A short YouTube monologue (Feb 2024) arguing that traditional 'selling'—product-pushing techniques—are ineffective and ethically dubious in the modern era. The speaker contrasts two agent archetypes (product pushers vs. problem solvers) and advocates a consultative, question-driven approach (discover the "why", gather information, diagnose, then solve) with an example telesales call structure (intro → information gathering).
Alright, so this is why you should not be selling insurance in 2024. I'll break it down here on the whiteboard. So to give you guys a little bit of context, the other day I was doing some continuing education stuff as you have to do as an insurance agent every 24 months. And I came across this concept that I found really interesting and it was basically why you shouldn't sell insurance. And so I'm going to break it down for you guys and show you what this means. So if you look in the dictionary, the Merriam Webster dictionary, the definition of selling, sell is to mislead.
Or manipulate.
Someone.
Into buying something.
And maybe this isn't word for word exactly what it is, but it's something like this to mislead or manipulate someone into buying something, right? And so what happens a lot of times is new agents will come into the business. Sometimes they have sales experience, sometimes they don't. But like the majority, the kind of like go to way to teach new agents to, you know, sign people open to policies is called hardcore sales, right? And so this is something that was like really popularized in like the 80s.
Before 80s and earlier, right? And basically what you'd have is you'd have all these people that would like go to people's doors and you know, sell them vacuums or knives or all these random things. And before the Internet, it was much easier to do all this stuff. Granted, I was born in 2001, so I don't remember it, but from my understanding of it, it was much easier to do this kind of stuff, right? You go to people's houses, they don't really, they're not really expecting to be sold. They're not, you know, suspicious or skeptical about different things. And you could really just like p, push a product on them, right? So these people were called product pushers.
And so what product pushers do is they have a specific product and they just push the product down people's throats to get them to buy that. Now in insurance this was also done because people would go to someone's house and they'd be like, hey, you know, you need to get life insurance because you're going to die someday. And then there's even some people will do like they'll walk up to someone's house, they'll draw a casket. This is gonna be the worst casket you've ever seen. This is gonna look more like a spider. Let's see, casket. I'll just draw a box to keep it simple. And then they'll draw like a Stick figure in there, and they'll be like, this is gonna be you someday. How is your family gonna pay for it? Like, that's the level of way that people were selling this product, and that is like classic product pushing, right? So what happens is all these people go out and they just are shoving things down people's throat that they don't actually need just to get a commission. And what happens is it actually ruins it for the rest of us, right? So now all these people that are getting sold life insurance and getting sold vacuums and milk and knives and all these random things, they're starting to get jaded against salespeople. And so especially come the time of the Internet, and, you know, now we're like a couple decades into having the Internet now.
You have to approach it a little bit differently. And this is why you should not be selling. Okay? So there's two different types of agents. You got product pushers, and you have problem solvers, right?
And so basically.
Product pushers are what I was just telling you guys about. Product solvers are more like doctors, right? And so what they're trying to do is they're trying to, first off, find out if there's a problem. Second off, find out what the problem is. And third of all, diagnose the problem. Last thing, solve the problem, right? So problem solvers are coming into it with a different approach than product pushers. These people are like, I'm going to sell something. These people are like, I'm going to figure out if there's a problem and see if I can help them solve it. So problem solvers are the ones that actually make money now. So how do you actually become a problem solver instead of a pushy salesperson, product pusher? It doesn't actually make any money in 2024. Let me show you. So the problem solvers are all about solving problems and figuring out what the need is, which I like to call the why. So the why is basically the emotional reason as to why someone is going to buy life insurance. And so essentially what you do is you come at it with more of a consultative approach, right? Consultative approach.
Meaning you're coming in asking questions instead of giving lines and giving answers. So essentially what you need to do is kind of the way the sales call is structured. And I'm going to base this off of a telesale, because that's what we teach, that's what we do, and that's what most of you guys probably do is basically the first part of your call. The first part of Your script is literally just to make sure someone doesn't hang up on you. That's the call intro, right? So you know, hey, is Jerry there? Right, that's like what you say first. Jerry responds, hey, Jerry, it's just Tim, I was getting back to you about that form you filled out about the life insurance here. Is this your first time looking into this? Right. And so basically that's the call intro. Very simple, very, you know, cut and dry. Just introducing yourself. You're not like, hey, Jerry, this is Tim calling you from Zoosurance. You just, you ask questions, you treat it like a conversation. Call intro. The next thing you do. This is the most important part of the whole call is the information gathering. So consultative approach. Starts with intro and then we go info gather, right?
And this is where the magic happens because what you're doing here is you're asking questions, right? You're basically like a detective. You're like Sherlock Holmes if you want to get all fancy with it. So you're basically just information gathering. So you start asking questions. Okay, got it. So is this your first time, you know, looking into life insurance or have you kind of shopped around before? Right, and so somebody will say, oh, well, you know, I've been looking for the past two weeks, whatever. And what you'll find is like when these people give you these little pieces of information, if you dive in deeper, you find out a bunch more. So a lot of people, they'll hear, you know, someone say, oh, well, I've been looking, shopping around for the last two weeks. And they'll just immediately skip over because they're focused on one thing and that's the sale. Whereas problem solvers are focused on the consumer and solving the problem. So if they're like, I've been looking for the last two weeks, what do you do? You ask. Okay, got it. Well, you know, obviously nobody wants to just talk about life insurance all the time. You know, you've been looking for the last two weeks. Is there any particular reason? You haven't really moved forward with anyone in the past. Right. So I'm finding out why are they still looking. I'm pulling on the thread to see if there's something there. And what you'll find a lot of times is they'll tell you exactly what the problem is. Yeah, well, I've been shopping around, but you know, everyone's telling me I'm going to get a two year wait and I want to get something day one, Boom, there's the problem. Everyone's giving them a two year wait. If I can solve the problem, I'm going to get the sale, right? If you can solve the problem, you'll get the sale. So that, ladies and gentlemen, in a nutshell, is why you should not be selling life insurance in 2024, and instead you should simply just be solving people's problems. If you guys enjoyed this video, hit the like button down below. Hit the subscribe button for more content like this. If you guys like the whiteboard stuff, let me know. I'll make more of it. And without any further ado, I will see you guys in the next video. Peace.
