Consequences

Insurance is sometimes sold with fear, but not all that successfully.

The dark stories are familiar.

Someone falls ill, is injured, or flat out dies.

The home is lost in the aftermath.

Savings wiped out.

An individual, a couple, a family struggles for years afterwards, maybe permanently.

Cue the "If only they'd..." moment.

The audience nods along, but I've never been convinced these stories actually work. At least not unless the goal is to hurry people out the door.

Because I think many of us react the same way when faced with fear-based messaging.

We shut down.

We think:

"That's not me."

"That's not my story."

"Never will be."

Or:

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I'll deal with that later - and also, don't be suggesting that I am not so smart"

Fear gets attention, for a moment or two.

But attention is not the desired outcome, a change in behaviour is.

Fear tells me to change my behaviour all the time.

Do I listen?

No. I do not.

I still go down into the dark basement with the flickering lightbulb I keep meaning to replace, basically tempting the axe murderer who's obviously been waiting down there all day for me to get home from work.

What changes behaviour is not fear.

It's consequences.

It's rethinking statements like:

"If I die..."

And replacing them with:

"When I die..."

The moment we make that shift, the thinking changes.

Because now we're not discussing probability.

We're discussing certainty.

Everybody dies.

Nobody argues this point, other than people selling magic beans to billionaires.

The question is what happens then?

What happens to the mortgage?

What happens to the family finances?

What happens to the surviving spouse, kids, cat?

What happens to the plans for, paying the basic bills, never mind invisalign, car repairs, and university options?

Maybe we should skip the fear-based stories and focus on the stories with positive outcomes.

Stories where the audience says:

"Yeah, that's who I want to be."

The family stays in the house.

The mortgage is paid.

The kids finish university.

There's time and space to grieve instead of immediately finding a second job.

Twenty years later the children still say:

"That sure could have gone a different direction."

That's a positive story.

Because the hero isn't the insurance policy.

The hero is the person who made a decision years earlier.

And maybe it's also the person who presented the option thoughtfully, created room for questions, and supported the client's decision.

Many of us avoid these conversations because they're uncomfortable.

But the discomfort belongs to us.

The consequences belong to the client.

Those are not the same thing.

Besides, what's more uncomfortable?

A slightly awkward conversation today?

(One that gets easier every time you have it)

Or a surviving spouse calling six months, or six years, later - with a very tough question for you to have to give a negative answer to.

Leaving you wishing you'd taken a little more time to explain the options and ask a few basic questions of the clients

For example:

"Do you currently have insurance in place equivalent to this mortgage balance, or greater?"

That's not really an insurance question.

It's a responsibility question.

An awkward conversation lasts a few minutes.

The consequences of avoiding it can last a generation.

Be Better!

DW