In this episode, I break down the 3 unconventional sales rules that have generated millions for my company.

You’ll learn why your goal is a clear decision (not just a “yes”), why the follow-up is 100% your responsibility, and why your first job is to disqualify prospects. This is the new rulebook for advisors who are ready to get real results.

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Video Transcript:

This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.

But I will tell you, these three tips have changed my life and I know they can do the same for you. You might mindset.

Hey, hey, welcome back to the podcast Andy Neary here. Today we’re going to talk about uncommon sales tips that lead to unmatched sales results. I’m going to share a couple sales tips I don’t think we often share with insurance professionals. That have definitely had a big impact on my sales career, especially in the last five years. And I wanted to use an episode to walk through a three of these tips that I think are going to have a profound impact on your sales career.

Now, if you’re one of my listeners who is absolutely killing it, maybe these tips can help take your sales to the next level. But if you’re struggling right now and you need it, you’re looking for a win or two. I want you to really start thinking about how you can leverage some of these uncommon tips to your advantage.

Now, I hate to tell you these aren’t going to create overnight wins. That’s not what this is about. But I do want to give you some tips that I’ve been given over the last few years that have had a profound impact on my sales career, and I’ll share that straight. As an insurance producer, when I was selling commercial and health insurance, I was good, but I probably wasn’t great.

I would not define myself as a great sales professional. I got the job done, I hit my sales goals. But it was when I leaned into starting complete game consulting and I had to sell something. Otherwise this company wouldn’t survive where my sales acumen really started to take off and I share that. Not to brag, I share that because if you feel like you weren’t born to sell, I’m here to tell you you’re not alone.

Most people, most insurance producers, are not born to sell. They find themselves in a production position. But these tips I share today, I think are going to have a great impact on your sales success if you’re willing to leverage that, move forward, because I know they have for me, you know, just to give you a little a little advantage, a little viewpoint.

Over the years, we have sold, you know, I look at my sales success. It’s been in the seven figures over the last 2 to 3 years. And it’s, again, not because of anything, you know, any, any, gift I have for sales. It’s because I’m applying some of these tips or some of these things that I was never taught, at least not in the insurance industry, maybe taught by mentors from other industries that have had a very, very, very big impact on our sales success.

Because with our company, we are not as recurring heavy as selling insurance might be. Right? One of the advantages in the insurance industry when you’re selling insurance is it’s very recurring. How do I, I want to say is it’s lucrative from a recurring standpoint because you build a book, they’re paying their premiums every month as they pay their premiums.

You’re getting paid commission or a consulting fee. And as long as they renew, you continue to get paid that commission. That is not how every one of our products works. A lot of our stuff is one time win, so we have to sell a lot of stuff every year to keep continuing to grow our company. So why do I want to share these tips today?

Because I see a lot of insurance producers stuck using outdated methods, and I am not going to go into the cold calling the cold emailing. But I do talk to sales leaders and executives of the top 100 agencies in the country every week. And the struggle is real, because the math is working against us more now than it ever has when it comes to getting in front of a prospect opening doors.

You know, I’ve talked about this at length. The biggest challenge I see in the industry today is not necessarily closing business. It’s I need to get more doors open and it’s not as easy as it used to be. We’re going to talk about that. But some of these uncommon tips I’m going to share today actually address how you push the right people across the finish line.

And what’s happening is we have a lot of producers right now who are creating inconsistent results. They’re frustrated, and sales leaders are frustrated because their pay and their bonuses and their their job, for that matter, rely on their producers hitting their goals. And so this is definitely an industry wide challenge that I want to talk about. And in order to, to to to get to the tips I want to share, I do want to address some things, though, from a sales mindset perspective that I think producers need to hear today.

Number one, you cannot have a fear of rejection. I see producers who are not selling because they’re afraid to hear no, I see producers not hitting their sales goals because they’re just not selling anything. If you go look at their calendar in a given week, especially if they’re managing a book of existing clients, the vast majority of their time every week is spent on managing the existing book.

It’s not on growing new revenue. I see a lot of agencies focusing on the wrong metrics. I have agencies that I know that measure their producer’s results and new accounts and or new revenue. They’re not measuring activity, they’re just measuring the result. That is a not only a quick path to failure, it is a very good way to have your producers ride this emotional roller coaster where you are constantly putting pressure on them for some kind of result, and you’re not even measuring how they get there.

We’re going to talk about that, and you have a lot of prospects caught in the may be zone. Go look at your pipeline right now. How many of your prospects have neither said yes or no? They’re just kind of in this maybe. And you have no idea where they are right now. You have no idea where they are in the decision making process.

We’re going to solve that today with these uncommon tips. And I say uncommon because if I look at most sales training in the industry today, they don’t talk about these things. You know, a lot of people like to pin us in the same bucket of sales training as maybe the Wedge Sandler training. And they’re all those are all good programs.

But I think what we’re doing is a bit different. I think what we’re creating is a hell of a recruiting and a retention tool for big agencies who are looking to make organic growth cool. Again, let’s be honest, for most agencies today, their only path to growth is to go buy a bunch of other people’s books. It’s all M&A, but if we can create organic growth again, we have a chance to not only recruit great producers who become successful, but then keep them.

But because we continue to supply them with the tools to help scale their sales. And that’s what I want to talk about today. So let’s just dive into three unconventional sales tips that most people in this industry will not teach you. First one is this if you believe in what you sell, if you believe what you sell can help others, you have an obligation to tell as many people as you possibly can, because if you do not, you are negating them from the chance to get the help they need.

I heard that spoken in a mastermind that I was a member of years ago from a mentor of mine, Chris Carter. As I was starting just starting to grow complete game consulting, he said that in one of our live sessions because he knew he had a bunch of entrepreneurs in the room who are trying to grow a business.

But a little has to be sales and growing their business. And he was very blunt with us. He said, listen, guys, if you’re going to grow your business, you got to tell as many people as you possibly can that you can help them. Your business is not going to grow by itself, nor are people just going to come to you by happenstance.

You have got to tell people. But guess what? Here’s the key. Guess what that comes with? You’re going to piss people off. You might come off party from time to time. Some people are going to think you’re too persistent to tell you to go away. Are you okay with getting those types of responses? Are you okay with people telling you to go away?

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And the same holds true for prospecting. The goal in prospecting is not appointments. In my perspective, the goal in prospecting is replies. So if you get it, no, it’s actually a small win because at least it was clear. So when you think about how you’re going to generate more leads, which is the biggest challenge we have today trying to get more At-Bats, you have to overcome or get past this belief that I don’t want to be pushy or salesy.

You’ve got to tell people you can help them, otherwise you are not going to generate leads. You know when we talk about creating your attention blueprint, what are you doing to put a message in front of as many people as you possibly can using channels like LinkedIn and public speaking and webinars and podcasting and all the stuff that allows you to distribute the stuff at scale.

The whole point is you got to tell a lot of people fast. You can help them. So the first uncommon tip nobody tells you is that if you believe in what you sell, you have an obligation to tell as many people as you possibly can. And it is absolutely okay to get a no. In fact, it’s a small win to get a no because at least they replied now, uncommon tip number two.

And this is big. If you own an agency, you’re an executive or a sales leader. Measure the activity. Don’t measure the result. I watch producers every year go through this emotional roller coaster. I used to go through it myself, and you’re oscillating between feeling like you’re on top of the world because you got an hour or two to wondering if you have what it takes to even succeed in this business, if you should even just you should just give it up and try something else.

And they do this month to month, and it’s all predicated on their sales success. And the only metric they’re using to measure that success is wins new revenue. If instead you measured the activity that goes into it, not the result, here’s what I believe happens. Number one, your self-esteem improves. Number two, your consistency improves. And as long as you stay consistent and persistent, week in, week out with the activity, sales results will take care of themselves.

And if they don’t, that means you’re targeting the wrong prospects or you have the wrong message. That’s simple. No tool you can fix, but you got to stop measuring just the results. I see sales is who only put the pressure on their producers to hit a certain sales goal, either new accounts or new revenue. There’s no blueprint to actually get there via activity, but they just apply pressure to these producers.

They hit these goals. This is why your producers come in every day stressed out. This is why you’re a producers attack every win as a must win. And it’s why they’re pushing prospects away or why they’re talking to disqualified prospects because they’re just trying to get any kind of win. If you instead measure the activity, what your producers or you if you are a producer, what you’re doing a rake with calls, emails, networking, the centers of influence, asking for referrals, activity on social media like LinkedIn.

If you just measure that, I promise the sales results will take care of themselves. Winning in sales is not sexy. It’s showing up every day and doing the activity that is required to create the result. Down the road, I run complete game consulting. I am a very busy man every week because I’m CEO. I still block time in my calendar every week to prospect and to follow up with our pipeline, because it’s that activity that leads to more, that’s more clients.

And I know the work I do today may not create any new appointment or new win today, but know by doing the activity it will create a win tomorrow. So if you want to improve your self-esteem as a producer, or if you are a sales leader and you want to help your team’s energy elevate, stop putting so much pressure on the result and focus your efforts on the activity.

How many calls are you going to do every week? How many emails are you going to send out every week? How many connections are you going to make on LinkedIn every week? How many DMs are you going to make? How many posts, are you going to make with content? That’s where the battle is one. So the uncommon tip number two that nobody tells you about is you got to stop measuring the results, start measuring the activity, which leads to uncommon.

Tip number three. Disqualify as fast as you qualify. Yeah. If I were you, I’d actually try to disqualify prospects as quickly as I can so they don’t waste your time. I watch too many producers spend hours, weeks, months trying to push a bad prospect to the finish line who had no desire to get there in the first place.

And I believe part of that comes from uncommon tip number two, because all of the pressure is being applied to the result. Therefore, they’re trying to just talk to anybody. You can’t just talk to anybody. You’ve got to talk to right prospects. If you talk to the right prospects more consistently, you’re going to create more wins consistently. So what does that mean?

You’ve got to disqualify them as quickly you can. So think about this. You’re in a discovery meeting with a prospect. You’re fact finding. You’re getting to know them while you’re doing all that. I would encourage you to try to figure out why they would be a good fit for you. Here’s some uncommon way to do that. Number one, how quickly or how often do you talk about the common objections do you get from prospects?

If I’m in a discovery meeting, I am going to talk about some of the objections I often hear from prospects. Why? Because I want to know if they’re going to throw the same objection at me. But I also know if I speak the objection first, I am giving myself the best chance to help that prospect overcome that dejection.

Take it a step earlier, I would be using objections in my content that I’m posting on LinkedIn or email I because if you talk about it first and you talk about it often, you make it easier for your prospects to overcome those objections. Number two, talk about why people wouldn’t be a good fit for you. I do that often when we’re on prospecting calls.

Today, I talk about the type of agencies, the type of producers that would not be a good fit for us. Why? Because I’m giving that prospect an opportunity to either identify with that disqualifier or say, nope, that’s not me. Now I am going to talk about what makes a good fit as well, but I’m going to talk about the type of producers or agencies that we just can’t create a good result for.

Why? Because if that is, then we just spent 15 to 20 minutes on a call, and we both came to the conclusion that they’re not a good fit. No harm. No. They got a clear no on common tip number one and we spent 15 20 minutes, no time wasted. This is how you quickly find the people who you’re meant to do business with.

And the more you talk about objections, the more you talk about the reasons they wouldn’t want to do business with you. I wholeheartedly believe that actually knocks down the wall of defenses prospects have when they come in into discovery meeting. You don’t sound like every other insurance advisor they’ve talked to. Most advisors come in, they do some fact finding, and they’re going to try to convince that prospect why they are the greatest thing since sliced bread.

They’re trying to win the prospect in the first meeting. So they oversell, puke that puke on them, and that actually turns the prospect off more than anything. If you walk in confident in who you’re meant to do business with and you talk about the objections you’re they’re going to have throughout this process, you talk about the reasons they may not want to do business with you.

I’m here to tell you that actually conveys confidence and a little bit of credibility from the prospect. And it knocks the walls of the fence down that they have coming into that. They know you’re trying to pitch them. So I’ll tell you, these three uncommon tips that I have learned over the last five years have had a massive impact, not only on our sales, but my income, this company’s revenue growth, because I can go back to the 20 years I spent selling insurance.

I was never taught any of these. I had to learn through trial and error. I had to learn them from mentors who may not have come from the insurance industry. But I will tell you, these three tips have changed my life and I know they can do the same for you. Number one, remember, believe in what you sell, and if you believe in what you sell, you believe it can help people.

You have an obligation to tell as many people as you possibly can to measure the activity. Don’t just measure the result. This is going to help your self-esteem stay high. It’s going to keep you positive, and it’s going to help you create momentum. And number three, work to disqualify prospects as fast as you’re trying to qualify them. That conveys confidence.

It builds credibility. It wall, it knocks the walls of defense down with the prospect. So you apply these three things. Whether you’re already having an amazing year or you need to get back on the right track before the end of the year, I am confident these three tips are going to help you do so. And if you are an agency out there right now looking to create more organic growth, you’re looking to help your producers get more At-Bats with the right prospects.

I believe we have the number one recruiting and retention tool for agencies that want to scale their sales. We call it the Agency Growth Accelerator. Reach out. Shoot me a no. Let’s connect. I would be happy to chat with you about the program because I know we want to make organic growth cool again. And with the right tools, the right tips, like I shared today, I know it can be done.

Be good. That’s all we got for this episode of the Accelerate Your Insurance Sales podcast, one of the most valuable things you can do to help us and other new potential listeners find our show is for you to rate the show and leave a review. So as a special bonus for you, if you leave us a review, take a screenshot of your review and send it to me as a DM to my LinkedIn profile.

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