 Who's ready for some phone tips? Assume the right person answered the phone. What do I mean? Which sounds better? Hello, I'm looking for Betty. Hello, Betty, which is more confident. But we're trained, and it's human nature to say I'm looking for so-and-so. Is this so-and-so? Are you so-and-so? You have the lead. You know it's them, Betty, right? And you're going to get lied to less. Who's ever got a call and you said you have the wrong number when they didn't? Me too, OK? When they do it, you blame the lead vendor. Maybe they lied, right? So let's be a little more confident in our approach. I only use my first name. I don't use last name. Nobody cares. And they're going to forget. I want to give them just information for them to remember, right? I don't use last name. I also don't use company name. Because when I use company name, they end up jumping in. They interject. Well, who is that insurance office, right? So instead, I'm in control. Who's in control, right? You are when you're on the phone. They're not in control. I don't ask how are you. I don't ask questions that I don't know the answer I'm going to get, right? So I don't ask it because I don't know them yet, so I don't really care. Number we don't, right? Yet. And I'm doing awful. Why are you calling me? That doesn't help, does it? Also, don't pause. This is the death of the call. Pausing. Let me give you an example. If I grabbed, not in this room because Houston agents are amazing, but if I was in Dallas and I grabbed 10 agents and I gave them leads, eight or nine of them, 80 or 90% would say this. Here's the example of the wrong call, OK? Example of the wrong call. Hello, I'm looking for Betty. Betty, hey, this is Cody Askins with the Houston Insurance Office. How are you doing today? Great. You recently filled out a form online saying you wanted to quote to buy life insurance. And then we pause. And when you pause without a question, and most people do it, right? We've all been guilty of it. What you're saying is, I don't know what to say. I have no confidence. I've lost control of the call. You should interject, say something stupid that you don't mean, give me an objection, or hang up. Right now. But we don't know that, right? So we haven't been trained that way. That's why I don't pause. I'm in control. If I pause, they're in control. Finish with a question, I'm in control. If I don't, they're in control. You get it? Also, sell a drop off time. Which is better? Hey, I would like to send an appointment for Monday at 9. Or can I drop it off in the morning or in the afternoon? Which has more likelihood of getting what you want, because with leads, every lead has some level of interest. Some is low. Some is high. A lead vendor can only control two things. Agents blame lead vendors all the time. It's easy. It's easy way out. Agents blame, and a vendor can control two things. Who sees the ad? Like, which demographic sees the ad? And what they see on the ad? They can't say, well, you fit the demographic. And I showed you the ad, but you can't fill out the form, and you can, and you can, and you can. We can't control if they say I'm not interested when they did it. We can't control if they say, hey, I'm busy, and you don't know what to say. A vendor can't control, hey, I'm broke. That may be a smoke screen. That may be wealthy. Who knows? Or I already have life insurance. I prefer that they already own life insurance. I just do. So we don't know those things. So here's an example of the right call. Who wants the right call? Say yes if you want the right call. Here's the right call. Betty. This is Cody. Easy so far. I'm getting back to you. I love that phrase. I'm getting back to you about your requests for the new final expense information. It was on Facebook, and you put your favorite color was red. I'm assuming you remember doing that, right? You can see it's a habit for me now, too, right? The head shake. And I'm on the phone, and I'll still do it, right? I'm assuming you remember doing that, right? Good. I'm the local filled underwriter. I'll be out in your area on Friday. So should I drop it off? What do you think, in the morning or in the afternoon? That's the right call. It actually eliminates some objections. You stay in control of the call. You set more appointments. And vendors can't help it that some agents are a lot better than others, right? OK. So who thinks they're a phone phenom now? Who's going to use that? Welcome to Phone Phenom. And today we're going to talk about a few tips, because we talk a lot about overcoming objections. Agents struggle with the telephone. They struggle with objections. It's always a big thing on a topic on everybody's mind. We talk about a lot. But I always talk about agree, answer, and ask. But even more importantly than that, there's a agree, answer, and ask. And once you can get that down, it's amazing how much it'll work, right? I've got insurance agents that are using the agree, answer, and ask to set dates with girls now, literally. That's happened multiple times. They're calling me, telling me the story, and everything else. Because they're agreeing, answering, and asking. I don't care what it is. Dylan's probably using it in his. Have you caught yourself doing that? Not to pick up girls, because you're dating. My girlfriend? Yeah, not just in general. Just in life, you know what I mean? Agree, answer, and ask, and the power behind it. Yeah, no, necessarily. So there's all sorts of little nuggets that I take from you. And just listening to the sales guys in the office that translate into just everyday life. Yeah. You always do some freelance video stuff, and some drone work for real estate agents, stuff like that, so I can see that. Definitely translating, right? You know what? Your price is too high. I understand I get that, right? Well, I've heard that before. And the reason is, is because I do it better than anybody in town, right? And if you're not 100% satisfied, I'll give you your money back, right? So should we set up an appointment and view what you got going on Wednesday or Thursday, which is better, right? So it can apply to anything, right? So I'll use that as an example immediately just to get you to think outside the box a little bit, because anything you're doing, agree, answer, and ask. I think one of the biggest things, Dylan, we see agents a lot. We go to all these free trainings over the country, 8% and everything else. Most people are combative and disagreeable, right? So some people are trained to say, well, when people say, hey, I have no money, they're trained to say, well, you know, that's exactly why you should buy this, right? That's just weird. That's just, right? Kind of odd, but we've heard that before. We've also heard a lot, hey, I'm not interested, well, and most agents are trained to say this right here. Ridiculous, never say it, okay? But I'm gonna say it for the last time ever, maybe, maybe not. They say, what do you mean you're not interested? You don't have enough information to be interested yet. Yeah. Click. I would hang up immediately. Yeah, it's stupid. It's disagreeable, it's combative. It isn't in a state of agreement, which we talk about a lot. So agree, answer, so the agreement part we get, right? I understand, perfect, I agree. Thank you for sharing, right? Whatever, it's an agreement state. Now then there's the answer. The answer is where you're repeating what they said, or hey, I'm not interested, and then you're plugging in the middle in this answer state, right? That it's my job to get you the information. It's up to you with what you do with it, right? So there's an answer to their objection a little bit, and then ask, right? And the answer's gotta be quick, right? The whole agree answer ask is like 15 seconds, right? 20 seconds? Max? That's like, and that's even long. Probably under 10 seconds total, right? 10, 15 seconds. So they got the agree, then you get the answer where you're actually responding to them, you're giving them an answer, and then you've got the ask. That's where you're always finishing with a question. And the psychology of the ask, and that's why I'm going over each A, agree, answer, and ask. Have you ever heard that before? Like, I need to start talking about this more on phone phenom and our shows because I've been teaching it for, I don't know, three and a half years, right? And I've been using it for a decade without even knowing it. When you get to the ask, the psychology is if they give you an objection and you don't finish with a question, what's going to happen is, for instance, I'll give you an example. Cody, I'm not interested. I understand, thank you so much for sharing that. It's just my job to drop off the information. It's totally up to you with what you do with it. And I stopped there. What's going to happen? They're either going to hang up or they're going to, most of the time, they're going to restate their original objection. I said I'm not interested, right? And so that's why you have to add the last A. Most people understand they get the agreement part down. They struggle with the answer part, but that's because they don't role play or practice it enough. But then when they get to the objection part, they, the actual ask, that's where they forget to ask a question. And it's human nature. When I ask someone a question, I'll provide you with an example, right? Dylan, where's your favorite place to eat in town? Let me actually answer it. Yeah. Probably majority. Okay, perfect. See, and if he would have said, you know what, I don't know. Well, and what would I have said? That's what I thought you wanted to say. Well, that's fine too. We'll say I don't know. I don't know. Well, if you had to choose, where would you pick? I like sushi, so probably the jury. Perfect, see? I've never had that, so I need to tell Lorna to try that, I guess. But you see how, well, fried, deep fried, mega deep fried, right? Fire fried. That's where the ask, most people forget the question. And the important thing behind the question and the ask, the third A, is that it keeps you in control. It gets them responding to your question, because when you ask someone a question, like the example with Dylan, it's human nature to answer that question. So it keeps you in control, gets them to answer it, and it steers the path of the conversation. So that's why I agree, answer and ask. There's another thing that you just heard right there too. When I was asking Dylan, where's your favorite place to eat? It's human nature to say no, and I don't know. It's human nature to be lazy. It's human nature to not give people responses. It's human nature to say something like that, right? Normal. And when I say I don't know, I normally know the answer. It's kind of like a pet peeve around the office. Dylan's probably noticed that you just don't normally say I don't know around the office here, because it's kind of annoying to me. It's also, it's annoying to me when I even say it myself, right? Those three words, I don't know. When most of the time we know the answer, or we could find the answer, or we could say something that's less lazy, okay? So, but for instance, most of your prospects are gonna say I don't know, or they're gonna be unsure about everything. So when that happens, what you do is you say, well, if you take them to a hypothetical state, if you had to choose, where would you say? And then that's where he said, well, if I had to choose, I like sushi, so I'd probably say Missouri, right? That's what happens when you ask a follow-up question. So the three A's are great, the re-answer ask. You'll typically get an answer. But if you don't, and they don't give you a response, or they're ignoring you, or I don't know, or no, that's when you use the hypothetical situation and always ask a follow-up question. One thing if I can impress upon you today is that you need to remember is, Tina will be proud of my impress upon you, is when you don't get the answer you want, always ask another question. Always ask a follow-up question, because most people fail to ask a follow-up question. And what you're telling the prospect is it's okay to not answer me. You're giving them permission to never answer your questions again. So what happens is, the next time you say something, it's okay to say, I don't know. You see where I'm going? That's a sales tip, right? So instead, always ask a follow-up question. When you don't get the answer you want, you must ask a follow-up question, and it needs to take them to a hypothetical place. For instance, hypothetically, if you had to choose. Or, right, hypothetically, or if you had to choose, or if you had to say, or if you had to pick, right? That's when they feel like, well, if I had to pick, right? I guess this, right? Because that's what ends up happening. So think about that. When you're using the three As, and you don't get the question answered right like you want, still always ask a follow-up question. It's super important to ask an additional question, take them to a hypothetical state and get an answer to your questions. Because you want to get prospects in the habit of answering your questions. Because what happens is, when you get them used to answering your questions, and what you're doing is, you're training them to respond and give you an actual answer. So that later on, 45 minutes later, you're in the close. When you ask them to do business with you, you've already trained them 38 times to answer your questions so that when you get to the close and you give them three options and you ask them which one is their favorite, they're gonna pick. Because you've trained them along the way to pick. And even if they still don't pick, and they're like, I don't know, that's a big decision. I understand. Well, hypothetically, if you were gonna pick one, which one would make the most sense to you? Those type of questions and wording things that way will end up getting you the answer that you want. At the end of the day, you need to always train people to answer your questions. I tell Dylan in live trainings all the time, when I drive through my neighborhood, a huge pet, I've got multiple pet peeves, everybody does, right? One pet peeve of mine is that when I'm driving through my neighborhood and I wave at a neighbor, if they do not respond with, if they do not wave back, I stop the car and I keep waving. It happened yesterday. It keep waving. I keep waving until they wave back. Because I'm gonna just assume that you didn't see me if you're ignoring me. The same thing can be said with an insurance appointment. If someone says, I don't know, then I'll answer your questions or you're ignoring you. You must get an answer before you proceed. You just must, okay? So hopefully this helped all about objections. Any questions, Facebook and YouTube before we wrap up today, short and sweet, straight to the point, but I guarantee if you apply this and implement this, you will see results 100%. No questions. We've got Mr. Bass one on YouTube said let's go. Let's go. I'm not sure who Mr., do you know who Mr. Bass is? Bass or Bass? Might be Bass. Omar Bass? Just says Mr. B-A-S-S? Yeah. Okay, maybe. I don't know. If not, tell us bro, because I'm gonna call you by the wrong name, but I think so, because we're friends on Instagram, we follow each other on Instagram, so. Nate Hoshik said thank big, let's go. Let's go, man. Thank bigger, right? Right? Tony Lonnie said it's perfect, Koei. What's up, man? Thank you, buddy. And then Mr. Bass, whoever this is, said get people accustomed to your questions nice. Yep, big takeaway, right? Most sales people don't think that way. That's why I get, that's why I close most of the people I sit in front of because if there's an opportunity for a close, I'm closing it, right? We talk about the no, call back close, we talk about all these other things. Objections is big and it can be applied to in person or over the phone, especially over the phone, you gotta get good at overcoming objections, okay? Any other questions or thoughts? Heather Huddleston on Facebook, she tagged a bunch of people and said, check this out and follow Cody Askins. He's on top of the insurance industry. Thank you, Cody, for all your wonderful knowledge. Wow, thank you so much. Happy to help, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for the kind words. Thank you for tagging people. You know what, Heather? She cares about the success of other people. Because when I find something good, guess what I do? I share it with others. Because most people don't know this. They don't know the three steps to overcome objections. They don't know that you should always have ask a follow-up question. They don't know that you should always get answers to your questions. Like they don't know those things. So Heather, thank you for sharing that. Hopefully the agents you tagged love the message as well. We do this every Tuesday. Phone phenom, thanks for watching. Any other thoughts, Dylan, before we wrap it up? Nate Hossick said, my socks are on the way. Ah, yes they are. It's a success society member. If you're like, dude, what is success society? I have no clue what you're talking about. Success society is a 12-month coaching program where I do weekly accountability calls. I do quarterly marketing sessions. And we bring in co-hosts to coach you every single month that I interview. So this is all about sprinting the success together. I love success society. I love helping agents. I want to be your coach. And you can reach out to Andy. Again, Andy at Kodiaskins.com. Andy, why? Andy at Kodiaskins.com. If you want more information or if you want to join success society. Okay? Any other thoughts? Thanks for the tags. Thanks for the comments. Thanks for the questions. Thanks to Dylan for producing and answering and giving us his favorite place to eat in town. Okay? Have a great rest of your week. Thanks for watching, fellow phenom. Let's go think big. Hey, if you love the video, which I know you did. I got two things I want you to do right now. In order, number one, click subscribe right now. Click the bell. Also, obviously like this video. I've got two other videos that you would absolutely love. And I'm going to recommend one, okay? The first one is five easy phone sales tips for life insurance agents. The second one, which I actually want you to click on is the top five mistakes that new insurance agents make. Click on it and I'll see you there.