 There's agent training every Monday, two o'clock or two or three central standard time. I'm Cody askings and I'm excited to talk to you today about the mistakes that agents are making. You're making them. I've made them. I don't make him anymore. And I know hundreds and hundreds and even thousands of agents that make these mistakes, when their appointment say, because I think that's, that's one of the, I mean, if you think about it, the number one reason why agents fell and 92% of insurance agents fell in this business, the number one reason why agents fell in this business. And I want some feedback from you, whether you're on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, in comments below, number one reason why agents fell is simply because they do not see enough people per week. You say, okay, if you're saying that I, the only reason I'm failing is I'm not seeing enough people per week, then what can we do to fix that? Well, I know that the best way to fix this, which is why insurance agents fell is there's three things. Number one, I would almost say there's like, there's like three ways to almost like guarantee success, right? To succeed. How are we doing on glare? DJ, we're good. Three ways to succeed. I would say, no, you know what? Number one is by leads. I heard it said by Joe DeVault out in the boot hill one time. He said, Hey, the boot hill in Missouri. He said, Hey, Cody, if agents do not have leads without leads, agents are unemployed. And I thought, dang, dude, that's good. Like that got my attention. Without leads, agents are unemployed. And you say, well, Cody, I don't believe in buying leads without warm, without prospects, essentially a lead is a prospect. And when you think of prospects, okay, you think you could think about your warm market, you could think about, you know, your people from your church, you could think about your, your, your networking group. You can think about all these different ways. It doesn't always just have to be a lead that you bought. A prospect is a lead. So without leads, whether they're bought free, grabbed referrals, whatever, without leads, you fell. Okay. The number two thing is there's some, there's some, there's, there's a, there's a, uh, there's, there's a lack of appointment setting through a succeed, dude, get better at appointment setting. And then the third thing would be, would be training, which would be knowing. Hey, here's what I do when I get in front of a prospect. From A to Z, all four steps from the warm up to the fact fine, to the presentation, the close all the way till the wrap up and cool down. This is the biggest reason why agents are able to succeed and keep themselves from felling is when they have people to talk to, when then they know what to do to get in front of those people. And then when they get in front of those people, how to convert them into actual sales. Okay. So I'm going to go over a few mistakes. The part I'm going to cover the most today is step number two, appointment setting, the appointment setting mistakes, the things that I see, whether it's at the door, door knocking, whether it's on the phone, doesn't matter. The biggest mistakes that I see, the, the, I would say the, the, the biggest mistakes in general, when it comes to appointment setting would be the first one would be the start of the call. It's weak. It's weak, baby. It's weak. The start of the call is weak. So when you start the call, a lot of agents will do this. Here's how about 90 plus percent of insurance agents will start a lead call. Hey, I'm, I'm looking for, uh, Betty Smith. Yeah, that, well, no, this isn't, well, yeah, it's Betty. And then, and then we'll make another mistake. Hey, my name is Cody Askins with secure insurance group. And you put your information in saying that you wanted a quote to buy life insurance. And then we pause. And what happens is by doing this, two things are happening. The start of the call has a lack of confidence. It's a, there's started the call as a lack of confidence. We don't know that we have the right person. And then even the second layer is when we say something like that, like, hey, you fill out a form you wanted to quote to buy life insurance or whatever. It's, it's, it's a, it's a dumb assumption, right? Because every leader has some level of interest by, by doing that, you are asking the prospect to insert an objection here, please. So that's the first mistake, the start of the call, the way you should say it, when you start the call, I would say, you know what, it's the greeting from the very beginning. You were showing a lack of confidence and you are struggling with getting the prospect's attention so that you can end up getting in front of them. Instead of, hello, I'm looking for Betty. Hey, Betty, which one has more likelihood of getting the response we want gaining confidence in them, letting them know, Hey, I know who you are. I'm not a salesperson. I'm not a telemarketer. I'm not a random stranger. I know you. One has confidence with an assumption and one's going to get that because if you think about it, have you ever told a prospect? Have you ever told, told it, told it, I mean, ever told the telemarketer? So for instance, oh, that's DJ something and it applies to you guys too. DJ, have you ever had someone call you and say, Hey, I'm looking for Daniel. I'm with Sirius XM or whoever. And you say, Oh, no, you have the wrong number. Has that ever happened? It's happened to you guys, hasn't it? Right? Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, that's the biggest thing though, because they don't know that they have the right person. I may not want to talk to them. You guys may not want to talk to that telemarketer. So we may end up saying, nah, you know what? It, you got the wrong number. It's not him, you know, dude, I even do it. So instead, let's start the beginning of the call, the greeting, the right way. Hey, Betty, Betty says, hello, hey, Betty, that's it. That's the beginning of a call. Hey, Betty, hello, hello, Betty, that's it. I mean, so many mistakes are made right here that affect the entire rest of the call. Now you know how to greet someone when, when you get them on the phone, because if you greet them the wrong way, there's a lack of confidence, a lack of trust, poor assumption. And the rest of the call, they are, they, they just know that you don't know them. All right. Second thing is use your first name. I think another big mistake agents make is they use their last name, they use their company name, and they end up giving the prospect not only too much information, not only too much information, but the prospect doesn't care what your last name is, they don't care what your company name was. I just heard it in our, I just heard it in our call center last week. The, we said who we were with the company. And guess what the prospect did because we said that they said, uh, who is that company gave them a chance to insert an objection to ask a question. This isn't a time for them to ask you questions. Guess what? You're in control. You're the one trying to get in front of them. It's time for you to ask them questions, not the other way around. I want them asking me questions and I want them talking a lot more than me and I want them listening. I want to be listening to them and all that when I get in front of them. But right now the goal is to get in front of them. Use your first name. Okay. So for instance, hello, Betty. Yeah, this is Betty. This is Cody. That's it so far. That's it. This is Cody. I don't need last name. I don't need company name. I don't need a bunch of different stuff. I need to keep it really simple, gain control of the call with confidence. The next thing that a lot of agents make the mistake is they say, how are you? And I'm going to even change this one to agents use last name because these are mistakes. Last name and company name. That's a mistake. Okay. How are you? Come on. Really? What telemarketer on the planet doesn't ask how are you? I said that a while back in a video and I said, Hey, the client, you don't kick the client doesn't care what you think of them yet. And they don't know that you care and we don't care how they're doing anyway. So stop asking. And I had an agent say, well, you know what? When I started calling the process of the agent jumped on a post and said, Hey, they know how much I care. I promise. Like they know in the first few seconds, how much I care. They don't even know you yet. They have no clue. It's irrelevant. It's a waste of breath. I don't want to speak words unless it positively impacts my goal of getting them getting in front of them. Period. So stop doing that. That's a what? That's a mistake. Fourth one, I'm going to write it as because it's a mistake. Agents always pause. Don't pause until after you ask a question. That is guess what? A mistake. You heard that call earlier. Hey, I'm looking and this is the bad call. Remember this? This is a wrong call. Hey, I'm looking for Betty. If she even agrees as Betty, she may lie and say it's not. You got the wrong number. And a lot of times it's still the right number. Yeah, this is this. Yeah, this is Betty. Betty, this is Betty Smith. This is Cody askings with secure insurance group. You filled out a form to receive your free quote to buy life insurance. Two glaring mistakes with that. Number one, they just agreed to receive information. They have some level of interest. You have no clue if they're going to let you give them a quote. You have no clue if they're going to buy life insurance. You have no clue about any of it because it's some level of interest. Right. Going back to some level of interest again. And the second mistake is the agent pauses and guess what happens when you don't, when you don't finish with a question, you pause. They're going to give you an objection. They're going to say, I'm not interested. You know, I changed my mind. Everybody got coverage. I can't afford it because you're a salesperson. You say something dumb. They say an objection, whatever it is, and it's because of the pause. The pause is the death of the call. And then the fifth thing is again, because it's all about the fifth thing is you're, you're, you're, you, everybody's setting all these like firm appointments and meetings like they're going like, like you're a doctor and they're coming to see you at the doctor's office. Like nobody wants that. They don't even enjoy going to the doctor. So instead of a firm appointment and a meeting, sell a drop off time because guess what, about 80 to 90% of what you say is going to get lost in translation. They're going to forget before you ever see them. So when you show up, they're, they're probably a forgot your name. They probably, some of them forgot you were coming by. They forgot sometimes some of them forget why you were coming by. Some of them may even forget that you were dropping something off. I get that a lot from agents. Hey, well, what are you dropping off? When you say you're dropping something off, what are you going to drop off? They're going to forget you're dropping something off. And then you're going to go run an appointment, which was the whole goal to begin with, but let's not add to the complexity. Let's keep it simple. Let's get in front of them and then let's run an appointment. These are the five biggest mistakes. Here's the right call for those that are curious. Here is the right call. We've given you the example of a wrong call. You're begging people to, you're pausing. You're begging people to insert an objection and you're saying stupid stuff. So here, here's the right call. Ring, ring, ring. Hello. Hello, Betty. Hello, Betty. Yeah, this is Betty. This is Cody. I'm getting back to you. Because again, telling them, telling somebody they did something is kind of like you're attacking them instead of, Hey, I'm getting back to you about your request for the new final expense information. Now, Betty, I'm the local filled underwriter. You notice I continue to keep control now, Betty. I'm the local filled underwriter and I'll be out in your area on Friday. Should I drop this information off? What do you think, Betty, which is better morning or afternoon? Do you think that that's going to get a better response? Then this is Cody askings with secure insurance group. You fell out of form saying you wanted to get your quote to buy life insurance. Congratulations. And then we stop. We don't ask a question more than in control. We pause and they do what they give you an objection. They may give you an objection, but I would rather it happen later. Plus I'm going to avoid some objections with the way that I structure a call. Most agents don't understand that. We give a we give a lot of this away for free on our website. SecureAgentMinter.com. We've got a page on our website. Secure. It's a free page. I'm not trying to say you nothing. SecureAgentMinter.com under our leads tab. We have a page called how to close our leads. We tell you when to call. When to text, when to email, when to Doorknock, How many times to call? How many times to text? How many times to email? How many times to Doorknock? When you call, here's what you say. Don't do this when you text here's three different examples of how to text someone. When you email, here's three different examples about an email. Someone when you doorknock, here's three different ways to doorknock them. Here's a training video. Here's a Harvard Business Review on why all this works. The only thing I'm not doing for you is the work. Is actually showing up and doing it, calling, leaving the voicemails, doing the doorknocks because the reason why a lot of our stuff works is about 90% of the time you will reach about 90% of prospects when you make six calls. Six statistically proven when you make six calls, you'll end up reaching about 90% of prospects. Also statistically, 80% of sales are made between the fifth and the 12th contact. Most agents give up. Some of them never call a lead. You say, no, that's not me. I would never do that. You've done it before, I promise. Or they call them once or they call them twice. But I would say only about 5% to 10% of agents ever go past one or two calls. And this is the only reason why you're struggling with leads. Because if we broke it down earlier, the ways to succeed have leads. I don't care where you get them. Work the leads to get in front of people. And then when you get in front of them, ask them to do business with you. It's not a super complicated process. The goal is to get in front of them, to get in front of enough people to succeed. So that's why these are the biggest mistakes that agents make. Poor greeting as in, hey, I'm looking for somebody. There's no confidence in that. The confidence has got, you've got to have, you've got to exude confidence or they're never going to believe you. If you don't believe yourself, I promise you they don't. Another mistake using your last name and company name, nobody cares. When you say company name, it allows them to say, oh, who, who is a senior benefits of the USA Incorporated? Like it's just dumb. How are you? You don't care. And it's not a good question. It's going to, it's going to, it's going to spur an objection. Just wait. The pause is another huge mistake, pausing after you've said something instead of finishing with a question of being in control. The pause is the absolute death of the call. This is the worst one, by the way. This one's pretty bad because it starts the call off really poorly. This one's really, really bad because it is the absolute death of the call. You want to, you want a lot of objections every time you try to call someone. Do this. If you want to extract as many objections as you possibly can to make this business even harder than it already is, then do that. And I promise you, you'll get more objections than you ever want. The last thing is the big, the last mistake is thinking that you need like a firm appointment or a meeting or just sell a drop off time. Your whole goal when you work a lead is to get in front of them. The definition of a lead is they have some level of interest. The definition of what you're supposed to do is to just try to get in front of them. So hope this helped. This was the biggest mistakes that agents make when their appointment setting, when they're calling leads and how you can avoid those and how you can be better at this. If you haven't got your ticket to the conference, shoot me a private message and I'll work out something special. We're doing really small executive upgrades right now. You got to get to this event. You've got to come hang out with us in Nashville and Easton Stadium. Thanks for watching insurance agent training every Monday, two o'clock attendees is going nuts for this deal. So if you haven't got your ticket, you want to come hang out in Nashville at NFL stadium. Let me know. I'll hook you up. We're walking through this. Bailey, I told them we would get this up on the web. We have a few people asking. I told them we'd get this on the website this week to agent training workbook. We'll throw it up for, I don't know, really cheap. I don't want to give away for free because you probably won't see any value in it if I give away for free. So we'll throw it up on the site. Agent training workbook. This is a boot camp I do for when I, when I get paid to go on site to train a team for six hours. This is what we walk through and I'm telling you what, it's a lot of content. It's a lot of content. I mean, it's, it's a bunch of stuff. I mean, it's amazing how much stuff there is. Every section of all of it. You can ever dream. I'm talking closing appointments, systems, schedules, goals. It's a lot of stuff. So we'll put that up. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. And again, you need prospects to succeed. So just in case you're looking for leads, our office is probably a good start, 833-4024368. 833-4024368. If you ever give them a call anytime, that's 833-40 agent, 833-40 agent. All right. Thanks for watching. Insurance agent training where we come to you every Monday to train and make you better today. Call the office. Better today than you were yesterday and last week and we're going to keep training you every week for the rest of your life. Have a great week. I'll see you Wednesday.