Final Expense Sales: How Michael In Tennessee Sold $13,500 in Final Expense Business in One Week

(Re-posted from Final Expense Agent Mentor.)

Today I am doing a mini-interview with my wonderful agent, Michael, out of Tennessee and if you've heard his other interview I've done, which was about cross-selling on a Medicare book of business, you’ll remember Michael's been working with me for a year and last week he actually had the highest grossing production week of his entire career.  What I wanted to do is bring Michael on to explain how much he sold, how did he do it and then tie that into the bigger picture of how he got to this point with even just a little under a year's experience.  

Why don't you go ahead and tell everybody how much production you did last week-- I'll let you go ahead and share it.

Last week was great, we ended up getting $13,500 in annual production for the week and that was working Monday-Saturday.  At the end of Friday, I was already to $11,900 and then kept it up on Saturday and got it up to $13,500.  I don't always work 6 days, but I chose to this week because I was going so good, kept going that way.  I think I ran 37 appointments and ended up with 19 apps out of that process.  It was great.  

You're telling me that with just one year's experience, you sold $13,500 premium in one week?

Yup, it was a great week.

Selling a bunch of old grandmas and grandpas a burial policy, right?  Because I'm sure the people on the call are listening to this thinking, "How is that even possible, to sell low income people that much coverage?"  But you did.  You weren't selling anything else other than burial insurance, right?

That's right.  Burial insurance and several lower premiums and then there were, of course, some nicer premiums in there, but none of them exceeded $130.  The average one was probably just like always $40 or $50, with a few extras in there with it that just-- sometimes you learn the stars line up.  I could have another 37 appointments this week and not have that happen; however, it is possible.

Building on what you said there, Michael, you did 37 appointments; how many actually showed up?  You set 37, how many did you actually sit down with?

I think that is probably how many I sat down with.  We probably set 45 and with typical no-shows 37 is how many I actually sat down with.

That's a good number.  So out of 37, you closed basically half of them-- a little more than half, about 19.  Doing the math roughly there, as you said, you're looking at about a $650-$700 case size average just, again, it's not like you wrote $5K, $6K, $7K premiums-- you had a bunch of normal deals.  This is all bread and butter business that we all run into that have been in this business long enough.  Again, this is a testament to somebody who's gone out there, worked the system, and leveraged it to the point of just working their butts off to get to this point.  This is all typical stuff, is what it sounds like to me.  There's no magic involved here or some big grand slam, this is all bread and butter business, right Michael?

Yeah.  Like I said, no policy was greater than $130.  This isn't figuring in some big annuity or something crazy in there with it, it was just plain, basic, final expense life insurance and a couple of the hundred-dollar range, but the rest is just what you see day-to-day and just really forcing a sale to do that and to kind of my head around how that's possible and starting to realize some of the steps it takes to get to this point and running some averages over the last few weeks, of course not all weeks are this good, but my numbers went way up overall.  My average basis of this week gave me another realization that it really works.  Some of it goes against your intellect, but once you see it, it's an eye-opener.  I  mean, I'm no whiz-kid-- I'm just following the system and realizing a few key elements that go against your natural reaction.

My tonality here on the interview kind of sounds like I'm skeptical-- I'm not purposely sounding like that because I'm thinking of the guys listening to this thinking, "How does a guy get to this point?"   I know what it takes, it's just a numbers game, but it's amazing when you hear it from somebody else who has obviously thought through this and questioned whether it was possible to do it or not and has done it, which kind of leads me back to what I was saying-- if you were talking to somebody who was looking on the outside in, maybe thinking about getting involved in this business, how would you explain to them how this is even possible?  I mean, how can someone do 37 appointments in a week, sell more insurance than most agents will ever sell-- not just in a month, but sometimes even 3 months if they're actively producing-- how is this even possible?

Well I think the key issue is, in this vocation, when I first came into this I wasn't in a position to be buying leads or Medicare appointments and got myself going and started with what I could afford, lead-wise with mailers, and started putting back a little bit to where I could increase if I could get my confidence up and so I had had a couple of bad weeks-- when I say bad, I mean I made money but I didn't do great-- so I'm sitting there thinking, "OK, I realize now this a numbers game, what do I need to do?"  So I had this thought and I talked to David and he said, "Just see more people."  Seeing more people means getting more money and I'm going, "OK, now leads means this much off of 20 leads," you know, your intellect is, "I don't know-- that's a high amount of money to spending for that much return," but then I realized it's a numbers game.  What I did is I went against my regular limits, or when most people would draw back or, "Let's wait a little longer before we order more."  Basically, I just said, "I'm going to give this all I have," and so I said, "Here-- send me 40 leads," and I just took a leap of faith.  I said, "Send me more leads, I'm going to do this," and the difference between that was just phenomenal because sure, that first week you feel tense and everything and then you start seeing the return and it's a huge eye-opener-- not to mention the compounding effect.  It's a numbers game, so when I say compounding effect, I mean after a couple of weeks of ordering a large amount of leads, you're going to start to glean appointments off the ones that couldn't see you last week-- you know, "Grandma's sick and we have to wait until next week."  When we start adding all those together and you start seeing more people and then it's just great the way it works because you basically have to-- there's no magic bullet-- you just have to spend the money to make it and be willing to work and follow the system.  That's actually it.  When I saw that the more I spent, the more I made, the better off it turned out to be.  And I'll say this-- you can't just buy the leads and stay at the house.  You've got to go work and see your people and I just got in a process where I could identify a qualified prospect and if they weren't that person, I'd move on to the next one and just keep going.

Now wait a minute-- let me just ask you this: are you telling me that what you do to get 39 appointments is no different than what it would take to get 10 or 15?  I mean, the selling process, the appointment-setting process-- is there really anything that you're doing differently, except just seeing more people?

No, not at all.  I mean, you can tell from listening to me-- I'm no genius, I'm just following the rules.  What it is is seeing more people and I was trying to figure out-- OK, so I took this leap of faith, I've ordered these leads, I'm going, "David, how am I going to see this many people?"  And he explained to me the key element that what we're doing is we're setting appointments to where the customer has a two-hour window that we're going to be there and on my schedule for that day I've got them set for only an hour, but the customer has a two-hour window, and so I'm able to get in there, get on with my warm-up, which is very little, get to the point and if they're not qualified I'm up and out there to the next place.  Or if there's a no-show, I'm off to the next place.  Or if you get in the house and there's two people there, a couple or something, I can take more time and get the deal done and that's how I'm able to see more people.  It actually gives you more energy, thank God.  It's a lot of work and at the end of the week you do feel some fatigue, obviously, but it gives you energy when you start having success and production and not any one appointment matters so much when you're seeing so many people-- that's another key.  You can do it and I'll add this while I'm on the topic, if you can figure out-- we all have the natural reaction of negativity when we don't get the sale or somebody can't afford it or I've had three in a row that aren't there-- if a person can just shut the door on those emotions and say, "This is a numbers game. I'm going to close the door on emotions, I'm going to light a fire in my sneakers and I'm gonna go see people," and that's all I've done.  I've done nothing but see people and try to maintain a positive attitude and I took that leap, so it's wonderful.

Thanks for that, because as I’m listening here, if I could summarize, basically, what you're saying, it's interesting because what you're doing is no different from what a skilled guy does who does half of the leads-- there's a few scheduling differences that kind of make it a little bit more optimal, but that's the major thing.  The one thing that does change to get to that level of production is a mentality shift and I preach this and I wonder if it makes an impact.  It does more so with the guys who've been in the business for several years or longer is that it's all a mental game; it's all what's going on inside of your head and that's the realization I led myself to believe is that I'm my own worst enemy-- we all are our own worst enemies.  

This business is simple, it's not easy and the big reason it's not easy is because sometimes we are the ones who cause the biggest obstacles to happen and if the audience is listening closely to this entire interview, what really has gotten Michael to this level is overcoming some obstacles in his mind he, maybe, didn't know he had or maybe that were there that were natural elements that cause resistance-- the fear of losing when they invest in a program.  Even though he had success, there was still that kind of resistance, right?  I mean, that's natural to have, but overcoming that and seeing it and taking a leap of faith is what everybody has to do to some level in any business capacity.  

I knew it looking in; I know Michael is an excellent agent.  It just took a little bit of persuasion and encouragement to say, "Hey listen, there's nothing different than going from 20 leads a week to 40 leads a week, except that you're seeing more people and you're doing more activity.  All you need to do is overcome that initial resistance and then believe in yourself to take the leap."  And that's kind of the reason I wanted to record this, is because what I train my agents to do is once they dial into the program, once they know they've got confidence and skill level, I want them to leverage it up to the level they want to, because once they see themselves succeeding and they're out there seeing results, it's easier to convince them that this business is simple and if you want to make more than what you're doing, then all you need to do is just do more of it and take that jump and that belief in yourself to make it happen.

I think that if a person wants to give themselves a little more security-- I mean, if you can't plug into what we've got going here, maybe it's not right for you.  Everybody chooses their own level of work, of course, but if you're considering dialing up or amping up your volume of leads or anything of that nature, what I'm getting at here is would you be willing to spend twice the money to make up to four times your return and really all you have to do is get in your car, drive to an appointment and if you're stumped, you've got a guy that's going to answer the phone and tell you what to do.  I mean, how do you beat that?  In other words, it doesn't take a rocket scientist; you just go and do the steps, if you get stuck call David or whoever is helping you and that's all I did, and they'll walk you through it and it's not like you're out there on your own trying to make it.  I'm getting to where I call in less and less but I had to call in before securing that for even-- you put an investment there, but you've got a whole lot of support holding you up, that just basically what it boils down to.

In this business, you've got to learn to walk before you learn to run and Michael took the time to learn the carriers, to interact with me to help him learn faster, but then also get the street experience working leads and then once he became comfortable, that's when the real large level of incomes can be achieved form dialing in and leveraging the kind of resources we have available to get to the level Michael has.  It's all something that everybody can do if they believe in themselves and they have the capability.  

It took me several years to do what Michael's doing because I am my own worst enemy. I am a tweaker and an engineer by personality; I always try to see if I can do something better than the system.  But what I've always learned, even to this day, is I always go back to fundamentals-- fundamentals are what matter in business and in sports, just the same, and the guys that play the fundamentals always are the ones that succeed over the long term.  Again, the final expense business is a business that's been around a long time, it's been vetted.  We know what works and all it takes is somebody that has the personal discipline to overcome fear or personal obstacles and to commit to the system to get the kind of success that they want and that's probably the biggest impediment that I see amongst my agents is the fear of investing, the fear of taking a risk, because that's what you do have to take.  

There's no guarantees.  You may fail out in this business, but then again, you may never realize your full potential if you never strive to get beyond the self-inflicted shackles that you put on yourself.  In conclusion, the point of this is just to share this success story that Michael has gone through over this last year of going from not having money to buy leads to working his existing book to basically being in the top 5% of final expense agents. Michael has done nothing unique, in the sense that he's not doing anything different than any other final expense agent has done.  All that he has done that is special is that, if you will, is the X factor or the magical bullet here, is that Michael has the discipline to commit to the system and has a little bit of hutzpuh, a little bit of balls, to take the jump when necessary to push himself to the next level and that is what it takes, really, to succeed. Michael, do you have any last words?

One final word: don't over-analyze any one day, any one lead.  I remember early on analyzing the leads and analyzing over appointments, got all tangled up and looked back and that same set of leads I was analyzing ended up selling 3 or 4 more 3 weeks later, so you've got to remember it's not, "Here's what I made," there's a compounding effect that takes place when you're buying leads that you're going to get a certain percentage from last week and last month, even times.  Don't analyze yourself to death, just make the step to do the system.  That's the only thing left that I have to say.  I appreciate David for what he's done, I couldn't have done it without him-- that's for sure.  

You're welcome, Michael and thank you for your business and that last little bit there is the biggest gold nugget anybody could dig up.  This business is so simple, it's hard and you don't understand it until you really work it and you start having the internal battles of, "Is this the right lead?  Am I working with the right people?  Is this area good for final expense?  Is it bad?"  And that inner battle is what's going to create the conflict that causes doubt, which ultimately crushes a lot of people in this business, really, before they're able to take it to the next level and succeed to what they're capable of doing.  Again, paralysis by analysis-- that's the internal struggle that I talk about and reference that you have to become dominant over, because if you allow it to spin out of control, then that's what creates losers in the final expense business.  It creates a situation where people give up on themselves, which is the #1 reason people quit this business; because they believe that they can't do it.  It's not the leads, it's not the people they see, it's they quit themselves and then they eventually quit altogether.  Michael, thank you so much for your time, again, as always.  I know lots of people will find this very intriguing and definitely motivating, to see what is possible if one only commits to a vetted lead system and sales approach to final expense.  The sky truly is the limit to those guys that are all in on it.