Top advisers share their secrets to successful protection sales

Selling protection isn’t a one-off transactional conversation. Top-performing protection advisers know that selling protection isn’t about ‘selling’ at all; it’s about achieving buy-in from their client. That’s the key to protection longevity. So, how do they do it? 

There are five key traits that top-selling protection advisers use in their process. These traits are revealed in our guide, The Secrets of Protection Success, which notes the practices and approaches you can start adopting into your own protection business today. 

Why solid protection advice matters 

The advice gap and the protection gap are two major challenges facing the industry. The protection gap has recently been acknowledged in the Financial Conduct Authority’s interim market study into the pure protection market. It describes the large and growing proportion of the UK population who aren’t covered by pure protection – that means no life insurance, critical illness cover or income protection. Access to advice, lack of awareness or confusion about the advice process itself are all contributing factors, leaving around 58% of the UK unprotected against death, illness or loss of income.  

Ensuring your advice process is solid can help guarantee that every client you deal with buys into the importance of protection and comes away with cover that they both understand and value.  

The winning formula 

We interviewed wealth advisers, mortgage and protection advisers, and protection specialists with a range of industry experience about four key areas: 

• How and when they introduce protection in their client conversations. 
• What importance they give to protection products in the broader conversation. 
• Common client barriers and objections, and how they overcome them. 
• How they define a successful protection adviser. 

The winning formula for protection success consists of five key areas: 

1. Passion and stories 

A genuine passion for protection is how top advisers consistently get clients covered. “To be a good protection adviser, you have to believe in it,” one adviser told us. 

Successful advisers inhabit a fiercely positive attitude towards protection, which reassures their clients that they’re not just promoting a ‘nice to have’ product. That passion often comes from experience, especially the retelling of client case studies where protection has visibly changed lives. It creates genuine advocacy and an enthusiasm that’s passed onto clients.  

Early-career advisers who may not be able to draw on real claims stories yet can use those of their mentors or colleagues, fictitious examples, and by listening closely to their clients’ life stories to illustrate the needs and benefits. 

2. Assertive conversations 

Protection is a non-negotiable talking point for the advisers we interviewed. They don’t fear client objection and instead tackle protection head-on, making sure their clients are always fully informed about the impact of having (or not having) protection. This shows up as top advisers building resilience around their own advice process. They believe in the need so greatly, so view the difficult conversations as always worth having. 

3. Cycle of confidence 

When you’re confident in the value of protection, your clients will have confidence in you. Fear of failure, gaps in knowledge and a lack of conviction can hold advisers back or mean they start paying lip-service to what protection offers. That can create a dynamic of pushing a sale rather than offering something of value, which can degrade trust.  

Instead, top advisers told us they ‘seed’ the idea of protection early on so it’s there in the background, ready to bring up again when the opportunity arises. It’s about creating natural and meaningful conversations, and listening to your client’s story to stay close to their needs and opportunities for protection.  

4. Process 

For many advisers, a robustly tested process is one of the best-kept secrets for achieving good customer outcomes time and again. Top advisers use processes as the backbone of their advice, splitting it into three key steps that help create  natural, habitual conversations that get to the heart of their clients’ needs. 

Establishing a process means protection gets sufficient airtime during client conversations. Without it, advisers admit it’s easy to fall out of the habit of introducing protection because of time, workload, priorities or confidence. 

5. Repositioning protection 

A central belief from the advisers we interviewed is that they feel it’s their mission to educate clients about the value of protection. That means positioning protection as part of your client’s bigger picture, rather than as an addendum. That might look like protecting the individual and their family, or the lifetime value of protecting a client’s earnings. This supports the Consumer Duty where the ultimate focus is on better customer outcomes.  

Learn and implement the secrets of protection success today 

Many of the advisers we interviewed consider it their mission to educate clients about the value of protection, and likewise, we believe it’s ours to help you achieve that.  

We’ve compiled the results of our research into a 14-page guide. We’ve also created a series of resources you can study to learn the techniques and how to implement them into your own advice practice. 

Together, they’ll help you understand how to lay the foundations so you can enhance your skills and achieve better outcomes for your clients.