 I struggled. You're probably struggling. Let's not struggle anymore. I'm going to share some specific stories, facts, tips, strategies of when I struggled, why I struggled with my presentation as a new insurance agent. I'm going to tell you a couple of quick stories once people don't know. You've never heard before and you're going to hear them now. The first one is I went up to a couple hours from here in northern Missouri and I showed up to a lead for someone that interested in life insurance. This was within my first six months in the business. I'm 20 years old. I'm a brand new agent. I'm going up and based on the conversation, I did a little preparing and I thought, wow, this has the opportunity to be a really big sale. I go up, I sit down and we end up finding out that he already has a term policy with our company that had turned into an annual renewable term to where the term was actually the price would go up every single year and it was getting pretty expensive. He was looking, this was the home office lead, he was looking to convert that or to do something different because he wasn't going to keep paying them the money he was paying now. I'm thinking, my eyes get big. I'm like, dang, this is a good opportunity. I do what I always do. I go through my sales process, my presentation. I slowed down. I did good on that. I slowed down. Got to the end. I presented like three options like I always do. I always talk about, hey, one, two, three. The biggest one was $1,200 per month to Ching. I present $1,200 a month. He looks at me, he can tell I was new. He looks at me and says, well, what do you recommend? I'm like, I said, dude, I'd do the big one. Now I'm thinking, there could have been a better way to approach this. It could have been a better way to say this. So guess what? I'm new. I present $1,200 a month. This was a decade ago. I'm telling him to do that one. He's like, okay, maybe. And so I convinced him to at least do the app because I drove two and a half hours. So I do the app. I leave. I'm supposed to call him in a couple of days when he talks to his CPA or CFO or something. I don't know. He made up some story. And he didn't move forward. And that killed me. Well, where did I struggle? Number one, I saw dollar signs and I just tried to grab the most amount of money that I could possibly get right now. That's a problem. Because at the end of the day, what are we put there to do to help them the best way we can? I saw dollar signs as a new agent. And in that moment, I struggled. When in reality, I should have slowed down. I should have said, well, all three of these are going to solve your problem. Which one makes the most sense to you? I should have put it back on him. I should have asked a question. I should have slowed down and maneuvered. I should have just, I think he could tell it was like, I was like, dude, give me your wallet, man. You know what I mean? I got excited, right? And we all get excited and we struggle and we make mistakes. That was one for me. Okay, here's a second one. Here's a second one. I'm just going to use my one, two, three for actual stories now. The second one was I went down to Arkansas for a warm market appointment, semi-warm market. This was after my first year, the very beginning of my second year, by the way. So you think about it, I had already made 117 grand my first year. I thought I was this hot shot. You know, I'm selling everybody I talked to. And what most people don't know is I made 117 grand in eight months, and then I took four months off to focus on school and basketball. I think I may have did a little bit of stuff part time. And it pretty much looks like, dude, I just made, I just hit my goal. So I'm going to just take the rest of the year off, right? Wish I wouldn't have now, whatever. Okay, I go back in January to run my first appointment after not running appointments very much for four months. Just like you got to shoot hoops. Just like you got to shoot the basketball every day. You get rusty. You don't run appointments every day. You're going to get rusty. Okay, at least for four months. So I show up. I run this appointment. I just present options in front of them. I'm there like 20 minutes, right? I'm like, all this will be easy. I got this. I show options. And they don't come in for whatever reason. I don't remember all the specifics. I drive home an hour back to Springfield, Missouri. And I'm thinking, what the freak is wrong with me? I used to make every freaking shot I took. And now I can't sell somebody who's known me since I was a kid. What is going on? Right? I was struggling hard in that moment. That hour drive, I thought about so much stuff. And I thought, dude, there was a few reasons why I gave you some of the reasons why I struggled in this example. I'm going to give you a few reasons why I struggled in this example. Okay? And it ties into number three. Ties in number three. I got rusty. Right? You don't flex the muscle, dude. It's going away. Okay? It's going away. I got rusty. I didn't even focus on building rapport. And I rushed the whole thing. The three Rs. Didn't mean to do that, but that's how it turned out. Rusty didn't build rapport. And I tried to rush it. And I just gave them quotes and hope they did it. Right? That's a problem. What's the learning lesson in this? That you've got to be consistent or you're going to fall apart. Also, you've got to run your presentation the same way every time, no matter whether you think it's going to be an easy game or not. Right? They always said that there's a lot of teams out there. And I used to do it too, where you'd play to your competition, where you'd beat a team that you weren't supposed to be. In the next game, you play a team that's like one in 13. And you literally either lose or barely win. Why? Because you played down to your competition. Right? I got rusty. And I thought, you know what? I can walk in and tell them whatever I want. Wrong. Wrong, because I tried to rush it. I hadn't been putting up shots. Right? And I didn't focus on building rapport. Anytime I struggled in my presentation, it came down to one single thing. Personally, for me, this may not be true for you, but when I had presentation issues, it came down to one thing for me. What do you think it is? What do you think it is? For me, if I struggled, I had not built rapport. If I struggled and I walked away without a deal, guess what? I struggled at building rapport. They didn't trust me. They didn't feel like there was common ground. Right? There was no relationship there yet. That's what a lot of people miss. There's got to be a relationship for them to give you money. There's got to be common ground for them to give you money. There's got to be some trust there for them to want to give you money every month for the rest of your life, the rest of their life at least. Right? So anytime I struggled in the presentation, it always came back down to this for me, rapport. And I could tell story after story after story after story of how I struggled in the presentation because of this, right here. Every single time. I remember selling a policy on the north side of Springfield that I rushed and sold because it was a chaotic house and environment and there was a lot of stuff going on that I'll explain in another video. And I literally leave, grab the policy and leave, but he doesn't stay my client. Why? There was no relationship. Why would they stay with you later? Right? For example, I had this happen to where I had a client a couple hours east of here because I sold them. I built the relationship. I sent them newsletters every single month when the next person came along to help them with their Medicare. This was years ago and they were able to save them seven, eight, 10, 12, $15 a month. They did not care. They didn't move and they called me and said, Hey, sounds like somebody can beat what you have for the exact same product, but we're not going to switch. Why? Because we have a great relationship with you. We like you. We trust you. We know you have our best interests at heart. We know you care and you communicate with us every single month. Right? This isn't like, you know what they call people that don't care about their clients, that don't build a relationship, that don't build rapport, they call them, my dad calls them a policy peddler. Right? I don't know if I'm spelling that right, but whatever. A policy peddler. I started out my career as a policy peddler and then I quickly learned that I was, my gift was this, I have a way for whatever reason, when I'm going to sell situation, I always, and it's not, it's not like fake. I always end up complimenting the prospect numerous times and it's not fake. I'm not lying. I mean what I'm saying. It's a habit now. I don't even notice I'm doing it. I'll get off the call and they'll be like, man, dude, they probably loved you. I'm like, why? They're like, because dude, you talked about them the whole time. You complimented the heck out of them. You built rapport and you showed how much you cared about them. I'm like, I don't even, like it's human nature. Right? When you do this enough, you will get phenomenal and you'll start to struggle less. Hey, if you love this, you'll love how to do a presentation for insurance agents. There's a couple pieces of this video that I've never talked about before. It's right here. Click on it. You'll love. Hey, almost every insurance agent I know struggles with objections, specifically what to do and how to improve your closing abilities. I'm going to talk through several different things. Okay. I always talk about