He Was $15K in Debt…Now a $40K/Month Sales Rep (Here’s How)

Hey, guys, this is a podcast between a rep that has absolutely skyrocketed his success over the last little bit. It's not a testimony or any of that kind of. It's just someone who's going to break down the process of how they went from not being successful to being successful. Myself and Kaden are interviewing him, so I hope you enjoy it.

Watch all the way through to the end.

Bye. So, all right, guys, today we have myself, Caden and Benoit. Right. So Ben was one of the guys on our team been coming on, but we wanted to come on and kind of share his story because it's pretty cool. So.

Yeah.

So, Ben, how long have you been with us now?

Go. About to be four months at the end of this month.

Okay, and what was it that kind of prompted you to make the jump over to the dark side?

Yeah, so I actually started this summer at another imo, and the big reason to go there was, you know, I switched from a captive agency because I'm still pretty new to insurance. Right. I switched from a captive agency to this other IMO with like two, three times the. The commission level that I was made use is.

Was it just the commission level that made you switch from captive to the imo because you were. Insurance is brand new to you. Right. Like, you got started in, I think, March.

Correct.

What were you doing previously?

I was at a large captive agency called Globe. Oh, before that? Yeah. Let's rewind here. I. I was in. I was in corporate real estate. I was in corporate real estate for about five years. Totally different things were going really well, and I just wanted more time to travel. I would take, like month long trips at a time, and I got away with it for a really long time until I realized, like, man, I think I want to spend more time out of the country than I do in the country. And I'm looking for a career that would give me that. That flexibility, that freedom to. To be able to travel to all these countries, to be able to take a month off whenever I want and do all these cool things without, you know, having to attend to my clients. 24. 7. Yeah.

That's cool. So you started. You started Captive. What took you from Captive to Broker?

Yeah, so I was in a place where people wouldn't last very long. I'd say the average tenure there was maybe like two to three weeks. And it essentially.

Long.

That's pretty long, maybe less. There's a lot of people, like, every week we'd get on a new meeting and we'd see, you know, whole New faces on the Zoom. And essentially what they do, they were hiring a bunch of, you know, 18, 19, 20 year olds just trying to hire 20 people and hopefully one or two or three of them would stick to. Um, and what we essentially got caught up into is, is, you know, you learn to produce and then you are recruiting full time. It was a full time recruiting gig, right. And you're recruiting people that weren't licensed, didn't want to be there, et cetera, et cetera. It was, it was a hamster wheel that I got out of. So I got out of that for. I got out of captive for that reason. And yes, obviously, way higher commissions in brokerage. So.

Okay, what is it that drew to you? Insurance in the first place?

Yeah, funny story. I actually. I got recruited by an AI robot. I got recruited by an AI robot and it was all of 20, 24. I traveled, I did not work a single day. I went to like 24 countries that year.

Nice.

And then I got back into. I got back into the country and I was like, all right, I need to like, look for a job. And I don't know if, like, you know how your phone listens to you or something. I don't know. I get this text from like this AI robo and I was like, yeah, this is kind of sketchy, but like, I'll. I'll take the interview. Like, I am looking for a remote job. I took it. They're like, all right, you're good. Now you just gotta get licensed. I was like, okay, easy did it. And I was kind of good at it, just, you know, out the bat. So it just started working out from there.

Okay, all right, perfect. And so I guess, like, what? What do you think? So run us through where you're at, like right now, and then we'll go back a few months. So, like, what are you. What are you gonna do for like, December?

December I'm gonna do somewhere between like 40 to 45,000 in production, personal production.

All right, that's awesome. What does that mean for you in terms of like cash and pocket?

Cash in pocket. That's going to mean probably like $20,000 in pocket with, you know, a lot of future commissions to come.

All right, so it did about 40k in production, and that means about, like after, like after lead costs about 20k in your pocket. Is that right?

Yeah, about.

Okay, well. Cause a lot of people don't realize that, like with insurance, like, you pay for your own leads and so people can be making 50, 60, 80k a month, but not actually be profitable. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah. So. And that was the case. But like when you're at your previous place, right, like you were kind of like killing it in the production side, but you weren't actually making any money. Is that what it was?

So at the captive agency, I wasn't paying for leads, but the commission rate was insanely low. And then I worked, when I switched to brokerage, I went to this other IMO for, I was probably there a month. I got out quick. I essentially, I had a pretty good commission rate. I just wasn't closing deals. Right. It wasn't such a structured system. Right. You know, jump into final expense. And I didn't really have any coaching. And no, at that point I was doing like, I think I was there six weeks. I think I did like, like maybe $15,000 total in production.

That would have been like, but like, compared to what most people do, I mean that would have been pretty high.

I probably spent close to that much in leads.

That could be trouble.

Yeah, maybe a little bit less. Right. But like after the, the software licenses and all that, like, I was negative, I was negative. And that's, that's, that's not including the chargebacks and all that, I was, I was in the wreck for sure.

Okay, all right, cool. And so like, I guess what, what sort of brought you to sniper insurance?

Yeah. So I have always been the person of like I want to be, I want to be the best. I, I will do whatever it takes and I need the resources and if I have all the resources at my disposal, I will leverage them and I will use them and I, and I, and I will get to the point where I'm, you know, top producing and I just didn't have that. And I was searching for it and there's nothing more frustrating than like searching for the resources you need to do well at your job and not having them. And I remember several times I, you know, would go to the manager and be like, hey, will you listen to my call recording? Like, where am I going wrong? Like what? Like why am I not selling? And they had just so many people under him. They, they couldn't even really listen to your call recordings or give you one on one coachings or really even group coaching. I just wasn't getting it. So I was really frustrated. And so I started looking for a third party sales coaching company. And that's when I found seventh level. That's when I found Kaden. I went to like an insurance boot camp like online and like, you know, everything I heard coming out of cadence mouth, you know, about, you know, sales techniques and how to do things. I was just like, it. It. It struck me so hard. I was like, oh, my God, Like, I found it. This is what I need to do. So, I mean, it was always smooth.

Though, because when we.

When.

When I recruited you and. And we started first talking, I told you something about Matt and myself was that we would always be kind and we would always give you the best advice, but we weren't always going to tell you what you wanted to hear, which we went through a little bit.

Yeah, true.

Walk us through that. What do you mean?

And so I'd love to hear your side of the story, Benoit, but there were a few different times where.

It'S.

Just time takes time, right? And you got up to speed pretty quickly, but because you had came in from somewhere else where you had a negative experience, I. You know, I think it was probably like two, three weeks in. You were already profitable with us, I believe, but you wanted to be more profitable. And I remember a conversation where I was telling you, like, hey, the debt that you came in here with, you can't put that on me. You came to me with that, and we're already making progress towards it.

And.

But I'd love to hear from. From your side of things what that was like, because I think that even though we have had conversations like that, we. We come back on the same page very, very quickly.

Yeah, absolutely. So that's a good point. So when I switched to brokerage, I think I came in a little bit too confident, Right. It's a lot different than, you know, selling to one type of person, one product, all this, Right? It's a whole different world. And I got really confident coming out, and I threw a lot of money at it, coming right out the bat. And very quickly, I started stacking up a bunch of debt. I think when I. When I left the IMO over the summer to come to Sniper, I was, you know, at about. Almost. About $15,000 of debt just from a couple months of being in brokerage. And some of the conversations was like, I, you know, I want to make money faster. I want to get there faster. I. I want to pay this off now. I want to. I want to be making a ton of money, right? And some of those conversations were like, you know, be patient. It'll come. It'll come. And I think it was.

Right.

It was going like this, like this, okay? I wanted it to go like this, and it almost did. You know, it got. It got good Pretty quick.

I mean, depends on the reference point.

Right, Sorry.

Depends on the reference points, you know.

Yeah, absolutely.

It sounds like. It sounds like it's going up pretty quick.

Yeah. But then out of nowhere, right, it just. I just, I hit the groove and I actually, the, the solution I found to, to get me there was the same exact solution that. That Kaden did when he was just soul producing, right. I even. I have it pasted here on my computer, right? One drill a day, one call recording a day, one training video a day, right? And. And, and that's what I did every single day. Like, I, I took no breaks. It was, you know, you know, training in the morning, calling all day, and then at night I'd walk around the track and listen to, you know, the call recording and do the drill or whatever. And, and slowly but surely, you know, the skills were getting up and up. And you talked about, you know, switching over to you guys, right? I, I noticed right away just doing the onboarding, just doing the onboarding stuff and, and having, you know, not just all the stuff that Sniper has, but all the stuff that empower Life Group. We have an awesome IMO lasting mark, like all the resources that they have just from the onboarding. In my first week, I had my best week ever, right? Like, they walk you through the science of the script and then. And then cadence script, and he. And he walks you through not just why do you say this? But like, you're saying this because you want to get this answer, and if you don't get that, that answer, then you pivot to this. Like you're understanding the whole science about why you're asking these questions. And then so you understand when to pivot and how to pivot. You're not just reading words on a paper and, like, hoping it sticks and, and literally just from the onboarding. The next week, I had my best week ever, right? And I think my. My second week here, I did like, like 8 or $9,000 or something like that, which was almost what I did in a whole month my last imo, right? And just from the tool, the tools we use and the more dials we can make with the everything, right? It all. All came together and it worked really, really well.

Wish it would have gone faster, though.

Wish it would have gone faster. But. And then this last month, I, I really been popping off. Last week I did. I closed 13 deals. I did like 135 or something like that in production, like 13,500 production. And yeah, since then I have. I paid off all my credit card Debt. Now I'm. Now I'm investing in virtual assistants. I'm investing in recruiting. I'm just gonna, you know, start building. It's. It's starting to get really, really fun. So that. That's been my experience so far.

What do you think from, like, you know, like a salesperson watching this? What do you think the key difference between. I guess, you know, let's put structures and companies and stuff, aside from a sales perspective, what are the key differences that you're feeling in yourself or your skill set between when you were, you know, sort of breaking even versus being super profitable?

Yeah. How I feel now is if somebody answers the phone and I get through the first 30 seconds where we ask them to go grab a pen, I feel like if they go grab that pen, they're gonna buy. Like, I'm just like, yeah, hell, yeah, they're about to buy. Because we have all the tools now, and I've learned all the techniques and then everything you can to, like, diffuse every objection there is. And, like, now I'm just so much more confident. Right. I feel like someone comes on in 30 seconds, I would feel like that's a sale.

Yeah. I think a lot of people have, like, the phone apprehension, Right. You know, they sort of do everything but, you know, pick up the phone, dial, or, like, they don't. They don't even want to be in a situation where they can make a sale. I think people are so scared of rejection. Did you go through that at all? Did you go through, like, the. Or were you just sort of, like, power through? It's like, I don't mind getting the nose, I'd say.

I mean, I. I had previous roles where I had to do a lot of cold calling, and I. I had to kind of overcome a ton of objections and give rejecting points. I'd say coming into this industry, that was a big advantage. I. I had. I didn't have that. I was never really scared of objections.

What did you do before this?

I was in commercial real estate.

Okay. Whereabouts?

Atlanta.

Okay, nice one. What made you leave commercial real estate? Real estate's a good industry.

It was really good, and I was doing really well. It was. Like I mentioned earlier, right. I started traveling, and I was taking all these trips, and I was like. I realized I wanted to spend more time out of the country, traveling four or five weeks at a time, and I just needed a. A different career that would have given me the freedom that has given me the freedom now to kind of, you know, put everything on pause and go take A massive trip and then come back. Right? It's, It's. It's perfect if you're looking for that freedom.

All right, nice one. And so, you know, from, from. Let's, let's work through, like, run me through, I guess, a typical day that you do right now, kind of to earn the money, the journey.

Yeah, absolutely. What I'm doing now looks a lot different than what I was doing even a month or two ago.

Right.

I guess I'll start with that. What I was doing a month or two ago was kind of what I went over earlier. Right. In one day, I want to do, you know, if we're having trainings, which we have trainings every single day, it's awesome. I learned something. Every single day. I'll do a training. I'll listen to one of my call recordings, and then I'm going to do some of our drills that were trained in sniper. So really that's kind of all my skills. And then the rest of the day, just calling, right? Just. Just straight up, full, full on producer. Now we've gotten to the point where I'm going to be still producing at a very high level, but starting to do more, you know, you know, filming, content recruiting, a lot of these more leadership things. I already have people on the team reaching out to me like, three, four times a day. Hey, how do you do this? How do you do this? How do you do this? And so, like, helping other people more, learning what I've learned in the past few months and hopefully getting, you know, all boats rising at the same time.

Nice one. What's. What's the plan for you for the next 12 months?

Like, what's the goal for the next 12 months? For the next three quarters, I want to, you know, continue doing, you know, 40 to $50,000 a month in production. As I'm starting to build out the team, I say three quarters because I assume once I have, you know, 10 or so people on my team, I want to be available for them. I want to be able to give them the time, the coaching that, like, you know, Kaden and Dana have given me to help me. If someone's on my team, I'm going to help them, right? I need to be available for them. So I probably can't be producing 40, $50,000 a month and have 10 people on my team. So I'm thinking after a few quarters, you know, taper down a little bit, maybe doing, you know, $20,000 a month in production as I'm helping people under me kind of ramp Up. That is the plan.

Nice work. And what's the, what's the sort of recruitment plan?

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, one thing is at Empower we're building out a recruiting funnel which I'm looking forward to kind of participating in that right now. Empower. And it's sniper, right. We have an attraction model. So we're not, you know, recruiting 2518 year olds a week that don't want the job. We're only attracting people that like want to be here and that are going to commit to being here full time. They have the investment to be here, the commitment to be here and they want to get coached and they want to learn. Right. The people that want are serious, they want to come and they want to learn, like make money and learn. Those are the kind of people that we're attracting right now. And we're already attracting a bunch of people. So, you know, piggybacking on that attraction model, as far as becoming a lot more active in social media, which I've started ramping up to now, actually just hired a social media manager slash video editor from the Philippines. She's great. She's already making me a bunch of videos I posted on this weekend. So she's going to kind of help me build that out. Building out the social medias. And yeah, those are, those are the plans of now.

That's pretty cool, man. That should be big things. Have you got like a, have you got like a North Star that you want by the end of the year but you want. I want 10 people that produce and want to do XYZ.

Yeah, I want at least 10 people that are producing $20,000 a month and I'm not necessarily looking for people that are going to come on and do $20,000 a month, you know, day one, but people that are willing to put in the time, the commitment, the investment that are, that are willing to do everything that I've gone through, you know, that want to seriously, you know, have, do this as a career. I'm looking for those kind of people and to build them up to make them wildly more successful with us than they would at any other, imo.

Yeah, I think that is probably one of the key differences like between what me and Kaden wanted to do is like we just didn't want, you know, 150 retard, you know, and then, you know, and then it like just like let the cream kind of float to the top itself. It's like we've tried that in the past. It's just not very fun.

Yeah.

You know, and I just don't think it. I just don't think it's. It's just like, you know, having to deal with, you know, the dregs. But it's like if you sort of make the barrier a little bit higher, I don't even mean money, like there's no money to join, but it's like, you know, make the barrier of the expectations higher. It's like, we only want people who are actually going to do stuff. And if you don't want to be on team do stuff, that's fine. Just. Just don't be here. And then I think, you know, hold people accountable. And I think our, like, our. I know my trainings are like, they're not, like, I'm pretty rough on people if they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, you know, but it's like, I just don't see the point in knocking around. Like, you know, time is valuable for everyone. Don't waste it, you know, like, what are you. What are you doing? And I think one thing I noticed about you straight away was like, you sort of, you. You came out full of the gate, and I think that is the way to do it. It's just get in and go hard. So many people, they want to, like, sit back and like, kind of ramp it up slowly and it's like, what are you doing? Like, why are you wasting all this time? Like, the amount of making mistakes is like one of the best things that you can do, you know, just go and make mistakes. Because, like, that's how you learn. You look at how a kid learns versus an adult. Kids learn so much faster because they're not held back by not wanting to make mistakes. They just go and try stuff, you know, and it's like, mistakes can hurt, but, man, I think that the things that you learn along the way and the speed that you gain by just going for it is a hundred X and it's just so much more worth it. So, you know, we can usually tell pretty early when people are going to do well because, like, they're just doing stuff straight away. But those people who kind of sit back and they're waiting for things to be kind of perfect, it's like, well, it's never going to be perfect, so you're never going to do shit.

You know, I explain it like for. For people that have kids. I explain it like when you have your first kid and I don't know if you remember this, man, or if you Felt this way, but I know I felt this way. We had the first one and as we were leaving the hospital, you know, they help you get the baby in the car and everything. And as we start leaving and we're driving home, there was just this feeling in me like, holy, are they sending me home with this baby? Like, we're supposed to take care of this thing now we don't know what we're doing. And what you figure out as you know.

Yeah.

You go all slow, white knuckles.

Yeah. By the ninth one, you just like.

Yeah, you just throw them.

Exactly.

Yeah.

The old one takes the other one home, right? Yeah. So, yeah, yeah, it's. Yeah.

Yeah.

You're never ready. Just go for it. And so, yeah, I think, like, I noticed that from you straight away. It was just like, get and do work, do stuff. The questions you asked were good. It was like, they're relevant to what you're doing. And it wasn't just like this random, ethereal, you know, which then tells me, like, oh, you're actually thinking about stuff. You know, most people, you know, don't try and they don't think about their problems. They don't try and think through an actual solution. And so like, if, if you think, if you actively try and think through the solution and, and then try hard with activity, you're going to be ahead of the 99 of people immediately. You know, what's something that you would tell some people who are like, I guess, you know, in a weird spot. Maybe they're in Naima, maybe they're in, you know, something like that, but they're just kind of not happy. Like, what's the advice that you would give them in terms of, like, how, like, how do you get out of that? You know, because you're in spot.

Yeah, absolutely. If, if, if you're the type of person that, that all you need is, is the coaching, the resources, the guidance. Like, if, if, if you just need the resources, like, man, it's, it's possible. We have everything on like, you know, accessible at our fingertips. Right. If you're, if you're the type of person that doesn't matter what IMO you're at, you're the type of person that doesn't want to put in the activity. Maybe you're scared of rejection. Honestly, this, maybe this isn't the industry for you, right? Like, there's not going to be another IMO where you're going to come switch over and be like, oh my God, the leads are so good here. Like, now I'm Making money. Right? It's never about the leads. Right. It's never about that.

But if ones with the money, if.

You want the coaching, the guidance and the strategy and like, learning how to actually sell, man, this is the place to do it. My business has taken off.

Awesome. Well, dude, like, I'm super glad to hear it because you came in, you did the thing, and it's been really good to see, and I'm glad that you're out of debt and, you know, back in deck, you just put a bunch of new furniture, but we won't talk too much about that right now. But seriously, dude, well, well done. It's good to see, like, I. I hate seeing, you know, when. When people, you know, like, I've been in tough financial positions. Kaden has, like, everyone has, and it's. It's a frustrating and. And scary place to be sometimes, but, you know, to work your way out of it is like, it's a new. It's a new level unlocked, right? Because now you know you can, and so you're already taking some swings. But I look forward to see the. The swings that you take now that, you know, you can. You can dig yourself out of a hole. You know what I mean? It's a good skill set that everyone needs to learn at one point. You gotta touch the oven to know it's hot. You know me. So. So, yeah, dude, well done. Seriously, well done. It's. It's good to see. And I look forward to seeing you have 10. 10 producers with 20k at the end of the year.

Yes, sir.

It ends up being more than that.

Yeah. And where can people find you?

Yeah, you can find me on my Instagram. Benoit life Group. I can. I can get past it to you after this.

Yeah, perfect. We'll. We'll link it down below.

No, I'm sorry. Benoit Life team.

Oh, there we go. Benoit.

How do we spell Benoit? N O, I, T.

The tea is sad.

Yeah.

Yeah. All right, dude, that's awesome, man. Well, it's great to chat to you, and I look forward to seeing the successes. Go, everyone watching this. Go and check out. Go and check out Benoit.