How to Sell Life Insurance: Don’t Get Commission Breath

We see ups and downs like this and swings that are emotional. So these are emotional responses. Yes. To external circumstances, which you may or may not have been party to or may and may not have actually created yourself. Right. The only response that you can have to actually write the ship is you've got to go back to facts. You've got to go back to logic. Yeah. Staying focused on the details because facts don't lie. Numbers don't lie. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Life Insurance Academy. Zach and I are in studio today at the White Desk. We are here. Love the White Desk. Oh, that was impressive. I was like one point two five speed. I know, man. You know what? Everybody tells us they listen to our podcast at one point two five speed. Is that real? Adam edits our podcast at like one point seven five or two. We sound like chipmunks in here. Anyways, welcome back, everybody, to the Life Insurance Academy podcast. Zach and I and Chris, we've all been doing a lot of coaching this last couple of months, a lot of new agent coaching, a lot of agents who've been in the business for a year. Some actually been in the business for many years. Yeah. A little variety of everything. And we've been finding these themes that we need to circle back to and teach on and coach on. And one of the things that's come up that is a problem, is a challenge, is a recurring issue that we see is agents getting commission breath, getting that stanky breath. Yeah. What is that? What is commission breath to you? When I say agents getting commission breath, what does that mean to you, man? Man, it's what it does. I imagine a dog sitting there wagging their tail, drooling from their mouth. Or, you know, you're about to hand them that bone, the hand bone or something, you know, like, ah, like it's a new agent or an existing agent or for whatever reason, any agent that is desperately trying or needing or relying on a sale. And so in that the way the way they talk is different, their energy, their whole engagement, their body language, their body language, every aspect of what they're doing is is it's almost begging. They're almost a beggar in a situation where they're trying to help a client. Yeah, it's a very sad and weak and pathetic position to be in. Yeah. And you typically don't notice it till after one afterwards. Well, you don't notice when you're in it because you're desperate. Yeah. You're in a situation where you thought you're going to get stopped by the police like you. You were rolling down the road. No, Roger. And you're and you're you're rolling down the road and you're doing 15 over and you go by a cop that was pulled off underneath the overpass and you're like, oh, crap. I think you got me right. What happens, man? Your body goes into a complete panic. You start slowing down. You're trying not to break too hard, too fast because you don't want to see him hit the brake lights because then you know you're caught. It just goes into complete panic, right? Your body starts to sweat. Everything is happening all at once. All the physiological response are happening. You're trying to merge over to get in front of another car so he can't see you. You're thinking, oh, I hope he didn't see me. I hope he was looking at someone else. Everything goes out the window about your normal function. You're in desperation mode. Yeah. Hoping not to get caught. Like that's what I think about when I think of people selling in a desperate situation. Like all practicality and all normal protocol of how they should act and proceed gets thrown out the window and you're in a desperate situation. You can maybe throw a car chase or something up here, something. I could see like Dukes of Hazzard getting run down by a sheriff. I don't know what his name is. Beth, oh yeah. Man, I'd be honest. I didn't I didn't imagine a car chase in this scenario. I was thinking of what's that guy, P Coltrane. What was his name? I forget what his name. Boss Hogg, but his deputy is the cop. Anyways, we'll figure it out. You know, I'm talking about. Yeah, I know. I'm talking about the old school Dukes of Hazzard, not the movie, not the movie that came out later. I'm talking about old school anyway. Roscoe P Coltrane. There you go. Yeah. Chasing the boys. It's yeah, it throws everything else out the window. You're desperate. You're in a desperate situation. Agents get into this desperate situation. It affects everything. They don't realize they're in it. What what is this, Zach? It you're right. It's a desperate situation, and it's typically caused from a it could be a financial strain, right? It could be as a result of you starting as a brand new being there. It could be a financial strain from you taking extra time off or you know, being being an existing agent or being in here for a while, building up some level of funds, but being honest with ourselves, kind of living off of it when we hit a certain threshold. And as that funds get down and then you're trying to turn turn the engines back on full force again, it creates this little panic, this little desperateness. But it's all coming from the lack of confidence. It's coming from the lack of confidence, lack of belief. But needing that result and trying to live off that. And that puts agents of all skill sets of all time frames in a very hard situation, because the only thing they know to do is try even harder in order in order to get the sale. And that's the last thing that you absolutely want to do. Like when I think about what commission breath is, first of all, commission breath is like the worst breath. It's like the worst garlic breath ever. It's really how the salespeople get the reputation, right? Slimy, you know, all the different words people try to say. Have you ever have you ever been like in a space when someone's got like the worst breath? Like it's it's you just don't want to even be in their presence. Yeah. It's like, do they not recognize? Do they not know that it's just reeking? What is commission breath to me is when you're selling out of a place of desperation, where it's about you, it's not about the client. You need the sale. Everything you say and do is oozing. I'm desperate. I need this sale. This is about me. And you're you're speeding through, you're skipping steps. It's it's a it's it's not a good place to be. It's certainly not a place to be able to put the client's interest first and move them to a better place. You're just trying to move yourself to a better place because typically it has to do with a financial issue. Yeah. Would you say that has to do with finances? Typically, if it isn't immediate, it's going to be. Yeah, it depends. Like typically, if you're brand new, obviously the finance, the finances is a huge part of it. The pressure is a huge part of it. And there's not a lot of history of success and renewals or anything to lean on. Even if you're an existing agent, it's a fear that financial would be an issue. It may not be immediately, but it's a confidence issue that if it's not addressed properly, it will turn into a financial issue which compounds it even more. Where do you where do we see this popping up with agents? Like, where does it come from? Why does it happen? Yeah, well, it can't happen. It will happen to everybody. That's the one thing that that that everybody must know is going to happen. If it hasn't happened, the conditions have been like everybody's going to sell with commissioned breath. Then the pressure, the pressure is going to happen in how we deal with that, if we can prevent it, if all possible. The struggle is going to happen. The emotional up and down is going to happen. And where we find this is typically a new agent. Not to say typically, this is based upon our experience of the agents that we've coached and mentored. And this is typically where it happens is we have agents that come in. Typically, they don't know a lot, which also means they don't have a lot of bad habits. They're leaning for guidance, support. They follow our principled sales system and they listen to all the trainings. They listen to a ton of podcasts. They they get our flip chart. It works like gold perfect. And then all of a sudden, they said, perfect, perfect. And they're perfect. They're having success right out the gate, right? They don't know what they don't know, but they have good enthusiasm. They're positive. They're starting something new. They have a system. They have mentors. They're excited. And everything seems to be clicking. They're getting wins. They're celebrating. They're high fiving. And that happens and carries on for a few weeks. And then typically throughout that that that period of of the first, I would say, 12 weeks, they're gradually starting to figure out. And this is natural. They don't I don't think people do this on purpose, but naturally as humans, we try to take shortcuts. We want to. OK, it works this way. The first few times we did every single step the way we're supposed to. But I'm wondering if I could shave a little time off and skip this one little part here or don't go into so much detail here because maybe they don't see the importance of of why they're doing it. Correct. They're just doing it. It's working. They don't know which part is working or not. How can I generate the same result faster, faster with less effort in a shorter amount of time? Yeah, that's that's all they're trying to do. And they made they may be doing it subconsciously and not really understanding. But the problem is, is they're continuing to have success because they're just making incremental changes. They're continuing to have success. And then over that period of time, they're starting to slightly drift further and further and further away from the original process that was laid out that worked perfectly. Perfect. Perfect. Absolutely. Perfect. Optimally, optimal. I don't even know how to say optimal. How do you say that optimally, optimally, optimal? Perfect. Adam said Optimus Prime. That works, too. And before they know it, they're having a almost I call it a false sense of success because they're still getting the result that almost gives them a pat on the back that they're doing everything right. It almost validates them in an incorrect way. But they then drift so far that one little, you know, straw that breaks the camel's back and then they fall off the they fall off of it completely. Yeah, that time frame is typically the first 12 weeks, the first three months in the business. Right. And then that's when agents typically also get hit with maybe a few chargebacks or a few things. What? In addition to you say something that was taboo. Charge. We're not allowed to say that on here. Nobody gets charged back. We bleep that out, Adam. You said it was perfect. They shouldn't be getting it was it was, but they sort of drifted. We also talked about that. Right. Aha. So at that point in time, it typically happens around the three month mark through the third and fourth month. It seems to be a relearning situation where they have to regather themselves, get back to base learning. It is a forced relearning because now they know what they don't know. And it's kind of shocking to them. And now they have to really dial in and they start to understand why the path they were on at the beginning worked so well and what went wrong in that journey. And that's kind of this is the stage, Roger, where this anxiety and fear comes along because they've made the leap from their other career. They've they've they've taken a leap of faith. They've leaned into something. Maybe they've never done full commission sales. Maybe they this is they're really, you know, stretching their selves and their abilities and learning and their emotions are all over the place. And this is the first time since they started, not that they were scared, but they were scared and struggled. Yeah. Right. So this is coming from a place where they've gotten off track. They may be getting some chargebacks. How does chargebacks? I want to explore that a little bit more for those of you that are listening that are brand new. Oftentimes, if you place a policy and maybe the client doesn't pay the first premium, but you're with a company that advances you as if the first premium was going to be paid. Yep. Because the policy was approved, the bank account registered. But when they went to draft the account the next month on the Social Security pay date, if it's a final expense case, it doesn't process. And now it takes 30 days of them trying to collect the payment. And then after that, it goes into default. Then they've got 30 days to get it back on the book. So that 90 day window, now they're charging back your account for commissions. And for the first time, you're writing policies and you're not getting paid because the new commission is going to pay off a charge back that hit because they all started hitting around that 90 day mark. And you're like, what the heck is going on? I'm not making the money. I don't have my leads. But you didn't count on that. And oftentimes you were told up front that this was going to happen. But because it's never happened to you, you didn't feel or experience it. Now you're in this situation where you have an emotional. Yeah. Response. Sometimes a visceral response to funds not hitting your account the way you thought they were going to. And then it throws you for a loop financially. Yeah. It happens other times, too, though. We've seen it even with experienced agents. It is. And if you're if you guys are unsure if this applies to you or if you have dealt this or felt with this, I got a question for you guys. Number one, ask yourself, are you in control? Right. Are you in control and in control of what? In control of your energy, tone and mood and in your whole your whole attitude, your whole demeanor. And this is how you know this. If your energy, tone, your mood or your attitude, your whole aura that you have, if it is because you have had self-success or it's due to the self-success that you have had, then you are no longer in control. Right. Because that means if you are having success, you're going to be super excited. You're going to be super energetic. You're going to be in a good mood. You're going to want to help other people. You're going to be involved in in your IMO community. You're going to be on on the calls. You're going to be you're going to be in there. But if you're not having success, it's going to affect your emotions as well because you don't have emotional control of that. You're probably going to drift away. You're probably going to start calling. You withdraw. You withdraw. You start calling them less. You stop learning as much and you start questioning and losing confidence and belief in yourself. You stop showing up publicly on group meetings and you have in these private meetings about why things are not working, but you're no longer leaning into the community. Yep. Withdraw. And I ask that, are you in control? Because theoretically that is all based upon the result of a cell or a non cell. Ideally, what you want to get to is the emotional intelligence to be able to say that your actual self success, this the self success is the result of your positive attitude, of your tone, of your mood, of your entire energy, which means that doesn't waver based upon the activity. Right. When you have that in place, regardless of the result, that's what generates the result. Does that make sense? I know it sounds confusing, but you need to be the one that has that. And that's going to help you and cause the positive results and the self success that you're wanting, not the other way around. I'm going to I'm going to ask the question I addressed earlier. I don't think we got to it. We talked about where does it come from and what we're putting our confidence in. When else do we see it other than that 12 week window? Do we sometimes we see it with experienced agents? Yeah. And to be honest, when have you seen it with experienced agents? There's two parts to that. It's not just in that three month window. I think that's where it hits you the hardest. And that's where most agents fail or fall out or completely quit and give up. It's it's it's felt the most in that period. But that little window of every three months kind of drift in that that happens more and more, but it's felt less right. It will happen again when you're hitting around your six month, nine month, a year period. But typically, if you're able to push through, you have the memory of the up and down. You know what it takes to get in and out of that. You have the experience. So it doesn't really affect you as much, especially beyond year one, two or three. The other place where that really comes into play is when someone breaks their momentum or they're on a roll or they're on a mission. And I mean, I have some agents come in mind immediately that, you know, week in, week out. And no matter where you guys are listening from, no matter what group you're part of, there's probably somebody you guys can think of that week in, week out. It's like clockwork. It's like sun up, sun down. You know what they're going to do. You know, the days they work, you know, the results they have. It's just it's just automatic. But what you will find is the second time where agents experience the most anxiety, the greatest lack of confidence and belief in themselves is coming off of life events or periods of time where they have taken off. It could be from a health issue. It could be from even a planned vacation, a planned vacation or a few planned vacations. Any time where you're your your focus in mind is off growing your business and serving your clients. It takes you time to regain that. Yeah. And the craziest thing is, and I say this all the time, it reminds me of Space Jam in that one scene, man, I swear it does, where you got Charles Barkley, Sean Kent, Muggsy Bogues are playing in the game and all of a sudden they touch that ball and that it sucked the power from all the NBA players and they don't know how to walk. They don't know how to chew gum. They don't know how to shoot. And they're falling all over themselves. And those little monsters took that energy and that that power and that confidence, the success. And man, it's awesome. I love I love that. Adam knows what I'm talking about. You're going to have fun with this. Yeah, just just watch the just. I do bring it up because because it's a perfect visual for it, because that agent can be a literal all star in insurance. We need to show that scene right in here. They take a week off and it's like they don't know how to shoot a layup anymore. Yeah, it happens in golf. It happens in everything to me in golf. Just this my most recent round. Yeah, it's it's crazy. I didn't know how to play. Yeah, just sell the clubs, right? You're selling them every other week. But it it's the expectation is to come back and have immediate success on that very first phone call or that very first doorknob coming off of a vacation where you had no focus at all on your business. And if that doesn't happen, then you're like, OK, I had no income coming in for the last two weeks. Maybe it could be more or it could have been periodic multiple vacations over the last five, six weeks. So my income hasn't been consistent. My activity and work ethic hasn't been consistent. And I come back and immediately immediately don't have a burst in results. Then it's like, oh, my bills are always consistent, right? Everything else is in my life. They're still coming, but I don't have the same moving towards it. And it could be from improper planning for taking your time off. But that that causes a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety, a lot of lack of confidence. I've even seen it with agents who have actually gone on qualifier trips. Yes. And on some of these trips with people. Yeah. And the trip starts on Thursday. Yeah. Right. They're not even started to get ready for that trip. Right. They're not packed. And then they realize, well, I got a short week this week. It's only Monday to Wednesday. We're leaving Thursday morning early. So I really need to be like getting ready on Wednesday. So that really only leaves me two days to work. I don't really know how effective I'm going to be. So I'll just get caught up on my admin. And you're literally going out of town on Thursday and you end up taking Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off because you were leaving town on Thursday. Yeah. And then the trip goes to the following Tuesday. So you're gone from Thursday to Tuesday. You get back home late Tuesday night because the flights were delayed. You're supposed to get back at three, but you're not getting home till midnight. And now because of a few things, you're getting up at nine or 10 o'clock in the morning, getting on the move. It's now Wednesday and you're trying to figure out. And then you realize, oh, shoot, I didn't put my I didn't get my lead flow. I got a call. I got to get the leads going again. I got to get this piped in. And all of a sudden, that five day trip that was literally from a Tuesday or Thursday to a Tuesday or a six day trip, whatever that is, five days turns into two weeks. And you haven't done squat in two weeks because of basic bleed over on the front and the back end of a trap, a planned travel event. And now you're out of funds for two weeks because these are not paid vacations, because when you work for yourself, guess what? You're not actually paying yourself while you're on the beach or you're not actually paying yourself while you're in Vegas. You're not actually paying yourself while you're on that cruise unless you've got a team and you're making overrides or unless you got renewals. Also, you could pay yourself a salary, which I do have a video, Adam, if you plop it up here. Yeah, that you can literally have income paying yourself a salary as you're going on those trips. So it relieves a lot of that pressure as well. Yeah, we've seen it happen like that, too. So plan trips with unplanned extensions. And I want to this is real and it will happen to everybody at some level and in some severity. And I want to talk about like what we do to actually fix this. And because we I want to give people tools to know that, hey, if you're dealing with this, you're facing this anxiety of a new person. It doesn't mean you're different. It doesn't mean that you're not capable of doing this. It doesn't mean this opportunity is not built for you. It literally every single one of us deal with this. And this is how we get through it. This is what our suggestions would be to help you correct that. What would be the first thing, Roger, in your mind, if somebody is dealing with this? What's the first thing that comes to mind on how to get this kind of corrected and identified? Well, we see we see ups and downs like this and swings that are emotional. So these are emotional responses. Yes. To external circumstances. Nobody has ever came to me and said, I don't know if insurance is for me when they're coming off three historic weeks of very high producing numbers. Nobody. Nobody ever says that. So it's an emotional response to external circumstances which you may or may not have been party to or may and may not have actually created yourself. Right. The only response that you can have to actually write the ship is you got to go back to facts. You got to go back to logic. Yeah, because you can't emotionalize your way out of it. It's hard to go in the bathroom and psych yourself up when you're emotionally sideways. You can't do it. You can't get to the gym and look in the mirror. Let's go. It's hard to pull yourself to that place. Right. You can drink three Red Bulls. You're just going to be wired and depressed. Life Insurance Academy pre-workout coming soon. There you go. So you have to go back to facts. You have to go back to logic. What were you doing in the first in that first 60 days? That was working so well. What was that? Were you what was your process look like? What were your numbers like? So it really goes back to tracking your numbers and understanding your process. And Zach, we are big proponents of staying focused on the details because facts don't lie. Numbers don't lie. What are your thoughts on knowing your numbers and going to the facts? You said it perfectly. It removes the emotional response. And as long as you're honest and transparent with yourself, when you look at those numbers, it will remove all of that from you. And, you know, again, the the most beautiful thing about this is because a lot of us out there have it could be pride. It could be ego, could be introverted, whatever it is. We don't typically want to share with somebody else that we're not putting the work in or we've cut corners or we've cut corners. But as long as we track our numbers, like honestly track our numbers so we know how we're running and tracking towards our goals financially, it will remove the financial stress. So quick example, if I know I need to make X dollars a week towards my income goal that is attached to what I want to accomplish with my vision in my life, not really monetary, but to trade it for memories. So when I break that all the way down to what I want to hit on a weekly basis, I'm going to take that a step further. If I know that, I'm also going to know my closing ratio. How many policies or sales is it going to take me to get to my weekly number? I want. And let's just say just for for easy math, let's say let's say my goal is just five thousand dollars a week, OK? Well, if I know I'm at 50 percent closing ratio, just keep it simple. I know I'm probably going to need to sell probably ten, ten to eleven apps. Right. And when I do that, my next question is, how many presentations do I need to do to write ten, eleven apps? If it's around 50 percent closing ratio? Well, I'm probably going to need to do somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to 24 presentations, right? It's pretty simple. We're not going to close every one of them. Some of the ones that we will close may fall off the books. But if I want to have that net income, this is what I'm going to look at. Sometimes it could be 18 because you're getting a husband and wife in one presentation, 100 percent, 100 percent. And it could vary. But just to give you example, the point is we have to know our number. So I need to know how many apps I need to sell, how many presentations I need in order to sell that many apps. How many phone calls or doorknobs do I have to do in order to get that many presentations? Right. It could be I get a presentation every 22 doorknobs, just for an example. Right. That's a lot of doorknobs. Or yeah, or phone calls, right? Good Lord. But you need to know what that phone call is associated with. And then how many leads do I need in order to fund this whole thing? Yeah. But when I do that, I can easily say I'm upset. I'm emotional. Roger, I'm struggling. I don't I don't know if insurance is for me. I have this anxiety. I have this fear. And you're like, OK, perfect. You know, I know you can do it. I believe in you. I've seen you do it before. Yep. Let's take a look at your numbers. And when you look at those numbers, you will see that maybe in a five week period, you've combined in a five week period, you've done enough presentations that you should have done in two weeks. That's right. Interestingly, I've got a book here in my hand. This book actually changed a lot for me, how I raised myself from failure to success in selling by Frank Becher. This guy was a former Major League Baseball player when they didn't make a lot of money in Major League Baseball, an old book. But in this book, he talks about the two things that saved his butt. Yeah. And business. And one of those two things, and this was copyrighted in 1947. By the way, this book isn't just about raise my self from failure to success, success and selling. He's actually selling insurance. Yes. So that's really cool. He got into the insurance space. But he talks about the one thing that changed everything from him, with the exception of this added piece of enthusiasm for what he was doing, was when he started tracking his numbers. Yeah. When he started tracking his numbers, because when you started tracking your numbers, he remembers a time and he references in the book. Mr. Walter Lamar Talbot was the president of the insurance company agency that he worked for. They were all in a bullpen. They would set appointments and go out and see people. And he came in to quit. He came in to quit and he's in there cleaning out his desk, his cubicle. And while he's in there, Mr. Talbot comes out and calls an impromptu meeting and everybody in the bullpen gathers and he's stuck in there. Now he can't get out. And he said, I had a lot of respect for him. He was a super nice guy, but I just realized this wasn't for me. And and he said he said one thing that just stuck with me. He said any person, any good person who will commit to telling their stories four or five times a day can't help but making good in this business. And he said that one statement is like, I may not be able to control whether they say yes or no. I may not be able to control how much money is going into my bank account on a daily basis, but I can commit to telling my story about life insurance four or five times a day that I can do. And he said, if he can do it, I can do it. So all I did was I committed to that and that started his progress and that started success to to the point where he's one of the largest, you know, biggest successes and author of a book that many hundreds of thousands of people have read in your time bestseller book. Yeah. But it's about his numbers. And we do a podcast. I did an interview with Kevin Montez back some time ago. We're going to put that podcast episode right there. And that episode was about the one thing that Kevin did to change everything from him. And I forget what the thumbnail title is, but he doubled or tripled his business in just just just 90 days. And it changed everything for him. It's about tracking your numbers. It takes the emotion out of it. Absolutely. It's it's it's everything. You have to do that. You have to do that. If you're if you're feeling that anxiety, it'll be gone when you track all your numbers. But again, you have to be honest and transparent with yourself about those numbers. I think one of the other things here before we get on to these last two ways to fix this is we've even seen agents kind of lie to themselves and lie to us. They don't do it intentionally because it's not an intentional thing. It's more out of like, I don't really want to fully admit to myself that I'm cutting corners, what you said earlier. Yeah, it's and when we dive into numbers like we've had agents say, man, I'm not getting the results out of these leads anymore. I'm just like, it's just not working for me. I'm really struggling. My premium is down. My income's down. And we go back and dissect. Well, what has changed? Well, nothing's changed. Well, when we look back last year, you were doing this many leads per week. And then what happened in the fall? Well, I realized I didn't need as many. They were stacking up. So I cut back my number of leads. Did your production cut back? No. I mean, I sailed all the way through to Christmas. OK, great. What happened in January? Well, I ended up having two and a half weeks off. And then I went back to the same number of leads I had in the fall, which was a lower number than I had been working all year. And now I'm not getting the same results. Well, if we actually looked at what happened is you actually drop your number of opportunities. Your call count went down. You lost momentum from being off. And then when you look at it, it takes a while for your momentum to do this. So if you reduce your number of leads, your production just doesn't automatically drop the next week because you got stuff in the pipeline. So if they had a 60 to 90 day pipeline on leads, now they're not being honest with themselves or genuine with the truth and the facts to say, no, I did adjust. I've reduced my number of leads because I was trying to save money on marketing, trying to lower my lead cost. So you're lowering your lead cost as you were going into the holidays instead of keeping your foot on the gas with your marketing opportunities and your lead so that in January one, when you're ready to fly, you've got plenty of opportunities. Now you've got limited opportunities. But now the system's not working the way it was. But in fact, you actually change something with the system. But if you track your numbers and you're honest with yourself and you have integrity in that process, you'll realize the emotional weight is a different story than what the facts are telling you. One more thing on tracking your numbers. Guys, don't don't just track your numbers when you're struggling to pull you out of the rut and then you stop tracking your numbers when you think you're good. It's as if not more important to track your numbers when you are having success as well, because now you know why you're having success. And now you can be able to duplicate and teach other peoples and pull other peoples out of the rut with examples of exactly the recipe you're laying out that's working. Yeah, there's a reason why top ranked coaches, whether it's NCAA or in the pros, they have so many scouts. They have so many statisticians taking stats on everything because they know activity equals results. A hundred percent. And they can unemotionalize them when people are going through struggle. So, number one, know your numbers. What's another way, man, we can fix this? Another one is pretty cool. And this this helped me so much, but it may be new to some people, but it's segmenting your presentation. And this is a this is a mindset activity. I've had conversations with agents all the time. And, you know, when they are feeling this way, they're feeling this anxiety. They're feeling this panic selling and they just they'll do anything. They'll try anything. But they just need to have this result like now, you know. And we have to we have to we have to wait a second and say, OK, what is our number one goal when we're knocking on a door or when we're calling? Oh, it's to get the cell, right? No, not not exactly. Our number one goal is for one, them to answer. OK, so when I talk about breaking down and segmenting your presentation is the the sales process and the whole idea and the psychology behind the cell is we want to move people to a better position. Right. And by doing that, there's these little stops along the way that we have to get there, meaning if they don't know who I am, who am I, Matt, or I'm never knocking the door, never make that phone call. I can't get them to sign the policy at the end. So it's all in an order that one has to happen before the next one can happen and so on. We can't skip and jump around. So if your mindset is already at the very end and to be honest, it's already past the close. You're looking two or three days later, a week later, a month later at the at the income hitting the bank account. We are so far beyond where we're supposed to be even before we knock on this door or we dial this one phone number. So we have to reel that thing back in and we have to segment the cell just to give you kind of an example, like how we would do this. Number one is the first one is to answer the door or to get them to answer the phone. So if you think about that is your number one goal, that's all that matters. If they don't do that, we don't care how good you are at closing. It's not going to happen. It's not you're not going to have a chance to close, right? That's right. So if we do that, we can actually train and implement strategies and we can actually diagnose the part of our sales process that we need to get better at. We now we need to focus on how do we get better at door knocking? How do we get better at routing our leads? How do we get better at calling or strategies to call on what time to call? Are we triple down? Are we double down? Are we leaving voicemails? Are we calling a segment of the leads and then completely exhausting all those and then pulling another segment? Are we calling all 200 in one in a row? We can implement strategies to make that more efficient to a accomplished number one goal. Again, it's not to get a commission yet. It's it's to literally to answer the phone or the door. That's right. The second one is very simple. Once they answer the phone, what's our next goal? It's not to sell a policy. It's not to close. It's not to see what they even qualify for at this point. It's literally for the introduction to gain access or we want to say set the hook. It's to be able to stay stay on the phone for that 15 to 30 seconds to get that initial surprise shock. Who is this? Who are you with? Why are you here to get that portion out of the way to now? We've earned the right to stay on the phone. We literally have bought time to stay on the phone or we've done our door knock and now we've got our stuff and now we're coming into the home. That's right. We've gained access. We've gained entry. That's all that matters at that point. So we can't close unless we have that opportunity to have a conversation with them. Zach, this reminds me right now we're in the middle of the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs, a couple of games left, three or four games left. And as you know, my wife is a avid hockey fan. And so hockey's been on. I think they're playing again tonight. Adam's going to be watching his teams out, our teams out. But we're watching we're watching the Florida Panthers right now play Edmonton. Florida had Edmonton down three nothing in the series. They only need to win one more game. Edmonton smoked them in the fourth game like six. What was it? Eight, eight, eight, one. They were up six nothing at one point, I believe, or six. I was crazy. I just blew them out like they thought their goalie was unshakable, like a wall. And they shook this guy's confidence. They pulled the goalie, put in their backup goalie. And their coach is a young coach. He's he's not. You know, he was drafted originally for the Islanders back in like 97. I believe he's now the coach. Chris Knobloch for Edmonton and his conversation with his team. When you're down three nothing, man, and you haven't won a Stanley Cup in Canada for I don't know how many years. Canada's brought Cup home, so to speak. And of course, Edmonton has got pedigree with Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier. Like, I mean, big pedigree there. And they're down three games and nothing. They're not focused on winning the Stanley Cup. His message to his team is we need to win one game. We need to play our best game. I don't want you to think about anything else. We need to win one game. Yep. Then if we can win that game, then we focus on one more game because you can't get to the end without getting to this next part of the process. So it's the same concept in basketball. Segmenting the segment. If you ever watch basketball, when when coaches call timeouts, when momentum's shifting, their goal is how do we win the next two minutes? Like they literally tell the players it's zero zero. How do we win the next two minutes? This is what we need to do. And that's to gain momentum, to game edge, to build confidence. But they do that with quarters. They do that with all kinds of things because it's not about that. And this is the same concept, you know, you know, as as you segment that cell and you could take the time to figure out every sales process, every section of your presentation that you need to segment in your goals to do everything you can to get as good and as sharp as you can to move to the next section. And while you're doing that, you're becoming really darn good at this. That's right. That's right. One final thing. So we're focused on the numbers to unemotionalize the the the feels. Yep. We're segmenting the presentation. What's the last one? The last one is this is this is really cool. I love this. The win is the activity like we need confidence. We're trying to build confidence. Confidence is the memory of success. But the success is whatever we deem it to be. OK, it's whatever we feel good about it. For example, some some kids, you know, their success is to or if you've let's just say you've had a knee surgery like Chris, his first success is to be able to to get out of bed and walk to the bathroom. Like that's a win, right? That's right. The win isn't to run his first marathon. Right. Right. That's the win. So whatever we get to deem it, the problem is, is us as agents. And when we are desperate, we accidentally put success so high for us that the success before we make a dial is the commission that before we ever even come to one training or even onboarding or even fill out our first contract, we're trying to make six figures before we've done a thing. Right. So we have to understand that. And we have to realize that the sales success or the results or the commission, it is what it is. It is the result. It's the result of what activity, the activity and the mindset. The activity is actually the win. So the win is the number of dials you accomplish. Like you high five that win is the number of successful segments you can get through. Exactly. Getting people to answer the phone. The number of segments you can get through of keeping people on the phone for that 90 seconds. Exactly. Right. To have the conversation. If you can imagine creating a poster board and putting all of your sections that you need to accomplish. And as you're dialing and going through and you just tally mark, however far you got, my goal is literally now my goal is to get, you know, I got all these people connecting. I'm good at that now. How many how many of those can I get in that first 15 to 30 seconds? How many can I get in there as I continue to progress every day? That sheet fills up. And as a result of that activity and that mindset, the the commission is going to come if you have everything prioritized the right way. Sometimes we're focusing on the result. Again, we're focusing on the full win of the Stanley Cup. And it seems so far away, we can't get there. And if we put our result on the activity and again, it removes the emotional the emotional weight of it and get you into a place of what Zach referred to earlier is in a place of emotional intelligence, knowing that your feelings are liars. Yes. Your feelings will lie to you. Your emotions will lie and they will tell you an untruth sometimes. Yeah. And when you go back and look at the numbers, when you go back and focus on winning at parts of your presentation and you put the focus on the activity and the wins of accomplishing the activity, you you take out the emotional weight, the roller coaster, and you can get you back, get yourself back to a level playing field and start. And I have I have two mind hacks I'd like to share, because these are things that I've personally done to check myself. And these are things that you wreck yourself. That's right. But I've also have I've taught this to many agents and it's worked right. Number one thing is take today and I'll tell you this. I'll say you say you're my you're my agent, Roger. Roger, I don't want you to sell anything the rest of the day. I don't care if you sell one policy. I don't even want you to try. I don't want you to sell anything. But I want what I want you to do is I want you to commit to segmenting your presentation. And first of all, let's do let's just can you promise me to give me the best activity and try to see as many people as you can get on the phone? That's all I want you to do. And then I want you to see how many people you can actually keep on the phone. And then I want you to develop the best relationship that you've developed with anybody. I want you to actually listen. I want them to hear that you're a real person. I want them to hear your heart and that you care. And then I want you to educate them. And I want them to know that they've probably never been educated or taught their entire life about insurance. They probably only have some mixed concept from commercials and flyers of what insurance is. The least you can do, Roger, and I don't want you to sell anything. The least you can do is teach them on the differences and really educate them, figure out what they need for the family and just give them advice. Right. Yeah. If you do those things, you might accidentally sell a few policies today. But I don't want you to. OK. Right. If you have to write them, write the apps. But I want your goal today to just do that and use today as a training day, use today as practice. So go ahead and remove that pressure of trying to put a result or get up that leaderboard. Just do these things to get better. I'm not worried about the sales. That's number one. You got another one. I do. OK. The second one, because that that again, that removes the pressure going. He's like a spin wheel that removes the pressure. Right. So that like, OK, I can take a breath. I remove the expectations from everybody else because we put pressure on ourselves that tries to make us collapse. Now we need to fix their tone and their mindset and their energy. So I tell them this. Everybody has financial pressure. Everybody could use some money. So I'll say again, I'll say, you know, Roger, what if OK, this is a good one, by the way, just just play this is a good one right here. What if your wife, Rose, calls you up right now in full tears and says, Roger, we just got to check for three hundred thousand dollars in the mail. Now, the first thing your mind's going to do is say, is it legit? What strings attach? What do we sign up for? Do we have to owe it back? Is there an interest rate? Let's just pretend it's all checked out and it's legit, free and clear. No taxes coming out of it. You got to check for three hundred thousand. I want to know why she's crying out of joy. Probably out of joy, out of joy and excitement. Right. You again, Roger, you're a brand new agent. So you're you're you're stressed. Imagine this when you when you first moved to the States doing this. And, you know, yeah, that would have been huge. Right. It can it can literally pay off bills. It can change your life. It will do everything right. And it's not much, but it buys you time and release pressure. Yes. So if that happened, how would you feel amongst your coworkers in your office or even, you know, going out to homes? How would you feel with your energy? Right. Your energy is big. Would you be in a negative attitude or would you be in a really positive? You've got that big, big energy, big energy, right? You get you get you get big energy, right? You're going to be excited. You're going to you're going to you're going to talk different to your kids. You're going to talk different to your coworkers. You got swagger. You do. But like you are, if you're walking through the grocery store, you probably may wave to somebody or say, have a good day. Like you're going to buy the cherries when they're six ninety nine a pound and not wait for them to go to two ninety nine a pound. Yes, you are. But what do you think your energy and your aura and your persona, everything you put off, your your energy to the world and universe is going to be different. Your tone is different. It's positive. It's excited. It's like you have the best news in the world to tell somebody. Now, I want you to imagine that capture that. You know what that sounds. You know what that feels like, because this is this is real money to your family. Now, how do you like how do you think that would sound if you called your next five clients or knocked on those next five doors? Do you think it would matter if one or two of them? Yeah. How would you sound? What would your energy be like? What would it sound like when you started teaching them about the different types of insurance or maybe the the ability to listen and hear about their family? How would that sound? Would you connect with them better? Would they just love that positive energy and they enjoy talking to you? Right now, think about think about what your last five calls or your last five door knocks sound like or felt like. And I probably wasn't that same energy. The whole idea behind this is to trick your mind and just for an instant to say you have that energy. You are that positive influence. If we're serving the final expense market, right? If you're serving mortgage protection, whatever market you're serving, these people need this. They probably are. Your body's probably not the best shape they've ever been in. They probably are more medications. They probably don't feel the best. Do you think it's really fair that their job is to a buy a policy so that we feel good and we have energy and we spread good vibes to our neighbors and friends? No. Our job is to take that energy that you just got from that phone call from Rose, take that into every phone call to every sit that you have. You're being that positive influence. You're being that beacon of hope. You're being that light in their life. That wow, when Adam called, it really changed my life because of his energy, because the way he connected, because he cared. That's what we need to give them. They don't need to give that to us based upon if they buy a policy or not or hang up on us or cancel a policy. Right. We need to be that. And if we can capture that moment, even if you have to trick yourself for doing this for two minutes before you make a phone call, that's the that's what we need to give our clients. And the result from that will change your life. Two sales hacks, guys, that Jack just went over with you is don't sell anything. Number one. Number two, you just want a million dollars. That's exactly right. If you have that approach, everything's going to turn around because your attitude, your approach is different. So do you have commission breath? Do you now know where it comes from? Do you know what it is and how stanky it is? Because it reeks. You don't want it. It comes from poor planning. Sometimes it comes from unintentional absences. It comes from jumping out of your system, not knowing your numbers, getting out of your good habits, developing bad ones. But you know that you can fix it. Know your number, segment your presentation, focus on the activity because the win is the activity. And there's a couple of hacks there we left you with. Yeah, I think this was a good episode. If people really took this and digested it. This is a great this is a great episode for basically all agents because everyone's going to go through these struggles. And when they do, this is a this is a great, great content piece. So we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did sharing it with you. And we'll see you next time on the Life Insurance Academy podcast.