Best Daily Routine To Sell $20,000/mo as an Agent

In this video, I'm going to be interviewing Brett Buenick, who is a consistent 20 to 30 thousand dollars per month agent. He's been selling insurance for the last five years, and over that five years, he's consistently done anywhere between 20 and 30 thousand dollars per month. How much activity are you putting in? How do you kind of plan your day and your schedule to consistently hit big numbers?

Well.

So, Brett, welcome to the channel. I want you to give some insight to the maybe newer agents out there or agents who are trying to be consistently selling $20,000 a month so they can learn what you're doing. Welcome to the channel.

Hey, Tim.

Awesome. Awesome. So for those of those people in the audience that maybe don't know you, if you could kind of give a brief background how you got into insurance and how you've been doing the last five years.

Okay, well, my name is Brett Buenick. I got into insurance like a lot of people did. I was looking for a change, and it kind of just fell into my lap. I found some stuff on Craigslist when I was poking around, looking for something to do. Ended up getting recruited by a captive company. And then shortly thereafter, about four or five months into it, I realized that wasn't for me, and I went independent, and I'm doing that ever since.

Okay, awesome. So you've been independent, you said, for five years now. Right?

Awesome. So for someone that's kind of just getting started, what would you say are, like, the biggest things, like, to get to their first $20,000 month? Right, because you've been doing it pretty consistently for a while. What about the person that's watching this, that they just want to get to their first $20,000 month? What does that actually take?

You know, honestly, I think people make it harder than it really is. It really just is keeping your activity consistent and doing what you say you're gonna do. You know, we don't have a boss, so to speak, in this profession. You know, we have someone that we check in with and stuff, but there's no one looking over your shoulder, making sure that you're working. So a lot of people just don't work. And so you need to remain consistent with your activity, and it's going to work out. You know, get your activity to that point where, you know, it produces, and then keep up the activity. You know, some people will show see some success, and then they kind of back off a little bit because they think it's easy or they think they have money. Now. I don't really need to work, and there's this constant up and down, and you just need to stay consistent.

Got it. Okay. So you see to. From what I'm hearing, it really sounds like. And to be honest, I would agree to get to their first $20,000 a month. It's really just about setting activity standards and sticking to those for a couple months to let your sales skills kind of catch up. And if you just consistently work, I mean, a $20,000 month is pretty inevitable. Would you agree? Yeah, I know for me personally, I think my first ever month or my second month in the business, I wrote 20k. And realistically, what it came down to is just tons of activity. So on that. On that line, how much activity are you putting in? How do you kind of plan your day and your schedule to consistently hit big numbers?

Well, I get up pretty early, and there's two reasons for that. One is because.

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Leads being all over the country. You know, since we're independent and we work on the phone, we can kind of work wherever we want. I want to make sure that I'm, that I'm on the phone talking to people at a, at the right time in their time zone. I live in Seattle, that means it's 8 o' clock in the morning when it's 5 o' clock in the morning here, you know, east coast to west coast.

So getting up early is something that's really helped with my success.

What time do you usually get up?

I get up usually it's somewhere between about 4:30 and 5.

Okay, wow.

And then I have a cup of coffee. I need my alone time before I'm ready to get on the phone. And I'm usually on the phone by 5:30 or 6:00am My time.

Got it. Okay. 5:30, 6:00am Your time. Coffee, you know, just chilling for a little bit, then jump on the phones.

Yep. And then I also take that time. You know, I don't over call my leads first thing in the morning, but so when I do a quick run through of all my leads that I need to call first thing in the morning, I'll also take that time to try to get on the phone with our carriers if anything needs to be done. You know, as far as servicing any client policies, usually the hold times aren't as long in the morning and so you can kind of whip everything out and then just get back to focusing on our income producing activities which with what we do is pretty much dialing the phone.

Yup, 100%. How, how many calls do you shoot for per day and what is like what does the rest of the day actually look like in terms of schedule? Like when do you take your lunch, how long is the lunch, what time do you stop working, all that kind of stuff?

Well, I don't want to say it varies, but of course it depends on if I'm actually in contact, talking with people or have appointments. You know, lunch I take about noon. I don't spend a lot of time with lunch. You know, I don't turn on the TV or that kind of stuff. I have a quick bite and then I'm kind of back to it.

You know, as far as dial activity, that can vary also with the tools that we have with, you know here you can get a lot of dials in. So some weeks, you know, I'll do over 2000 dials. Other weeks if I'm talking to more people and have more appointments, people are answering the phone, it could be closer to 6, 700.

No.

But with the tools that we have, it's, it, it's not as grueling to get that many dials in as it sounds.

I know some people make like that amount of dials in a day. I've heard, I've never heard 700. I think 600 might be around the highest that I've heard. But some people are, you know, they're putting in numbers on the phones.

I've made 700 dials in a day before.

Oh, yeah, it had to be a power dialer, right?

It was a power dialer. And I actually talked to quite a few people too. It's just that I didn't have anything else scheduled for that day except getting the phone ringing and talking to people. There were no appointments, There was no, I didn't have to call any cares. There was nothing else for that day. And to be honest, I liked it that way.

You know, just leave it wide open. If you were, if you were just getting started again. Right. Or, you know, maybe someone hasn't had a 20k a month. 20k a month yet, what product would you recommend them to do to hit that? Like, obviously we're talking life insurance, so the majority of the channel, you know, viewers are. But what, what specific life insurance product would you sell to get to 20 came up?

I think it depends on their experience. You know, an experienced agent would probably do well with Iuls there. I don't want to call them popular, but people are talking about them now.

Yeah.

You know, some people know what, what it means. They don't really know exactly how it all works, but they have heard the, the term IUL or index universal life before. And, you know, your premiums are a little bit higher there. When people are newer. I always suggest simplified issue, whole life or final expense for as a product for new people. And the reason why is because you don't have to spend a whole lot of time on product knowledge.

Right.

You know, the structure of the policy is generally the same company to company.

Yep.

You know, and so you don't have to to learn a whole lot. And when people are new, even things as simple as dialing the phone are skills that they're learning. Sounds dumb, but there's a structure to dialing the phone.

Yeah, you got to get in a rhythm for sure.

Those smaller policies.

You know, a lot of people kind of discount how important they are. They're important to the families that, that we, you know, can help and we're rewarded handsomely.

Yeah.

For those policies, you know, 100%.

The renewal. Honestly, the renewals on final expenses, killer.

They add up.

Yeah, yeah, they do. Yeah. If you, I mean, if you do it for five years, those renewal checks start to build up for sure.

And especially if you're like cross selling other things and, you know, calling back your clients and upselling them more insurance and all that kind of stuff. How many, how many clients do you have after five years? Do you keep like a tally or you have all of them in a CRM or something?

I'd like to say yes, but, you know, with, with just starting out, not really knowing how to organize everything, and then over the years, you know, kind of upgrading and stuff like that. I don't have everybody all in one place. I know that I have at least.

800 active policies out there through the various carriers.

And I am in contact with a lot of them still primarily in contact with them again from the tools that we use here. When I was selling in person.

You know, face to face, it was really easy and not using the tools that we have right now, but it was really easy to go out and sell, sell a policy, help a family out, and have the greatest intentions of actually keeping in touch with them, but they just kind of fall to the wayside because you're always looking for new business a hundred percent. And so when things are a little more organized, like we have them here, it's a lot easier. And in fact, I just had a past client that bought another policy adding more coverage. I just had someone else whose birthday is next month just message me right before we got on this call. Hey, Brett, I did want to talk to you about that.

I love that. That's awesome.

They just bought their policy like four and a half months ago, and they've been thinking about it already.

And for those of you that don't know what Brett's basically talking about is with our CRM and all of our automations and everything leading up to a client's birthday, I believe it's, it's like 31 days or 30 days in a week before it'll shoot them a text saying, hey, by the way, your birthday's coming up. Now is a great time to lock in some extra insurance. So, like when you have 800 clients, that's like multiple birthday texts going out every single day. And you know, like, you're, like, you're saying policies just kind of, they start to fall out of the sky at, at a certain level when you build up a massive client base and you're Continually reaching out to them and. And selling them more products. Amazing. So for. For someone that's, you know, getting started or again, hasn't hit that 20k month, what are the biggest sales tips that you would have that help you convert and close policies over the phone?

Well, excuse me. You know.

My look on this might be a little bit different than everybody else's, but.

You know, knowing what you're going to say. So having a script is important, but more the structure. The more that the structure of the script, I find it to be more important than the actual words that you're saying. And there were times when I would just stick to my script wholeheartedly. And it does kind of sound robotic.

It's unscripted.

Yeah, but so I think when you talk to these people like they're real people, you have some empathy. You know, they tell you things about their lives that they probably don't tell everybody else, and that gives you the opportunity to let them into your life a little bit. You know, you don't have to spill the beans with everything, but, you know, letting most of my clients or all my clients probably know that I have kids and I'm married and what I'm doing, you know, and it's just. It's just more personable. And not only is storytelling a great way to sell, but it also helps build trust when you're letting them in, you know, it's more than just showing them your state ID and then expecting them to trust you with.

And I've noticed that, you know, one of the primary objections that people talk about in this business is like, people giving up, giving their personal information, their Social Security number, their bank information. And since I started doing things like that, talking to them like they're just real people, letting them into my life a little bit. It's probably been about two years since I've actually had that objection. I haven't had anybody say they don't want to give me their social.

Yeah, nobody is. In two years, you haven't gotten that objection.

Not one? No.

That's insane. How do you go about, you know, how are you kind of opening up and sharing, you know, personal details without it, you know, being awkward or forced? What's, like, the best way for people.

I wait to hear what they have to say and, you know, it's a conversation. It doesn't have to be this uncomfortable sales presentation all the time. And, you know, one of the reasons that these people no show us or avoid answering the phone is because they're expecting it to be that way. And it doesn't have to be that way. And so when you're just talking with these people, you know, you're a couple minutes late. Hey, sorry, you know, I don't know, say, of course you want to tell the truth. Yeah. It could be that your wife called. Sorry, my wife called. She's a talker. You know what I mean? They know you're married. Or.

A lot of.

People that we talk with, you know, will tell stories about their kids. Well, I have kids. You know, they do dumb stuff too. And, you know, if you can get them laughing a little bit, usually it kind of their guard comes down. Yeah.

And what we talk about is, is serious, but technically, when we're talking about dying and money all day long, you can get something to interject to make it even just a little more light with some of the people. It does really help lot.

Yeah, those are pretty much like the two, two, like, most intense topics. The only, the only way it could get more intense is if you throw politics on the mix.

Right.

And then it's like, it's a recipe for disaster. But, I mean, I've met some agents that every single call they get on it just devolves into politics. So I don't know if you're, I don't know if you're doing that. That probably would either build.

I avoid it.

Yeah, yeah.

I, I, yeah, especially, especially now.

Yeah.

I don't talk politics with anybody.

So the, the rapport building stuff is great. But what would you, what would you say to an agent that's like, you know, I'm making calls, you know, I'm struggling with getting people on the phone first and foremost. Right. And then two, whenever I get someone on the phone, they hang up with, hang up on me immediately. Like, I would love to tell them about my dog name, you know, Spot, and my, you know, my hobby, playing pool or whatever, and build all this personal connection, But I can't even get people to listen to me, much less even answer the phone. How would you reply to that person? What would you tell them to do.

That can get down to being as easily easy as the structure you're using when you dial? Like I just said, you know, people, people request this information, especially people when they come through as a lead on the Internet. It's because they're, they're expecting to see the information that they're looking for on the next page. And they don't realize that it isn't there because it's different for each person. We all have different health Issues and all that kind of stuff. So the rates are different for everybody. And a lot of these people are looking online to avoid talking to a real person. You know, if someone hangs up on me when I'm in the middle of introducing myself, I just call them right back. Mm. And you know, hopefully they answer the phone. If they answer, I'd be like, you know, Tim, don't hang up. I'm not a telemarketer. You know, I'm calling because you, you asked me to. Well, okay, well who is this? And then you're back to, you know, where you were before. If people don't answer, then I do, I do leave voicemails and in my voicemail I say exactly who, who I am and why I'm calling. I don't see any reason to try to do some kind of bait and switch just to get people talking.

You know, just be very direct.

Yeah. But then, you know, we do have our automation that goes out. And so if people aren't answering the phone, they are receiving our text messages and emails.

Yeah, 100%.

And so I've had people that didn't answer the phone and I've called them for two months and when they finally do, it's like we're old friends. Or they're like, brett, I know you've been calling me. I'm sorry, I haven't been able to answer and I've never talked to that person ever.

Yeah, yeah.

Just because of this, you know, constant communication that's trying to go out.

Yeah, that's the power of the system. What's, that's what I love is, you know, you gotta have, first you gotta have quality leads, but then you need to have automations and things that kind of, it takes a lot of the pressure off of you as a salesperson. Not to say like, I mean, you can't just come in and not do anything and expect the system to do everything for you. But it really is like an aid that helps a lot. Like sales and marketing are kind of like a dance together that really get things done.

You can't rely on the automation. Yeah, I agree, but it definitely helps. And also, you know, with all these text messages, we all see a lot of different CRMs out there and all that kind of stuff. And especially with all the AI and pre qualification and everything like that, I mean, people need to keep in mind that those text messages are going out for one reason and it's just to start some line of communication, start a conversation, and then you need to be on the phone with them.

Yeah.

You can't expect your automation, even if you have, you know, some kind of chat bot or something like that, you can't expect it to do the job.

To sell the policy for you, you just have to fix your signature at the bottom. That's what a lot of people do expect for sure. Yeah, it's not the case. Maybe in, maybe in five years we'll see. We'll be on the cutting edge of it. I know that, but it's not, not there now. Awesome. So any, any final tips for the agents out there that are watching this at home? You know, they, maybe they've had a 20k month, maybe even they've had a 40k month, but they're not a consistent producer like you. What are your tips for, for you know, consistently selling business over a long.

Period of time comes right back to the beginning. They need to remain consistent in their activity. If you've done it once and then you don't do it again for a couple months, something has changed most of the time, you know, especially if it's their first time making 20,000 in a month. A lot of people haven't done that ever within they've worked their whole lives and they've never had $20,000 in one month. So they don't work as hard.

Yep.

It's also, it's easy to, to think that our job is, is easy. It's not, it's really simple and repetitive, but it's not easy. You know, there are times you can get in your own head and you have to muscle through it and, and keep dialing the phone. I mean that's really what it comes down to. Yeah, just, just get your phone dialing 100%. Yeah.

So just staying consistent. I mean like it's, I think it also in, you know, chime in if you disagree on this, but I think it's like people will, will kill themselves to do a 50,000 or $40,000 a month and then the next month they just don't do anything because they're recovering and it's like it's a marathon, not a sprint. Like you're not going to, you're not going to pay your year's bills in one month.

Right.

You need to, you need to find a pace that's comfortable and consistent for you. And in the beginning you do need to all out sprint so that you can gain the skills so that you can run and jog at a, at a more consistent pace.

Right.

But once you have that.

Yeah.

Like you don't need to do 100 grand in a month in final expense premium on your own pin. Like you, you're not going to do anything the next month, right? It's. It's more about finding that pace that you can stick with and then duplicating yourselves with other people.

Yeah, I was, I was going over a check in with one of my agents, and they had a good month the month before, but then last month's not so great. And so we're going over their numbers and like one of the weeks in there, it was like 32 dials were made. It's like you, you, you got 62 leads in that week, but you only made 30 dials. So what, what were you doing? It's in their mind. They're working on things, making sure their Facebook page is up to date, doing something with their website, working on this and that and all that. And that's all great. And it does help, but it's not income producing activities. You know, staying focused on your income producing activities is. Is where the money is, you know, and we don't make money unless we have an application submitted.

Yeah, there's a big difference between being busy and being productive, for sure.

And you can feel real good about that workday, you know, Man, I got a lot done. Well, did you submit any applications? No. Well, then you didn't make any money that day, you know.

Yeah, I think that's, that's golden advice. And for anyone that's watching this that, you know, maybe wants to reach out to you about potentially joining your agency, where can they contact you?

Easiest way is to call or text. And my cell Phone number is 206-478-1837.

Awesome. Brett, appreciate you coming on here and offering insight to the people, and we'll see you next time. Take care.

Thank you.