November is Long-Term Care Insurance Awareness Month, making it the perfect time to reach out to your clients to start an LTCI conversation. And it’s not as hard as you might think.

One of the biggest hurdles to selling long-term care insurance is educating people about what LTCI really is. Most people think it’s “nursing home” insurance, when, in fact, 73% of long-term care is provided at home or in an assisted living facility.

And it’s not just “old person” insurance, either. For example, agent Peter Busse helped Felipe and Lissete Montes de Oca with comprehensive planning that included life insurance and LTCI when they were in their 30s and 40s. LTCI became a financial lifesaver for the family when Felipe was battling leukemia. You can watch their story and share it here. (In addition, you can access more of the LIFE Foundation’s realLIFEstories videos about LTCI here.)

Agent Peter Busse with client Lissete Montes de Oca

Many of your clients may need this “financial lifesaver” as the cost of care continues to rise. To have a home health aide come and administer care costs an average of $19/hour, while at the other end of the spectrum, a private room in a nursing home averages $83,950, according to the Genworth 2013 Cost of Care Survey. How many of your clients have the savings to sustain an extended need for long-term care? LTCI is the solution.

Here are three ways to get started:

1. Choose one of these new LTCI videos from the LIFE Foundation that features real people who’ve bought and have benefited from having this coverage. Watch it with you clients to open up a dialogue about LTCI.

2. If you think your clients prefer to spend time reading through some facts and background, send them a link to the comprehensive “What You Need to Know About Long-Term Care Insurance” brochure.

3. If you feel that you don’t know enough about LTCI to sell it effectively,  why not partner with an expert? Ask around at your next NAIFA meeting to see who in your area would be a good LTCI match for you to work with. Approaching clients about LTCI will now be that much easier with an expert to help you.

Use Long-Term Care Insurance Awareness Month as the reason to start the outreach to your clients about this important product. Then be sure to leverage one of the benefits of your NAIFA membership: access to the LIFE Foundation’s LTCI resources to keep the drumbeat going all year—This two-page PDF has a complete listing.

The bottom line: There should be no more excuses for not reaching out to your clients about this important topic.

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By Debra Newman, CLU, ChFC, LTCP

Debra Newman, CLU, ChFC, LTCP, founder of Minneapolis-based Newman Long Term Care, is past president of NAIFA-Minneapolis and past president of the LIFE Foundation