HL October 23,12

The speaker emphasizes the importance of mastering the seven fundamentals in order to succeed. They mention John Wooden as a role model who focused on fundamentals in his coaching career. The seven fundamentals are discussed in detail, starting with prospecting, which is seen as the lifeblood of the business. The speaker emphasizes the need to become an excellent prospector and overcome the fear of rejection. They explain that prospecting can be done through warm market, referrals, and talking to new people. The second fundamental is setting appointments, which is crucial for closing sales and recruiting. The speaker highlights the importance of improving skills in setting appointments to overcome the fear associated with it. Hey, good day, everybody. Hey, listen, today I wanna talk about why it's critical to master the seven fundamentals. You know, I talk about this all the time, and I actually have another audio that I did on this, but I wanted to just kind of talk about it a little more in detail. One of the things that I've always done is I feel like, I don't feel like I know that. Preparation is the key to everything, and one of the reasons that John Wooden has always been my hero, I actually sent a tweet out today. I built my business around the philosophy from his book, They Call Me Coach, which is the first book he wrote. It was written, I don't know, 20, 30 years ago, I don't know, but I read that book about 10 times, and really what, you know, he was the, voted the best coach in the 20th century, by all of the, whoever, I guess the pundits are relative to that, but was an unbelievable coach, and had an incredible record, and what he was all about was the fundamentals, and I, as a result of that, to me, preparation and mastering the fundamentals has always been the most critical element to succeeding, and that's what I focused on in building my business, so I'm gonna go over each one of these seven fundamentals, and in my experience, if you master these seven fundamentals, and then you actually, you know, have self-discipline and work ethic, it's impossible to fail at primary. You will be successful. Really, the only key is, will you master the seven fundamentals or not? Will you teach those to your teammates that are motivated to become successful or not? That's really the only thing that will stop you from succeeding on a grand scale in our business, so is your commitment, number one, to mastering them, and then your commitment to teaching them to motivated people that enter your business, so the first thing, and they're in order of importance in how you need to learn them, and they all, it's kind of like building blocks. Each one builds on the next thing, and you have to do them in this order in order for them to work, and if you, you know, after hearing this, and if you really think about it, you'll, I think you'll come to the conclusion that I've come to is that, you know, once you've got this down, it's really our business in a nutshell, and you will succeed if you work. I mean, that's the bottom line. That's the thing that I think's so powerful about this. You doesn't take some extraordinary skill. You don't have to be a great motivator or public speaker or any of those things. You just need to learn these things and then practice them, you know, do them. Actually do them, not just to learn them. It's not enough just to learn them and match them, but you gotta apply them to your daily, you know, business building routine, whatever that happens to be. All right, so let's get started. Number one is prospecting. Look, if you don't become an excellent prospector, there's absolutely no way for you to get wide or build a big bay shop or produce strong regional vice presidents. Prospecting, you guys, is the lifeblood of our business. It leads to sales and recruits, both of which you must have to be able to stay in our business long-term. If you don't prospect, you can't set appointments, and if you can't set appointments, you can't close sales or recruits. Without these two things, you can't stay involved because you can't make any money. So you've gotta first prospect because the prospecting leads to the appointments. The appointments lead to sales and recruits, and without prospecting, you can't set appointments. So that's why this is sequential. In the end, the strongest prospectors in our business become the best builders, and they make the most money. Look, people don't like prospecting because they don't know how to do it effectively, and they're deftly afraid of rejection. Those are the two reasons why people don't like to prospect. They don't know how to do it, and they're deftly afraid of rejection. Most of you who are hearing this call, your fear of rejection is gonna be the economic death of you, if you will, in Prime America. You need to learn how to do it so that you stop fearing the rejection. When you get really good at what you do, you're gonna have very little rejection. The rejection really is a response to low levels of skill. The higher your skill level, the lower your rejection level, okay? So if you wanna reduce the rejection, you've gotta improve, increase your skill level. If you're trained well, and you get excellent results, you can then look at prospecting as a game, not life or death. So for me, prospecting was a game because I got really good at it, and those of you that are good at it, you know what I'm talking about. So it was never really like, you know, I didn't really care if people did anything or not, because to me, it was just a game to find the right people. You can look at prospecting at either one, you know? So most people don't prospect because they don't know how to do it well, so they experience, you know, way too much rejection. Very few people, folks, are gonna stay engaged in our business, in the process, if the process is too painful for them. They're not gonna stay involved doing it, so the only way that you can reduce the pain, right, associated with it, is to increase the skill level. To me, that's just simply common sense. I'm gonna keep saying common sense a lot throughout this talk, because all of this, to me, is just common sense. If people don't, you know, recognize it, to me, it's always been just kind of, I mean, kind of, I'm a loss of it. Why could you not recognize something as clear as day, as this is to me? Again, it points to the absolutely critical role preparation and training has in your ability to build a business, make money, and stay in the business. Look, how to prospect. Prospecting, folks, is merely starting a conversation or a dialogue with people. Your warm market should be your first entry into prospecting, talking to people who know you, who trust you, right, is the most likely place to start. If you start anywhere else, if you start cold calling from the beginning, it's crazy, it's nuts, okay? It's a madness. Second are referrals, and third is cold calling, or talking to people as you go about your day. So, like a warm market, prospecting, if I was calling, you know, Rick Susie, you know, he's a friend of mine. I'd say, hey, Rick, you know, if I call him on the phone, hey, Rick, listen, I'm looking at this business, in fact, I'm so excited about it, I'm really impressed with it. I'm actually kind of thinking about possibly, not only getting involved, but possibly making a career change. I mean, it looks that promising to me. Before I make that kind of commitment, I would really like to get your response, your view on it, because I really trust your point of view. Would you take a look at it from me, and, you know, tell me what you see, what you think? I mean, if I was calling a friend, that's what I would say. Really simple, really straightforward. I want their opinion, I do. Obviously, I want to, if it makes sense, I wanna get them involved as a client. Obviously, if it makes sense for them, I wanna recruit them, but I do wanna get their opinion, and your friend's not gonna say, no, I'm not gonna give you my opinion. I mean, come on, that's the easiest way to call somebody you know. That's how I did it, that's the way I prospected my War Market, and the best place to prospect is your War Market, people that know you, people that like you, people that trust you, okay? Second, our referrals, if I got a referral, let's say Rick referred me to, you know, Chris Howard, for example, right? So if Rick referred me to Chris, I don't know Chris, but Rick referred me to Chris, what I would call, Chris, and hi, Chris, my name's actually Mark, we have a mutual friend, and Rick's Susie. Do you know Rick, right? He says, yeah, of course, listen, the reason I'm calling you, I was talking to Rick, I'm expanding my business, I'm looking for some really sharp, motivated people who wanna do, you know, really would like to make a lot more money and improve their life, and he said you were a really motivated person, you had really good people skills, you had great work ethic, and that you wanted to do better than you're doing right now, is that true? And then what's he gonna say to that? He's gonna say, of course it's true, right? And so, that's what I would do, okay? That's how I would handle that. And so, and then I would say, listen, I'd like to get together with you and talk to you about, talk to you about what we're doing here in Primeirica. And then, you know, set the appointment. The third is, you're right, is talking to cool people, people you just met, let's say I was at a ball game or something, or let's say I was at a car wash and I start chatting and talking to somebody and how you doing, and I might just say something like, hey listen, you know, we just met, but I'm in the process right now of expanding my business in this area. I'm looking for some really sharp, motivated people that wanna make more money, wanna improve their life, and maybe are even thinking about a career change. Do you know anybody like that, that I might be able to talk to that's looking to do something different? And then you start the conversation. That's all you need to do, okay? Very, very simple, very, very easy. But the bottom line is you need to do it, okay? You need to do it every day, everywhere you go. Okay, number two, setting appointments. Look, if you can't set appointments, then you're essentially stuck in the mud with nowhere to go. Learning how to set appointments, getting competent at setting appointments is critical to having a chance to close sales and recruiting people. Look, because with no appointments, you have no chance. Once again, the reason people have a fear of setting appointments is because they have a low skill level in setting appointments. As a result, they experience a high levels of rejection, which ultimately could drive any normal person out of the business, which again, points to the thing I talk about repeatedly is preparation and training are the keys to becoming a competent appointment setter. Setting appointments is everything, okay? So you need to be able to set appointments. I'm not gonna go into how to set appointments right now, but you need to learn. There's all kinds of information on how to set appointments. Basically, the way that I set the appointment with Rick is how you would set an appointment in your war market. That's what you do, okay? Number three is presentations. Look, there's absolutely no ability to recruit people or close sales if you don't do presentations. And obviously, if you don't prospect set appointments, there's no possibility to even do a presentation. So you've got a first prospect, right? Then you've got to set appointments, and then now you can do a presentation. See, it's all sequential. So hopefully you can see that these seven fundamentals are in the exact order of importance that you need to know and need to master. So presentations have to be question-oriented, right? We're asking lots of questions throughout the presentation, not just giving information, but asking questions. Questions should be throughout the whole presentation. They need to be in a tie-down oriented way, eliciting a response that leads a prospect towards going forward with either doing business with you or joining your business. For example, if I'm talking to Mary and John, right, John and Mary, I said, look, if I'm able to put together a plan, John and Mary, that will allow you to realize your financial goals, can I assume you'll go ahead with my proposal and do business with me? That's a tie-down. That's like where you're asking them a question. If I can put together a plan that will allow you to realize your financial goals, can I assume you'll go ahead with my proposal and do business with me, right? The key to an outstanding presentation is its ability to overcome all the most common objections in the body of the presentation. You should be covering the things that are, you know, whatever those objections happen to be. They should really be covered for the most part in your presentation so at the end of the presentation, right, you're not gonna have a lot of resistance. The better job you do at overcoming the objections, the fewer objections you're gonna have at the end and you'll make the prospect feel comfortable to go ahead if you've answered their major concerns during their presentation. So how I would start my presentation out, just to set everything up properly, this is how I would do it. I'd say, hey, Bob and Mary, thank you for allowing us to spend valuable time with you tonight. I wanna put you at ease. The purpose of our visit is to share information that can possibly allow you to become debt-free and financially independent. My presentation will give you an overview of who we are, what we do, but the way we actually help you is through doing a financial needs analysis. Now I'd have a copy of that. Here's what it looks like. Through asking you some very important questions, we're able to come up with solutions that can possibly allow you to get debt-free and retire financially free. Can you think of any reason, if we're able to do this for you, right, put together a plan that would allow you and show you a clear path to becoming debt-free and possibly retiring financially free that you wouldn't take? Can you think of any reason, if we're able to do this, you wouldn't wanna take advantage of a plan like that? And then you wait for their answer. The most important part of this sequence is to find out if there are any hidden objections before you start so you can address them before you go into your presentation. What I always wanted to do is find out if I were able to come up with a great plan, is there gonna be any resistance or hesitation or objection to them doing business with me? Because no rational person, folks, would say no to helping them get debt-free, right? If you were able to do that and financially independent unless they simply didn't trust you. So to me, I thought it was always best to find out in advance at the start if, you know, so I could overcome whatever might be holding them back so I don't waste their time or my time. So you need to practice, drill, and rehearse your presentation relentlessly so that when you actually do one, you're smooth and confident. Look, people buy confidence. If your material and your ideas are sound, and ours are, and you're totally prepared and confident, you're going to close more sales and recruits, period. Look, we have a super compelling story here at Primerica that makes infinitely more sense than what 90 plus percent of the public's currently doing right now in their own personal financial situation. Your job is to clearly present the facts so that people can make an intelligent, informed decision that's good for them. There's no other company out there putting together a plan as good and comprehensive as ours, but you must know your stuff and make the most compelling case possible with conviction and confidence. Look, that's what you've got to do. Number four is overcome objections. Your ability to overcome the most common objections, which there are about six to 10 of them, will ultimately determine your closing ratio and your income. Your ability to ask questions in such a way as to get the prospect to see clearly what's in their best interest, that in this case is going ahead with your proposals, critical. People have objections because they don't want to make a mistake and they don't like change. Your ability is through, your job is through questions that you ask. You make it clear that making a change is going to enhance their current situation to the extent that their fear of making a mistake or changing from a previous decision is kind of diminished. Often people don't want to change because they don't want to admit they made a mistake on their previous decision. So you must make them aware of this so you don't offend them. So you have to be aware of this so you don't offend them for making a mistake in the past. So you don't want to make them feel bad about making a poor decision in the past because they made that decision. So you can tell them that the decision they made previously was based on facts they had at the time, but now that they have all the new facts, they can make a better informed decision that makes for a much better financial situation for them. So you've got to take off the weight of the previous bad decision. You've got to be aware that people feel offended if you make them feel like they're not, that they didn't make a smart decision before. And some of the most common, there's audios on how to overcome objections. I have an audio on overcoming objections that has all of the most common ones in detail on how to answer them. The common objections, there's just a few of them. I want to think about it. I don't make decisions on the first visit. I like to shop around. I'm not a salesperson. Let me talk to my agent and on and on and on. So there's a few more, but those just give you an idea. So you have to learn the responses to those because you're going to get them. Not all the time, but you're going to get some of them. So you need to be prepared on how to overcome those so that you can keep the process moving forward to the ultimate close, which is either recruiting them or making a sale of some sort. Number five, master the products. You've got to master the products that we offer. In order to be able to sell the features and benefits of our products, you have to know them inside and out. That's just common sense, folks. The fact that you might not teach why and how our products are superior to what most people have now is just nuts. You need to do that. One important reason you should teach your team all the ins and outs of the products is so that your people feel good and proud offering and selling them to people they care about. If people don't feel good about what they're offering because they don't understand it, they don't see, they don't understand what all the features and benefits and why it makes sense and what the advantage is, they're not going to feel motivated to share them with people. The better they understand what we do, why we do it, and how it affects people, the more motivated they are going to be to share this information. That's why talking about that's very, very important. The right kind of people need to and want to feel good about what they're selling. The better they feel about them, the more motivated they're going to be to talk to people about them and sell them. It's just common sense again. Again, confidence is what gets people to follow you and your advice. It makes sense to teach your people about our products so they feel confident offering them and recruiting people to offer them. Number six, recruiting at the kitchen table. Personally, I've recruited virtually everyone that I personally recruited at the kitchen table. I use the meetings, the op meetings and Saturday trainings and fast start skills to reinforce what I talked about in their home and to prove to them that we had a real viable business and we weren't offering out of the back of a turnip truck ride, that we really had a business. When doing the financial needs analysis, folks, you're going to find out if they have a need to earn more money because the FNA provides evidence that people need to at least consider earning more money because most people have a shortfall which you can then use to leverage and motivate them to consider joining you and your business. When they have an obvious shortfall, when it comes to reaching their financial goals, that's the time to show them how they can bridge that gap by starting their own business part-time with you in Primerica. So I felt it was always easier to recruit someone who was first a client. For me, I always like to make people a client first because I felt that if they trusted me enough and believed enough in what we do to become a client, that taking the next step to join me in the business, which was a much shorter leap than just talking to them straight away to getting involved in the business, that to me was just common sense. If they could buy what we did, if they feel confident in what we did and is at least confident enough to become a client, right? They believed me, they trusted me, and then all I need to do is show them that look, you need to make extra money. Let me show you how you can do that through joining me in the business. So you have to become really good at recruiting at the kitchen table because as you're field training, you need to be able to build your new teammates' businesses and if you can't do that at the kitchen table, you're not gonna retain them. And folks, retention's the name of the game in growing your business. And then last but not least is field training new agents. Look, your ability to properly and professionally train your new agents is critical to retaining them because if they aren't trained well, they won't be able to close business or recruit people. As a result, they're not gonna make any money and then they're gonna quit. That again is just common sense. The main reason to train people really well is they have a legitimate chance to make money and succeed if they are trained well. The number one reason people quit is because they don't or can't make money. To me, it's always been total common sense to focus on training people really well so they have the best possible chance to succeed and stay involved in the business. The better trained people are, the happier they are because they're confident they can earn money. They also become better trainers so they're able to transfer the skills they've learned to people they recruit. This gives them the confidence they can actually build a business and become a regional vice president. Look, no one's gonna attempt to become an RVP until they feel like they can actually do it and they'll never feel like they can do it until they're trained properly, where they have self-confidence and they're getting results and they're closing transactions and recruiting people and now they're training people and they're making money. They can start feeling like, you know what? I can do this thing. This is why I've always put such a huge emphasis and premium on training. To me, it's common sense that if you're serious about succeeding, you've gotta train people. Your business is only as good as how well-trained your people are. The better trained they are, the better your business is gonna be. That's what I would focus on. So those seven fundamentals, folks, I went over them rather quickly, but I just wanted to reiterate how important those are. Once you master prospecting, now you can set appointments, you master setting appointments, now you can do presentations. When you do presentations, you're gonna have objections while you're doing the presentation or trying to close transactions, so you need to overcome those. You need to know the products really, really well so you can explain the features and benefits. You need to know how to recruit at the kids' table so you can build your business and build the business of the people you're training and you need to be able to field train people really well so you can have productive people who can repeat that process. And then you start right back over prospecting again. So once you recruit somebody, you get their warm market list and that's their prospect list. That new recruits warm market list is their prospecting. So now you're prospecting again. You're prospecting for what? To set appointments, to do presentations, to overcome objections, to explain our product first, to close business, and then you're recruiting again. And then now you're field training and get that warm market list. And it just repeats over and over and over. Our business is very, very simple. I think people complicate this thing way more than it needs to be. It's a very, very straightforward, simple business but you've got to master those fundamentals first. The better you are at the fundamentals, the better results you're going to get. It's very, very clear to me. So make sure that you focus on this like a laser beam, folks.