Timothy Schucker teaches life insurance telesales agents when to book an appointment versus closing on the call. Use closed-ended questions to reduce friction, avoid pulling quotes immediately, and offer two specific times so the prospect picks one instead of saying your schedule is wide open.
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This video, you're going to know how to use human psychology to your advantage to set an appointment and get them to actually show up. So let's look at the appointment setting framework here. So we've got closed ended or multiple choice questions and we've also got open ended questions. I want you guys to think with me for a second. Close ended is to make a decision. Open ended rewinds them why they're doing this. So for example, let's say that I ask you what your favorite animal is. You might say a dog or a cat. But what if I meant jungle animal or what if I meant sea animal or what if I meant bird? Right. There's so many different options out there for so many different types of animals. It is a very large question that takes a lot of decision making power because then if you said dog, well, and I say well, I meant safari animal, you'd probably be like, well, damn, why didn't you tell me that? And so what we want to do here is when we're trying to get people to make a decision is we want to limit the amount of fract friction that is there to make the decision. So for example, instead I might say, do you like zebras or do you like giraffes better? Now this is a much easier decision to make and I can make that decision with confidence if I know that I like zebras more than giraffes. But on the contrary, we can use open ended questions to our advantage when we want people to tell us more about why they are doing this. For example, if I want to know why you're interested in life insurance, I might say something along the lines of is one of my favorite ones. Have you ever talked to anybody about this before? Oh, okay, gotcha. And what was that like? And I'm assuming we're talking today because it seems like maybe a few questions weren't answered. What questions did you have about that? What does that look like? Right. And so now we're able to dive deeper into why they're looking at life insurance in the first place. So let's talk about when to set the appointment. Right. So these are situations in which you don't want these people to like to go call to close with you. Right? You want to actually take the time to set the appointment instead of call to close for these reasons. Driving, if somebody is driving, they're not going to move forward with you, I can tell you that. Because they're not. They're just not. It does not happen. People will not stop and pull over. I've had that happen one time, and that was, like, ridiculous. Right? That is a very uncommon event and has happened once in thousands of sales calls that I've been in. So I've never seen it happen other than that either. So I want you to think about one decision maker. Right. My husband's not home. Okay, Ms. Jones. No worries. And is this somebody that you usually like to make decisions with? I'm guessing yes. Perfect. Let's set an appointment for when you guys are both there. Right. If they're in a rush, I just want to quote. I say, listen, it sounds like you got a lot going on there. What I don't want to do is I don't want to give you a quote that you're not for a program that you're not even able to qualify for. And so what I'd rather do is find a time that would work for both of us where we can, you know, kind of look at any potential options that you might have and go from there. Sound fair enough? And because you've made a concession, they're going to be more than willing to say, yes, that sounds fair. What do you have available? Right, if there's a riot going on around them, this happens a lot with final expense. I'm sure it happens with term. But when you have a riot going on around you and you hear the screaming, the grandkids, the freaking motorcycles, whatever it is, whatever stories going on, don't sell these people ever, ever, ever, ever. We never want to sell these people at all because they are not going to buy, they don't care, and they're not even taking it seriously. And so if I lower my status to being willing to accept this, then they're not going to be willing to move forward with me. And so what I need to do is set a boundary here and let them know, hey, listen, it sounds like you got a lot going on around you. Let me find a time that works best for both of us, and then we can talk about any potential programs that you might qualify for. Stop. Never do this. Never pull up quotes and start giving them to the prospect first thing on the phone, especially if they're in one of the other situations that we talked about, driving, riot, etc. But definitely this is not the purpose of the call. And if they tell you that they are, you know, just looking for quotes or shopping, do not give them quotes immediately. Here's another thing to never do. Never talk about how you have the best rate ever. Don't beat your chest pillage the village about how you have the best this, the best that. They don't care, quite literally. All you need to do is ask them questions about them and see if you can solve their problem, because that's all they want to talk about anyways. Never tell people that you're wide open, ever. Yeah, my schedule is wide open. I can take you anytime. They're like, dude, this guy's broke. And broke people are terrible at their job. I'm not working with this guy. Give them two options and make them pick.
