Successfully solving an insurance sales challenge in India using

Learning LaunchPad Tool

1. Challenge: Hi this is a real life challenge I have faced & successfully applied Design

Thinking Approach to solve the same. I am based out of India & work as National Cluster  Sales Head in an Insurance company in India.

Challenge faced was to empower sales team at my organization ( an insurance  company) to see abundance of prospects & opportunities around their workplace &  empower them to engage with these prospects in an efficient manner so they can  achieve their monthly insurance policies login targets on a month on month basis. The  current scenario of going from door to door to sell insurance policies doesn’t help them  since the industry is highly competitive & most of the households apprarently have  already bought an insurance policy or don’t trust an insurance sales man due to past  bad experiences with the policies bought.

2. Selection: The Design Tool Selected by me was the Learning Launchpad since it gives

me handon understanding of the real challenge & get a grip on the insights live rather  than ideating & brainstorming in closed cabin walls.

The way I applied this design thinking tool is - After having conducted some initial branch  research & interactions with customers & sales people, it was noted that the real  problem doesn’t lie in the product. However the problem lied at 3 levels ;

a. The fundamental belief of sales person that insurance can be sold & there would be

buyers of the policy.

b. Availability of potential prospects to pitch the insurance policies.   c. Find a way to connect & engage with customers given that majority of customers don’t

want to listen to an insurance sales pitch or receive any calls from an insurance sales  man.

3. Application:

To address the above findings & challenges, I took a simple 3 step approach basis my  research & personal work conducted.

1st Step – I created a myth buster pitch to bust the myth that INDIAN households have  bought adequate insurance cover for themselves & their families. The research  suggested that only 15% of Indian Population is adequately covered & the rest are  simply unaware of their need for insurance. – This pitch helped my sales team boost up  their confidence multifold & they created a very strong belief in the insurance industry.

2nd Step – To help sales team solve the problem of prospecting & making them aware of  existing untapped opportunities in an easy manner – I conducted a simple workshop  where I made them list down their friends & families names & the places they all work &  then asked them if they can reach out to them & through their help connect with their HR  Heads / or Respective company decision makers to allow them to make an awareness

pitch about insurance need without getting into any product presentation or pushing the  product. – 4 out of 10 people got this done successfully with them securing an  appointment from 4 different corporates who agreed to conduct an awareness session.  Though each of these awareness sessions, on an average 60-70 prospects were  touched based with ( an average sales man would be able to connect with only 15  prospects all through the month ) – 70 prospects is 4 times higher their monthly average  prospect base. This itself gave them lot of booster & confidence.

3rd Step – Once connected with the prospects, the sales guys counseled the prospects  on overall insurance needs & myths for the family bread earner rather than pushing a  sales pitch. – This move was highly appreciated & the prospects gave feedbacks that we  are the first insurance company to listen to them rather than us trying to sell a product to  them. This gave sales guys even further boostup & confidence level to reach out talk to  a prospect went up multifold & as per a survey conducted, 80% of sales guys now  became confident than before to connect to a prospect & engage.

4. Insight: My insight from application of Learning Launchpad Tool is that to solve a

challenge one needs to move step by step with lot of patience & perseverance & one  needs to set an example through demonstration till such time the experiment isnt  completely successful. All through this approach, I was standing personally with my  sales team & demonstrating them how things can be done rather than only instructing  them how to do things.

Once the confidence of sales team started going up more & more believers started to  emerge since sales team was able to see success right in front of them & then we would  felicitate the achievers in front of the entire team which would inspire others also to  adaopt the new way of conducting insurance sales. So the learning here was that one  must find the right horses to bet upon & ensure the horses win. In this case the 4 sales  guys who turned out to be the initial believers were the ones on whom I banked upon to  create a success story out of the experiment. From there now the rub off effect has  started.

5. Approach: Something that I would do differently next time is possibly capture more of

customer testimonials through videos & showcase the same at other branches rather  than only felicitating the sales achievers. The customer testimonial always supercedes  any other form of confirmation & would help me achieve my results much faster than  other approaches. So this is a key learning which I carry along & I would want to use  next time when I conduct any other Learning LaunchPad experiment.

