The 14th annual Long-Term Care Insurance Awareness Month kicked off last week. This event gives you a great springboard to restart the conversation with your clients who need LTCi.
Why is it so much easier to talk to your clients about auto, home and life insurance?
If you’ve been skirting the issue, you’re not alone. It seems Baby Boomers often avoid the long-term care discussion with their family members. Adult children avoid the subject with their aging parents and doctors avoid the topic with their patients.
Anticipating the need for long-term care can be troubling for many clients, more troubling than facing their own mortality. In fact, according to “Family & Retirement: The Elephant in the Room”, only 37 percent of people 50 or older believe they will need long-term care. Planning for long-term care for yourself or your spouse requires facing the possibility of being incapacitated, or having diminished physical and mental abilities.
Other reasons that people avoid the long-term care conversation include:
- Not finding the right time to discuss options with loved ones
- Wanting to avoid family conflicts over finances
- Believing they can handle their care themselves
- Being unaware that long-term care was something to plan for
So, how can you help your clients feel more comfortable with something that that will be an inevitability for 70% of Americans?
The Ultimate LTCi Sales Script will help you over the hurdles using a combination of factual and emotional responses to objections and reluctance. You and your client will feel more comfortable about an uncomfortable subject.
Once you’ve addressed your clients concerns, you can encourage and help them prepare for an even more important conversation with their family members.
If you implemented any of the recommendations I made last week to leverage the awareness campaign with your clients, you may already have one or two clients who reached out to you. You still have time to draw attention to the need for long-term care.
Look for another helpful LTCi tool from DIS next week. Subscribe to our blog in the top right corner if you haven’t already done so, so you don’t miss anything.