Episode 6: Barry Rutten on How Asking Uncomfortable Questions Will Help You Maximize Your Income

Bradley earlier asked about differentiation, just starting the process out differently than everybody else they've talked to ever or previously. And the client's going to be more like, you know, that actually is what I want. I want to make sure I'm protected from all those big scary things. I don't care about your $250,000, $500,000 weird numbers and your liability this and your comprehensive that. And you're, you're really kind of just confusing me and throwing out all this jargon as opposed to, you know what, just protect my family. That's all I'm looking for.

Welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, where you will learn to grow your business, grow your leadership and grow and develop your team. And now tune in to another great episode brought to you by your hosts, Bradley Hamner and Chris Ferretti. Chris, Man, Barry Ruttan, this podcast, this was the longest podcast we've done. I mean, we went a solid 2 hours on this, so we just had so much content. Look, there's a lot of people that offer a lot of really good things, but number one, Barry is probably one of the best wordsmithers that I've ever heard or been around, and he just has a really contrarian view about a lot of things. I think this podcast is jam full. I mean, for us to— we could have made this like a 4-part episode if we wanted to.

Bradley, I am surprised that Barry does not have a book out. But after speaking with him, it was interesting to see how this man is already working on 4 books. And I got to tell you something, typically when I hear somebody talk for 2 hours, a lot of the time it's all fluff and maybe 30 minutes it's actual valuable stuff. But Barry is so eloquent that for 2 hours I was fully engaged. And like I was joking throughout the podcast, I was ready to buy life insurance from him. The whole time because he really knows what he's talking about. I see why he's highly requested. I see why he's constantly traveling the country. So we definitely got to have a part 2, part 3, or part 4 at some point in time because this man is packed with knowledge. So I'm super excited, super pumped to see the amount of value that our listeners are going to get out of this because it really is, I would say, the most information-packed podcast that we've ever filmed or recorded, I should say. And it's all jewels. So I'm excited. Let's get into it.

Get your pen and paper together on this one now. Google makes it easy. Swipe a card, pay for marketing. Sure, you get a few more phone calls, but they have nothing to do with your business. The truth is Google can't understand the buyer's intent. Enter Matt and Maddie Jones, the husband-wife duo adding intention to your online marketing game. As a State Farm agent himself, Matt built his business by maximizing the volume and quality of inbound calls. His success led to the creation of DirectClicks, a company helping insurance agents across the country grow their business through online campaigns. They focus on Google Ads so you don't have to spread your budget across the internet. With attention to detail and transparency, they provide monthly review calls, exclusivity, and the lowest cost per click. So before you swipe that card, contact Matt and Maddie Jones at directclicksinc.com. Again, that's directclicksinc.com. We're really excited, Barry, to have you on the podcast today.

I'm excited to be here. I'm really looking forward to it.

So I thought the first thing that we would do for people that don't know you and don't know your background— and certainly we're going to spend a lot of time talking about Magnetic Sales, but the first thing that I thought about is your experience has really prepared you really well for what you do today. So why don't you take people back, talk about your experience, your background, and what brought you to where you are today with Magnetic Sales?

Yeah, the path to getting to Magnetic Sales System has been really interesting. And, you know, I think like a lot of people, I'm not all that much of a fan of telling my own story. You know, it seems so self-aggrandizing and maybe only my mom is interested or whatever, but I do think some of the unique stops along my path are really what I think helps me help agents in kind of a unique way. So I started out in law school mostly because everybody said I had a big mouth and would probably be good at that. And I was actually in law school for a little while. I didn't enjoy it and I left and I actually did a lot of soul searching and I decided what I liked about law was the idea of clients, but it all seems so negative to me. So I tried to find something that aligned with a more helpful role in relation to clients. And I sort of stumbled upon financial planning and I had a financial planning practice in San Diego. I think the things that are most relevant to agents in terms of that piece of the background is simply that I had the good fortune of working with a company that addressed all areas of the client's financial life in sort of a global sense. It wasn't, hey, we're only focused on this and maybe dabble in that. It was a very uniform approach. The other thing that was interesting is they really were insistent that you knew your scripts. You know, they had their script, of course, and you had to prove you knew about it. And at first, like everybody, you resist that. And then you find that if you really know the script, it allows you to focus more and more on the client and be able to really listen and engage with them. So that was really good foundational stuff. I had the opportunity to work in a very unique company where we installed insurance and investment advisors in community banks. And we were pretty widely spread in community banks and credit unions in Southern California. And the integration of those functions really took me in a different direction in terms of how do you take someone who's maybe having a conversation they expect, like a banking conversation, and then broaden that into a conversation they don't expect, i.e., a financial services investment insurance conversation. And I actually returned to private practice and I focused on sort of the senior market wealth transfers, everything to do with long-term care and combining universal life with long-term care and estate transfer and things like that. And that was really interesting. I really enjoyed that. And one of the stops along the way is I actually became the director of financial services for a fairly decent-sized bank here in Washington. And we have about 35 branches. And again, that sort of integration was really interesting because I actually convinced the bank to open— actually, to buy, I should say, a property and casualty insurance agency, fairly substantial size, both commercial and personal lines. And so, I had shot my mouth off with my boss, who was the CFO of the bank, and I had to make a pitch to the president and the board of directors for why they should drop $15 million to buy an agency. And I told them basically, "Well, you guys make loans on cars and houses. Why the heck wouldn't you insure them and get the recurring fee revenue that you like from the loans?" And they're like, yeah, that's a really good idea. And then we integrated that into the other insurance lines and investment lines and things. And it was actually very, very, very successful, very profitable. And it gave me a really unique perspective on how do you sort of cast a really wide net that was not product-based, but was objective-based, goal-based, risk-based so that the client really saw you in a global way. And that actually had a couple of benefits. One, lots of cross-selling, lots of products per household, lots of revenue for for household, but it also dramatically reduced the amount of objections people had to deal with. That was always a fascination of mine professionally when I had my financial planning practice and throughout my career is having people not— I didn't like dealing with objections, to be perfectly honest. I hated it. It was extraordinarily frustrating to me. And as most agents can relate to, it seems so obvious to me that the people needed what they needed, and yet they were fussing about premiums and things like that. And so I determined to really study that, and I've actually spent more than 30 years really studying that and understanding what goes on psychologically. And I think we've cracked the code. Agents who work with MIR, their most frequent comment is, "I was able to sell XYZ," and then it's always in capital letters, "with no objections." And that's the agents, that's the team members, that's the thing people are the most excited about. And so it's kind of become a little bit of my calling card. So after working with one of the really large property and casualty companies for about 11 years, where I basically was in agents' offices every day doing joint sales appointments to really teach them how to do this process, I decided the thing I liked the most, because I really wasn't a good corporate guy, I decided that the thing I liked the most was coaching and training. And that's kind of what led me to establish Magnetic Sales Systems. And just the name itself, you know, my little tagline is powerfully attractive, incredibly effective. The idea is how do you attract people to you in an effective way so they simply do what they need to do for themselves, that they benefit from that work to you? Because I think honestly, a lot of the things we do actually repels people. And in a lot of cases unknowingly. And so I think sometimes being aware of those issues is helpful as well.

So obviously you've been in the financial services industry for a really long time, but we're going to talk about objections specifically today and how to overcome those or even how to avoid those objections. One of the things that was curious as you were mentioning your background is I'd like for you to talk about what you feel like has changed in the financial services industry since when you first started to where it is today and where you may think that it's going because it's demographics change and the way people take in information. Let's face it. I mean, there's such a huge commoditization happening in insurance and financial services as a whole. So can you just speak to that?

Yeah. I mean, when I started, you know, there's a lot of technologies that exist now that didn't exist then that both make it easy, but also make the world a much more competitive place. And obviously no internet and things like that. And I can remember doing lead generation with actual ads in newspapers. And the response was to an 800 recorded line. And I would have somebody transcribe the people taking names and addresses and then send them a free report and make the offer for an appointment. So it was a little simpler, a little more complicated than the simple nature of like a landing page with a, you know, you can deliver sort of a lead magnet with a click of a couple of buttons. But by the same token, it puts something physical and tangible in people's hands as opposed to something that kind of sits in their inbox and hides there. So, I think the big differences are a lot more players, a lot more niches. There are a lot of people who said, "I'm just going to focus on Medicare or final expense or just this kind of commercial P&C and such." So, I think the niching, the internet I think especially has allowed people to really niche down. Overall, I believe prospects and customers and clients, and I make that distinction, I always have, that prospects are the people that you might work with, customers are the people who make buy buy one thing from you. Clients are the people who buy multiple things with you and stay with you for a long time. I think the loyalty of those folks can be not as great as it used to be in the past, but I think I'm gonna lay that a little bit more on the feet of the agent than the customer themselves. Are we doing what we need to do to retain those people proactively? I think because they are bombarded— this is the prospects and customers— bombarded with marketing messages from so many different social media and other sources, I think it's really easy for agents to get blended into what I call platitudes. What I mean by that is platitude is like saying something that anybody could say about their business. So for example, I said Bradley said, "I've been in business since 1987." Well, you know, so what? Anybody could say that. Does that mean you've been in business since 1987 doing things wrong for people? We provide great customer service. We have great claims service. These are all things that anybody could say. And so, I think it's really more important to figure out what is your unique marketing and positioning message. And then, I think you have to really think about your strategy when it comes to retention. And I think a lot of agents think they have better relationships with their customers than they really have. I think the people are a lot more fickle than we realize. I think they're very susceptible to the offers of others, but I think the good news is, once they're your customer or your client, there's so many different things we can do to help retain them. And so, for example, there's certainly a very common belief that multiple products help retain a household. And I believe that, but I only believe that to the extent that the products came about from high-quality conversations, because it's the conversations and the interaction and the humanization of that relationship that I think really lends itself to retention. The other thing that I think helps it lend itself to retention is and we may get a chance to talk about this, but strategy-based sales, meaning if you have a person who came to you as an internet lead and they're just looking for a price, that's a very slippery person. They may not stay with you very long. But if you have somebody who you're working with 10, 15, 20, 30-year goal, like college accumulation, retirement, things like this, that lends itself to frequent annual meetings. It lends itself to being a little bit more, I'm sorry, less price sensitive when it comes to changes in things like P&C rates. So, I think that while the world is a little bit more of a challenging place, a little bit harder to get noticed, I think you're totally right. The commoditization of property and casualty is a done issue, meaning it's not a question mark anymore. The insurance companies decided a long time ago that they were going to race to the bottom when it came to focusing on price and discounts. And so, I think it's up to the individual agent to make the distinction at the individual agency level. But that's a good thing, right? It allows them to be nimble and creative and not follow sort of the big company thought processes and be more entrepreneurial. And so I think that we sort of live in an exciting time where technology creates a lot of opportunities. No matter what anybody wants to think, people are people, humans are humans. They want connection. They want to know that somebody has their back. They want to know that there's a plan. They want to know that there's a strategy. They want to know that there's an objective. And people are getting a little sick and tired of, you know, the, keyboard warriors and social media and the anonymous stuff. I think people are really, in my observation, looking for real human connection. So if we can link those two things together, that human connection, the long-term goals, the long-term strategy of really providing total asset protection. I always like to say we really only do two things in our industry. Number one, we help people avoid financial loss. Number two, we help people achieve financial success. Everything we do falls under one of those two umbrellas. I think it's a really simple way to keep things sort of straight in our mind, and it's a really simple message to communicate to clients. When we offer both sides of that equation, that's when the households get sticky, that's when they stay with us for a long time. That way you're able to attract more people, keep them for a longer period of time, and have them pay you more money per year. And that's when your business is hyper-successful, and then you need Club Capital to come in and count the money for you.

Exactly, man. Well, I mean, there's absolutely zero doubt that you really know what you're talking about, but I feel like we should get granular with things. And I do have a few questions regarding just sales in general, because at the end of the day, insurance agents are in the world of sales. They are selling themselves. Yes, they are protecting people, but they are selling themselves. They are selling their agency. And I do have a question regarding objections specifically. Would you say that there's a difference between objection avoidance and objection handling?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, one of the things that really disturbs me me when I work with agents is that they will go years and years and years and years continuing to come up against objections that they hear on a regular basis, both themselves and their sales teams, and yet they don't do anything about it. They just allow those objections to continue to perpetuate, and they continue to lose those sales opportunities. And so I, I think you have to divide your strategy into two parts. I think you have to say, what can I do to avoid objections in the first place? And then for the ones that squeak through, do I have a proven process to handle them? And I don't believe in the statement of, quote, overcoming objections, because I think that connotates sort of crushing them or blowing them out of the water and dominating them. And so I don't believe in that strategy at all. In fact, I think the thing that works the best is the complete opposite. But if we cycle back to avoidance, If you think about the word objection in general, people are objecting to something, either something you said or didn't say, or either something you did or didn't do. People don't just walk around objecting to stuff. And so we either said something that triggered something in them, or we didn't say something that should have been addressed, or we did something that caused them to become concerned. I'll give you the most common one. I think the granddaddy of all things that create objections, and that is the product-first conversation. Leading with products, pivoting to products. And you know, again, I don't know if I'm going to step on anybody's toes here, but there's a lot of stuff that's taught and retaught and regurgitated in this industry that is not helpful to anyone. And one of the biggies is bringing up products, and you could substitute the word solutions for products, first in the conversation before bringing up the risks that the person's dealing with or the potential consequences first. And so that creates, honestly, most objections. Would an example be helpful here?

Please. Yes, yes, yes. I mean, I get exactly what you're talking about because I actually used to be in business development, but I do think that an example for our listeners would definitely be great.

So, so a lot of property casualty agents also have as part of their sales objectives to sell life insurance. And what a lot of agents do is they say to their teams things like ask everybody, ask everybody about their life insurance, or say things to the client like, hey, you know, we haven't talked to you about your life insurance, should we talk about that? And all that happens is you literally, by that action, create the objection. So now the client comes back with, I have it at work, I have that covered, I'm fine, I don't want to talk about that, things like that. And then you are immediately sort of in this trap of Now you got to overcome all that stuff. And number one, if you just stop doing that, you know, so a lot of business success is based on what do you start, stop, or keep doing that was working, right? And so my suggestion would be stop doing that. If it constantly creates objections, stop doing it and do something different. And the different, just to not sort of bury this, is ask people about risks, not products. Because I don't know if you remember, there was a toy, if you will, a kid's entertainment device called a Slip 'N Slide. And a Slip 'N Slide, for those of you who have unfortunately never had the pleasure of owning one or using one, is basically a piece of plastic with a hose that runs along it and wets it down. If you really want to go fast, you throw some dish soap on there and you run across the lawn and you dive belly first and you slide across this thing and you slide off the other end and you giggle and it's fun. You run back again and do it all over again. Well, a lot of agencies are engaging what I call in slip-and-slide sales prospecting activity. They're getting into the conversation fast. Like, if you bring up life insurance, boop, you're in the conversation. But you're shooting off the end of the plastic because the client immediately is like, "Nope, don't want to talk about that," and they sort of put up the hand of objection. Unfortunately, the problem is they not only object, they now have labeled you as a product peddler. And what that does is it really makes it very difficult to re-enter that conversation later, and it makes it very difficult for anybody who follows you. So let's say Team Member A brings it up. Well, that agency is now going to be labeled as project peddlers, not just the individual. And anybody who asks down the road, who unfortunately will likely again ask about life insurance, they're just reinforcing the message that this agency is just trying to pitch policies and not really here to help me, and it creates a tremendous amount of immediate and also long-term resistance. I would caution people to really think about, are you sort of ruining your book of business's receptivity to your offers of helping them by offering them products instead of solutions to problems not yet explored? So I don't know if that helps you with that explanation.

Yeah. Would you mind giving me like an example of like an actual conversation that a strategy-based agent would ask rather than a product-first agent? Like, how would they either lead or just ask a question to get the conversation started on the right path?

So I think the first thing I would suggest is, in the most emphatic way I can state, stop product pivots. That's my business advice to the agent, meaning stop encouraging your people to pivot to products. And in place of that, I think you want to engage in what I call linking and framing. And this is a concept that I teach to my client agents, which is How do you connect what you're already doing to broaden that conversation? Or how do you pre-frame a conversation or reframe a conversation in a way that the client is now open and receptive? So I'll try and give you a couple of examples. I didn't know you were going to ask the question, so I'll have to do this off the top of my head a little bit. Let's just say that either through the old-fashioned fax machine or through the email, you get a binder request, right? So somebody needs a binder on their home. And traditionally, people would take care of the binder and say, "Oh, by the way," which immediately flags the client that here it comes, here comes the product pitch. "Oh, by the way, I noticed we haven't talked to you about your life insurance. Maybe we should have a conversation about that." And then all the objections come up. Well, instead, what I suggest people do is have the client feel as though what you're about to say is part of your normal everyday process. As part of protecting that home. So something along the lines of, "You know, Christopher, whenever I speak with a client about protecting their home, I always make sure to talk to them about their foreclosure prevention plan. So in the event their income were stopped, interrupted, there are alternative sources of money to continue making those mortgage payments so that you don't lose your house, put your credit at risk, and potentially be in the scenario where you would be homeless." 'Bradley is our foreclosure prevention specialist, and what I'd like to do is set a time for the two of you to get together so he can make sure that never happens to you.' So that would be a completely non-product-based conversation, basically linking together the role of, quote, 'protecting the house,' because we know the house can be taken away in one of three ways, right? It can be destroyed by fire or some natural disaster. You could be sued and be put in a position to have to access your home equity by selling the house to satisfy the judgment against you, or you could have an income interruption that would prevent you from making your mortgage payments. And after a few of those, the bank says, "We'll take the house back. Thank you very much." So you're not really doing the full job if you don't protect people from all three. But what I see a lot of agencies do is when they get to kind of that third area, you know, I like to talk about it in terms of risks, they shift it to a product You know, like, you need life insurance, or you need disability insurance, or you need this. And the client needs to really understand what's at risk before they're willing to really solve the problem. And I want to make sure we don't miss cycling back to objection handling, but that's kind of where I would suggest people go is how do you connect what you're already doing to expand the discussion, but without bringing up a product, but more expand the nature of discussing and exposing people to the risks that they face.

[Speaker:ROBERT_LEONARD] When I hear you speak, I actually think of Simon Sinek, who talks about why, how, and what. So people don't buy what you're selling, they buy why you're selling it. And it's a whole lot different if I told you I'm selling life insurance, or let's just say mortgage insurance, whatever the case may be, car insurance, because of the fact that you drive every day and I want to make sure that you're protected. Even though the thought is noble, it's still putting the product first. But if you just start with the why first. For example, I don't want to go with the whole pitch, but basically say something along the lines of, "You want to be protected because if you are the breadwinner for the house, who's going to be there for your family in the event that an accident happens and you're not there? This is how we can protect you." And by the way, it's through a life insurance policy, car insurance policy, et cetera. But the point is why, how, what.

[Speaker:ROBERT_LEONARD] I think it even goes to, I really believe that people go to sort of the numbers and the data too quickly. Even things like auto quotes. Somebody says they want a quote, you know, language is important there, right? So somebody calls in and says they want a quote, I don't want to repeat the word quote. I never do. Because quote to me means bid or proposal, means basically you should keep shopping. So if Christopher, you called me and said I'd like an auto quote, I'm gonna come back and say, "Fantastic, really appreciate the opportunity to earn your business and be happy to put together a customized auto protection package for you." "I think you're going to be really glad you called our agency because we protect our clients from the 4 major financial risks of driving. Are you aware of what those are?" In a lot of cases, they're going to be like, "No." Well, let me share with you quickly what those are. You could damage someone else's property. You could damage your own property. You could hurt or kill someone else with your vehicle, or God forbid, worst of all, someone in your vehicle, especially a breadwinner. Could be hurt or killed, and this would prevent them from providing an income to the family. When we're done, you will be fully protected from all 4 of those, and then you can kind of go on and enjoy your life and drive home. So this way, when you go to actually start putting the package together, the person now understands that these coverages are connected to things that actually happen. And when they get done with the auto, you can come back and say, well, you know, we've taken care of 3 out of 4 of those risks. We have 1 more to go because that's not directly addressed in your auto policy, and that gets you over to that fourth risk of the loss of a breadwinner. And so, you know, again, we've just simply differentiated ourselves. Bradley earlier asked about differentiation. Just starting the process out differently than everybody else they've talked to ever or previously, and the client's going to be more like, "You know, that actually is what I want. I want to make sure I'm protected from all those big scary things. I don't care about your $250,000, $500,000 weird numbers and your liability this and your comprehensive that." You're really kind of just confusing me and throwing out all this jargon as opposed to, you know what, just protect my family. That's all I'm looking for. Boom. Just keep me safe.

I just think obviously in knowing Barry for the last few years, he's always just— your ability to be able to, of course, you've created these word tracks, but just your ability to be able to rattle that stuff off is always super impressive to me. So I think obviously people are going to pick up a lot of really good value just in what you said there with some of those word tracks and differentiating yourself. So I am curious. Let's kind of wrap back around to the objection. So if you're not able to avoid the objection, so what do you then recommend whenever the objections do come? So we're going to try to do everything we can, we're going to talk about the risk instead of the product, they still are going to come up. I mean, if it was just that easy, then it would just be that easy, but everybody could do it, right?

Of course.

But that's just simply not the case. There's still going to be objections there. So can you just talk about your objection handling process? Once those objections do come up, and then we'll obviously continue to pivot into some other words.

Sure. You know, no matter how much effort I've put into objection avoidance, everybody's gonna get objections. The issue is, can you respect the objection versus trying to crush the objection? And I follow a process that I created a long time ago based on, frankly, a lot of the ways people process information and sort of psychological and physiological reactions to confrontation and things like that. So the number one thing I think you gotta remember is you cannot make this confrontational. You can't make it a fight, you can't make it a battle. And the number one reason is you're gonna lose every single time because they have the checkbook. So you may win the moral fight, but you're not gonna win the business fight because they're like, "Nope, still not gonna pay you." And so I think the number one thing when it comes to objections is you have to stop selling. So you're sort of going down the path, you have to recognize, okay, I have a legitimate objection or a not legitimate objection, meaning it may be completely invalid, but to them it's valid, or at least to them it's their defense mechanism, their stall technique. So to them it's valid even if you don't think it's valid. And I think the first thing we have to do is stop selling. The reason you want to stop selling is the more you keep trying to sell, the angrier they're going to get because you're disrespecting what they're saying. The other thing is, let's just recognize the human part of this. If you're the salesperson and you're hearing an objection It's a punch in the stomach. Let's be honest. It's a punch in the stomach. You're like, "Oh gosh, another objection," and, "Oh, I see the sale vaporizing in front of my eyes." I think it's really important to manage your emotions. So stop selling and stay calm. Maybe easier said than done, but I think especially if agents are coaching their team members, we need to de-emotionalize this and stay calm, stay relaxed. And I think you need to make sure that, you know, if you're face-to-face, You have to have a poker face. And even if you're over the phone, you have to have what I call poker stomach. You need to not let your emotions, that kind of knot in your stomach, shoot up to your brain and shut your brain down. Because you're going to need to be thinking and you're going to need to be talking. So we stop selling, keep calm. The next step in the process is so important because what most people do, even if they're sharp enough to stop selling, is they try to immediately overcome the objection. They try to respond to the objection. And if there's anything I can advise people to do, it is never, ever, ever respond to an objection with a statement, an answer, a response. Always, always, always follow an objection with a question. And the question can be very, very, very simple. It can be, "I'm curious, where does that feeling come from?" Or, "Can you tell me more about that?" Or, "Can you explain what you mean? I want to make sure I understand." or can you tell me more about that? That question— so that's sort of the ask of the process— that question accomplishes a lot of different things. Number one, it allows you time to think, because if they're talking, you can be both listening and thinking, right? You can be listening to the explanation, you can be determining exactly what kind of an objection it is, because most objections fall into 6 or 7 categories, right? You know, no time, No money, no interest, perception of sales pressure, need to collaborate with other people, etc. So one thing to keep in mind is that all objection types are known in advance. Nobody's come up with any new objections. They just fall into one of 6 or 7 categories. But if you ask a question, the person has to explain themselves, meaning you don't have to own their objection. So if Bradley says to me, you're just trying to sell me something, I don't have to start defending myself. I didn't do anything wrong. I'm curious, where does that thought come from? Has that happened to you before somewhere else? It at least makes them explain it and it buys you some time and it also gives you insight into the objection because people may have just thrown that out there because they're used to just objecting. They may not even have a legitimate objection. Frankly, I can't wait until someone says, "You're just trying to sell me something," because I get to ask them, "So where's that feeling come from?" And they tell me, "Well," and, but you know, they tell me whatever the story is. I say, "Well, I just want to make sure I understand. You're concerned that I'm going to ask you to acquire an insurance policy that you don't need or you don't want. And they're like, yeah, exactly. I'm going to say, well, I'm really glad I asked. And I'm really glad you shared those feelings with me because I can promise you this, no one will ever leave this agency with a policy that they did not need, want, and ask us to put in place for them. My role is to make sure we understand the nature of the risks that you're exposed to, share with you any gaps that we identify, and then allow you to make a decision as to whether or not you want to address and close those gaps. The control always remains with you because effectively, if I'm the money doctor, I might have a prescription for you, but you're the patient. You get to decide whether you go to the pharmacy or not or fill it or not. So, I can't make you do anything. You're in total control here. So given that promise from me, would it be all right if we proceeded? What I've done there is I've covered two of the next two steps. There was stop and then ask. What I did is a quick verify, okay? Verified that I understood the objection and they said, yes, that's what I'm worried about. And then I moved to what I call the education piece. That little explanation that I did was the education piece. What a lot of agents do is they jump right from stopping to education and they skip the other steps. They skip the ask, they skip the verify, and they go right to education. And a lot of times the education is really just trying to double down on whatever they said before, and it doesn't directly address the person's objections, and they get into trouble. And then the last thing I did there is I actually resumed trying to proceed, because I originally stopped selling. Well, at some point I have to resume selling. So if the client bought into what I said, which was, oh, okay, I'm in control— I gave them a visual analogy like the doctor and a prescription, and "yeah, I don't have to go to the pharmacy, I don't have to fill this prescription. So, what you've told me is I retain the power to say no. Okay, now I feel safer. Now I feel more comfortable. Sure, we can resume the conversation." And what you've done is you've been extremely respectful to the person by asking them to talk about the objection. And it may take a couple of rounds, by the way. It may take a couple of ask and answer and ask and answer, depending on the nature of what they're saying. And eventually you're going to say, okay, I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying. And you're sort of repeating it. And that creates empathy. And empathy is a very powerful sales emotion. It means that, hey, this person took the time to understand me. I feel understood. And now as the client, the sort of the person who was objecting before, I'm open and receptive to the education. I'm open and receptive to the analogy, the story, the alternative perspective. Now I'm willing to listen because you listen to me, and now when you ask me to resume and continue the conversation, now I'm more open to it. And now we haven't crushed anyone or overcome an objection, we've just skillfully, professionally, and with poise proceeded to continue a human interaction because we've kept our mindset focused on really helping the client. And I think that's the other side of this where we can make this a lot more relaxed for both sides and have everybody enjoy it a little bit more. And I have it be, you know, I want it to be collaborative, not combative. And I think most objection handling is extremely combative. I want to make it collaborative. So I want to be sort of gentle with the person as I go through the process.

You know, it's funny you mentioned about emotions and how important it is to manage your emotions, stay calm and stay relaxed. But I can't help but say that we actually want to use emotions to our advantage. And so, bringing out the emotion, especially whenever you're talking about life insurance and disability specifically— look, let's face it, the property and casualty, you have homeowners, the mortgage company is going to require you to have homeowners insurance. You have a lien on your vehicle, they're going to require you to have auto insurance. We all know that. But in life insurance and disability insurance, almost 100% of the time, it's not required. There's a tremendous amount more objections that come in selling those specific products. And so, can you just talk about how you bring out emotions first and then you bring in numbers second? So how we can utilize those emotions actually to our advantage.

As much as we dress it up, we're still very emotional creatures and I always like to say we have a very thin crusty exterior and a lot of mushy interior. And so, the reality is Too many people try to go analytical with people first. And if you understand how the human brain developed over time, and now I'm going like, you know, way, way, way, way back to the beginnings of humans, our brain really developed in 3 distinct stages. So there was the sort of this central core sort of survival brain, you know, that kind of basically just regulated your living functions like breathing and heart rate and things. But it was also the thing that kind of kept you safe and protected. It's part of your core central brain. Some people call that the lizard brain or the primordial brain or things like that. And that is the brain that operates very, very quickly to either recognize danger or recognize opportunity. The next part of the brain that developed was actually the emotional brain. And then the third part, the last part, was the logical brain. And it is the emotional brain that makes buying decisions. It is the lizard brain that objects to the things you do wrong in the sales appointment. And the logic brain only comes in last in the process. You know, you've heard the phrase, people buy with emotion and justify with logic. So I think that's a foundational issue there. So if hopefully we have engaged with the client properly, right? We haven't led with product. So I'll give you an example of how I would get into emotion and then into numbers. What I see a lot of people do is they're like, well, let's perform that Life Needs Analysis, right? Let's go right to numbers, right to logic. And again, you're violating fundamental human physiology to your detriment. You're trying to get the logical brain to go, "Yeah, that makes sense. That makes logical sense." And all that happens is the emotional brain has no connection to that conversation. And the emotional brain's the brain that actually makes the purchase. So the emotional brain's like, "I'm out of this. I'm not even paying attention." And then it makes it really easy for the lizard brain, the brain that objects, to say, You just sound like a dangerous life insurance salesperson. I need to get out of here. I need to run away. And so what we need to do is we need to engage the client's emotions, and human beings operate on visuals. And so it's essential that instead of us trying to convince the client of anything, we have a process that gets the client to convince themselves. And the only way somebody's going to convince themselves is if they're talking, not you. And so we need to ask questions, and we need to ask questions that create visual responses and emotional reactions. And I want to make a distinction here before I give an example between internal decisions and external decisions, because this is really, really, really critical. An external decision is, you should. So I want everybody to think about their spouse for a second, significant other. How effective is it to tell your significant other or your spouse you should do anything and how fraught with danger that is? But how effective is it to actually have that same spouse say, "You know, I really should do that. I really want to do that." And I'll let you fill in whatever examples coming to mind as I talk about that. I think the recent Peloton commercial might be a good indicator of how people feel about that topic. So, I'm trying to create "I should" reactions, "I want" reactions in the mind of the client as opposed to "you should" reactions. The reason is people's brains will work to unravel a "you should" decision, but they will also work to reinforce an "I should" decision. So, for example, if Christopher twists my arm and almost forces me out of guilt or whatever to write that life insurance policy in the office, and I've made an externally driven "you should," "Hey, Barry, you have 3 kids. You really should buy some life insurance," that kind of thing. I might actually even go through the process just to make this painful experience stop, but when I leave that office, I'm gonna be actively working to unravel that. That's where my buyer's remorse is gonna come in. I'm not gonna schedule the medical. I'm gonna start researching the internet for cheaper alternatives. I'm gonna call back and cancel. All the stuff that people hate in this part of the business.

Is that like if I eat a lot of cookies and then I go jump on the Peloton to try to unravel that decision? Is that true?

And then if by the same token I have made my own internal "I should" decision, I'm actually going to schedule the medical. I'm going to work to reinforce that I've made a good decision. I'm not going to shop. I'm not going to have buyer's remorse. So how do you make that happen? Well, you start out by asking the clients some very broad questions, and then you start narrowing it down with very specific questions. So an example would be, I'll use Bradley because I know Bradley and his wonderful family and his kids. And I might ask Bradley a very, very broad question, something like, Bradley, what would be the financial consequences for— and I won't use names here, but I'll just say I know the names, but I won't use them. I'll just say, what would be the consequences for your wife and your kids? So, of course, if you know the names, use the names, you know, Jill, Bobby, and Sally. Okay. So, use the names. What would be the financial consequences for Jill, Bobby, and Sally if your income stream were suddenly shut off tomorrow and money stopped flowing into the family checkbook, what would be the consequences? Now, please note that nowhere in that question did I ask or mention the words life insurance, and nowhere in that question did I kill anyone or disable anyone or get anyone fired. I just simply said, let's talk about the consequences of the absence of money. I didn't get into the causality, what caused it. Now, there's going to be a couple of reactions. The most common reaction is they're going to come back with a response of something like, "That would be bad. That would be terrible. That would be awful." What I want you to realize is that that's a fantastic thing because a question, by the nature of how human brains work, you have to process the meaning of the question. In order to even formulate an initial response. That processing of the meaning of the question gets you under the defensive radar. It gets you under the block brick wall, and it immediately starts connecting with the person's visual cortex and emotions. So I want to ask a question like that that creates a powerful reaction very quickly, and most people summarize that in sort of a knee-jerk reaction of, "It would be bad, it would be terrible, it would be awful." Some people might get a little more specific right out of the gate, like, "I couldn't pay the bills." Now, if you use a power question like that, at this point you're like, "Oh, I'm really excited that they said I couldn't pay the bills, so now I get to say, 'Hey, you should buy some life insurance.'" Right? Okay, so settle down. You're moving too fast. This is a date. You're moving too quickly. So you started out very broad, so you might want to come back and say, "I totally agree with you. It would clearly be a terrible thing, but I'm really curious about what your seeing in your mind? What are you visualizing that causes you to say it would be bad, terrible, awful? Realize the choice of words there is very important. I'm giving them the language of visuals. I'm saying, paint a picture for me. What are you visualizing? What are you seeing in your mind? Those are all visual words, and by stating visual words, it causes the client to give us it back in in the form of visuals. And now we're moving in the direction of getting more and more specific. It looked like Christopher had a question there, so I'll pause for a second.

I was just putting the pieces together from the first question, you know, like what would happen if money went away and how would that affect you specifically? But you asking them, like you having them describe what would actually happen, that way they can see it in their minds rather than you telling them, if your money goes away, then X, Y, and Z is going to happen. Then the person might just say, no, duh, I already knew that. But it's a whole lot different when they're actually walking through what would happen to them specifically. So I was just raising my hand to be like, wow, like, this is powerful. Like, this is incredible.

Yeah, to reinforce what you just said, when they describe it, that's beginning to create the circumstances for them to be able to make the internal decision. When you describe it, it sort of bounces off them and doesn't get in really deep. So we want to kind of have this come out of them. So I'm going to coach them to paint a picture, describe what you're seeing in your mind, what you're visualizing. And they might come back and say, well, and depending on who you're talking to, and you might even want to help them out a little bit, you're sort of observing, are they readily forthcoming with answers or are they struggling a little bit? So if they're readily forthcoming, I'm just going to let them throw out whatever they throw out. Well, you know, I couldn't pay the bills. And if you move past that too quickly, you're missing out on the opportunity to get them to really describe. So Yeah, that makes total sense, the bills. So, specifically, what bills? What would be the top 3 to 5 items that come to mind? So, most people are going to rattle off what I call the big 5. And if they're not, as the agent, you need to be aware of that and making sure they cover those 5 in your conversation. So, the big 5 are things like housing, food, transportation, utilities, and kind of everything else. And the very interesting thing is I've had— Tens of thousands of these conversations with clients, coached thousands of people, and I'll tell you, the number of people who actually volunteer that they couldn't buy food is like one in a million. It is fascinating to me that people's answers are almost always related to debt. Couldn't make the house payment, couldn't make the car payment. The industry has trained us that the biggest responsibility you have is to pay the bank as opposed to putting food in your family's face. And so I always bring up Food, and they're like, "Oh yeah, food." You don't get a bill for groceries, you don't get a bill for restaurants. It's like if you don't eat, no one cares. You get really skinny and then you die. And so food is a pretty important thing to talk about. In a second, I'll show you how to make food a hyper-emotional conversation. It's one of the things I really think is really powerful. So let's just use mortgage. Is this too specific or are we getting too granular here?

I actually think that granular is good because of the fact that our listeners, and even me, I'm walking away like, "I should buy these policies right now." Hey, we're making a sale.

Awesome. So let's say the person comes back to you and says, "I couldn't make my mortgage payment." Again, if you stop there, you're missing out. So I might say, "Okay, so if you don't make your mortgage payment, how many months do you think you can go before the bank's really, really not happy with you and can begin the foreclosure process? Would be one possible question. The other way to say it is, what do banks do when people don't make their mortgage payments? And then the person comes back with foreclosure. You're still not done. It might seem obvious to say, oh, well, therefore we need more life insurance, right? I want them to really describe it. So can you describe for me the scenario where the bank actually has foreclosed on your house? There's an eviction notice nailed to your door. There's a U-Haul truck in the driveway. Your kids are standing there sort of bewildered and crying. What happens next? Can you visualize that and describe that for me? We want them to go deeper and deeper. Where are you going to live? What part of town are you going to be in? What are the schools going to be like? What is it like for your children to leave their friends, their neighborhood, their teacher, their environment? If they tell me, well, you know, I'd move into an apartment. Okay. How's your credit after not making a bunch of mortgage payments and being foreclosed on? Oh, my credit's trashed. What part of town do you need to live in where the apartment manager or property manager doesn't care about your credit? And I just kind of pause and they're like, oh, really bad part of town. So in that same part of town where you're going to be living, what kind of schools will your children be attending? So again, I'm just asking questions. And the more they describe this stuff, I actually have people on a regular basis cry. Now it's not my goal to make people cry, but my feeling is turn tissues into dollars, right? The more tissues you're going through, probably the more dollars you're gonna make. And so don't be afraid to go there, 'cause here's the issue, guys. I am totally willing to take people down a deep tunnel of hypothetical questions to avoid them dealing with the horrible reality of this actually happening and them dealing with it in the real world. And I will tell them that point blank. I will say, "I'd rather have this hypothetical conversation with you now than the horrible conversation of, 'Oh my God, what are we going to do?'" And I say, "I don't know." So, as a professional advisor, we need to be willing to go there and take them there because most people will stop at, "Well, I couldn't pay the bills, duh," and not go any further, and that's why they remain unprotected.

So, is that—

Yeah.

You know, I just want to say something about that, just the willingness to go deep and we talk about in our leadership journey about the importance of having courage, leadership courage. And I just think that that's so important, the willingness just to continue to go deeper as opposed to staying at the surface level.

Right, exactly. Let's be honest, it does take some courage, right? This is gonna be a squirmy, uncomfortable, messy conversation.

I was getting uncomfortable listening to the questions. I was like, oh man, this guy is really digging deep. Like asking them to describe what, you know, like how would they react once they see the U-Haul, then after the U-Haul, you know, like once you actually move to the new neighborhood, 'Where are your kids gonna go to school?' I mean, those are not easy questions to ask.

Yeah, we're not kidding around. And I will tell you that as much as we talked about creating visuals in the mind of the client, I think you as the agent need to have the visuals as well. So as I'm describing that, I'm asking those questions, I swear to you, I am seeing a home, I am seeing a U-Haul. I actually have a little girl in my mind who's clutching a little bear, and I'm seeing her crying, and I'm right there as the advocate for that child to try and get her parents to see what I'm seeing and to get them to describe it. And what does it feel like to be not only the new kid in school, but the new kid in school at a dangerous school? What does it feel like to have the student-teacher ratio be so high that your child can't get a good education and have their classmates be so disruptive that they can't get a good education. I mean, to a parent, this is horrific, right? That's the emotion I need to get them to act in their own best self-interest and get the coverage they need to go away. Because no matter what they want to say, it's a money issue. They need to buy these future dollars at the incredibly deep discount that they can acquire them now through the purchase of the life insurance policy. And we've got to stop sugarcoating it. We've got to stop talking about the generalities of cheeseball stuff like protecting your loved ones and all this vague garbage that doesn't really get anybody to connect with anything and doesn't cause them to act. Because I'm going to tell you something, it is not my goal to plant seeds, initiate conversations that take 2 years to come to some conclusion. If you have the gap, if you're sitting there as a father of 3 kids with your $50,000 workplace insurance, and I fully support the idea of, say for example, the stay-at-home mom or the stay-at-home dad for that matter, and you're sitting there telling me that you have everything covered, you're fine, I'm sorry, I'm gonna ask questions until you're sweating or crying. So I need salt wherever I look at, right? I need tears or I need sweat, 'cause it's the salt that's gonna get the thing sold. And if you're not an advocate, a fierce advocate of your client's children, then I don't think you should be having the conversation. I think you should leave the conversation to somebody else who can have the passion and the belief and the conviction and the commitment and the confidence to take that person to that place they need to go to make a decision in their own best self-interest.

Wow. That's powerful. So, Barry, can you go— now and talk about the numbers second. So now we've talked a lot about the emotion and bringing that out and just the depth that you take people. Now bring it back and talk about where you actually do start bringing in numbers.

Sure. Yeah. So we're going to flesh out, you know, we don't have time for it on the podcast, but we're going to flesh out all 5 of those topical areas emotionally, you know, the things I mentioned before, the food, the utilities, all those kinds of things, because every one of them lends themselves to a great depth of emotion, a great depth of description. Utilities is a very generic number, but if I say you're cold and in the dark and dirty because you don't have any water and you're thirsty, that's a very different visual, right? And if we're buying cheapo white bread versus the 21-grain wheat bread because we don't have the money to buy the good bread, those are really tangible things. So we're going to flesh those out. And once we get to a certain point where we feel like we've really fleshed out the big 5, We're going to ask the client a very important question, and that's the very important transition, which is, "Bradley, what you just described really does sound awful, really does sound terrible. If you had the power to prevent it from ever happening, would you want to do that?" Guys, that's where the sale is made. It's not made in the needs analysis. It's not made in the illustration. It's in that question. It's in what I call the prevention question.

Repeat that question for our listeners.

Sure. By the way, you have to earn the right to it, to ask it. If you ask it too soon, it doesn't work. So you really need to make sure you're good at the emotional part because if you ask it too soon, it seems really weird. The client's even like, well, I didn't really describe anything all that awful. So, but the question is, Bradley, if you had the power to prevent everything you just described from happening to your family, would you want to do so? And it really puts them in a position where they're like, the only answer I can say is yes, because if I say no, I'm a really evil person. I'm an uncaring person. And then we shift to the numbers, and we won't go into the numbers part, but even in the numbers section, we have to be really putting the client's best interests at heart and making sure we're not glossing over things and really understanding how to make sure we're asking them enough questions to get the numbers really accurate and correct. But the numbers is a lot easier to learn and a lot easier to teach than the emotions part. I think that's where people really need to step up their game. But emotions, and then that prevention transition, and then the numbers. By the way, I do not refer to the numbers section as Life Needs Analysis. I don't like that mental positioning. To me, more specifically, Income Loss Replacement Analysis, ILRA, much more accurate to what we're actually doing. And the more clear and the more accurate you can be with your clients, the better they're gonna have understanding. So I'll just kind of use that as the capstone for the numbers side.

Awesome. That's really powerful. Chris?

Yeah, well, I know many agents would like to write more life insurance premium and do it more easily. Can you discuss the million-dollar mindset and how a goal-focused life insurance, um, sale can bring in a lot of high numbers and high premiums in life insurance policies?

Sure. Yeah, so we have two issues there. One, I still see way too many sales of what I call your parents' or grandparents' life insurance death benefit. The house that I grew up in cost $17,000. My father made $10,000 a year. So, if my parents carried $100,000 of death benefit, it was probably an okay number, right? But what I'm seeing is that people are still writing $100,000, $150,000 death benefits under the guise of something is better than nothing because they're afraid to have a real numbers conversation. And share with the client what they legitimately really need, and they're doing it at the detriment of the client. So, an example, this Million Dollar Mindset that I teach, I'll just walk it through with you, Christopher. So, if we even just took some very common expenses, so let's just rattle off a few. Monthly expense for food, monthly expense for phone or cell phone, monthly expense for utilities, things that are not going to go away. right? These are not going to be things that disappear ever. So give me a number on a monthly basis of someone's household expenses that are not going to go away. Just what's a good number to work with here?

I would say minimum $2,000.

Okay, let's use $2,000. So if you multiply $2,000 by 12, you'd get $24,000, right? So if I am replacing the income of a breadwinner, we might expect to work 30, 35, 40 years. Generate a paycheck on a regular basis, we need to have a mechanism, a pump or a machine, if you will, that generates that cash flow. So, the way we do that mathematically is we're going to divide your $24,000 by some safe money interest rate we could get on a lump sum that would remain in that account and continue to kick out that money on a regular basis. So, if I divide your $24,000 by some safe money rate, would you like to use 3% or 4%? Nothing more. And probably nothing less.

Let's just use 4% because why not?

Okay. So, if we divide that by 4%, I get $600,000. I need $600,000 earning 4% a year to generate $24,000 on a consistent basis. So, why are we writing $100,000 policies? I need to have that million-dollar mindset that for every million dollars of death benefit, I kick out $30,000 or $40,000 a year. Let me give you an even further example. For my person with $100,000, at 4%, I'm going to generate $4,000 a year of annual cash flow. On a monthly basis, that's $333. If I have $1 million, I'm going to kick out $3,333 a month. When you think about your family and the amount of money they need to make ends meet for all the regular survival expenses that are not going to go away, then they need to be closer to $333 or $3,333 to make ends meet?

The latter, for sure.

The latter. Can we get a little more specific so we know exactly what that number needs to be, but at least we know what universe and world we are really going to be living in here?

Yeah.

So how much more money would an agency make if their normal, regular, go-to standard death benefit was $1,000,000 and not $100,000, and do that in a very justifiable way when the number you threw out was a very modest $2,000.

I mean, frankly, I was being incredibly modest. And I actually thought that we weren't including rent. I purely thought that we were including things like groceries, bills, and things like that. Like I wasn't really—

Yeah, I wasn't even there, no. Yeah.

It just made me think, I think I actually heard you say this before, Barry, they're not millionaires, they're $40,000-aires.

Right, a lot of people get hung up on, oh, I'm not gonna leave my spouse a million dollars and make her a millionaire. I'm like, well, you're not making her a millionaire She doesn't get to touch the million. The million's the engine. The million's the pump. That gets locked up. So, are you okay with her being a $30,000 or $40,000 a year inheritor? And that's before taxes, guys. Well, okay, that's more reasonable. So, we have to be prepared for the reaction to that million-dollar recommendation or that multimillion-dollar recommendation and be able to frame it in a way that that person can accept it and not be too worried about it. And then the second part of your question, Christopher, related to higher premiums. One of the things that a lot of agents miss is the power that they have to affect the lives of their clients in incredible ways when they use life insurance's tax advantages and other aspects to accumulate money in a safe way, to grow it in a tax-advantaged way, and to actually access it in a tax-advantaged way. And here, what I'm talking about is the ability to borrow money against their policy, not from it, right? So, if I build up money in my cash value to pay for college, for example, I can actually borrow against that policy, write a check to the tuition office, and then when my child graduates and starts working for themselves, they can actually pay me back. So, while they were in college, that money was staying in cash value, continuing to earn interest, and then as opposed to paying back a very difficult to pay down federal student loan, which is a fully amortized loan. It's very hard to pay off. It's a lot like a mortgage. I can just pay money back to the First National Bank of Mom and Dad, and even if I take 20 years to pay that off, Mom and Dad still has that cash value in their cash value, and we're just paying down this loan. And now all that capital is going to be available to produce retirement income. And if we do it right, We're going to be able to take all those distributions above what they put into the policy tax-free, right? So, the money you put in after tax comes back tax-free, all the gain come tax-free through policy loans. And so, if we really want to win the property casualty game, and the property casualty game is very straightforward. I want a lot of people paying me the most amount of money per year for the longest time possible. So, everybody loves renewals, everybody loves retention. But they need to have a game plan to make that happen in the hypercompetitive, price-sensitive environment that we operate in, which was Bradley's initial question. The way to do that is to engage with the client on big-time life planning goals like college, like retirement. Instead of paying the bank extra money each month for the mortgage, pay that into your cash value, build that up over 15 years, write a check, and then pay off the mortgage. but to have access to that money along the way instead of being tied up at the bank and in your equity. These are the kinds of things that clients don't know about. They don't know they can do, they don't know you can do it. They're missing out and you're missing out. And so I really believe that we need to have not only the million-dollar mindset for the core income replacement type strategies, we need to have a goal-focused, high-premium strategy where the clients are not saying, "How can I get this life insurance for the cheapest amount of money possible?" They're saying, "Christopher, what's the most money I can give you? What's the most money I can contribute to that plan?" And now all of a sudden, you could be bringing in several hundred thousand dollars a year of life insurance premium with the clients willingly paying it to you and telling everybody else about what they're doing because they're so excited about it. Major shift for a lot of agents.

We're going to have to have you come back on and talk specifically about that.

All the time, everywhere, whether it's a podcast that talks about sales, whether it's a book that talks about sales, whether it's a very seasoned salesperson, they always say, ask questions and have people sell themselves. And I never really understood that until today. Like, after speaking with you, I realized that the questions that they're talking about are questions that are not easy to ask. And it almost sounds ridiculous when you hear what you're saying at face value. Like, how can you make your client ask you, "How can I give you the most amount of money possible?" Like, if you hear that and you haven't heard the first part of this podcast, then you think no one in their right mind would ever do that. But me, after going through a series of questioning that you just put out in front of me, I think that after you walking me through once again, what happens if I lose my income, what happens to my family? What happens to my daughter? What school are they going to go to? What's their future going to be like? What are their classmates going to be like? Me thinking about that, I get the feeling like I have to get this policy right now. Not only that, but how can I make sure that I get the best policy possible?

I'll tell you what, there's a lot of insurance agents that are going to be listening to this podcast in the DC area. They need to call Chris Ferretti right now. Email him at chris@club.capital, and he's going to get it. Kudos to Barry Rutten.

Seriously, man. You know what, the funny thing is, Christopher, I have agents all the time tell me, 'cause we actually teach them how to walk people through and get to this moment, and when the client actually, 'cause I'll tell them, look, you'll know you've done it right when the client says, Christopher, well, what's the most, what's the maximum I can put into this? And when I teach it, they don't believe me. And when the client for the first time says it, they're so, internally, the agent is so flabbergasted, like, oh my God, they actually said those exact Words. And what you're hearing is a person shift from the Costco nature of the world, you know, what's the cheapest way I can get this thing, to how do I take the most advantage of the strategy you've put in front of me to build my wealth and achieve the goals that are important to me and my family. And this is how you transcend— and I want to come all the way back around to Bradley's original question— this is how you transcend the commoditization of the property and casualty insurance industry Let's just say that you're having these kinds of conversations. You know, there's 3 types of assets, and if you can provide your client a total asset protection plan, you're going to have them for life. I teach that you can protect their physical assets from being lost, damaged, or stolen, their financial assets from being taken away in a lawsuit, and their income assets from the threats they face from physical calamity like death and disability, and financial calamity like job loss. And if you're providing that to the people in your town, your community, your area, your state, you're going to have an extremely successful business. And once you've done that, those people are going to be extremely open and seeing you as an advisor, and then they're going to go down the road of, "Well, what else can you do for me?" And then we start getting into this wealth building and goal accomplishment, and now you have very high-income clients for life who might be paying you several thousand dollars a year instead of maybe a hundred or a few hundred. And now what happens to your business when they're paying you thousands of dollars a year and you're keeping them for 25 or 30 years and they're telling everybody else about you and introducing you to everybody else they know? Now what kind of business do you have? And that's why I want you to see it as kind of an integrated strategy not how do I sell more life insurance policies.

[Speaker:ROBERT_LEONARD] Quick question, and I'm sorry for not knowing this prior to this, but do you have any books that you've written on this by any chance?

[Speaker:STEVE_VAN_CAMP] Well, I have certain courses that I teach. What I find is that you can give people the written information, which I certainly provide them. I give them the language, the mindset, the toolset, and all. But what you really need, I think, also is kind of a coach, kind of a mentor to help you push past the things you're used to doing, you're familiar. Somebody to stretch the comfort zone, help you be a little more brave, deal with the bumps in the road, and just kind of put your toe in the water. But the reality is the best thing you can do, you know, there's two kinds of people in the world. There's the people who put the toe in the water and they pull back their foot because it's a little chilly. I have a boat, I jump off the boat. It's too slow for me to go down the ladder. I just jump into the water and it's cold for a second, but then the water is great. And I think we need to be braver ourselves to be able to really help the client. And so there are resources that I can make available and we can probably talk about that more. When we wrap up, but it's funny you ask it. I have about 4 different books in various stages of being written. It's tough to become an author, I think.

When you release them, I want to buy all 4 of them and I'm going to hand them out. Like, this has been a 1-hour conversation. You and I have never spoken prior to this. And now, once again, I fully understand why you have to ask questions and why, as a business owner, no matter what business you're in, you have to become an advisor, number 1, Be willing to ask uncomfortable questions. And by you doing that, you are going to be doing what's going to allow you to sell, which is actually show the customer that you care. Like, "Hey, I am willing to ask you these uncomfortable questions because just like you were saying earlier, I'm willing to go through this uncomfortable feeling to not see you go through what actually would happen in real life if you did go through any of these scenarios." I feel like I'm just ready to run through a wall right now.

I mean—

I love it.

No, man.

Thank you so much. This has been great. This has been really, really good.

Thank you.

All right, Barry, you ready for the famous E9 rapid fire?

I'm a little scared, but I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna be brave here. All right, let's rock and roll.

What's the last book you read?

My favorite book lately is Profit First. I have been really devouring that, and I look at it from the perspective of my own business and the business of my agents. I think it's transformative in its approach to how people look at their money from a business, and I think it will actually allow agents to begin building wealth earlier in their lives and have the business really work and serve them as opposed to the other way around.

Profit First is a good book. There's only one thing in the book that I don't agree with, and he actually points out that most people will not agree with it, and that is calling your creditors and telling them to lower your credit limit like that. You're going to be lowering your credit score by doing that. And mind you, if you have good credit history, then it's not going to be by that much. But I used to be in mortgages before, and like, I fully understand how impactful your credit score can be. So that's the one thing that I wouldn't do. But outside of that, the overall message that he has is a great message. So overall, one of my top books for sure.

Christopher, let me ask you a question. If I can show you a way to actually stop having to deal with banks and finance companies and not have to actually ask their permission to borrow money and actually borrow money at incredibly small rates with no application process, to be able to ignore things like credit scores and things like that and actually have that borrowing help build your wealth? Would you want to have a conversation about that?

Of course.

Okay. So the finance industry has trained people to care about things like credit scores. And yet there's a way for you to actually become the person who's actually the finance company, where you can actually become the bank and you can become the lender to you. And actually, as opposed to giving money to banks, borrowing from yourself can actually enhance your wealth. We can go into details if we have another conversation. I'm not trying to sell you here, I'm just trying to say that even some of that conventional wisdom about caring about credit scores, you can actually show your clients that how to do it a lot better and a lot smarter and really build wealth because they're gonna definitely need to finance things in their life. But there's ways to do it better. So just, sorry, you took me down a road that I'm pretty passionate about.

Boom, man. We're definitely gonna have to have you on again for sure.

No problem.

Quick question. What's the book that you would recommend the most to leaders today?

I'm gonna go to a classic. I believe that self-image is the number one thing that people don't think about, manage, pay attention to, both for themselves and their teams. And when agents have struggled with leading their teams, or they're really looking to reinvent themselves, I go to Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, and it was written back in the '60s. And every, every book that I mentioned, Bradley's just yanking off the shelf. I just feel that a self-image and a carefully crafted— because as you guys know, your subconscious is gonna keep bringing you back to whatever your real self-image is. And the reality is that you can determine what your self-image is. You can actually really recraft that and resee yourself differently. It's kind of part of some of the things we were talking about here today. So it's a classic, it's been around a really long time. I think that's the book that I would recommend to really have the most transformative formative experience.

What's the biggest mistake you've made in your business and what have you learned from it?

I think the biggest mistake that I made early on in my career was being afraid of making the client somehow uncomfortable and realizing that the exact opposite of that was really where I needed to go. And that I once spoke to a client and said something to him. This was very early on in my career. Is it okay if I tell a quick little story? I think it's really illustrative.

Let's do it. It's rapid fire.

I had this client, he came in, this was in my financial planning practice, and he comes in and it was like he was out of Hollywood Central Casting. Man in his probably late 60s, incredibly good-looking, still had all his hair, but it was silver hair. He's in one of these Adidas tennis outfits with the three stripes down the pants and the sleeve of the jacket. Turns out he did actually play tennis a lot, masters tennis. And long story Long story short, he had several million dollars to invest, and I was very new in the business, and I was really trying to figure out a way to stall because I had no idea what I really should do with this guy's money. So I asked him a question. It was my early education and asking questions, and I said, let me ask you a question. Did you acquire this money suddenly, or did it take a long time to acquire? I don't know where that question came from. It just kind of popped popped into my head. He goes, "Oh, it took a long time to acquire it over my entire life." And I said, "Well, would it be okay with you if we took our time? And does it matter if we make a decision today or next Thursday or two Thursdays from now? Because I actually have access to a team of people who are really sharp and really smart. I'd really like to tap into their knowledge and expertise as well and make sure I'm coming back to you with a really solid recommendation." And he said, That would be fantastic. Now, I should have shut up. I should have stopped. But this next piece stumbled out of my mouth for some reason. I don't know why, but I said— and in the moment, as it came out of my mouth, I was like, oh my God, I can't believe you're saying this and I can't stop. But it was like the best lesson of my career. I said, you know, because the reality is I have a knot in my stomach and my hands are sweaty. I'm really nervous. I don't want to make a mistake. I want to do the best thing for you, and I'd like some time to really figure out what that is. I don't want to just be some answer machine that comes off with something off the top of my head. And as this is coming out, I'm like, oh my God, this is the stupidest thing I could have ever said. And this man— I'm 26 years old, he's probably 67— so he says, son, which, you know, 67, 26, you can get away with that. He looks me dead me in the eye, just stares right at me. And he says, "Son, you just keep telling people who look like me what you just said, and you'll do really good in this business. I want your stomach to be in knots. I want your palms sweaty. And I want you to care about the outcome and the advice you give." I have been to— guys, no joke, no exaggeration. He says, "I have been to 6 other investment advisors. Every single one of them had an instantaneous, immediate recommendation for what I should do with my money. And after barely asking me any questions, and he said, "I know you're young, I can tell you're newer, you're my guy because of what you just told me." And it really made me realize that the best thing I can do to be successful in the business was to be a human being, to be honest, to be caring, to be empathetic, to have the outcome matter for that client as if he was a family member. And so it appeared to be a mistake as I was saying it, but it turned out to be the best lesson. And I've tried to operate my— both my professional practices when I've been the producer and when I've been the sales manager, the coach, or the mentor, I've tried to communicate that message. So I hope that story is illustrative and helpful to your listeners as well.

Wow, who would have thought that being human, you know, would actually help you make a sale in a industry where typically whoever is like the hotshot rockstar salesperson does well. But I do think that you have to be human, like you generally have to care for people if you're going to be successful at anything. And speaking of being human, I do have a question. Who is the person that inspires you the most?

Hmm. I find that the people who inspire me are the people who have— I hate to sound kind of cheesy here, but the people who inspire me the most are not the people who are the most successful. The people who care the most. Whenever I see people really doing the right thing, not because anybody's looking or because anybody's watching, but because it's the right thing, you know, some of the most meaningful things to me are kids who take their lemonade stand and allowance money and put together backpacks with school supplies for kids who don't have any money, or they figure out a way to help soldiers who are fighting overseas, or— and I know those don't seem like really particularly business examples, but I think we can all do a better job of connecting with our community and contributing to our community. And because you make that connection, I think people naturally want to gravitate to you and work with you. And whether you're sponsoring a Skills and Drills soccer event for the students in your community, and that, you know, exposes your agency, or you're doing something for the less most fortunate people in the community. Those are the, you know, I mean, sure, somebody like a great entrepreneur, like an Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or something, those guys are really, really, really impressive. But to put a really fine point on it, most of us are not running gigantic Fortune 500 companies, running small businesses in towns and communities. What the people in those communities don't realize is you probably have the biggest impact of anybody in that community, maybe other than the doctors and nurses who work in those communities. And I think the insurance profession should be more respected. And I think in order for the insurance profession to be more respected, we have to really position ourselves that way and really live the message of contribution and of help. And I think when we do that, then people really want to gravitate and work to us. So I think in a lot of cases, a selfless child can be some of the most organic human inspirational kind of little people on our planet. So I don't know if that's a business answer, but that's kind of the first thing that came to mind.

All right, very— question number 5. I know this one, but when you're not working, what do you love to do?

Oh, this is an easy one. Thanks for the softball question. I'm a boater. I have two boats. One's a little bit bigger than the other for sort of overnight cruising, and one's a fast little zip-around boat. And there's really no place I'd rather be. If I could buy a third one, if my wife would let me, they're probably be a third one.

Nice. If you hadn't gone into financial services coaching, what do you think that you'd be doing today?

Oh, that's a great question. I've always said that the people who do things that are sort of a real passion— the example I always give is I would have loved to have been a professional surfer. That just seems like the ideal world, living in board shorts and a t-shirt and travel around the beautiful places in the world and the beaches surfing. So I think that's a pretty good gig if you can get one.

You know, I'm always interested interested in hearing successful people's rituals. So do you have any rituals that you can share with us? Morning ritual, evening ritual?

You know, I didn't used to do this, but the more I've kind of studied what other people do and other successful people do, I'm going to give you a really odd one because I know people are going to tell you about journaling and meditation and this and exercise. And, you know, I try and do all those things. I work out of a home office and it's in my basement. It's a pretty big room, but it's in my basement. In, so I have to go downstairs to get here. I have had the discipline every single day for the last 7 years that I've been in this latest bout of being self-employed and working from home, that before I make the turn to go down the stairs to my actual office, I open the front door and regardless of the weather or temperature, I step outside and I take 10 really deep breaths through my nose, hold it for a second, and blow it out through my mouth. And somehow that energizes my brain. I think it oxygenates me. Kind of connects me with whatever the real weather is outside. And I do that 3 times a day. I do it in the morning before I come down, when I take my lunch break, and thankfully, usually, hopefully the sun's out by then. And I try and go for a walk in the evening and do the same thing. And I think I've discovered that a lot of us don't breathe enough. So kind of taking in more air can be, I think, very beneficial to our mental clarity.

Would you say that you're more of a morning person or a night owl?

Night owl. Some of my best writing and creative work happens. I've tried to be the morning guy. So far I've failed miserably at it. I like to join the 5 AM club and I'll get all the exercise done and do this and that. And then every once in a while when I do it, I'm like, wow, there's really a lot of time in the morning. But for some reason my brain, because I do a lot of writing and trying to communicate my best thoughts and put them in writing and in recordings, I need the calm of the evening and the night to do that. So a lot of times when everybody else doing other things, I'm probably recording at 10 PM. And then of course I can't go to sleep because my brain's awake.

Last question and you're off the hot seat. What's the legacy that you hope to leave behind, Barry?

Oh, you know, that's such a clear one because a lot of people ask me like, why do you do this and why don't you just go back into personal production? Impact. I feel that if I can lead agents and coach agents and mentor agents to be more effective with their clients, then I can just simply help a lot more people to become better protected. And so if I feel like a young girl didn't get thrown out of her house due to foreclosure, if a family can send their kids to college or retire comfortably or avoid any of the other risks, I think by leveraging my time through other agents, I can have more impact and good in the world. I feel really good about the work I do. I feel really good about the work that my agent clients do. I think our profession is underappreciated for its impact. I I think a few bad apples spoil it for us. And I think the more we can do to just be very professional, knowledgeable, skillful, confident to help people, the better. So my, like, my lasting impact to be, he helped a lot of people help a lot of other people.

Barry, this has been great. I've really enjoyed doing this deep dive with you and just really appreciate your time. I hope that we can have you on the podcast in the future. There's so much more that I know that you have, and we'll be able to get into some other topics, but In the meantime, if somebody wants to know more about you and how you can help them in their insurance agency, what's the best way for them to be able to get in touch with you?

Sure. I like to maybe share a resource with people, and that might continue sort of this maybe contrarian track we've been on, kind of getting people to think about their business a little differently. So let me share a link where people can download a resource. The resource is called The Deadly Dozen Insurance Sales Killing Mistakes. That insurance agents and advisors make in their client prospect appointments and how to avoid them. We'll shorten that to the Deadly Dozen, okay? So the website would be www.deadlydozenappointmentmistakes.com. Deadly Dozen appointment mistakes dot com. It basically tells you the what and the why and then gives you a solution on the how. There's also some additional information about the programs that I offer and ways that people can work with me. And if they're interested, they can fill out a little questionnaire, get onto my calendar, Be happy to chat with people. If I can help them, I will. If I can't, I'll try and point them to some other resources that can. My objective is just help every agent be the best agent they can be.

Barry, thank you so much for your time. That's been a blast.

Thanks guys. I had a lot of fun. Talk soon.

Yes, sir. Thank you so much. Have a great one, Barry.

Google makes it easy. Swipe a card, pay for marketing. Sure, you get a few more phone calls, but they have nothing to do with your business. The truth is Google can't understand the buyer's intent. Enter Matt and Maddie Jones, the husband-wife duo adding intention to your online marketing game. As a State Farm agent himself, Matt built his business by maximizing the volume and quality of inbound calls. His success led to the creation of DirectClicks, a company helping insurance agents across the country grow their business through online campaigns. They focus on Google Ads so you don't have to spread your budget across the internet. With attention to detail and transparency, they provide monthly review calls exclusivity, and the lowest cost per click. So before you swipe that card, contact Matt and Maddie Jones at DirectClicksInc.com. Again, that's DirectClicksInc.com. Well, Chris, we said it was going to be packed full, and it was, wasn't it?

Yes, it was, man.

Listen, if you want to see the quality of material and content that Barry has, go to Deadly deadlydozenappointmentmistakes.com. Again, deadlydozenappointmentmistakes.com. And just off that one resource, you'll see the quality of material and content that Barry puts out. Hey, listen, if he can help you and his team at Magnetic Sales Systems can help you, reach out to Barry. I think this podcast— hopefully people took some notes, not while they're driving, don't do it while you're driving— but I think they got a lot out of this.

I mean, once again, I cannot help but be blown away by Barry Rottenman. I'm not easily starstruck, like it's not easy to shock me at all, but this guy had just so much knowledge, so many jewels around human psychology in general. Like, yes, we are talking about insurance sales, but what I learned today, what we learned today, can be applied to just about any aspect of life. And if I can just say one thing that I truly walked away with, especially it hit me because I come from a business development background, That is, that finally sank in what it means to stop selling and start caring. When you do that, you truly start asking the questions that are uncomfortable to ask, but those questions are necessary for you to better understand your client, for you to better understand your customer, and for you to truly be able to service them with the products that you're selling. So by truly caring, you're going to get to the sale that you're looking to make. So overall, I love spending time with Barry. Thank you so much, Barry, for coming on the podcast. Thank you for listening, and I'm excited to hear what you think.

All right, man, till next time, another great episode.

Lead well and stay classy.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC]