If you are a plumber, a financial plumber, and you are going on a job, you don’t go there with a single monkey wrench expecting to fix everything with that single wrench. You don’t know when you go on a job as a plumber what might be needed. You carry a complete tool kit so that whatever the problem is, you have the relevant tool handy.

When it comes to critical illness insurance, it’s the same principle. We don’t know what questions might get asked. We don’t know where the conversation might go. So, we need a tool kit. We need the right tools to be able to answer whatever questions may come up from the client. So, I’m going to share with you some of the things that I carry in my critical illness sales tool kit.

The first thing I always have is a list of illnesses. When we start talking about critical illness, the client is likely to say, “So, what’s covered?” We can try to remember the list of 20, 30, 40 different things, or we have a list available. And we say, “There you go. Here’s an example of the kind of things that are covered.” Run your finger down that list and say to the client, “Do you know anyone who has suffered any of these things?” Invariably, the client will say, “Yes, I know somebody who had a heart attack [or cancer or a stroke].”

Next question, and it’s a leading question: “Tell me, John, that person who had that heart attack ― did they know they were going to have a heart attack before they had the heart attack?” John says, “Of course they didn’t know that.” “OK. And do you think when they had that heart attack, a quarter of million dollars or half a million dollars would have been a useful amount of money to help them get their lives back in order? Of course it would be. Nobody would say no to that. Well, that’s what I do. I deliver money when somebody has a life-changing illness. John, you don’t know if you might have a heart attack or cancer in the same way the person you talked about didn’t know.”

When you are showing this list of illnesses, the client might say to you, “Yes, but what does a heart attack mean?” You might try to memorize that the definition of a heart attack is the death of a portion of the heart muscle, typical chest pain and characteristic electro-cardiac changes. You don’t need to know that. All you need to know is that you have in your tool kit the relevant technical definition so that you can say, “Look, if you meet this criteria, the insurance company will pay.” That’s all you need to know. Carry the technical definitions as part of your tool kit.

If you are doing a good job, somebody is typically going to say to you, “That sounds really interesting. How much does it cost?” We can’t walk around with a computer in our head of what something costs, so I carry a sample of a premium table. For every five-year age group for a typical, say, $100,000, I can program it from that. How much would a critical illness policy cost over a range of different terms? At least I’m able to then give an indication and say, “This is not a quotation, but just to give you a feel for it, it would only cost you $50 a month [or $100 a month, whatever the number is]. How do you feel about that? Does that make sense to you?” What’s also useful is to carry a table of underwriting limits for your favorite provider. How much insurance can you get without the need to get a medical examination? It’s quite handy sometimes to be able to say, “I can get you $200,000 or half a million dollars, and all you have to do is fill in the form, and I can get you on cover. As long as you have no medical history, I can get you covered in the next week or two.”

Probably the most powerful things that you can carry in your tool kit are stories, real-life stories and examples of claims. I have paid out millions of dollars in critical illness claims, and I have so many amazing stories to tell. By selling lots of critical illness insurance, you will end up having to deal with lots of claims. The more claims you handle, the more you can then talk about those and make them more specific to the person you are talking to.

One of my clients was a 40-year-old who suddenly had a brain tumor. This tumor was wrapped around the auditory nerve. That, in itself, was a critical illness claim, and it paid out, but that’s not the story. The story is that at the same time that he was diagnosed with this brain tumor, his wife was declared pregnant. He didn’t know if he was going to survive to see his newborn child. Fortunately, the tumor was removed. He is now deaf in one ear as a result of the operation, but he’s alive. He’s a dentist. He’s back at work, the money paid out, it was a life-changing amount, and he’s got a beautiful daughter.

Knowing that the money was going to appear, he told me, was something that alleviated the fear of what could be the worst if the tumor removal wasn’t successful. It gave him peace of mind, as he went into the operation, to know that even if he didn’t come out, his family was secure.

That’s what we do for people. We give them not just dignity; we can even create financial independence by talking about these things. If you want to be a critical illness insurance specialist, there are three steps.

The first step to this is knowledge. You need to understand the product, you need to read the literature, and you need to get some claims statistics and understand when a claim would be paid and when it would not be paid. Knowledge is power when you are talking about critical illness insurance.

You then need belief. Belief comes from ownership. You need to carry your own critical illness insurance policy bracket, assuming you qualify. If you are going to talk with belief about this product, somebody is going to say to you, “So, if you believe in it so much, how much have you got, or do you carry some?” If the answer to that is no, forget it. You are not going to make a sale. So, belief is really important, and we are talking about meaningful belief. Six-figure sums are what we should be carrying.s

The final thing to become a specialist in is passion, passion for the product itself. Passion comes from handling claims. You will only handle claims if you sell enough of the product, and passion is when you realize the power of what you do for people, and your belief is elevated even more.

Those are the three components to being a CI specialist. You have got to have all three, but the last one will only come if you’ve got the first two and concentrate on them.

Bhupinder S. Anand, ACII, Dip PFS, is managing director of Anand Financial Architecture, a firm of IFAs based in London, England. He has twice been awarded UK’s Independent Financial Advisor of the Year and rated best IFA in the capital. He is one of the industry’s favorite speakers at major international conferences. The author of “Smashing the Glass Ceiling – Breaking Through Your Personal Barriers to Success,” Anand has unique insight into creating value for clients and how words and processes can influence the results we get from clients.