 The greetings and salutations, this is Dave Duford at Final Expense Agent Mentor at FEAgentMentor.com. And today we are continuing our fantastic interview series I have on the line with me live, Cody Askins of Secure Agent Mentor and today we're going to go into a deep dive on how to sell Final Expense's experience in the business, more specifically talking about telephonic tell sales. Cody, why don't you say hi. What's up buddy, the famous Duford intro greeting, I love it. Making Final Expense great again. I like it, I love it. Thanks for having me on buddy, looking forward to this. Yeah, so why don't we kind of start from the top, Cody, tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got in the insurance business and kind of what you're doing today. You got about, yeah, I'm Cody Askins, I own and run Secure Agent Mentor. I've actually grew up in the business. My dad's been in the business 28 years now. I never thought I would want to get in the business as a kid. It's insurance, I don't want to get in it. But I got into insurance at Mutual Womahal as an intern. And so I was there as an intern at 17, 18 years old and started getting into business, got to where I enjoyed it, loved it, went part-time in the business for a little bit. And then at 19, I was in college playing basketball, went full-time and was fortunate enough to make $117,000 in a very short time. And I just, I fell in love, I became obsessed. And I'm like, you know what, I absolutely love this business. And I always knew that I wanted to get into training and marketing and that kind of thing. That's just where my bigger passion is. Telesales, you know, when you're a captive agent or when you're at a lot of these agencies and IMOs and stuff, it's like, you know, telesales is like a curse word. You know, it's like, do not do that. Don't quote, don't help qualify, get in the home. You know the old spill, especially all the old-fashioned guys in this business. So I did well at Mutual. And then we went out and started our own brokerage. And then I got into, we actually created a call center. I actually sold my share of that call center about three years ago. And then this year got back into starting another call center again. And I love it. I've always enjoyed telesales. And I think the biggest reason, I was thinking about this last night, because I was thinking about some of these questions. I'm like, you know what, I think the biggest reason is I don't like to drive. It's crazy as it is. And we know it. And it may be similar for you. It may be similar for you over in Tennessee, but I live in Southwest Missouri. I've got to go, if I leave Springfield, and it's not big, it's like 150,000 people, I've got to go an hour, hour and a half, two hours, you know, sometimes. Right. Yeah. Oh, you're in the middle of the state. Yeah. So there's nothing once you get outside of Springfield. Yeah, exactly. So I, I don't know, I hate to drive. So I, I get into, I get into telesales and now we do all kinds of stuff. But I, I absolutely love this business, really do. Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned that about driving. I, I train mostly face to face guys myself. And the reason one of the things they like is the driving, you know. And I think that kind of, as we get into our conversation here, it kind of delineates what kind of agent does better in certain environments and that kind of thing. But it's funny how a lot of guys I'll talk to, they're like, I can't imagine being chained to my desk. But then, then again, if you're doing really well, you won't really care. Yeah. For a story, either way, one of my good buddies here in the office, Dallas, he dude loves to drive. We used to drive all over the state together, doorknock and everywhere. Like dude, you can drive, I'll hang out in the passenger seat. He loves to drive. So, you know, I'm sure, and correct me if I'm wrong, Cody, that as you got into your mutual of Omaha career, you're a captive agent, you probably sold the traditional route, you sold their life insurance products to people. And then you eventually transitioned to this call center, telephonic sales environment. What was that leap that you made or what processes you get to get to the point of doing the more traditional route to getting into the call center environment where you're now selling it over the phone? Yeah. I kind of issued it to myself as a challenge because I was always told, you know what, it's bad to sell it over the phone. You don't want to do it. It's difficult. And you know what, it isn't easy by any means. It isn't easy. But I always knew that I could write more policies once I got in the independent side of the business. I started to hear of all these big call centers, you know, selling thousands of policies a year, you know, and I'm like, you know what, I'm crazy. So I'm like, I think I can do that, you know. I've always felt like I'm a natural born salesperson. And I feel like what separates me, either face to face or over the phone, is just connecting with people, putting a big old smile on, building a relationship, building rapport. And so that's why I feel like I've always excelled, is just becoming a friend first and the sale comes, you know. So that's, and I just got to where I started focusing on teleselling, improving, listing audio books, listening to videos, you know, and meeting people, interviewing people and got to where I, I'm probably better at tele-sales now than I ever was at field sales, which I never thought I'd be able to say. So you're saying you're not, you weren't like that in the beginning. This is a process of training and learning and adjusting as you went on. You know what, it's, it's funny you mentioned that. My very first, and you know what, I'll say it. I've never said this before. It's, that's what happens when these interviews, man. It's like, it's like professions of a salesperson. I get in the, and so we, we had a final expense and Med Step Call Center. This was back in March of 2015. And our very, and it was, there was four, four partners in this, three agents. And so three closers taking transfers from promoters. And I got to where I was actually only doing the closing and applications and stuff. I wasn't doing like the initial calls. Well, our very first month, tele-selling. We made nine sales, nine sales, you know. So, I wasn't going to stop there. And before you know it, you know, by, by June of that same year, just a few months later, you know, we're doing 60, 70 apps a month with no sales experience, no insurance experience. We were all mutual all together, no, no tele-sales experience. No one knew what the freak they were doing, but we were, we were, we were determined to figure it out, which a lot of times it's all unique. Yeah, I mean, you know, if there's a, well, there's a way and, you know, a lot of the time, a lot of what I'm doing these days is reviewing and reading the, the literature from the classic salespeople in the insurance business. And the thing that you see commonly is people that, you know, the most successful had period at the time where they did struggle, where they maybe got to the end of the month. Even for many years, you know, you'd look at Ben Feldman or John Savage. These guys were mediocre for nearly a decade before they got anywhere. And so you have to have an element of faith, I think, you know, that even if you don't know what you're doing, that if you have the willpower and the capability to learn from what your mistakes may be and how to improve them, that's the only way you can go because, you know, eventually you're going to get it right. That's kind of how I've always looked at it. Exactly, exactly. If you figure something out, you put your mind to it long enough. And if you work at it, whether it's field sales or tele-sales, it's, you know, we're sales in general. And a lot of times there's always a struggle before you hear about that awesome story, that awesome week, that awesome month, you know, it's just how this world is, you know, so. It's so true in business. I had a, I remember I was in a B&I group about five years ago. And one of the, there was a guy, a home builder, and he had been in home building for 30 years, built, you know, middle-class homes, nothing fancy. Well, he landed a deal for a custom design building. This guy had made a ton of money, millions of dollars in chemicals or something. He was building, there was at least a $15 million house in Tennessee, you know. It was just a ridiculous mansion. And he said, he said to us, he said, you know, I'm an overnight success after 30 years, you know, and that's, and that's something, you know, and I understand that because you look at the path, you don't really see the past. He said, wow, I had to get this client, you're making millions of dollars off of doing this deal. There's a lot that goes into it that nobody's ever really interested in hearing or doing. You know, very few people realize that's just kind of a life lesson for any sales people or business owners, you know, you have to pay your dues. All those behind the scenes, late hours, you know, like, like, you know, you and I and others have endured, you know, it eventually pays off that. And that's, and I wanted to mention something real quick. 92% of insurance agents fell in the first three years. Those that make it, they, they endure some struggle, but they, they keep the faith and they work hard and it eventually pays off. And that's why this business is so lucrative. It can be so freaking rewarding. It's another reason I love it. Yeah. And it's true. If you just, there's, it was either John Savage or Al Granum. He said, if you just last, you'll make it. If you can just survive, you know, of course, learning from your lessons. I think it was one of the two as well that said, you know, really it's like, when you start the insurance business, it's like a four-year degree. You know, you're not going to go into college and make 200 grand a year as a general physician, you know, in medical school, you've got to, you're going to make 20, 30 grand a year. You're going to do residency work. It's going to suck. They're going to try to get you to quit. You know, you're going to have to deal with all sorts of people, you know, work at all nights that, you know, you're a slave. And then when you make it, now you're making it. And that's kind of the, that's how the insurance business really is. A lot of the guys that get really good struggle those first couple of years. That's that faith and consistency to stick with it, despite that, despite what everybody else is telling you to do, to quit, to get a real job and all that crap. You got to go. Exactly. Exactly. So why don't we jump into more into a deep dive of the telesales. What I'd like to start with is, you know, a lot of people watching this, a lot of my guys, a lot of people on my channel are, and most insurance agents are face-to-face agents. And when they think about telesales, they think, how is that even possible? You know, how can you collect personal information? How can you overcome the trust barriers? Or how can you stand standing, you know, sitting in front of a desk all day? Right. So my question to dive into would be, what are the big differences between a face-to-face agent selling any kind of life insurance versus the one that sells over the phone? How do they sell differently and what does it take to succeed to sell over the phone versus face-to-face? Yeah, it's, I think it takes a lot more time, a lot more poor, which you can do that on both sides. But I mean, the biggest differences is it takes, it takes a lot more leads, a lot more contacts, talking to a lot more people. There's so many agents that think that it's nearly impossible. I get agents right now even to this day that say there's carriers that allow you to sell for the phone, you know, in 2017. And you know what? And there's agents that think, okay, and I think some of the myths are, you're going to sell smaller cases, your retention's going to be worse, you know, you're not going to sell as many cases, you know. And so, and I'll get, we'll get into that, I'm sure a little later, I've got to get some numbers for you and that kind of thing. But the biggest thing is agents fell in person because they don't run enough appointments. Agents fell on tele-sales because they don't talk to enough people. You're not going to tell everyone, I don't care how great you are, how awesome you are, how incredible it sells you are, how great, awesome you are building rapport, how much time you spend. At the end of the day, it's a numbers game. If you don't talk to enough people, you won't make enough money. And so, the reason agents fell at tele-sales and like 92% of total agents fell, I bet 99.5% of agents would fell if they only focused on tele-sales. And the reason I think that is, if it's hard enough to get in front of enough people in person, how much harder is it to talk to enough interested, qualified people that you can actually talk to to turn them into a cell over the phone? And so the numbers, you need more. Naturally, you just need a lot more. And so that's the biggest difference is agents just never talk to enough people to actually succeed over the phone. Or they think that price is all that matters and they sell price and they ignore the fact that believe it or not, the relationship, the value, the time you spend with them, still trump price, just like they do in the field. Right, right, absolutely. One question I have for you, and this is something that I've talked to, again, you know me, I'm not a tele-sales guy. So this is all in education just as much as the next guy. One of the things I hear from a lot of guys, the guys, the agencies that I know that are successful at tele-sales. And there's little mom and pop, you know, I know several down in I think Mississippi that have 10, 20 agents, you know, they do tele-market leads, that kind of thing, to the big call centers. One thing I haven't seen a lot of, and I kind of like your thoughts on this, is do you think that an agent who's going to do tele-sales, is it better for them to work in a call center environment? Or how successful do you think they can do this on their own, in their own home, with the system, with the setup, maybe something like you teach? That's a great question because it's so difficult to know what to do, have the right training, have enough leads. And yeah, we have the training and we can help, we have the leads, we can help, all that kind of thing. It would be much easier to succeed if you could just go sit in a call center, like ours, like any of these other monster ones across the country, to where you can sit and sell over the phone and get paid a much smaller commission. At the end of the day, and not everyone's like me, but my personality is I want control, I want to know what's going on, I want to own it, I don't want to go sit and, you know, be someone's kid sitting in a call center, then tell me what to do, you know, and me getting a small piece of the pie, I want the whole freaking pie. And so, yeah, not everyone's like that. At the end of the day, it takes a certain personality and drive to want to do it on your own. But you've got to realize, just like field sales, yeah, there's investment to field sales, there's a bigger investment to tele-sales. If you think you're going to sell over the phone by cold calling, you know, in 2018, it's likely, it's possible, but it's extremely, extremely difficult to think that, I mean, you'd have to have so many openers cold calling, transferring new calls. At the end of the day, it's just much smarter to be talking to interested people and then qualifying them. And then you're only talking to them when they can answer the health questions, they're not GI, they have a bank account, they actually have interest, all that. You just flip it on its head. Most people think, okay, I need to just talk to a ton of people as a closer. Tele-sales works best when you've got an open or closer model, you're splitting up the responsibilities, and that closer, you are talking to 10, 12, 15 people a day or more that actually are qualified and have interest. And then you spend time with those. Can you go into that model a little bit more of whatever level you're comfortable with because a lot of people probably think, hey, I've got to make the calls cold or with leads, I got to do the whole pitch from start to finish. It sounds like you endorse and do something different. Go into a little bit more detail how yours and how you suggested the work. Yeah, and I don't mind being transparent and saying it telling anything. It really, really don't bother me at all. Just because it's not easy to tell a sale, so I could give away secrets and then there's no guarantee that anyone would succeed. The best model for tele-sales and most, there's a lot of places that still don't do this or don't realize it, or an agent think that I can just get on the phone and cold call or call age leads or call 30 new leads a week. I can make it. I can succeed. You can, but it's the toughest way to do it because you've got to spend all your time doing the $10 an hour work that could be delegated. So most people are spending 90% of their time trying to find that qualified interested person and only 5-10% of their time closing. Let's flip that on its head and spend, spend 90-95% of our time talking to interested qualified individuals and delegate that work to someone else. And so the best way is to, I think, is to have leads flowing into a dialer using a predictive dialer, whether it's calling one number, two number, or three numbers at a time. Our call center dials two numbers at a time and we have openers. And so my call center is not even that big. Yeah, we do 80 to 100 final expense apps per month over the phone. Some weeks, you know, more than 20, some weeks less than 20, whatever. But we have four openers, I'm sorry, two openers transfer into four closers. And so if, but if you find, if you have enough lead flow and you're using a dialer and they're talking to someone every 30, 60 seconds, and then they're, then they're reading a script, they're pre-qualifying the person, the opener is, they're making sure that they can help, they can help qualify. They're not GI, they have a bank account that you're asking everything properly. And then once they meet all your qualifications, then you transfer them to a closer. Most people think that they need like two, like two or three closers, two or three openers for every one closer that they're transferring to. It's actually, if you're using leads in a dialer, it's actually the opposite. One good opener can keep two to three closers busy full time if you're doing it correctly, which is surprising to most people. They're like, that doesn't make any sense. That's crazy. But it's just the math and it's true. And so we have two openers transferring to three closers and our call center manager. It's a, it's a small operation. We just started it, you know, started it back up a few months ago. And so that's, that's the best way that it works. And we're starting to add a person a week and starting to scale it up now that we have perfected and figure out the exact numbers of it. And I've got so much going on that I'm not looking to have a thousand man call center. But hey, if I can write a thousand, couple thousand, 5,000 final expense apps in a year, one day in a small operation, that's a start. Yeah. Well, you know, it makes a lot of sense too, because as a face to face agent, I think one of the best ways to leverage your time is to hire someone to set appointments for you to go on versus travail the countryside. You probably know, trying to find somebody's home or not, not to say that it's a bad method to do that. It's great. It's just that you can be extremely efficient. Exactly. For a very affordable price or the price of one policy commission a week, they booked with a bunch of appointments and have your life back. You don't have to sit down in front of the phone between six and nine at night, the book for the following day, the people who will take, like you said, 10 bucks an hour, give or take to do this for you. We started opening it out at $8 an hour. Yeah, we'll give them a little bonus for when they transfer a sale to us, and then our closers can choose hourly plus a small commission or a piece of the larger commission and go 100% commission. Even agents out there that don't want to hire someone for $400 a week. I mean, you can still go to onlinejobs.ph, get a get a Filipino telemarketer, maybe start with one, maybe start with two, spend 60, 80, 100 bucks, 120 bucks, and throw in some age leads into a dialer, and at least start to learn the system and only be talking to, and yeah, it's not perfect. I mean this well. It's a lot of times it's some broken English. It's not perfect. When you're able to transfer, when they're able to transfer you calls, and you're able to talk to people, yeah, it's not ideal yet, but it's a start. It gets you on the phone. You're still delegating some of that weeding out to where you're then only talking to qualified, interested individuals that have time for you, that have a checking account, that are healthy enough to talk to you. We try not to write guaranteed issue in our business. I'm getting a crowd outside my window. We get outside our studio. We get, we only write guaranteed, just to surprise people, we only write guaranteed issue business when we've got a spouse applying for a healthy policy, for a day one policy. Just because of the amount of time, the little return, they get policy in the mail, they see it's a two year wait, they're like crap, you know, or the fact that United of Omaha's direct consumer GI is, you know, great. And so it's just, we don't want to get into that business, and especially when our closers are on 100% commission, or even when they're on $11, $10, $11 an hour plus small commission, their time is best suited. At the end of the day, I always try to focus on quality. At the end of the day, their time is best suited talking to someone that can give us the best ROI. Right. So let's go through the process of qualifying these people. And your, your openers, they've established the criteria that you're looking for that will suit, and like you said, be a good use of your closers time. You get the closers on the phone with them. They do what they need to do. What kind of, what are the most common, say, two or three objections? Because again, people seeing this are probably face to face. We get certain kinds of objections, and they probably think, oh, there's going to be objections about personal information, banking information. What kind of objections do you experience as a tele-sales agent? And how do you guys overcome them? Yeah, the biggest ones are, and we try to train our staff to handle those as well as we can. At the end of the day, I'm most, most places want to, most salespeople, they want to handle objections like at the end of the call or on the close. If an objection is going to come up, I want to get it out as early as I can in the first 10, 15, 20 minutes. I don't want to give and maybe, maybe it's going to be crazy. I don't, I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to go over benefits and talk about value and get into price until I know that they're going to make a decision. Until I know and I'm confident that when I say what, when I ask them, hey, which of these three are you most comfortable with? And I ask them that I feel most confident that I'm going to get, I'm going to get an answer and that they're going to make a decision because of all those trial closes and that kind of thing. The biggest objections are trust. Hey, I don't know you. I'm on the phone. That comes, we have to, that's why we take our time. Our average sale takes about, and this is for people too, our average sale takes about, takes over an hour. Because I don't want to sell price. I don't want to spend 10, 15 minutes, 20 minutes on the phone. I can, I'm trying to put up crazy numbers. I did, I did the challenge a while back at the end of last year and did a little bit of that. But we want to spend, we've got a script. We spend five, six, seven pages of initial script, 20, 30 minutes, building rapport, building trust, and just really trying to overcome any trust objections they may have. Price normally isn't an objection we get, believe it or not. The biggest one is, hey, I don't know you. I don't trust you. They don't normally say, I don't like you, but I like to throw that in there at once long just for fun. But it's generally just, hey, I don't know you. I don't trust you. And so some things we'll do to overcome that is, I'll always use phrases like, hey, we've got a thousand clients that said the exact same thing, and I'm with you. Once they took that leap of faith, once they knew that we were who we said we were, and that they were doing business with someone in their state, it just made all the sense in the world and they're happy they did. We've got a lot of awesome happy customers kind of going back to just putting them in that frame of mind. Some of the things we do is we can send them to a website, we can have them call our office, we can text them a picture of our insurance license. I've even got as crazy as to text a picture of my driver's license. I don't care, you know? Right. I mean, anything we can do to gain that initial trust and be creative and do some little things, normally it comes down to just time, building rapport, taking our time. Those agents that think they're selling price, the price is most important and that they're going to sell little bitty binky cases that don't stick on the books, I can promise you they're selling based on price and they're not spending enough time with the prospect. Well, so with that said, and you're using, you know, what's the great thing is you obviously have the capability and the leverage to use these supplementary things like showing your license or here's my website, here's my office, here's the purse, here's me, you know? And that's great. Does that, my question would be, does that, what percentage of your sales or one call closes? Are you having to do multiple call backs? Is it commonplace to have that happen? Just kind of curious. A little bit. We've got one closer that she wants, she just, maybe it's just, I don't know, maybe she just allows people to call people back, but I would say about 80% is on the first call. I actually, I won't call anybody back and I try to get my call center manager, you know, and get that transferred down to my closer and openers. But the end of the day, sometimes it's a one-legged call and you're talking to a spouse. There's little things that we can't always overcome to where sometimes, and there's certain clientele that won't always make a decision on the first call. And so if they think they are truly serious and there's a really good chance, yeah, I won't call them back for a $20, $30 a month sale. It's just not going to happen. Generally, they're making a decision on their own and they can make a decision right there anyway. But those that want to think about it and they want to talk to their spouse or they want to call them back, I won't allow, we won't allow it to happen unless we're calling them back within 24 hours and it's scheduled. Otherwise, they're going to forget to waste the time. Otherwise, we just need to figure out a way to overcome that objection, take a little more time. And I would say we don't have to call them back as much as people would think. We focus on one call close. It doesn't feel like we're closing them, but that's what we focus on. Right. Kind of related to that. So you mentioned, obviously, you guys aren't cold calling, thankfully. You're using paid leads of some type. Just curious how willing you'd be to kind of talking about what you use, what you would suggest agents to use as far as leads that would work well with tele sales and maybe what kind of leads aren't necessarily the best. Yeah. I would kind of flip it on its head probably and say that we don't use direct mail, or a lot of agents use direct mail in person. Our main sources are our online digital leads that we use, social media advertising, Facebook, Instagram, we're doing some Google, that kind of thing. And then also some telemarketing because people are used to answering the phone. The only thing you get into there is guaranteed issue. You need a lot. Yeah. Oh yeah. So what we prefer digital leads, online leads, I'm not going to net quote or precise leads or life leads directly into those companies, all web leads and buying internet leads because I'm going to get on the phone with like one out of 20, it's just a nightmare. But we're focusing on generating our own leads through online advertising, digital advertising, and then supplement it with some telemarketing leads. Right. So interestingly enough, what you're saying here is the old adage and final expenses direct mail is king, of course, for face-to-face agents. But you guys, and I can kind of assume some reasons why, why you would do digital leads. I mean, what do you think makes your digital lead creation better for tele sales instead of, say, direct mail? Yeah. We can call them in real time. We can call them within 24 hours. We don't have to pay near the cost of direct mail. Again, we don't have to wait weeks. We don't have to pay the call. We don't have to pay the price. Nowadays, I've got a better chance of my digital lead being exclusive than probably my direct mail or telemarketing at this point. And so I like and prefer that. And those customers are a little more tech savvy, online savvy. They're more likely to buy over the phone because they're used to doing business through websites, social media, whatever, and they have a phone. They have internet. They have computer. They have an email. They have a Facebook, all that little things that actually help our main objection we get. Yeah. No, I think you're spot on, man, because the person, as you know, final expense traditionally are people who are at home, watch TV. They've got a flip phone. They're not on Facebook. They're not online. And the entire life they spent replying back to direct mail cards, that is how they are by design. And they'll continue to send these cards back. And that's what most of them do. But as you know, you've got this growing market who are now on Facebook, who are now using the internet. And they have changed how they buy, because that's the other thing. I mean, I personally think the people who send in direct mail that want final expense, want a face-to-face, the buyers want a face-to-face appointment, because that's how they've always bought. Whereas now, we've got this digital market that is used to doing the research, is used to being able to access the internet and qualify, like you said, who you are, what's your website, answer those particular objections. And they actually prefer it. And I see personally, kind of as an aside, I see that as a growing trend over the next 10 to 20 years in final expense, because final expense is one of the laggards, I think, to catch up with technology. I mean, I don't know about you. I've never had a salesperson in my home, probably in 10 years. And if somebody comes knocking, as much as I do in selling face-to-face, I don't let them in. It's very rare that I'll give somebody the opportunity to do it for a pitch. And I just think more people can do it. I'm sorry, Cody, go ahead. Kind of funny. I do the exact same thing. I mean, I don't let anybody, I don't let a salesperson in my home, but yet I've got agents that go to people's home every day, or doorknock, cold. But maybe that demographic is more likely to let them in. But what you said is true. It's expanding. It's growing. I like that that type of lead is just a little more educated on what's going on online, too. Well, you know, the other thing, too, that you get with your kind of leads that you don't get with direct mail, is you've got an email. Okay? If they're online, they've got an email. Pretty much assume that these days. And they probably are using their smartphones. So you can text them at those. You've got so many more opportunities. I would think just looking from the outside in to contact these people to drip on them over time, even if they don't buy to automate that whole process. Again, that's the biggest problem with a face-to-face environment is you don't have any of that. You know, you've got to pay the old fashioned way, you know, you got to do direct mail. It's more expensive. It sure it works. But hey, man, it's a lot cheaper. Like you said, the develop leads online and you get their contact information, you know. So I think that probably is a tremendous help with gaining the trust and enough so to make the sales. Right. It really is. And also another thing that a lot of call centers will use are TV leads. Yeah. They used to be, what I've noticed, and we've tickered with them a little, not running our own commercials, but just buying them from a TV lead vendor. But what I've noticed is the cost for TV leads is a lot more than it used to be because it's kind of funny with final expense or insurance. Everyone starts to hear about these things that are working and then they all start to run towards that. You know, it's just like, it's just how it works. Right. But also the TV lead is generally in a little worse health. They're sitting in front of the TV, you know. Kind of like telemarketing. They're sitting by the phone, you know. So we've used that a little, but the digital is king for what we do. That's what we prefer. Yeah. No, it makes perfect sense. And you know, again, I, you know, the biggest problem in direct mail. And then again, I advocate it for the face-to-face guy. I think it's the best way to do business, but it's undeniable. That's what most agents do. There's no way that prices for postage can stay as low as they are. They're suppressed for how long they'll be subsidized. I don't know. Postage should be triple what it's paid. And with more people doing final expense face-to-face, as we've seen a huge upsurge in this business from the failed business models of health insurance, a lot of people leaving Medicare advantage getting into this. And when they all do the same thing, you know, you know, Mildred's only going to reply to one mail or maybe two, and she probably gets six or eight a month, you know, and that particular segment is so competitive that there's markets that we work in where it's just, you cannot get a lead at an affordable rate with direct mail. It's insane. 100% true. No doubt. And then you know that, you know that specific type of lead and that part of the industry is good as anybody that I know. Yeah. Yeah. It's an unfortunate reality that we all have to contend with if we're going to do face-to-face sales. And some markets are fine, but a lot of the more traditional areas to sell final expense face-to-face, this just, it's, I can't go into some areas. I love the work because I'd pay 50, 60 bucks a lead for final expense, so it's crazy. So real quick question just based on that. When it comes to marketplaces and where you target for telephonic sales, do you have a preference as to where you target final expense? Do you target in areas that are, you know, more metropolitan, more rural, maybe smaller upper Midwestern states with small populations? What kind of strategy, if any, do you guys employ? Most even similar to face-to-face, those metro areas are going to be the highest targeted areas. They're getting the most calls. They're getting the most mail. It's just easier to target those. We target all the same, but we prefer a rural individual just because they're talking less people, they're getting less mail and maybe two hours from the nearest insurance agent. Generally, they're getting, maybe they're getting less phone calls, maybe they're on the do not call, whatever. That is another thing that helps. We prefer rural. Obviously, we get a lot more metro. Right. There's only so many people that live in a rural area as much as you'd like to work it, you know, and so you have to, I would imagine, mix in some of that. That's similar to face-to-face though. Yeah, same deal. You know, I like working in Van Buren County up the road for me, but you know, there's only like 900 people between 50 and 80 that live there. It's like, I might get 10 leads there if I'm lucky, you know. Yeah, exactly. You mentioned earlier about the challenge that you did, where I believe you wrote an excess of $40,000 and I don't know if it was just life-freeing in them or final expense or a mixture of those, but either way, I'd like you to kind of describe what that was all about and kind of just go into detail for people who are curious that would maybe like to look at more about that as you did the videos. Absolutely, buddy. Thank you. We have a 100-day challenge page on our site where we can talk about it. I ended up doing in 35 total days, I did 100 apps, mixed mostly final expense, some terms, some non-med, some fully under written, you know, I'd take what I could get mostly final expense. That was the target and the total premium was a little over 65k in 35 days over the phone, just me closing all of them. I did that because I get so many agents that think telecells is impossible or that email or text or call and say, man, I really would like you to bring light to telecell and how possible it is and how, and yes, it's tough for the field sales, but at the end of the day, my marketing team and I, we kind of, we brainstorm, we meet every morning. I meet with my call center owner and managers every morning. I meet with my agency director every morning. I meet with my marketing team every morning and so we meet every morning and I had this crazy idea. I come up with just wild crazy ideas daily somehow as you probably do too. We just get creative and our minds get to churning, but I said, you know what, what would be nuts? And I'm like, you know what, I think it would be nuts because I stay busy too. I stay very busy as I'm sure you do too. And I thought, you know what, 100 apps in 100 days. And I'm like, well, no, that's not bad. I'm like, what about 100 grand? Well, that's pretty good, but still 100 days. You know, we're like, well, let's just call it, you know, 100 day challenge and you just do 100 apps as fast as you can, just to bring light to telecells. And so what I did was just like what I do in the call center leads into a dialer opener, transferring to me and setting up callback appointments to where I'm talking to 15, 20 people a day. Yeah, I had to put all the other stuff on hold and do some delegating that I wouldn't normally do during that time. But by doing that and focusing on building rapport and spending a lot of time, I mean, I mean, my agency director, he has agents to ask, hey, I want to sell over the phone, you know, what can I do to do that? He has to explain, you know, Cody's got a lot of experience in this. He's focused, he spends 45, 50 minutes before he even gets into benefits and building value and all of his trial closes an hour before he even gets into price, you know, most people don't understand all that. And we put a bunch of recorded, we recorded a lot of these calls. We, what's funny is we were doing a transition in software in my call center. And for the last half, I wanted to speed it up. So I went and sat in my call center and let them transfer me calls. And I thought, you know what, this will get, because of how much time it was taking, I'm like, I got to get to get this, get this thing rolling over with as soon as I can. So it was a ton of fun. It was a, I mean, it was a monster challenge. I don't want to do it again right now by any means because I was just, it was just all day every day, 12, 13 hours. But it was fun. It brought a lot of attention to tell sales and the fact that it's possible. But at the end of the day, most, most agents don't realize it took a lot of leads. It took a system. It took a lot of experience. It took it open or it took some dialers. It had to invest a lot of money in a short amount of time. And it took a lot of my time. So it wasn't someone that anyone can just, just jump in and do like, you know, and do it. Well, you know, it's good that you did that too. Because I'm again, you asked me two years ago, can somebody be successful in final expense tell sales? I'm probably say, probably not. I really don't know a lot of producers that do it successfully. But so I think therefore that kind of, you know, now I've met a lot of people yourself, others, there's a guy down in Kansas City who does tell us sales. I don't know if you know the guy, but he, he does all direct mail leads and he sells everything. And I think he even mails the application. He's so antiquated. And do you know what I'm talking about? I don't, I don't know if I'm, I may know you're talking about, but I've heard his name is David. Okay. Okay. I think I do. I think I do. I'm, I'm thinking the cool people what I think I do, but it's, that's a, gosh, I can't imagine mailing apps. That's, I assume so because the carrier I was on convention with, with them does not have a telephonic application nor an eapp. So the only physical way, and this guy was doing, you know, 200 grand plus with this one carrier. And I know he had other carriers too, but I mean, it's just wild. So, so anyways, you know, after having some experience meeting other people doing this, I'm persuaded that, you know, there's some people that just are destined and are more situated to sell over the phone just as much as those who are situated and better off going face to face. I'm, I'm of the persuasion. You can be successfully the way, and you got to find the approach that best suits your personality to something that you enjoy doing. And cause just like you don't like enjoying driving. And that's kind of a, you know, a driver not to go face to face. It's the same for face to face guys, but where I'm going with this, I think the challenge you did was fantastic because I think there's a level of selling that you have to do and convincing of these guys that it is possible. And there's, there's, as I say, we're all doubting Thompson's, you know, we have to see to believe and seeing it is believing, especially if you've got recordings and trainings. That's, you know, how else could you better position yourself and sell process? Exactly. And I had a train of thought I was fixing to mention. I remember what I was going to say, but I do that a lot. I was, I was, I was focusing on, I was focusing on writing as many acts as I could. And so it just like field sales. Some of them will fall off. Some of them, you know, maybe get them, maybe get declined after they're submitted, you know, if it's a non-med term or whatever. Some will change their mind. I mean, it's, it's, there's still those numbers, but to kind of give someone an idea for you to try to do this from home, you need 50 to 100. If you're just doing on your own, without an opener, without, without dialers and stuff, you need 50 to 100 leads a week. You just do to do, you know, five sales. And sometimes more, sometimes less, maybe initially for the first several weeks, first month, you know, it's, you're getting to know what you're learning it. And for those that think that, and you were maybe going to get to this, I don't know, but I thought I mentioned it. For those that think that, hey, I'm going to average 30, 40 bucks a month, my call center over the last several weeks, I just asked my, my manager this morning before I came on this on purpose. And he said that we've averaged 63 dollars and eight cents of monthly premium. And that's probably higher than my field agents. Yeah, that's better. That's probably better than my average face to face. You know, I, mine usually is a little bit lower on an average basis, but yeah, that's, I've seen, you know, and I've seen guys that do tele sales that seem to have pretty good case sizes. You know, I mean, that's not a detriment to your average in my experience doing over the phone. Yeah, it's just, it's just all about the way you do it. Don't like, like, I gotta tell all of our field agents, don't sell with your own pocketbook, your own wallet, you know, you're not buying the product, they are. If you put so much focus on building rapport and building value and just proposing what you think they need and giving them three options and given, given them the options in descending order, not ascending order, then they're more likely to choose larger, larger option. So as we wrap up this interview, Cody, what I'd like to touch on here is just some kind of final thoughts and tips that you would have for the aspiring agent that wants to sell telephonically. What would you tell them they need to do to succeed? What would you need to, what would you tell them to do to not, you know, fail? What are your kind of general advice to be successful in this type of business? I would say the first thing is record every single call. That's, especially if you're trying to do it on your own, that's the fastest way to learn what you're doing. We've all got bad habits that we do, things that we say, and I'm really, I'm really picky about that kind of stuff, so I try not to have those, but we, but naturally we all do. If you can listen to yourself and plug yourself into a, you know, a script or a program or something that's working and then record every call so that you can dissect and diagnose what you're doing, what you, what you're doing well, what you're doing poorly, what you should be improving at, when you should be speaking, when you're not, when you should be shutting up, when you're speaking, and all those little things that, that we can learn from ourselves like, like for instance, there's, there's a lot of times where agents, they want to speak and then, and they'll interrupt people. In telecells especially, if you are talking more than the prospect, I can tell you, you will not make that sound. At the end of the day, we want to be listening more than we're talking, we want to be asking open-ended questions. If you can't get them to talk, there's, there's a couple things that happen in telecells. At the beginning of the call, you've got to focus on building rapport, getting them to talk, but there's also those, those, those individuals that the prospects to say, Hey, what's the price? What's the price? If you give them the price, when they're asking, when you're not ready to give it to them, the interview's over. You won't make the sale, they're shopping or they're not serious, or they just want you to regurgitate information so they don't need you anymore. I'll just tell them, Hey, I promise I'll get to that. I want to give it, I promise I'll get to it. Just give, you know, give me a few more minutes to get to know you so I can give you the best possible price. But if they're like, no, I want a price now. I'm sorry, Mr. Jones, I want you to wait around and get it from me. But unfortunately, I have a lot, a lot of other people that I've got to get to and I can't just give you a price that's not perfect for you. I guess it wouldn't make any sense, right? Am I right? You know, and so, but the end of the day, I'll hang up on someone and move on before I just regurgitate a price and then they don't buy. Right, right. Those are excellent tips, especially the recording one is that's good for any insurance agent, but I imagine especially important for the telephonic guy because all he has is his voice, his tonality. Exactly. As in how he says he can't rely on body language. And I'll add to this. You know, if you're looking to get in telephonic sales, you will need somebody who knows how to do it successfully. Cody is a guy that is doing it successfully and has done so. It would be a wise decision of you to talk to him because if this is something you're passionate about, you love the idea of selling over the phone. You don't need to learn it from somebody who's never done it. It's not enough just to have a carrier or two that does telephonic apps or E apps and some leads. You need to have some counsel, some training from somebody who can help you guide you in the right direction. So that said, Cody, for anybody that's interested in that position as we wrap up our great interview today, how can people find you if they're interested in selling over the phone? Tell us where to go, where they can find you pretty much anywhere on the internet. Absolutely. Secureagentmentor.com. We've actually just totally rebuilt and rebranded and spent a lot of money improving our site. Secureagentmentor.com. Also Secureagent Mentor on YouTube, Secureagent Mentor on Facebook. We've got a free agent Facebook group or they can always call our office at 417-883-9300. They can send an email at support at secureagentmentor.com. We'd love to help. Just like Dooford helps a ton of agents and does an awesome job at providing valuable content. We hope they'll do that as well. Well, Cody, thank you so much for joining me today and I really enjoyed this interview. I don't think there's anything like it that I've seen and I'm sure my audience as well as others looking at telephonic sales will enjoy it. Cody, I'm checking out and it was a pleasure to speak with you. You as well. Appreciate you, Dooford. Thank you, buddy. All right. Have a good one, man. You too, sir.