 Welcome to Phone Phenom every Tuesday, five o'clock. Central Standard Time. I love Phone Phenom because I love making you a Phone Phenom. Dylan came up with the name of the show. It's catchy. It's the most popular show. When I go tour and I go do all these events, Phone Phenom is memorable. Everyone loves Phone Phenom. So today, welcome back to another episode of Phone Phenom. Or you can already tell from the title. What is the number one killer of your phone calls? When you make phone calls, something is killing the phone call. The number one killer of phone calls. Do you know what it is? The number one ender of your phone calls. Most agents don't know it. Like I say this all the time when I'm in training events, Dylan. I say all the time, if I plucked and I always, I'm nice to the audience that I'm with, right? So I say, well, not from this audience, right? Probably not true of this audience. But if I was in another audience and I picked plucked 10 agents out of the audience at random and gave them leads, eight or nine of them would do the, they would accidentally not even know any, they wouldn't even know any better. They would insert the killer into their phone call and they wouldn't even know. They wouldn't understand, right? It wouldn't make sense. No one has taught them the right way to do it. Here is the killer. All right, you ready? I'm gonna give you an example. I'm gonna give you the total example of the wrong call. The whole thing's wrong. The whole thing. And I'm gonna end with the killer. You ready? Hello, I'm looking for Betty. Betty, hey, this is Cody Askins with the Missouri Insurance Office, the Springfield Insurance Office, whatever, right? You recently thought of, oh, how are you today? You recently found a form online saying that you wanted to buy or get a quote for some life insurance. And then we pause. The pause is the killer. The pause is what is destroying your phone calls. When you pause, and I say this, I say this, at every, you watching right now, I say it at every training event that I go to. When you pause, here's what you are doing. Ms. Betty, I don't know what to say anymore. I've lost control of the call. I have no confidence. You should take control of the call. You should say something stupid that you don't mean. And you should actually just give me an objection, right? It's the number one killer. The pause, not only is it a pause, so you just totally lost all control. It's stupid, right? You just lost all control, fantastic. Congratulations. Your confidence dropped. Whether you know it or not, your confidence dropped. You lost it all, right? Congratulations, okay? You told the prospect to take control of the call, right? And they're about to, congratulations. When they do, they're going to give you an objection because you are begging them to give you an objection that they don't mean, that they've never, that they probably didn't think about before that they didn't plan on saying, but because you didn't, you sucked on the phone, they're like, I'm gonna just say it anyway, right? Congratulations. Pausing, and if, like you heard everything I said in the wrong call, if anybody out there is telling you to say any of that, stop listening to them. All of that was wrong, right? I gave you the example of the wrong call, but the worst part, like I could say bad stuff like how are you today, like stuff I don't even mean, like nobody cares, right? That's dumb. I could say a lot of bad stuff, a lot of wrong stuff, a lot of stuff that's gonna hurt my phone call, but ending with a pause without asking a question is the killer. It just, literally it's like, it's like, it's like you were literally dropping all these mini bombs and then you just freaking dropped a nuke, right? With the pause, it's over, the call's done, you have no chance of getting it back, the prospect is done with you, they're gonna give you an objection, you're gonna hear it, you're gonna think they meant it and they're probably gonna hang up when they're done. The good thing is we got a solution. The positive with the killer of phone calls, pausing is the killer, right? The positive in all this, the positive spin in all this is that you have the ability to stop doing that. From now on, until forever, no more pausing, right? You say, well, Cody, what do you do instead of pausing? You ask a question. You ask a question on the phone 100% of the time. In fact, when you use a telephone, you don't speak without finishing with a question. Now that's intense, that's direct, that's awkward, that's not normal, that's crazy. People don't teach that, but they should be. We teach it and we preach it and we go over it because it works. And I'm tired of you losing phone calls, of you losing leads, of you losing prospects when you don't have to because all you had to do was be prepared, right? Guy last night, Dylan gave us the five Ps. Prior performance, prior preparation, prevents, and I said five instead of four, right? For a reason. He said, prior preparation prevents, maybe it's six, he can't even know it. Prior preparation prevents, he says, piss poor performance, that's like six, right? And I'm like, you know what, I like that. Somebody said that at our event, right? It's all about helping people, getting in front of them, taking advantage, right? When there's a sale to be made, you make it. But what happens is, if we do not know how to get in front of them, we're gonna help less people. I always bring it up all the time when I'm trained, when I'm doing coaching sessions. If an agent is selling with their own wallet and talking about price and selling smaller policies, which agent's helping the prospect more, okay? In this example, agent number one, who sells them $5,000 of coverage for $38 a month, or agent number two, who sells them $15,000 of coverage for $94 a month, which agent helped the prospect more, prospect and their family? Agent number one or agent number two? Agent number two, every single time because they have more coverage, their family's properly covered or at least better than the other one, right? Also, let me give you another example. So when you're selling small stuff, you're not helping people. You're not helping the prospect, okay? I'll give you another example. When you're sitting there with the prospect and let's just say that they give you a, hey, I wanna think about it. I want you to call me back, right? You ever heard my objection to that? It's freaking strong. But let's just say that happens, okay? One agent listens to it and says, okay, you know, I'll let you think about it and they leave and they don't make the sell. That's agent number one. Agent number two, overcomes the objection and makes the sell. Who has helped the prospect and their family more? The person that listens to the objection that they didn't mean, or the person that overcame it and actually made the sell. Because people think about it every single day. And guess what? People, their health goes, something goes wrong with their health, something goes wrong with their life, something goes wrong with their, you know, hominado or whatever, while thinking about it and they didn't do anyone any good and you didn't either by helping them make this, you should have helped them make the decision they should have made from the beginning, right? The same thing goes for the phone call. The killer of phone calls is the pause. So from now on, we're gonna cut out the pause. No one will be killing your phone call. You'll finish with a question. You'll get your energy up, right? And you'll get where you need to go. So from now on, so that's the killer. When you say, Cody, what is the killer of a phone call? That's it. And from now on, no more, right? So that's phone phenom. Thanks for watching. I love hanging out with you guys. Thanks for being live with us today, Tuesday, every Tuesday, five o'clock central. We're gonna keep dropping phone phenom. Have a great rest of your week. Thanks for watching phone phenom. I appreciate you watching phone phenom. I want you to be phenomenal on the phone and end up being a phone phenom. Thanks for watching. Have a great night.