Concentrate on One Room at a Time

David, a multi-line insurance agent in the northern part of Texas, had the worst sales record for life insurance in his agency.

“I want to do better,”?he told me during our first coaching session,?“but I guess I’m just not very good at prospecting.”

I asked David if he had ever talked with his more than 600 property and casualty clients about life insurance, and he told me that he had not.

"Is there a reason you haven't?" I asked him.

"I guess I just never thought of it," he replied.“As a matter of fact, there’s an agent in our office who does a tremendous amount of life insurance business from doing just that, using one of our company’s standard letters.”

“How about sending just 20 of those letters a week, starting tomorrow?”?I suggested, and he agreed to do it — just like that!

David?had been?looking at the huge mountain he’d have to climb to become one of the better life insurance producers--thinking of all the prospecting he'd have to do--and was so overwhelmed that he couldn’t think of a simple way to do it.?

If you’re trying to climb Mt. Everest for the first time, standing at its base looking up at the peak might be so daunting that you can’t move.?But if the goal for today is to travel a few hundred yards, and you have a similar?goal tomorrow and the next day, there’s a chance you’ll be at Base Camp One before you realize how far you’ve traveled.

David had a different analogy.?He laughed about the parallel to a conversation he had just had with his wife this past weekend:

“My wife was feeling overwhelmed about doing spring cleaning. I told her not to look at the whole house, but just to concentrate on one room until it’s done, and then move on to the next one–and that made her feel much better.”

One of my jobs as a coach is to help you see simpler and more effective ways to do your work so it isn't overwhelming, but you’ll need to do one thing to have that conversation–message me to get on my calendar.

?In the meantime,?keep?REACHING…?