When you get into this crazy business of final expense life insurance sales you step away from the apparent safety and security of a regular job and you bet your entire financial future on your ability to be able to make it in commission sales. Well, at least from the perspective of the independent life agent. If you are a captive agent or you work for an organization that provides a base salary plus commission it may feel little different but in all reality you are still on full commission. You are still on full commission because if you don’t perform and produce enough revenue to cover your salary, your expenses and at least a small profit for the company you will still find yourself without of a job not after long. It’s a tough gig sometimes and you really begin to question yourself and your career choice as you try to manage the emotional ups and downs of inconsistent production weeks and seemingly endless obstacles to your success. It’s almost as if you need a supporting cast around you just to help you manage. Now, I’m not suggesting an MC Hammer type of entourage ( although that might be fun for a while just to see what it’s like, until they take your house ) but at least a group of people that help you out and keep you straight. So it may be advisable to hire some people to put around you to give you the best shot at success.
So, here are my recommendations on the first five people you should consider hiring in your final expense business:
A Motivational Speaker
When your cruising down an old road filled with potholes, sometimes scattered debris, a crushed beer can or two and two exits past nowhere, well, congratulations you have experienced “Final Expense Land”. This journey can easily allow negative thoughts and lack of confidence to creep in your mind. You are in a car alone and adjusting your hand on the wheel every five minutes thinking to yourself “What am I really doing here?” All you see out of your car windows are fields, crops, trees and many times just a bunch of nothing. During this time, your mind can wander because you have so much time to think and process. This happens to all of us no matter if you’re the number one producer in your organization or the new guy full of pressure and concern.
So the first person you should hire, is a motivational speaker. The motivational speaker will get you in the right mindset to give your client the best version of you. This person can give you the pep talk, the perspective and the energy to give it everything you have all week and the right mindset to manage the negatives your brain wants to tell you. A good motivational speaker will help you get your swag on!
Your Mother
Whether you are leaving a sit covered in second hand smoke or doing the walk of shame after leaving a scheduled appointment, which I like to call a “disappointment”. You may need to cool off! You may need to hit the reset button.
The second hire of your business would be your Mother (or at least someone’s mother, who will listen to you). You need someone who will let you vent and get all that anger and disappointment out. A mother would provide the words of reassurance you need and the courage and confidence that you would lack in that moment. She is someone who would let you know that it has happened to all of us. She will be there to help you relax and remind you of “WHY” are are there and remind you that you are the best thing that’s going to happen to the people and families that you visit today.
A Life Coach (or a Drug Dealer…just kidding or maybe I’m not)
Waking up to notifications that you have a few new emails from insurance companies, and cringing and holding your breath in hopes that these are not charge backs, just doesn’t feel good. We all know in life that “s*&%” happens. We are all human and even though we might not believe it sometimes, life happens to our clients as well. And sometimes you do get a charge back. And sometimes they don’t make their payment and sometimes they just change their mind. It’s just the way it is. It’s going to happen.
So, the third person that you should hire is a drug dealer, I mean life coach. He will give you what you need to make you smile and get your mindset back on track to start your day off right. A life coach will pick you up when you are down, and pull you back to earth when your head turns into a hot air balloon after a big production week. A life coach can talk you off the ledge sometimes and let you know the only thing you can do is your best and to go out and serve more families. It’s all a part of this game that we play called “sales”. Having someone there to help you zoom out of the narrow minded negative focus of that one small little charge back, to look at your entire body of work for the current week or month is super important. A good life coach can help you focus on what you need to do in order to grow past these things, manage your emotions and the way you process these things. And he or she can help you develop into the person and leader you aspire to be in spite of the opposition and in most cases because of it.
A Doctor
When we visit our family over the holidays we are able to see changes with members of our family that we haven’t seen in a while. You notice that people are aging, kids are growing up, and some of us unfortunately are putting on a little extra weight. The ones that see us everyday don’t really see these differences, because they are slow subtle changes. But over time these changes make a big difference. This is the same concept that we also witness in sales. You can begin to figure this business out and start producing at a high rate and you can get into a rhythm and become confident and comfortable with your process. This however sometimes can lead to complacency and laziness. You slowly start making minor changes and taking little shortcuts that are hardly noticeable at first. But the next thing you know is that you hit a wall. You now find yourself in a slump and you may wonder what happened and begin to blame everything and everyone. The truth is that you have slowly deviated so far from the system and the fundamentals of the sales process and what actually created your success in the first place.
That is why the fourth person you need to hire is a Doctor. Having a doctor to look at your symptoms and diagnose the problem you have and prescribe a solution is extremely important and even life or career saving. You need a set of fresh set of eyes to identify where you started taking shortcuts. You need someone trusted, who knows your sales system. You need someone who can see where you have gotten off the tracks. Maybe even someone who can jump in the car with you to see what’s happening. You need someone who can give you a “how ya doing”. We all know how upfront and straight forward doctors can be. Good ones usually just tell it like it is. They are not worried about your emotions so much as correcting the problem. If you listen to his or her diagnosis and take immediate action the advice prescribed, before you know it you are back on track, your system is working again and you are back to reaching your sales and production goals.
A Travel Agent or Entertainment Coordinator
You know how you always look forward to a trip out of town or that vacation you’ve planned? It’s interesting how the anticipation and just knowing that you are going somewhere makes everything you do leading up to that much easier. Its like you have an extra pep in your step. We all love to get away right? In sales we can easily get caught up in the daily grind and live and die with every sales appointment. Sometimes we can get consumed with our results or some of the “No’s” we get or the bills we have to pay at home. Have you ever considered how valuable it is throughout your work week to also have a mental break? … to have things that you look forward to, even if it is just a 10 min break in the middle of your day or some time for laughs over dinner.
Hiring a travel agent or entertainment co-ordinator as the fourth member of your entourage team will help you solve a lot of these issues. You need someone to give you the mental escape to be able to talk about life, family or literally anything else but sales sometimes. You need someone to recommend a place for lunch and meet you there or recommend and catch a movie with you or to go to a local sports event. Sometimes its just good to have someone make dinner arrangements for you and the rest of the sales team when you are on the road so you don’t have to worry about that. It’s great to have someone you can simply take a mental vacation with over cheese sticks and fries at Buffalo Wild Wings as you laugh about each other’s day in order to return to work refreshed and rejuvenated the next day. That’s why a travel agent or entertainment coordinator is so important. They can get these things done for you. They are worth more than you realize. I highly recommend you hire one.
How Can You Afford to do This?
So, you’re thinking “How in the world can I afford to hire my own doctor or travel agent?” You certainly might not want to or even consider hiring your own mother or actually going to a life coach for help. (I don’t even know any life coaches or if that’s even really a legitimate thing… or are they just people who want to make an easy buck telling other people how to live while they are trying to figure out their own life?)
I hope its evident I’m being tongue in cheek with my hiring recommendations (especially with that drug dealer implication). But what if I told you that you could hire all of these professionals at once? One good hire could do the job of all of them. One person could get the job of all these people done for you if you look in the right place. Instead of forking over thousands for these professional services with multiple people, you could accomplish this with one good person. And that person is somebody that I like to call a Running Buddy!
A Running Buddy
A running buddy is the motivational speaker you need to get you going. A running buddy is the mother to vent to when you need advice or just support. A running buddy would be the life coach to help you with the ups and downs of the emotional and mental battles and a person who could pop your ego balloon when necessary. That person could also be your doctor, recognizing your symptoms and diagnosing your problems before they cause lasting damage. They are the travel agent or entertainment coordinator that understands you well enough over time to know when you need a break to clear your mind or just the right place to eat for dinner. A good running buddy is a friendship that develops over time with trust and mutual support in a common cause. There are plenty of good ones out there that are also looking for the same thing. In our industry they are sometimes hard to recognize, but they are out there. Be selective and intentional and be someone who others would like to have as their running buddy. It makes finding one easier.
And here’s another thought, a running buddy doesn’t have to be only one person. It could be a support team of running buddies or a network of others in the same business with you, that run the roads with you, that deal with the same issues day in and day out that you do, that have a mutual understanding of the challenges of our industry and they understand that we are all each other’s running buddies. These are people who know the business, that have been through ups and downs just like you and have proven themselves. These are people you can trust and depend on. They are people that leave others better off when they leave than when they found them. They build up. They do not tear down. They encourage and challenge you to be better. As my close friend and one of my own running buddies, Mark says, “These are the people that you can depend on if you were ever to find yourself in a fox hole together. You know that you would have each other’s back.”
Find yourself a great running buddy or a group of running buddies. It’s one of the most valuable and least expensive hires you can ever make. And besides who really wants to have to take their mother with them on the road every week. I mean I love my Mom and all ( and so did MC Hammer I’m pretty sure) but seriously!
