Selling disability income does not have to be challenging. Try these five easy ways to beef up your sales.

1. Sell the Need. Three out of 10 workers between the ages of 25 and 65 will experience an accident or illness that will keep them out of work 3 months or longer. (Social Security Disability Fact Sheet, January 31, 2007.) Have you considered how you would pay your expenses if you were too sick or injured to work for a long period of time? The average duration of a longterm disabilty is 30 months.
2.  Target Underserved Markets. Only 13% of small business owners have disability income protection. This is a huge opportunity to sell multiple disability products: individual, business overhead, keyman, business loan protection and buy/sell are all disability products that focus on the small business owner.
3.  Purchase a disability income policy for yourself. It’s hard to sell an income protection plan to a client if you have not invested in it yourself. Furthermore, as you research your own policy, you will learn more about the important features in a DI policy.
4. Multi-product sales. About 43% of wealthy business owners say they will work to age 70. Yet, only one-third said they have written succession plans in place. (Private Wealth Magazine, 2008) In 2009, outstanding business loans (under $1M) were valued at $68.5M for more than 23M loans. (SBA Office of Advocacy, 2010) Lots of opportunity to discuss buy/sell and business loan disability protection with your small business owner clients.
5. Just Ask. The top reason producers do not sell disability income is because their clients do not ask about it. (Limra International, Producer Perspectives on IDI, 2009.) Yet, many of our clients are not aware of the risks, so they are not likely to ask. Just ask!!!