HL October 16,12

The speaker discusses the importance of knowing what not to do as a manager and treating employees with care and respect. They emphasize the need for managers to invest in the growth and development of their employees. The speaker also mentions the importance of building trust and not treating employees as a means to an end. They highlight the significance of preparation, training, and development in motivating employees. Additionally, the speaker emphasizes the value of praise and celebrating victories. The overall message is that success in business relies on treating employees well and helping them succeed. Hey, good day, guys. Hey, listen, I wanted to talk a little bit today about knowing what not to do. This is like kind of a note to the managers, right? You know, I've talked to a lot of young reps in Primerica, you know, whose managers or uplines don't really care about them or any of their other people for that matter. It would be great, it'd be nice, if their sales manager or their upline cared enough about them to help them grow, but in a lot of situations, that's not true, okay? So one of the good news, one of the good things about that is you learn what you don't wanna do and who you don't wanna be and what you don't wanna be like, okay? So good managers, great managers, great uplines, right, you need to treat them like they're special, like they're incredible, like they're awesome, like your total mission is to help them succeed and to grow and develop and to become whatever it is they wanna become, right? A lot of managers believe their people are a means to an end and if you treat them as if they're a means to an end, right, and a lot of them, they don't make any investment in their training or they don't make any investment in their development or any investment in their growth, they do no coaching, their people aren't means. Folks, it's degrading and demotivating to be treated as like you're a means to an end and unfortunately, a lot of the times that you see people struggling in Prime America or they just can't seem to get it going or they can't seem to retain anybody, everybody end up having problems with their people, okay? It's because they see their people as a means to an end, they try to fake it but in their real heart of hearts, they see people as a means to an end. Folks, that's morally reprehensible to me and it's why you need to develop yourself so that you can develop people. Look, in the end, folks, you're not gonna get anywhere in Prime America, in any real business, without a focus on being for your people. They need to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they're the most important thing, that what you do is to help them succeed because that's how you help yourself succeed, folks. One of the things I learned a long time ago is that if you help enough people get what they want, you get what you want. So I read that years, 30 years ago or more, I don't know. I read that and I said, you know, that makes sense. Ever since then, I've always, even when I was in the retail journey, my goal was to help the people that work for me to become more successful, to teach them and train them to develop themselves. I brought all kinds of sales like Hopkins and whatever to that company too. I actually got the company to buy Tons materials so that we could get people trained in our company so people would know what they were doing, to learn how to overcome objections, to get great at the business because they didn't really have any training, you know. Other than whatever, if you had a manager, they might do a little training, but most of them weren't that good either, okay? But so, you know, what I learned is that you have to do that. You have to look after your people and work like crazy to get them what they need to accomplish what it is they wanna accomplish if you're gonna succeed on a significant scale, right? The bottom line, in the end, you can only be as successful as your people are. So my goal was always to have the most successful people in Primerica, which we've accomplished, okay? So, you know those managers that when you schedule an appointment to come with you and they cancel at the last minute or even though you have a scheduled appointment with clients and prospects, prospects who are now expecting to see the manager, right? He no-shows. This has taught the manager's team that his words no good. It's a violation of trust, and when you don't show up or you cancel on your people or you don't do what you say you're gonna do, folks, you end up teaching your people that your word is no good. Folks, you can't build trust in a great business and have people go through walls for you if you treat people that way. They need to know that your primary interest is their interest. Look, you know that kind of sales manager who's always mad at his people, yells at them, he's tough on them, right? He does that because he's mad at them because they're not making money for him or because they're not doing what he thinks they should do. It's making them have to work more, right? Instead of leading from the front and getting wide and doing exactly what you want your people to do, you get mad at your people. I never got mad at my people. It was ridiculous to get mad at your people. What'd I get mad at my people for? If my people aren't doing well, it's my fault. I haven't trained them well enough to do well, right? And I also understand a lot of people just aren't that motivated, so I would have to go recruit and train and develop other people. I was always prospecting and finding new people, recruiting, you know, not personal, but in my base shop, I was recruiting five, seven, eight, nine, 10 people a month every month, and I knew I had to keep adding people because not everybody was gonna do it. I never got mad at somebody because they weren't doing something. I have great relationships with all the people that ended up quitting the business. I got so many letters and emails and correspondence from people who left the business because I trained them, and maybe Primerica wasn't right for them. They left and went and did something else, and they become successful because of the things that I taught them here. I didn't get mad at them because they didn't produce. You know, I don't look at somebody because, you know, say Rick who does a million and a half or whatever a month in premium and stuff like that, and I have some RVPs who can't do five grand or do $5,000 a month. I don't look at them any different. I don't treat them any different. I don't pay as much attention to them because it doesn't make sense to, but I don't look at them like, if you only worked harder, you know, I would have more money. That's ridiculous. They're people. They're human beings. I love those people just the same. They just have a different level of motivation, so I went and found the people that were motivated. I didn't wait for them to get motivated. You can't wait for your people to get motivated, and by the way, you can't motivate people. It's not even possible to motivate people. If their family, if their spouse and their children don't motivate them to get off their rear ends, there's nothing I can do to motivate people. I don't believe in motivation. I believe in preparation and training and development. When you find motivated people and you prepare them like crazy, they do amazing things, right? You can prepare somebody who's not motivated now to the end of time and nothing happens. You know what I'm talking about, right? A lot of you are spending so much time with unmotivated people because you think if I could just get them going, I won't have to go prospecting to find some new people and start over again. That's ridiculous. You're never gonna get somebody going that's not motivated, no matter what you say or do. You could do it for them. All they'll expect is for you to continue to do it for them. So sometimes you need to tell people what they need to do, but not because you're mad at them, but because they need to know what they need to do to be successful. They can take that however they want to, right? A lot of these calls that I do, I'm very direct, right? You can take it any way you want. All I'm trying to do with these calls, folks, is help you think correctly, do the right thing so you can be more successful. We like it, don't like it, doesn't really matter, okay? It's the truth. It's my experience in over 30 years of recruiting and training salespeople and becoming very successful at doing that, okay? That's all it is. Are there other ways to do it? Absolutely. You don't have to follow my way. This is just all voluntary, right? Even with my own people, I didn't force them to do it my way. I didn't do that. I shared with them the fundamental stuff that it takes to be successful, and everybody has their own way of doing things. Rick does his business. He doesn't do it exactly fundamentally. He does a lot of the same things that I taught him how to do. Chris Howard, fundamentally, he does a lot of the same things, but he's got his own way of doing things, his own personality, his own style. Everybody in my business has their own way of doing it, but there are some fundamentals, and one of them is training and developing people. That and getting wide and building a big base shop, those are fundamentals. How you go about doing that, you don't have to do it exactly like me, but you need to do it. Those are fundamentals to our business. Making sure your people are really prepared is fundamental to you building a business that can operate when you're not there. Look, one of the problems of some of these managers, even when their people are doing well, they don't praise them. There's only more yelling that they have to do more. Look, that doesn't work. There's no victory that's worth celebrating for some of these people. They're stingy with praise, and praise, folks, is free. It's free to give people praise. You don't have to spend a penny to say, hey, Jose, you did a phenomenal job. You are on your way to being amazing. You are such a stud. I mean, you are so disciplined. Your work ethic is fabulous. I mean, you're gonna be a super huge RVP. There's no question on it. Man, you just gotta develop some people, but man, you're on your way. You're getting awesome results, and I'm so proud of you. What does that cost? Nothing. Look, regardless of your situation, you can win, you can succeed. You know, you may have done it before, right? Look, in spite of what your upline is, you can still do your numbers that you need to do. Even if you had no real sales, or management, or leadership experience, right? You can get experience by doing this. Yes, is it gonna be up and down? Absolutely. In the beginning, it's gonna be up and down, but in the end, right, if you're focused, and you keep on learning from your errors, and your mistakes, and you don't repeat the same ones, you're gonna get better. You're gonna get better, and you're gonna get better. I remember the first time I spoke at a fast start school in 1984, and I had not even recruited a single person at that point. There was about 65 people, it was a small fast start school. It was the first time I had an opportunity to speak in front of a group like that. 65 people, and I invited 12 people, and their spouses, okay? And I got up there, and I was so bad, it was ridiculous. I was so bad that what I was doing, I was reading my talk because I couldn't remember anything. I'm reading it, and then of course, I'm getting, I'm so nervous, I'm sweating, my eyes twitching. I mean, I'm super, super nervous because I've never spoken in front of people. I'm so worried about whatever he's thinking about me, right? I'm just a mess. And I got through the talk, it was terrible. After the talk, my wife Jan said, I am, that was awful, that was so embarrassing. I'm never gonna come to another meeting when you're speaking, she said to me that day, right? And guess what, I recruited every single person I invited. I recruited 12 people that day because they must have thought, heck, if Hector could have success as bad as he is, I could definitely do this. I mean, they had to be thinking that. The key is that I did it, I was terrible, and then I told myself, look, Hector, you can't always be that bad. You're not gonna be great, but if you keep working on this and keep doing it, incrementally, you're gonna get better, and over a period of time, maybe six months or a year, or a year and a half or two years, you're gonna get pretty good if you keep putting yourself in that position. You're gonna get better. And that's the way I looked at that. I didn't look at it and go, oh, I'm so bad, I can't do this. Poor me, I can't do this, I'm just so bad, I should just forget it and stay in the jewelry business because I'm so bad. That's what a loser thinks. That's what a person that ends up with a mediocre life thinks. A winner thinks, I can't continue to be this bad if I work on my skillsets and keep on working on it and prove, at some point, I'm gonna get better. I can't stay this bad. And folks, that's true with when you're prospecting or when you're setting appointments or when you're doing a presentation for the first time. You're gonna be bad. You've gotta be bad before you can be good and you've gotta be good before you can be great. It's kinda like learning math. You don't start with, you start with adding and subtracting, right? You don't start with trigonometry. It's incremental. You learn adding, subtracting, right? Then multiplying, then division, then on and on and on. You don't learn everything at once. It's all incremental. So you becoming successful in a business like Primerica, folks, it's gonna be incremental. You're gonna be bad before you're good. You need to say it's okay to be bad because I know I'm not gonna stay bad. You know why I'm not gonna stay bad? Because I'm gonna work on getting better. I'm gonna study. I'm gonna listen to these audios. I'm gonna watch these videos. I'm gonna read these books. I'm gonna study. I'm gonna practice. I'm gonna videotape myself. I'm gonna work with my upline. I'm gonna do presentations for my spouse and get their feedback. I'm gonna get a partner in Primerica and I'll check out their presentation. They can check out mine and they give me advice. I'll give them advice. I'm gonna get better. I'm gonna get better. I'm gonna get better. Because you blow it one time is not a reason to quit. It's ridiculous. Nobody that wins big at anything is great in the beginning. Look, the key is always your work ethic, your self-discipline, your individual effort at prospecting for new business and new recruits. The difference between you and your peer group folks is gonna be your work ethic, your self-discipline, and how much you prospect for new recruits and new business, that's gonna be the difference and that you're continually getting better. Look, your manager has nothing to do with either your work ethic or your self-discipline or your diligence in prospecting, any of that. Your manager has nothing to do with your work ethic, with your self-discipline or your diligence in prospecting, right, or your staying to it or your working on yourself every day and turning your car into a university and listening to all the right audios and working on all the things that you are right now maybe a little bit weak on. Look, even though you might be new, you can still get good results, and the better you get and the more you grow, the better the results are gonna become. You can't keep being bad if you're focused on getting better. You know, what I've learned also is doing, if you find opportunities to help your people and your prospects get what they need, get what they want, if you make your focus in building your business, your number one, my number one focus, folks, this should be your number one focus, is how do I help this client get exactly what they want? How do I, through this F&A and this process, how do I get them, help them get to retirement, to educate their kids, or whatever it is they want, how do I help them get that? That has to be your complete intention going into every appointment, not how do I close a sale so I can win the contest or get a recruit so that I can get a promotion. That's not what you should be thinking about. Those are byproducts of focusing on helping prospects get what they want and what they need. If you do that, everything's gonna work out okay. Income growth comes from your focus on your clients and your prospects, your recruiting prospects, okay? That has to be your focus. What not to do. This is gonna be phrased in the positive. The most important lesson that you're gonna learn that will serve you later is I know what I'm not going to do when I am a leader. I know exactly what I'm not gonna do. I'm gonna train my people, I'm gonna share with them what they need to do, I'm gonna work with them, I'm gonna praise them, I'm gonna do everything I can to help them improve their skill sets, if they're motivated, to help them succeed, to make money, to close more sales, to recruit more people, to make more money, okay? That's what I'm gonna do. The most important thing to learn from a week up line is to learn what not to do and then to do the opposite, right, kind of like one of the things I always did. I said I looked at what people, the average and ordinary people were doing, I looked at what they did and I did the opposite. It's kind of like if you go on an appointment and you get a dark house, what does the average person do, right, the average mediocre person goes home. I didn't go home, I did drop bys. I would go, I would look at my thing, I'd say, okay, I've got all these prospects, these referrals and stuff, I go drop by people's homes, knock on the door, hi, did you get, I used to use a direct contact referral system, I'd go, do you get the letter I sent you? My name's on, Smith asked me to give you a call, I happen to be here, I just wanted to introduce myself and I would prospect, I'd go prospecting, I'd go talk to the people that I had on my list because I had a constantly growing list of 50, 100, 200 names on it of prospects, recruit prospects, client prospects, whatever, I had prospects, I was always prospecting, I was always getting referrals, so I had this big old huge list of all these people that when something went sour, when an appointment canceled, I had a place to go, I could go and talk to people, I could go home. Kidding me? If I had gone home after a dark house, right, got home at seven o'clock or something like that, my wife would have said, what the hell are you doing home? I thought you were serious about making money and being successful, what are you doing here? You can't close a sale, recruit somebody in your recliner, get your butt out of the house and go find somebody to talk to. Now, I don't know if she would have said that, but I know she would have felt that and I would have been embarrassed and I would have felt bad, there's no way I'm going home, right, without trying to make something else happen and I can't tell you how many times those drop bys turned into sales that night or at a minimum, they turn in an invite to an op meeting or at a minimum, I got another appointment, they're busy, they were right in the middle of something, I'd say, look, I want to meet with you and I'd get an appointment for another night instead of going home, I turn, look, when I used to be in the jewelry business, it was called creating, we're always trying to create opportunities, create business, create ways to make money, make it happen, you don't wait for it to happen, you make it happen, okay? Look, people are ends, they're not means, okay? In my experience, managers that care enough to help their people succeed have people who walk through walls for them, they'll help you grow, they'll help you accomplish your next promotion, they'll help you do anything. I've seen other managers with their people who go the extra mile every time because of their relationship with their manager because they know that their manager cares about them, goes the extra mile for them and has their best interest at heart because these other managers treat their people as ends, they produce better results, people want to work for them, people want to help them, people want to promote their cause, people want to help them in their cause, right? Look, your word is your bond, folks. You know what I've learned as a leader? You have to keep your word. If you promise you're gonna do something for your people or for your clients, you have to do it. If you don't intend to do something, don't promise to do it and don't ask people to do something you don't really want them to do or that you haven't done yourself. I think one of the biggest problems that leaders have is they're either guilty or whatever about the fact they don't want to ask their people to do stuff because they haven't done it themselves and they're not doing it themselves. Look, one of the things that I always focused was on being the perfect recruit first so that I can attract the perfect recruit. So by being the perfect recruit, right, which means being to the meetings on time, bringing the most people to the meetings, means setting the most appointments, means closing the most sales, means being the most positive, means doing everything that I'm telling, I wanted to be the perfect recruit because I wanted to be able to hold people accountable to being the perfect recruit. You can't hold people accountable to being the perfect recruit unless you are the perfect recruit. So those of you who don't prospect, don't recruit people, don't train people, aren't doing what you, you know, you're not being the perfect recruit, your attitude's not incredible, all that stuff, right, then you're gonna have a heck of a time attracting those kinds of people because like attracts like. You attract people like you. If you don't like your people, if you're mad at your people, you gotta be mad at yourself because your people are a reflection of you as a group, not everyone, but as a group, right? If you have a team that's just not motivated, not doing the right things, it's a reflection of you. You may not like hearing that, but it's the truth. You're not gonna get everybody to do it, but you're gonna get more people to do it, you're gonna get the motivated people to do it, folks. It's always about the motivated people. Look, you gotta create and protect a positive culture. Your office needs to be a haven for people, a haven. Your team has to be a super positive haven, a place where people, when they come to your office or your team meetings or whatever, they feel so much better about themselves, their future and everything than before they came. The better people feel after they leave your functions, whatever they happen to be, the more motivated they are gonna become back and the more motivated they are they're gonna bring people with them, right? They need to feel like, you know, I don't know what's going on, but I feel so good when I'm in that environment. Hector makes me feel so special, he's always trying to help me, he's trying to do whatever he can to help me get where I wanna go. I feel better about me and about my future when I'm in that environment. That's the kind of environment you need to create, okay? It produces the best kinds of results. So you recognize, you praise, you show gratitude, you have a positive environment that it'll produce better results because the people can see how your approach is and what their role in that situation is and you're gonna get very different results, very good results, fantastic results, right? Is everybody gonna do it? Of course not, that's not how it works, right? It's a percentage. But the better you are, the better culture you have, the more positive you have, the better your job is at creating and protecting a positive culture within your office or within your Bay shop, you're just gonna retain more people and you're gonna have people wanting to be there, wanting to return. And the key to growing is retention, folks. If you're not retaining people, you can't grow. And because the way you retain people is you train and develop them so that they have success and they make money and they feel good when they're there. So knowing what not to do, folks, is just as important as knowing what to do. You've been subjected to both kinds of lessons probably. If you're wise enough to capture them, you know what not to do now. So these are some great questions to think about. Think back to what you've learned from the best people, the best managers, the best leaders you've ever been around. What do they teach you about your role as a manager or as a leader? By watching them. Some of you may have had some experience with some people that were pretty good. Even if it wasn't Primerica, somebody in your past that was really good at managing and leading people. Think about what the characteristics of that person had. Think about the worst manager or leader you've had. What lessons did you learn about them not to do? Think about that. Are you using those lessons you've learned from your best managers and leaders? Are you avoiding the crimes that your worst managers and leaders are guilty of? Look, think about what you need to do more of to become a better manager and a better leader. Look, if you've never led before, read all of John, oh my God, I can't remember him, you know who I'm talking, he's a leadership guy. I'm just in the middle of this and I'm forgetting his John Maxwell. John Maxwell, right, he's got phenomenal stuff. You should start with the leader, developing the leader within you and developing leaders around you. Those are the first two books you ought to read of John Maxwell's and then you can read all the, he's written, I don't know, 50 of them, it seems like, but I mean, there's a lot of them, but they're all great. You can listen to his audios, whatever, to start learning how do I become a better leader? Because nobody's born being a leader. This natural born leader stuff is bunk, okay? You learn how to be a great leader. So what do you need to stop doing right now to be a better leader? What do you need to stop doing? Think about that and then go do it. Go get this thing done. Go kill it. I mean, you are in a phenomenal position to do something great in your life here at Primerica. Go do it. No more waiting. No more putting anything off. Just do it.