Sales Tactics for Insurance Agents in 2026
If there were ever a time for agents to reassess their presentations, how they anticipate and handle objections and how they present their planning and product recommendations, it’s now. Agents will, of course, get help with those reassessments from their advanced planning teams at their companies and brokerage general agencies. But another valuable source of support and resources will be from their study groups.
Here are some suggested topics for 2026 study groups, along with suggested assigned readings for the meetings and guest speakers.
Why Buy Permanent Coverage Now
Agents will find themselves sitting across from more informed, cost-conscious, short-term-minded, and “insurance skeptical” prospects than ever before. These prospects are likely to meet agents’ traditional financial security and legacy protection talking points with stiffer resistance and more well-articulated objections than they have in the past.
So, rather than just using the study group environment to put a more sophisticated spin on their traditional talking points, agents need to hear how to revisit and, if necessary, refresh their approach to showing prospects what life insurance can do for them first and their families second. It’s an approach that says to the prospect, “Here’s why buying your own permanent life policy, one that they can never take away from you, will prove time and again to have been a smart move no matter how your career and family situation evolve.” The construct of this approach is based on the concepts I introduced in “Life Insurance Planning for the Merely Well-to-Do,” and “A Boomer at the Crossroads of a Vintage Policy,” namely, visualization and optionality.
As intuitive as those concepts may be to insurance professionals, they’re hardly intuitive to most prospects. Agents who want to deploy those concepts need enhanced skills in both asking and telling and a certain amount of institutionalized knowledge that’s been historically provided by experienced advanced planners and seasoned colleagues but can certainly be a topic for the study group. The group shouldn’t cover the topic with just words. They should collaborate on a “visualization and optionality” diagram that guides the prospect through their financial lifecycles and, in “if, then” fashion, points out pivotal events and circumstances where that individual coverage will continue to show its worth.
Market Effectively, Practice Defensively
Based on developments and commentary, I’m convinced that litigation against agents will only increase. So, they need to be as smart and proactive as ever to protect themselves in the event that the products they sold are alleged to have “underperformed.” The study group is a great forum for discussion on this topic. As suggested by “Life Insurance as an Investment for Retirement,” the discussion will focus on life insurance as a tax-advantaged investment vehicle for retirement, a popular planning tool.
The moderator, and perhaps a guest litigation attorney, would take the group through these points:
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How to show that the carrier issuing the product will be a good long-term steward of the prospect’s money, and how it supports its products and maintains quality policyholder service.
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How to explain the structural characteristics of the recommended policy that make it more suitable for the prospect than other types of policies.
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The characteristics of the recommended product that make it stand out from its competitors as one uniquely built to perform well in this planning application and the analytical tools and resources they used to arrive at that conclusion.
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How to show that the policy is artfully designed/constructed to serve as an efficient cash accumulator and distributor.
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How to illustrate and explain a clearly documented glide path for how the program is expected (but not guaranteed) to unfold.
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How to explain the chosen assumptions about policy performance, what can change and what happens if the assumptions don’t work out.
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How to illustrate and explain what the policy will look like and what their options will be when the income stream stops, and the policy must remain in force until the insured dies.
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How to set a schedule and process for policy and plan review throughout the life of the plan.
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How to get the prospect to acknowledge that they have the responsibility to participate in the agent’s review and to follow through on the agent’s recommendations for keeping the program on track and what can happen if they don’t.
Presenting LTC Insurance
The study group environment can be an excellent forum for a moderated discussion on presenting long-term care (LTC) insurance. The group doesn’t need to bring in a representative from an LTC insurance carrier because, frankly, all they’re likely to get will be an infomercial that won’t address what these prospects need to hear before they’ll even consider buying. The session should cover:
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How to “objectively” present the benefits of buying LTC coverage versus self-insuring.
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How to explain why they should buy the coverage from you:
Deferred Annuities—Beyond the Basics
There’s a lot of momentum behind the marketing of deferred annuities. Despite their obvious appeal to many prospects, I’ve found over the years that their advisors find deferred annuities far more complicated and opaque than life insurance. What’s more, tax advisors, in particular, have historically been quick to tell clients not to purchase variable deferred annuities for what I’ll refer to as “classic tax technical” reasons, such as they don’t afford a step-up in basis to the beneficiary.
Agents presenting fixed, variable or equity-indexed deferred annuities to clients who will run the proposals past their tax advisors should be prepared to explain and demonstrate these points, among others:
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The tax economics of investing through these vehicles versus low-cost, tax-efficient investment vehicles, especially now that tax rates are somewhat more benign than in prior years.
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How distributions from these vehicles are classified, determined, reported and taxed.
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How deferred annuities are taxed when the owner dies.
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The options available to beneficiaries include continuing deferral by a surviving spouse.
This should be a very constructive discussion among the group’s members. But it’s a very technical territory, so the group would be well-advised to bring in an advanced planning attorney who specializes in this area.