By Maggie Leyes

It’s been a slow month. In fact, it’s been a slow year. Production is down, way down. You’re worried. The knot in your stomach tightens as you look at a near-empty appointment book. You realize that you’ve been here before; this feeling is not new. Despite your goal of helping others secure their financial future, you’re having difficulty securing your own. Your head starts spinning, “Will my sales ever improve?” “What am I doing wrong?” “Should I quit?” “Am I really cut out for this profession?” “Who am I kidding?” Doubt begins to cast its shadow on your future in the industry. This is a difficult profession, no doubt about that. You are in business to help people reach their financial goals, and you do that through planning, advising, and selling products and services to meet their needs. The bottom line, however, is: If you don’t sell your products or services, you won’t be in business. It’s this axiom that can wear you down, make you doubt your ability to accomplish your goal—that of helping your clients. Think you’re alone? Well, far from it. Those flagging sales, those nagging doubts about staying in the business have plagued the best and the brightest in the business. They are here to show you how to boost your sales and stimulate your career, making it everything you had hoped for when you started.

When the student is ready … the teacher will appear
In the late 1960s, David F. Woods, CLU, ChFC, LUTCF, NAIFA CEO (and president 1986-87) and LIFE president, was a young agent in a MassMutual agency in Springfield, Mass. He had been in the business a couple of years, but, according to Woods, “It just wasn’t working. I had done all the things I was told to do, but I was getting very few sales—and they weren’t particularly good sales.” And like many young advisors starting out in the business, family obligations weighed heavily. “I was discouraged and running out of money, and we had just had another baby. I was just down and I said, ‘Well, maybe this was just a big mistake.’” recalls Woods.

That’s when a defining moment happened in his career. He attended a local NALU meeting (now NAIFA). It was not his first meeting. Indeed, he had been faithfully attending meetings since starting in the business.

It wasn’t until that day—that meeting, however, that the light bulb went on for him. The clarity with which Woods recounts that day 30-some years ago underscores the profound effect it had on him.

It wasn’t until that day—that meeting, however, that the light bulb went on for him. The clarity with which Woods recounts that day 30-some years ago underscores the profound effect it had on him. The speaker at the meeting was Ben Jones, then-CEO of Monarch Life Insurance Company, and the title of his talk was The More I Fail, the More Successful I Am. Woods says, “I remember thinking, ‘That’s really a stupid title. What in the world is he going to talk about?’” Despite his reservations, Woods attended, and it turned out to be a career-altering decision.

“What [Jones] said in a nutshell is that the life insurance sales business is a business of numbers—you have to get a certain number of noes in order to get a yes,” he says. “So, the more I fail to make a sale, the closer I am to making a sale.” And while that seems like something we all should know, Woods admits that it hadn’t dawned on him.

“He caught me in exactly the right way at the right time with the right words. … Then it became a real game to see how many noes I could get before I got a yes,” Woods explains. “Some weeks I’d have to take 22 noes to get a yes; other weeks I’d get a yes after the second no. It was kind of like turning over cards in a deck to get an ace. You know there are four aces in the deck; you just don’t know where they are. So you got to keep turning them over until you find them. It’s a simple thing, but I can’t tell you what a huge difference it made.”

The lesson Woods walked away with that day: Never forget this is a business of activity. You’ve got to see people.

While that is his first tenet in keeping your sales and spirits up, he has a second piece of advice: “If you never give up, you will inevitably be successful.” Woods recounts the times he would come back from summer vacation only to be faced with the reality of “turning in a big year.” It is at these critical, gut-tightening times we feel that urge to just give up. Woods’ remedy? He would tell himself over and over, “Don’t go out a quitter. If you are going to lose, lose running as hard as you possibly can.”

The grass (or car) is always greener on the other side of the fence
Dick Koob, CLU, ChFC, AEP, NAIFA president 2002-03, admits that he was struggling. It was the beginning of his career, as the ‘60s rolled into the ‘70s. He and his wife, Judy, were newly married, and had just had a baby. That’s when he says, “The economics set in.” He was a commissioned salesman for Northwestern Mutual in the Chicago area. Judy had left her job to stay at home with their new daughter, so her salary was no longer in the picture.

“That put the pressure on me. I saw that I was not making progress, so I started looking around at other companies—not insurance companies. I had a knack for sales, so I thought that maybe I just needed a tangible product [to sell],” Koob says.

For Koob, it came down to borrowing a bit from this company’s rigid system; he knew he needed to establish discipline in his practice.

That search took him to the brink of taking a job with an office supply company. The offer, Koob says, started to look like salvation: salary plus commission, a company car—a pea-green station wagon, an expense account, contests with trips.

Then, at the last interview, they started getting down to the details of how Koob was to sell: He was to call on predetermined businesses along a specified street (and specified side of the street) on the indicated day. He was to make 15 cold calls a day, and at the conclusion of each, he was to dictate the results into a Dictaphone. At the end of the day, Koob was to mail the tape of the call reports to his supervisor, who would review it the next day and call him to critique the results.

“It was absolutely rigid—an absolutely inflexible system with no room for deviation,” says Koob. “I went home to think about it: salary, commission, a company car—these all meant a lot to Judy and me.

“Then I figured, while the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, the grass may be greener because [the neighbor] is tending to his lawn better,” he recalls. “I thought that if I stayed in the insurance business and made 15 phone calls—not even cold calls—a day in the comfort of my office, I could generate enough business to get by.”

And that’s what he did.

For Koob, it came down to borrowing a bit from this company’s rigid system; he knew he needed to establish discipline in his practice—and adhere to it. What helped him get some discipline and start treating his business as a long-term proposition was O. Alfred Granum’s now-legendary One Card System. “It gave me the farsightedness to look out on the horizon and ask a client, ‘If we don’t get together [for your birthday], is it okay to call in six months?’ It gave me a horizon and psychologically gave me the attitude of looking out into a future that was beyond this week or month. It gave me a long-term perspective. (Continued…)

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