Empower Your Opportunity Sales Process for Financial Services with airSlate SignNow

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Alright good morning everybody Mike Courtney MassMutual Eastern Pennsylvania I'm joined by my good friend and counterpart at IBC Global Steve Parisi. Steve good morning how are you today? [STEVE PARISI] Good morning Mike it's fantastic over here. How about yourself? [MIKE COURTNEY] Good, I'm finally starting to see some a little hint of an actual spring so that always makes me happy. [STEVE] I love it I had a nice run this morning it's nice shorts and a t-shirt I'm good to go. [MIKE] Nice. So Steve and I it feels like for a while the last maybe 4 or 5 calls have been spending a lot of time talking about product and product changes and who's competitive where and different Riders and how you can maximize value. Today we wanted to talk about the other side of our sales process which is really client communication and running meetings and how do you filter all this information in a really ideal and concise and summarized way for a client while remaining real detailed and answering all the nitty-gritty questions. So Steve I know that you have an internal team of sales producers that you manage and you've got a very specific selling system and process in place for those folks and then you've got ILS which is the training platform where brokers or advisors can sign up for a subscription and get a boatload of information there. What's been the key in your internal team's success with regards to how their sales process works or how their sales process has developed? [STEVE] Yeah that's a good question and I'll give you one thing it's the number one thing and it's really what sets the difference or makes the difference between a superstar agent and someone that doesn't make it or struggles in the business whether they're here or anywhere in the industry in general which is really communication being able to communicate the message of the product your story whatever it might be effectively to your audience whether that's one-on-one whether that's in a group setting are you effective with communication? And I would say most people probably are not effective with communication naturally I'm not I can share stories where I've bombed presentations most embarrassing situations of my life but it is something anyone can improve and how you improve upon it is simply by practicing practice practice practice I know for me I'll try and use visuals so I'll write out what I want to communicate use visuals where possible and then I'll rehearse aloud exactly what I would say to you if we're going to have a meeting or conversation I'll rehearse the main points and in the beginning it's very structured because I've got that script almost in my mind but then like anything as you become more comfortable with it you can learn to call audibles related to a football game and then it becomes more conversational because communication is knowing how to feel your product how to feel the situation how to maneuver through that conversation but at the same time completely adjust course if you start asking questions that have nothing to do with perhaps 80% of my conversation or my presentation if you want to call it that so I want to talk about the 80% you don't care about so being able to really understand your product service objective what does the client want? Like that's it and then how do you communicate effectively to them where they know like you're with them okay you're trying to help them you've got their objectives down here's how to do it you're asking the right questions and practice is how you improve upon that. [MIKE] So I had in a previous life I worked for a sales organization where we would do a lot of role play I would have twice a week we would have these sales meetings where at some point in the meeting we would either break into small groups or just kind of get called on to bring up an issue or bring up a specific topic and then you and the sales manager would role-play your way through that which was always kind of an embarrassing and uncomfortable exercise but so critical it's almost like performing something in athletics or if you do the long jump or if you're shooting a basketball you have to get that muscle memory down and if you don't have any muscle memory and you've got to open your mouth and you think you have the knowledge it's not always going to come out in an effective way. [STEVE] It's not and then you kick yourself thinking oh I did that wrong the communication just stunk there I wish I would have done things differently. Role-play helps a lot just drilling over and over the awkward feeling you mentioned I can relate to that I would hate role play so much I wanted to quit jobs I used to work for one in particular when I think about it because I'd always mess up and people will just kind of look at me like what's wrong with this guy? [MIKE] Well it's just it's an awkward and weird you know we're not actors and all of a sudden you're kind of rehearsing a play is what it feels like. [STEVE] Yeah but it's we're uncomfortable at first like anything the more that you do it the more comfortable you become with it and it does help you just improve overall with communication it's helped me so much and I still do it and I often do it by myself and what I mean when I say that is if I'm preparing a recording for someone for example when we send a proposal and different illustrations if it's something that's fairly complex I'm not just going to send it to them I'm going to do a zoom recording turn it into a private YouTube link and send it to them or something like that which provides talking points to the material I sent it makes it easier for them but I don't shoot one recording and send it all the time sometimes you know if I'm on that day but it's very rare I'm going to practice it because when I deliver it to them I want it delivered in the same manner that I would deliver to them as if we were talking on the phone similar to what they've seen through our marketing content like I want it how can I put this served on a golden platter this way they say okay this is exactly what I want thank you they see the work that was put into it and then they want to move forward because it's their money this is their plan it's about them not about me so I want to make sure the presentation is as good as it can be to complement the product which is what they ultimately want. [MIKE] And I think too for sales professionals whether you are the sales professional or you're managing the sales professional it's important for that person to realize that you want to get this practice and get the kinks out of the way during these internal role play sessions or during whatever your mechanism is for practice as opposed to with clients. So I mean we talk about this all the time I've been with MassMutual for about 10 years when I first started I had literally never touched a disability insurance case so it's not that complicated of a concept but it is kind of a mitchy world and there's a lot of little idiosyncrasies that go along with disability product and underwriting so when I first started working for Mass I was getting a lot of inbound phone calls from advisors that had questions about our product or about a certain case and I just had no life experience so I very quickly got up to speed and educated myself with regards to the product so I had product knowledge but I still found myself struggling in conversations and I asked one of the disability wholesalers I think this is important for so not to pat myself on the back but as a sales professional I kind of recognized that I was deficient in a certain area and I took some ownership I called one of the disability wholesalers in the home office and I said I want a standing call every Monday morning at 9 o'clock 5 minutes so I was asking him to help me but I was also making it very non-invasive it can be real quick I want to start my week every week talking about disability and I just want to talk about anything I want you to tell me a story talk to me about a product feature tell me about a case you worked on last week tell me about some weird underwriting scenario tell me a funny story talk about a claim whatever we did it for probably I don't know we probably did it for 3 months and it got to the point where DI was top of mind for me and sometimes that's all that it really is just kind of get getting your brain rewired a little bit so that this is something you're thinking about talking about everyday as opposed to if there's an area where you feel deficient or less than you're gonna shy away and that's gonna be obvious. [STEVE] Yeah big time thanks for sharing that too building awareness around the disability product and then rehearsing it becoming more comfortable with it and the rehearsal either you can do it on your own or it's going to happen either way as you talk to more brokers about it but if they sense kind of like what you mentioned that you're not confident about it or not knowledgeable because you're shying away that's where we end up losing the business as a result like that's the kind of stuff that happens when someone disappears. [MIKE] It's very clearly I wasn't an expert and same as your internal salespeople if this is really where they're supposed to have expertise and it becomes clear that they're not experts in this area if I'm the buyer I'm probably looking around for a different outlet. [STEVE] Yeah and that can happen so quick so you have to be knowledgeable on that and then you have to communicate it effectively. You mentioned before with the individual you're working with whether it's product information underwriting issues, stories stories are the things we remember more than anything else so you know there's the saying what stories sell they do so if you can become effective with using stories or illustrations to complement your product or service that will keep the attention of your listeners or your customers more than just product details with most people not everyone but with most. [MIKE] And they don't have to be your stories. [STEVE] Correct. [MIKE] You know I'm not making up stories but if it's something really that happened or a real but just didn't happen to me that's fine. [STEVE] Yeah we all get our stories as time passes that's good advice you gave there for someone new in the business if you're young I was like I don't have any stories when I was young. [MIKE] Use mine it's okay. [STEVE] Yeah that's alright a story of someone else but you know with those stories the one thing to be aware of there is I've seen people be very effective with the initial sale with stories but then if we don't have the product knowledge or know someone that does on the back end it can end up hurting us because if we're a good storyteller they want to work with us but then if we say okay I got the sale I'm good let me move on to the next person and sell them with my story and my product requires service on the back end they're going to come back things will happen no matter how perfect everything is set up things will happen if you don't know how to maneuver through difficult situations it can really cause a lot of stress with your particular product or service depending on what company you're using and such but it's important to go beyond just the story selling you have to know things in and out or have specialists or internals that do. [MIKE] So you're set up in the office I think let's call it your internal sales team or the producers that are internal at IBC I would imagine regularly more than weekly you guys are getting together in some form of huddle and role-playing answering questions talking about live cases talking about live situations just like everlasting ongoing training for those folks, correct? [STEVE] Correct so the sales team every day first thing in the morning they do role-play that's 5 to 15 minutes nothing extensive but just to get things flowing so they do role-play as a group and then they do have weekly meetings all departments do some departments will have collaboration calls where a number of departments meet together. For sales they've got their standard weekly meetings which is the entire sales team that's typically on Tuesdays I'll run one of those once per month and then there are other meetings our sales team is actually broken up into 2 groups so we've got the senior agents that will run trainings with their juniors as well so there's a lot of constant training and just interaction among each other you have to because things pop up in this business you know variables and questions that you thought you would never receive like I don't know how to answer this well someone with experience does so let's work together so we can properly answer the client's question. [MIKE] Yeah that's a good setup I found that a lot of times in a sales organization you set up these meetings that start to become stale and I think what you mentioned is sharp like a good way to keep that stuff fresh is we're gonna do role play every morning but it's going to be 5 minutes this isn't going to be a 45-minute or an hour-long meeting everybody books these meetings like every zoom meeting I get is for an hour it's like no let's do it in 10 minutes and get back to work and then you don't burn people out and I don't know I think me personally I would get a lot more out of that. [STEVE] I'm with you there short and sweet because it doesn't need to be long just a quick morning run to get you walking to wake up and then get on with your day but it allows you to practice on your peers instead of clients very important to do that it goes a long way and just the whole topic of communication in general the more you practice that the better you will do but again you've got the knowledge on your product and service and then the communication first understand it in and out and then communicate it effectively and understanding it in and out I said first understand in and out it never really ends. We had a training yesterday because over the past 2 weeks I had them personally experiences with existing clients where we set the policies up we'll give you one example a nice guy pays in a little over $30,000 per year with one of the major mutual insurance companies I don't want to mention their name for this reason because they're working on something on this point but when we set the policy up he wanted to fund it $100,000 over 3 years so he's paid $33,000 and change for 3 straight years and then nothing thereafter. Premium offset allowing the dividends and interest to pay the premium and based on the guaranteed values non-guaranteed values on that original projection the original illustration worked out fine non-MEC. In-force illustration year 4 just came he's paid in 3 years I don't want to pay anything in I want to stick to the original plan in-force illustration software says the policy will now MEC in year 4 I'm looking at it like that's not right because death benefit hasn't changed we've got a level term Rider that levels the death benefit out he hasn't paid anything in has never gone over his MEC limit but the insurance company software that's what the company uses to determine if a policy is a MEC or not so I'm looking at I'm like okay this is not correct so I go to my primary contact he looks at it and has the same reaction he sends it above and this is one of the major insurance companies and they're like we're a little stumped here because it should not be a MEC but the software is saying it's a MEC he goes higher up and they say okay we actually found an internal error with our software the policy is not a MEC here's a manual adjustment corrected and it's all good thankfully and I never had to even say anything to the client because they don't need to be stressed out about this kind of stuff then they're going to lose confidence in the insurance carrier, us because that's what happens and then another case happened... [MIKE] Before you move on it strikes me that if you didn't have the kind of product knowledge that you do if you were an average insurance advisor and that happened I think you probably would jump up and down and scream and stamp your feet but you'd end up going back to the client and saying this policy's a MEC something got screwed up we're gonna raise hell with the insurance company but I think you'd be in a big mess and probably wouldn't push it far enough in the right direction for them to realize that there was a software error. [STEVE] That's exactly what would happen Mike and that's exactly what happens in the industry when something happens that an agent does not expect because they have the awareness or comes out of the left-field we panic and we get defensive and we start to fight so that individual paid in $30,000 per year so this might amplify what you just said so put yourself in this position that I'm about to share right here you set up a policy the policy is set up with a MEC limit of $400,000 the client pays in $400,000 in year 1 year 2 comes 3 days after his premium due date within the grace period he says I'm going to fund the full $400,000 so I've run the in-force illustration and it says the policy will MEC in year 2 with this $400,000 payment in the software I know it's wrong but if you didn't know that was wrong when you look at it... [MIKE] You knew it was wrong because of the $30,000 case or did this happen at the same time? STEVE] No this was 2 weeks after so I had the $30,000 cases experience but even so I would know that it's wrong because what I do is reference the status report to see what the total MEC space is then I go back to the original illustration I'll take a screenshot of what the 7-Pay limit is the MEC limit and this is exactly what I did and provided that to the insurance carrier to say I think we found another glitch in the software because here's the client's policy he paid $400,000 in the 1st year he hasn't paid anything out saying year 2 the anniversary date has passed the next $400,000 goes in and it's saying it will MEC if you're an agent and you see that what's going to happen if you don't have the experience you don't know how to maneuver through that situation? What you mentioned before stamping the feet up and down yeah people are gonna panic and when we had the training this was yesterday where we walked through the situation with our agents some of them said like I would freak out in that situation because I told them one thing and now it's like completely different in the software I feel like it's lying to me like that's a natural reaction I would have that too I used to react like that all the time as well but when these situations occur you know the product you know the system and how it works you've got your team here I'll help you with this when we run into situations the key thing to do for you as an agent is not to panic that all you're going to do is just think of what it could be how am I going to explain this to the client and we stress yourself out with all this stuff that we don't even need to it's like to stay calm you know how the system works staying calm will help a favorable outcome and you won't burn yourself out for the day with mental exhaustion either which is true that actually happens with this kind of stuff so just staying calm and then here's how we maneuver through the process when this happens check all your facts and then send it to the carrier send it to me I can check it with you with these complex situations and like that's it and it always works out but it's just knowing how to maneuver through that but don't be a knucklehead and send something to your brokerage director yelling at them or making your emails seem like you're yelling at them like what are you nuts? Like you're panicking when you don't need to because then you harm the relationship and I say that because you're a broker's director and I'm sure you've experienced that a few times. [MIKE] We're in the same boat I've experienced that this week. So the other thing before I let you go that I want to mention is I think you guys do a great job of this but in general in our business I found this particular thing to be difficult is really focused training on where your main revenue drivers are so as a brokerage director for MassMutual I'm regularly being told whether it's by a general agent or by home office or by one of my peers that oh you should focus here you should focus here you should focus on worksite you should focus on long-term care solutions and I think it would be hard as a new or young person in the business to really know and get caught up and I need to get up to speed on this and this and this and this and really you end up a lot with a lot of training and a lot of effort in areas where you're not driving a lot of revenue. It is really important at the end of the day we are in sales and I'm trying to maximize sales and I have to focus on areas where I'm gonna drive the most revenue and not get distracted by shiny ancillary items which is a regular occurrence and I think it's a regular occurrence for a lot of independent advisors out there who get pulled in a bunch of different directions and they see their buddy over here who's making a ton of money doing this and their buddy over here is having a lot of success with group health benefits and there's a lot of ancillary factors that are coming into your sphere. [STEVE] It's easy to get pulled into that focus on one thing in the beginning get very very good at that and then begin to expand your products but just focus on one thing we can become an absolute expert in your field. When you look at business building there's a really good book Ready Fire Aim it sounds like really aim fire but no ready, fire, aim so fire before you aim you've got different stages of business and the first stage is zero to $1,000,000 and during that stage all you should be doing is selling one product that's it don't try and do all this other stuff focus on the one product until you get to that $1,000,000 number and then the next stage is beginning to add additional products into your business but people try to do too much too soon and it's exciting because we see the opportunity there but don't do it become an expert. Think of it if you're working with someone do you want to work with a jack-of-all-trades that knows a little bit about everything or they appear to be experts but they really just know just a little bit about this and that and that or an expert in a particular niche field you're going to them for that reason if you want something else they're not the person you're gonna work with and that's okay think if you're the agent if you're not the person that that individual is not going to work with because they're interested in something outside of your service that's alright work with the people that are interested in your service start there and the life will be so much easier for you as time passes. [MIKE] So listen folks if you're interested in anything that we talked about today or if you're struggling with training or practice I would really urge you to as a sales professional take that into your own hands don't always wait for management or wherever you sit whoever your superiors are to put a track in place for you to run on. I mean sometimes you have to create that track yourself and take that practice and take that self-training very seriously because it's only going to benefit your business in huge ways. If you have questions feel free to reach out to me I'm Mike Courtney MassMutual Eastern Pennsylvania brokerage director or Steve Parisi president and CEO of IBC Global there's a variety of ways that we can help both young and seasoned advisors who are looking for training in these areas. Steve thanks for your time today and I'll talk to you soon. [STEVE] Likewise, thanks so much Mike, enjoy.