage may still have some concerns about switching, and if they are unsure about anything, they will always ask to see a quote.

So, once the customer has said YES, we will immediately take back control of the call and let them know the switchover process and allay their fears about:

  • The switching process
  • Refunds or double payments
  • Re-Serving Wait periods

This is all scripted in the cheat sheets:

“Brilliant, well if you like the policy, then don’t be daunted by the switch, because switching is actually super easy.

We will handle all the back of house stuff for you, so you don’t have to lift a finger. We will make sure nib contacts <previous health fund> for you, which will generate your transfer certificate. We’ll also make sure you get a refund from <Previous health fund> as well, for any money you have already pre-paid to them for the month when you switch.

I just need to grab a few details from you to get the ball rolling, like your previous health fund member number, Medicare card number and payment details, but to start off with, can I just confirm your email again?”

Explain

If the customer gives you their email address at this stage without hesitation or requesting a call back, you then just simply continue asking the customer to confirm their information. This is an assumptive close, which might seem a little awkward to do in your first few days, but you need to get comfortable with it quickly.

Customer Call Back Methodology

If the customer wants to receive a quote or speak to their partner, then we need to make sure we take control of the situation and not let the customer dictate the terms of the callback. One of the mistakes agents make is giving the customer too much power over the callback. So you need to make sure you follow the following structure for setting callbacks.

IF NO (Setting a Call Back):

1) Normalise the objection (Make the objection seem normal, “off course, I would get killed by my partner if I switched cover without asking him/her first too”)

2) Provide the customer with 3 specific BENEFITS to take away (Get them to write a few things down)

  • Look in your Junk or Spam Folder
  • $$$ on Dental
  • 60% back on extras
  • What else you think is a benefit

3) Set the scene for the call back “I’ll call back tomorrow and answer any questions you might have …”

4) Arrange for within 24-48 hours’ time (People DO NOT need 3 or 4 days to look at an email)

5) Give the customer a verbal hug (It’s been a pleasure speaking to you today <Name>, I look forward to chatting tomorrow afternoon)

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