How to Sell Insurance For Children

Selling child trauma cover : an insurance option under a policy for a parent - that provides a payment should that child be diagnosed or suffer from a specific listed event must be a really hard thing to sell.

We have to believe that because we are told constantly by advisers that they find it a hard conversation to start with parents.

We have to believe that because when we look at the data : the number of policies that have child trauma attached is incredibly low : single digits in percentage terms.

Yet when we look at our own families surely we acknowledge that were anything to happen to our children we would as parents want to be there by their side.

We acknowledge that to be able to do that for however long their recovery takes will require financial adjustment.

We take out insurance on our children not to profit but to be able to fulfil the promise of parenthood - to be there for our children.

Why then is so little of it sold?

We have forgotten to share our values with our clients. And in doing so we have not connected to their values that are a mirror of ours. Of course they would want to be there for their children. It is the professional advisers job to facilitate that opportunity for them.

All that is required then is to share your values and beliefs and your action with a client.

An adviser dear to us, tells of how she sells child trauma insurance to every parent every time.

She tells them that if anything happened to her child she knows where she would rather be and she has arranged the method to allow that to happen.

Her clients acknowledge that choice as completely rational. They agree with it. They share that value and belief.

Why does this adviser do it? Because one day her daughter came home distraught that a school friend had been diagnosed with cancer. There was a physical and emotional battle about to start for that child and that family. There was also a financial battle.

For that reason this adviser tells her clients that she knows where she would want to be.

For that reason every recommendation includes child trauma. There is no need to go into micro detail about the policy.

The positioning is simply:

- tell the client what you have done for your own children and why
- they will agree with what you have done : sometimes with just a nod of agreement sometimes with an emphatic "oh yes, I'd want that too"
- then when you present your recommendation you simply say and I have included childrens trauma because I want you to be able to make the same choices I can make and so you can be there for your children too

At about $10 per $10,000 of cover, I do not know a parent who would opt out of covering their child for an appropriate level of cover at what amounts to essentially a cup of coffee a week per child.