There are four key steps to securing successful protection sales through increasing client trust such as scheduling standalone appointments, delegates at The Protection Review conference heard.
Intrinsic's Andy Walton highlighted that protection is mostly written on the back of other products such as mortgages as an "after-thought."
As a result, Intrinsic had changed its approach in dealing with clients who might need protection with the introduction of protection only appointments.
Walton said: "We've bought in protection only appointments. We [set up] standalone protection appointments- that has increased sales for us by stripping out protection and dealing with it on its own. With Treating Customers Fairly and commission, the point is the client doesn't want to be sold to, they have the answers already in their minds, all we have to do is facilitate it."
He urged for advisers to act more like dentists in the way they interact with clients in forecasting future appointments.
Walton also said: "Highlight gaps and make new appointment at the end of every sale, diarise it, text them two weeks before, lo and behold on a journey and trust is built."
He added the two key motives that advisers should raise are: how protection can keep consumers in their home and how would they ensure their lifestyle is maintained.
As a result client fact finds should move away from questions around smoking for instance to a more personalised approach, Walton urged.
He added: Those are the two things we are interested in. Anyone can understand that, we're not talking about debt or critical illness. Most advisers at this point bring out a fact find around where you live, do you smoke, these are strange questions to start this process off with. Our fact find puts the customer in control and doesn't start off with these.
"We just need to bring it to the front of their mind by asking them the right questions - what could cause you to lose your home? They'll say, I could lose my job, I could get cancer, basically, they'll even say I might die."
Walton also said that advisers should act like dentists in diarising the next appointment with the customer."
Walton also said that advisers should think about building bespoke protection portfolios for their customers.
