What Alex Hormozi Taught Me About Selling Life Insurance

Last week I went to a conference and listened to Alex Hormozi teach everything that he knows about sales in an hour long presentation. In this video, I'm going to share everything with you that I learned and how you can apply it to become a six or even seven figure insurance producer. My biggest takeaway was that there are three big scapegoats in sales. And the analogy that Alex used was that it's like three layers to an onion. And he called it the blame onion. Because each layer you have to peel back to get to the next. And ultimately if you get through the last layer, which is number three, then you'll be at the core of the objection and you'll actually be able to overcome that and go through sale. First you need to peel back the first layer and that's blaming circumstances. Think now isn't a good time. The second one is blaming others. I need to talk to my husband. And number three is self. I need to think about it. Ultimately, the root of hesitation just comes from within, right? It's not others, it's not their circumstances. There's something that they're unsure about when they're giving you these objections. Sometimes we're unlucky and we have to peel all three layers back to get to the core of the onion at all. Sometimes they're blaming their self already and going straight to I need to think about it. Which means we're one layer away from getting to the core of the issue, which is great because we're almost there, right? But I'm going to break these down a little bit more for you. So let's start with number one, circumstances. But this has three components, value, time and fit. And I'm going to go over these in depth. So there's no way that you can't knock any of these objections out of the park. Let's start with time. Now it's not a good time. I'm too busy. Let's break that down even further. We have number one, macro. This would be seasonal, right? For example, work super busy, super hectic right now, or hey, it's the holidays, I can't talk. What I'm going to share with you are mental frameworks and how you can overcome these objections and not exact scripts word for word because it differs from product to product. When I hear busy, I think, oh great, Busy to me is the best time to get started because you're going to be busy six months from now. So let's just go ahead and take this off your plate so you don't have to worry about in the future. That makes sense, right? Wouldn't you want to do this now when you're more busy so you don't have to do it later and worry about adding yet another thing onto your plate? And number two is micro think. More like hour by hour, right? So they're telling you, oh, I don't have time right now, or I don't have any time, which is usually going to come right after. I can't call me after the holidays. We want to relate here. I used to say the same, the same thing. And it's funny because my girlfriend got so tired of hearing me whine about this. She took my phone out of my hands one time when I was on the couch and showed me that I was spending 20 hours a week on TikTok and Facebook. Her point was that it just comes down to what's most important to us. So do you think that it would make more sense to take time to make sure that your daughter isn't stuck paying for the mortgage on the house if you were to pass away? Number three is called the when then fallacy. Here's a few examples. Outside of life insurance, when I have money, I will invest. When I am healthy, I will go to the doctor, or once I get sick, I'll get life insurance. Once I'm making more money, then I'll get life insurance. And so the way that I would approach this is I'll show them a couple of these examples. I'll start investing when I'm making more. And it never happens. So when is it real enough? How sick do you have to be before you would deem this a priority? Well, let's tackle the second component of this layer of the onion. Blaming circumstances, which is value. And here's what it sounds like, one of my least favorites. I can't afford it. So here's number one. Here's why a lot is good, right? What we're doing is we're actually going to flip a negative into a positive because this is your last dollar. This means more to you. And that's why I'm least worried about your success, because this will change your family's generational wealth. So let's do it. And here's another good one that I picked up. Would you even believe me if I said that it does what I say it does, but it was one tenth the price? And they'll usually respond with, well, no, exactly, and how long do you want? I can't afford it to be one of your problems in life. Because if you can't pay the small bill, the $50 a month. How is your daughter going to pay the big one, the 300,000, when she's just getting started in the real world? And you can even look at lower options that are out of their budget. If you have to drop coverage, it's okay to price drop. I'll usually shave off about 20 to 40 dol dollars off the top. So instead of saying, hey, we can do this for 100 bucks a month, I'll say, hey, we can do this for 60 to 80. Does that make more sense with your budget number two? Not a lot. This time we're going to downplay it. Last time we blew it up, but this time we're going to make it really small. The way that Alex described this was as a value anchor. And if all this did was protect your daughter and make sure that she didn't have to lose the house, go into debt, or even go bankrupt, then would it be worth it? If you're fact finding properly, you'll find out what their payments are. Cash in, cash out per month. And what we can do is bring up something else to them that is not as much of a priority as their daughter's future. Right, because you told me you had a car payment. But what do you think will will pay off more in the end? Your daughter's future or the car that you're going to trade in in just a few years? Don't you think you should spend more on that than on your car? And if they say no here, then, well, it's belief. The only reason that you wouldn't do this is if you didn't think that it would cover your daughter's finances. So at what point would it be more unreasonable to believe than not to believe? Another trick here that you can do is you can actually compare these to things of comparable value. I like to use pizzas or chick fil a. So for example, if it's 60 bucks a month, I'll say it's literally three takeout pizzas a month. And when you condense it into units vers they see it differently and therefore it is not perceived as big as they thought it was originally. And here's the third component of this layer of the onion. What's money good for? This money is going to get spent either way. The only difference is that 12 months from now, rates will be higher. So the thing is, is you're buying this program either way. It's just whether you're going to pay the small bill, the $50 a month or if your daughter's going to pay the big one, the 300,000. And for my FE people, you can do the exact same thing, but just make it the 20,000 or whatever it is that you're getting. So here's another close. One of the best closes, according to Alex, that he was running into. I've actually used this one a lot because it really takes pressure off situation. And so this is the best case, worst case, close. Best case, you're able to get coverage and get accepted and make sure that your daughter's not responsible for the 300,000. And worst case, you decide that going with the best option for you, the one that is lowest in price, doesn't matter and your daughter can just suck it up. But you have 30 days to consider that. And both options are risk free. But only one of them, your daughter, gets covered. Number four of this layer of the onion is why you don't need money. You know what self made millionaires and you both have in common, both started from zero. You don't need resources, you need resourcefulness. Have you ever had a time in your life in which but you had an unexpected bill pop up and you just made it work? Maybe your car broke down, maybe your daughter got sick, maybe you got sick, or maybe you had to come up with $100,000 because you had to get an open heart surgery and it was the difference between life and death. Do you think you'd be able to figure it out? Yes. Okay, great. So let's do it. So here's the next layer. Next is fit. I'm not sure if it's for me. And so with new identities means you have new priorities because we vote with our dollars about the things that we care about. He gave a really profound story, Alex did about these two little girls that were in Sephora. They were in like middle school or high school or they were aspiring to be adult women. And so they were playing around with the makeup, they were playing around with all of the cool stuff or whatever that all the nice ladies like. And what was crazy is that the saleswoman came over, she made such a well placed move by saying, now that you are women, you are going to need to start budgeting for these things and labeling them with a positive characteristic that they wanted to identify with completely reinforced their ability to want to spend money on these products. And so the thought here is that someone poorer than you has made this work. So it really just depends on how much you want it. New identity, new priorities. Number two, pain of change. You Got to change to change, right? So when the pain of change outweighs the pain of staying the same, that's when you'll make a difference. And so the question here is, are you in enough pain? Is it real enough yet? The last one here with FIT is number three, hypothetical. If this program had everything that you needed, what would you invest in it? Okay, well, what's missing? And so if we added that piece, you'd be in. And so the one thing to remember is that with insurance, we are kind of limited on the things that we can do because we're not selling fitness gym memberships like they are. We can't move things around within the deal like they can. And so we're selling a flat rated product. And so we can either move the price up or down, can add riders, and we can explain the benefits that are within the life insurance policy to the consumer. And so, for example, I had someone that I signed up, a lady that was like dying to have accidental, and I didn't even think she would get approved. And when I kept looking at the carrier, it looked like I wasn't even able to add that rider. So I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get it for her. I didn't even know if she'd qualify for life insurance because her health was not the best, but that was the difference. And so when I asked her, so if we added that piece, you'd be in? She said yes. And the reason why was because her husband had been killed in a motorcycle accident by an 18 wheeler, and because he had the accidental policy, she was actually able to pay for the funeral and make sure that she was okay despite the fact that she was on disability. And so the two options that we have here as an agent is that we can either accommodate by adding the rider and moving on with whatever it is that they needed answering the question, or we can explain to them that the insurance doesn't work that way. Like, hey, no, your whole life policy is not going to make you a trillionaire. And so it's just about making sure that we're realistic here and also giving them a good understanding of the concept before we move forward. And so another way to come about this is to say, if it were perfect, would you do it? And if they say no, then I'm just going to say, whoa, whoa, let's take two steps back. Do you hate me? The reason why I'll always say this is because it takes pressure off the situation by making it a joke about me. But like they'll always get defensive in this situation. Oftentimes I'll be like, because if you do, I can call up one of my co workers. Would you rather talk to a guy or a girl? Do I make you nervous? And they'll, they'll continue to explain away as to why I'm not an issue and da, da, da, da. And usually that's where they'll give me their objection. But let's talk about layer number two of the blame onion, which is the hardest one to overcome, by the way. This is blaming others. I have no power to decide. The truth here is oftentimes you'll hear like, I need to talk to my husband, I need to talk to my friend, I need to talk to my nft. The thing is, is that we have to shift the questions, the authority and away from the consumer. Here, for example, the best questions I've ever heard was, if your husband was here, what is it about the program that you think he wouldn't like? And this will give you the real reason for their objection. We need them to realize that their authority has already given them permission. Does your husband approve of you not having a plan in place currently? Because he's, you know, he's on the hook for the 20,000. Right. And your daughter's next in line and if the roles were reversed, would you oppose them doing this? And the reason why we want to stack those last two is because we don't necessarily need them to answer the question about them having a plan in place, but we do want them to answer the question, question about whether or not they would oppose their spouse taking care of us in advance. So you want to stack this one in the last one. And I'll follow up with, if it were my wife, I wouldn't want to hold her back from getting his coverage to protect me or my daughter. And usually somewhere in this part of the conversation they'll say something along the lines of, ah, well, I still just want to talk to him, et cetera, et cetera. And in which case we'll reply with, what you're asking for is support, not permission. But let's play this out. What if every time in your decision making process you get to this point and they say no, what happens? Well, then your daughter and you can put the beneficiary in there. If they're like, oh my gosh, it's my, you know, my husband or my dog or whoever the beneficiary is. Right. Well then your daughter is going to get stuck paying this 300,000 right? And if your husband is saying, no, this $50 a month is too much, I would rather invest this in beer, in going out on the boat on the weekends to smoke cigarettes and fish. And if they want to go downtown to the bars and they're like, nah, screw it, forget about our grandkids future. You know, you guys have up to 30 days to talk this over. And if he says all of this, have him call me and we can talk about it. Because I got to meet this guy. Usually here people will laugh and say something along the lines of like, oh, no, he wouldn't. So I'll continue with who signed up and took care of this was just as fearful as you are. This is totally normal. Let's just go ahead and get you signed up. And so you can see here, I'm making it normal to feel skeptical. But I'm also using the herd mentality here. If you've gotten all the way through these and you're still here, you're about to figure out how to overcome the last layer of the onion, which is blaming yourself. Now, if you overcome this one, you've hit a home run, but you all are familiar with this one and it's in the form of avoidance. And it sounds like I need to think about it. Now I'll say something along the lines of, a lot of people think this is a fast decision, but how long have you been thinking about whether or not your daughter would be on the hook for the 300,000 if something were to happen? They'll tell you something. Oh, I've been thinking about this, you know, for about two or three weeks now. Well, then I don't think this is a fast decision. You've been fighting this for three or four weeks now. The only difference is now you're just taking action. And do you think maybe that you're here because you've struggled to pull the trigger in the past? And are you tired of another year of almost, almost getting your dream house, almost getting peace of mind in retirement, of almost protecting your family? Because maybe it just isn't painful or real enough yet. They'll tell you some real objection. Oh, well, I dealt with this other agent or I bought this in the mail or I, I got it off TV and it was just, you know, it was a renewable term policy and it was too. It ended up going in price and I lost it and I lost hundreds of dollars and I paid into it for 25 years and it just went away. And now I have nothing. And I'm just frustrated. I think Insurance is a scam. But you can't let a bad decision burn you twice. So don't let that bad decision create another bad decision. I need to think about it. Don't need time to think. We need more information. Because what will happen is that if we hop off here, you'll go and you'll turn on the tv, you'll go back to whatever it is that you were doing, do the laundry, start cooking, cleaning, take out the trash cat or the dogs running around the house, and a year from now, you'll get a col, and you'll finally start thinking about it again. But by then, you might not even qualify anymore, and the prices will have definitely gone up. So let's make a decision together. What do you use to make a decision? Typically, there's going to be a second of silence here that you can actually step on that silence by saying, well, do you want me to help you? I can give you the frameworks that a lot of our clients use, because most people don't have a framework for making decisions. So we're going to ask them three things. First, do you think this is more likely to protect your daughter? Second, do you like me? Third, and do you trust that I'm going to be here tomorrow and I'm not some, like, AI robot that's, like, calling you over the phone from some random place and I'm just going to, you know, run away and take your money? No, I don't think so. No, I don't think you're going to take my money. Okay. The Latin root for decision is decaderi, which is a combination of debt, which means off, and cadari, which means to cut. So not choosing is a decision, but which future are you deciding to cut off? Are you cutting off the decision that helps your daughter gets her the $300,000 check, gets her a little bit of leftover money where she's actually able to go out and start her own business or put money down on college or whatever. Or are you not, And I'm cool with whatever, you just let me know. Because the goal of this conversation is not to get them to sign up, it's to get them to make a decision. And so this one actually really made me laugh. He gave us a bonus clothes number six, which he calls the reason. And so whatever they throw at you just literally fire back with the reason why you should do it. So, hey, I can't afford it. That's exactly the reason why you should do it. Oh, I need to think about it. Like, it's exactly the reason you should go ahead and knock it out. And he calls this a stall closing. I thought it was really funny, but if you liked this video, go ahead and click the subscribe button down below, click the like button and comment. Which one of these layers in the Blame Onion that you struggle with the most? We'll see you in the next one.

Sam.