HEART CENTERED PLANNING Guide 7: Live Your Purpose
HEART CENTERED PLANNING Guide 7: Live Your Purpose Live Your Purpose What does it truly mean to live your purpose? Purpose can mean many different things, but at its core, it is the unique gift, talent, or contribution you are meant to share with the world. In the previous guide, we explored the importance of living your vision. In this seventh installment of the Heart Centered Planning series, we continue that conversation by exploring what it means to fully embody your purpose and align your work with deeper meaning and intention. So, what does it mean to live your purpose — and why does this matter for your business and life? Watch the webinar below and request the complimentary guide to explore the conversation further. Season 1 Webinar Heart Centered Planning Webinar Series — “Live Your Purpose”Featuring Amy McIlwain Watch the webinar: Download the Guide Fill out the form below to access the complimentary guide:
HEART CENTERED PLANNING Guide 6: Live Your Vision
HEART CENTERED PLANNING Guide 6: Live Your Vision Live Your Vision What does it truly mean to have a clear vision? Vision goes beyond goals, plans, or business strategies. It requires awareness, intuition, leadership, and the courage to trust what you feel called to create. Creating a meaningful vision involves clarity, decision-making, and the willingness to take aligned action — even when the path ahead is uncertain. In the previous guide, we explored the importance of speaking your truth. In this sixth installment of the Heart Centered Planning series, we take the conversation deeper by exploring what it means to live your vision and move toward your true purpose with intention. So, what does it mean to live your vision — and why does this matter in business and life? Watch the webinar below and request the complimentary guide to explore the conversation further. Season 1 Webinar Heart Centered Planning Webinar Series — “Live Your Vision”Featuring Stephani Lucas, Founder & CEO of The Annuity Consultants Watch the webinar: Download the Guide Fill out the form below to access the complimentary guide:
HEART CENTERED PLANNING Guide 5: Speak Your Truth
HEART CENTERED PLANNING Guide 5: Speak Your Truth Speak Your Truth Speaking your truth is not always easy. Sometimes it feels uncomfortable, vulnerable, or even risky — especially when your voice challenges expectations or goes against popular opinion. But suppressing your thoughts, values, and authentic perspective often creates more harm than growth. In the previous guide, we explored the importance of leading with your heart. In this fifth installment of the Heart Centered Planning series, we take that idea deeper by exploring authentic self-expression, aligned leadership, and the power of speaking your truth with confidence and integrity. What does it truly mean to speak your truth — and why does it matter in business, leadership, and relationships? Watch the webinar below and request the complimentary guide to explore the conversation further. Season 1 Webinar Heart Centered Planning Webinar Series — “Speaking Your Truth”Featuring Carol Campos Watch the webinar: Download the Guide Fill out the form below to access the complimentary guide:
HEART CENTERED PLANNING Guide 2: Create an Abundance Mindset
HEART CENTERED PLANNING Guide 2: Create an Abundance Mindset Create an Abundance Mindset We are excited to bring you the second installment of our new series based on Heart Centered Planning. This guide focuses on going past mediocre and excelling in everything that you do. These guides are to help you come from your heart when working with your clients and all other areas of your life. By following the suggested tools and ways of being in this series, you will not only inspire your clients but you will inspire others around you to live a more heart-centered life. This world is a beautiful place — let’s help make it even more beautiful. All we need is LOVE. Watch the second webinar in our Heart Centered Planning series, “Create An Abundance Mindset” with Jennifer Spor. Watch the webinar: Heart Centered Planning Season 2 – Episode 2: Create An Abundance Mindset Featuring Ellen Tyler When you surround yourself with positive, heart-centered people, this mindset shift has the ability to help affect the change you seek in yourself and the world around you. What is an abundance mindset all about? Check out top tips from personal growth coach Ellen Tyler, as we help you grow your insurance business and generate insurance leads. Watch the webinar: Download the Guide Fill out the form below to access the complimentary guide:
HEART CENTERED PLANNING Guide 1: The Importance of Being Grounded
HEART CENTERED PLANNING Guide 1: The Importance of Being Grounded The Importance of Being Grounded It is time we change the public’s perception of the insurance and financial services industry. True leadership begins from within. When advisors operate from clarity, balance, and intention, they create deeper trust and better outcomes for the people they serve. This guide explores the importance of being grounded — not only in business, but in life. Because when your inner world is aligned, your outer world reflects it. We are excited to bring you the Heart Centered Planning series — a collection of guides designed to help advisors grow both personally and professionally while creating more meaningful client relationships. By applying these principles, you can build a business rooted in trust, alignment, and long-term impact while creating more freedom and fulfillment in your life. Season 1 Webinar The Importance of Being GroundedFeaturing Hass Sadeghi Watch the webinar: Season 2 Webinar Heart Centered Planning Season 2 — Episode 1Featuring Raj Jana Learn how grounding practices can support stronger leadership, clearer vision, and a more intentional approach to building your business. Watch the webinar: Download the Guide Fill out the form below to access the complimentary guide:
Showing Empathy: Do You Understand What Clients Want?
When you go to your local coffee shop and the barista, Stephanie, serves your favorite concoction, you love it when she uses your name and asks no questions. Occasionally, Stephanie recommends a different drink for you to try. Time after time, you relish the familiarity of the shop. If your barista stopped working there, it wouldn’t feel like the same coffee shop. However, if you don’t visit for a month, she still knows your name. Fortunately, there are other baristas who know your likes and dislikes. In this post, I want to explore what’s evident in this business relationship, especially when it comes to empathy. What Business Clients Want According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, empathy is “the ability to share someone else’s feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person’s situation.” While the relationship of empathy to Stephanie and the coffee shop may not jump off the page, they do to me. There had to be at least a few transactions in which this magnificent Stephanie learned your preferences. She had to ask your name and then practice using it. She probably took time to explain the menu and encouraged you to try different beverages until you settled on a favorite. She never forgets to smile when she recognizes your face. Sometimes, she gives you a free drink just because. How to Show Empathy Not everyone is cut out to serve their customers as well as Stephanie does. She is a special person suited to working with the public. However, owning a business or running a company calls for some interpersonal skills (or staying behind the scenes and letting the Stephanies of the world do it for you). If you want to be as successful at welcoming people to your company and then nurture relationships with them so that they will stay on the client list, here’s what you can do: 1. Keep a record of how every client finds your business. When you have a CRM platform, much of this is automated for you. However, you also need to add people to the CRM database who walk into the office, call first, email, or get referred by word of mouth. 2. Practice active listening. This requires that you stop thinking about what you will say next and give your full attention to the customer. It means that you don’t refer to a computer screen, a cell phone in your pocket, or a co-worker waving at you while you ascertain what the customer wants and needs. 3. Change the office environment to promote active listening. Find a place where the customer interacts with you in person or on the phone without distractions. In a busy call center, this might be hard to do, but other environments can allow for noise reduction and limited interference from managers and colleagues. Don’t force customers to yell into the phone or to keep repeating themselves because of your workplace’s shortcomings. Customers also need to focus on what you say as you explain products or services and pricing. 4. Get training for yourself and your staff on showing empathy. A person who shows empathy is not in a hurry to get his words out. He watches your body language and catches the intonation in your voice. He shows concern when you take a deep breath in case this means you’re worried or afraid to ask something. He leans forward when he talks to you and occasionally pats you on the shoulder or playfully punches you on the arm. He sometimes hugs you or shakes your hand. His arms and legs are never crossed because that creates a defensive posture. He will gladly show you where the restroom is and ask if you have any questions. He will never rush you to state what you want or need. He will not pressure you to buy anything. Many companies have lost the art of customer service. Empathy is the top skill that your business can provide training on for everyone who helps customers. If you go through empathy training with your staff, you will see rapid results as customers feel more appreciated. What’s more, don’t keep workers on the payroll who go through empathy training and fail to show this quality to customers. Your clientele deserve the best!
The Connection Between Tech and Underwriting Life Insurance
Have you ever waited in line at Starbucks, ordered a bagel and a coffee, received your beverage, and then felt you must return to the counter to inform the barista your bagel was never cooked. This happened to me today. The barista said, “I am sorry for the inconvenience, but the label for your bagel never printed out. Let me make you one now.” I had to wait four more minutes, but I did receive a tasty treat. Of course, I’ll continue shopping at Starbucks because they work hard to please their customers. It’s integrated into their business culture. Customer service is a big reason why people pay so much for a delicious drink including their exact specifications. As consumers, we love convenience and speed. We’ve been trained by new consumer-driven delivery models to expect the best and to speak up when we don’t get it the first time around. Turning to Insurance Ah, the Starbucks metaphor works time after time. What does this have to do with my business? I don’t want to admit this, but, sometimes, I stay up late at night pondering how to streamline the underwriting process for annuity and life insurance prospects. These hardworking folks deserve to get the most for their premiums with as few snags as possible. Last week, I was browsing the web and discovered an interesting piece from InvestmentNews.com, which explained how insurers are making this process easier through automation of more aspects of the policy creation process. I encourage you to join me in considering how these tech insights can inform your current business model, especially so you can begin to develop handier applications for new and existing customers (or at least work with insurers who provide such tools for you): According to Investment News: “Now, rather than wait months to get a life insurance policy, some companies can issue fully underwritten policies — that is, those taking full medical history into account — within one to two weeks. A handful of more cutting-edge companies can issue them on the spot.” How They Do It Life insurance carriers want to automate everything. It’s a matter of posting the questions that you need to review on your website, providing a secure way for prospects to submit their answers, and then having a database application automatically review each consumer’s information. Then, you can have human workers review applications for things that the application flags as potential problems for underwriting a policy. The article describes the trend towards a more digitized application process and fewer questions asked of each consumer. What’s more, “Insurers are now able to gather some consumer data, such as prescription, credit and motor-vehicle information, from third-party sources.” Consumers Have Privacy Concerns For consumers, there are the usual privacy concerns. Personally, I’m not crazy about the idea of a potential insurer considering the prescriptions I’ve purchased in the last year as a factor in policy underwriting. However, consumers can use an automated underwriting process if they have a way to get their questions answered about the access and use of their protected data. As annuity and life insurance sellers, we should be prepared to answer these types of questions for each company that we represent. The Bottom Line If you choose to partner with insurers who can access prospects’ protected medical information (with the proper consents, of course) in a timely manner and quickly determine if their data fits the underwriting criteria, you will have happier customers. I see this as consumers being able to actualize their need for a new life insurance policy or a more comprehensive product in a shorter time. They might also like it so much that they begin to refer others to your company.
Broker Dealers: Where Do We Stand in the “Everyone is a Small Business Owner” World?
Sometimes, I think it is fun to step back and look at how our different roles in the life insurance industry have changed. We need a fresh perspective on our jobs to become better at what we do. This all happens in a business environment marked by constant change. As we face pressure to produce in the face of greater competition, we should understand our roles in relation to others in the same industry. The broker dealer occupies an interesting role in this economy. I say this because, with the Internet as the place so many people now launch a business, the broker dealer’s role is in flux. It used to be that people would visit an insurance agency to get an annuity or a life insurance policy. Now, they can go online and select an agent and buy a product from one of many insurance companies. A single agent can connect them with quotes from multiple insurers, and, therefore, the broker dealer is a manager of different kinds of agents that he or she was in the recent past. We must be experts on more products and focus more on volume sales than we did before. What the Market Says Broker dealers are out there in the life insurance world trying to maintain their independence even as the regulations from FINRA get tighter. A broker dealer is someone who a financial advisor or life insurance salesperson can go to work for and then earn a commission or a fee based on the amount that he or she sells. It helps to think of the broker dealer as the middleman, who gets a cut of the sales that all of the financial consultants under him earn. The dealer may assume all of the overhead costs, for example, for maintaining an office environment and providing the right equipment for advisors to reach out to existing clients and to prospects. Both the broker dealer and the life insurance seller will make more money if they work in collaboration and share ideas on doing business. Broker dealers can serve as leaders and perform coaching and mentoring for the life insurance sellers who work for them. Life insurance agents, if you will, can use an agency to find a position under a broker dealer who matches their style. It pays to find a position where the agent is comfortable and can build long-term relationships within the community without feeling conflicts with the broker dealer. What Broker Dealers Should Do A broker dealer is under a lot of pressure to stay in business by reaching sales goals. This may include meeting a quota for each insurance company for which her sellers write life insurance policies or annuities on behalf of clients. This pressure is hard to withstand when there are so many people who use the telephone, mobile communications, or the Internet to find a life insurance or annuity product. Many consumers have simply stopped going to agencies. They may buy directly through the insurer’s app or website. As a broker dealer, invest some time in marketing your brokerage to target audiences across multiple media formats, which will keep the prospects coming in. This is a make-or-break market that confronts all dealers no matter how long their agency has existed. Second, invest time in finding new salespeople who fit your business model and then coach them as they try to close enough sales in their first year on the job. You cannot stay in business by simply hiring them and turning them loose to sink or swim. As a person running my own agency for many years on the West Coast, I am ready to mentor broker dealers, such as by suggesting how to improve your current business model and to lead your agents to greater sales.
Growing Your Agency to Include More Customers
The drive behind every small business owner must be to increase sales through improved relationships. If you’re going to increase the number of customers, you have to take approaches that will maximize the use of your time and provide a quality experience to all customers. In this post, I want to discuss how you can organize your time better to ensure that you are available to sit down with prospective customers on a daily basis. They deserve your time to answer their questions before they choose a life insurance or annuity product. I decided to do some reflection on agency to customer relationships. Interestingly, I concluded that your leadership and sharing of industry knowledge with customers and prospects is the single biggest factor that you can change to increase sales. Create a Customer Service Routine Your aim is to increase sales, so, you’re going to start by giving yourself additional training. What do you need to learn about customer service techniques? What products do you need to research more? Questions like these can help you grow in your sales profession and then share more insights with customers and employees working in your agency. You need to establish a routine for each meeting where you will sit down with a client and work through the process of identifying their needs and matching them with the best product. Then, use the routine consistently, being sure to standardize customer service experiences. This creates a better brand for people who come into the office. You can also develop a routine for how you handle consultations over the phone and even use a set of canned responses for emails, online chats, and social media conversations. Some small business owners even use texting systems now to keep in touch with customers because this is more convenient than talking on the phone or messaging over email. Don’t Be Afraid to Change Office Routines If you’re going to satisfy customers who have many options for where they can purchase life insurance and annuity products, it’s worth improving your current office system. If your agency uses outdated ways of communicating with customers or doesn’t change anything about the customer service experience, you may not be able to stay relevant. This is akin to a doctor’s office that won’t go to a computerized medical records system. A medical practice with only paper documents would find it hard to meet many requirements for the protection of patient health information. For example, in the event of a fire or a water leak, paper records could be damaged beyond repair. Then, the practice could not respond to many requests for patient records. Look for phone system updates and customer service software that will help you better respond to customers and track their needs. You Can Do It! Having successfully built my own insurance agency specializing in my life insurance and annuity products, I am happy to offer professional development opportunities to other people who are starting an agency or trying to increase their success within their current agency. The insurance agency and the individual agent who sells to people will only stay relevant if people can get an experience through a personal meeting that’s more helpful than they could get over the phone or via online chat with an insurance company. I am all for helping customers to select the right products, but this should take place when they are ready and feel connected to the right options. For more details on building better agent to customer relationships and improving your customer service routines, please check back on the blog. I want you to sell what you believe in while growing your agency the right way!
Overcoming Self-Doubt to Increase Sales
Because of the potential for both high risk and high rewards, business is a very instinctive endeavor. Concepts like thinking with your gut and trusting your instincts become very real when trying to judge who to invest trust and resources in. Being self-assured is one of the primary ways to gain customer trust and increase your sales. Unfortunately, that casual air of confidence is hard to achieve for the thousands of people in every city who suffer from self-doubt. Self-doubt saps your ability to proudly represent your products and makes customers wonder if you doubt the quality of your own pitch, costing you potential sales at every turn. If you’re ready to leave doubt behind and become the sales guru you know you can be, take our advice and try these simple doubt-defeating tips: 1. Treat Yourself with Respect Self-doubt is there to stop you from feeling confident about yourself or anything that you do. Every action you take, your doubt second-guesses whether or not it was a good idea. This is a form of undermining and that little voice is treating you with incredible disrespect. Every time you think ‘maybe I can’t do this’, imagine if someone else had said it. You wouldn’t take it from a stranger, so don’t take that kind of back-talk from yourself either. The first and best way to deal with internal doubt is to fix your self-talk and treat yourself with more respect, from the inside out. 2. Look How You Want to Feel Humans are incredibly responsive to appearance, and the way you view yourself matters too! If you have trouble feeling sleek and capable, make yourself look cool first. Don’t just comb your hair, add a little gel to the mix and style it in a new and professional way. Instead of the ‘same old work clothes’ choose something snappy. If you only have a few nice options in your closet, that could easily be part of the problem! When you look and feel your best, customers will be able to tell and will think “Now here’s someone who’s got their act together” and they will be right. 3. Speak Clearly and Boldly What’s a sales pitch without confident, clear speech? Practice clear diction and speak boldly on the topics you know well. When judging someone for trustworthiness, a steady gaze and a confident way of speaking are considered top indicators of honesty and capability. If you have a passion for your products and want your customers to know about it, tell them in a strong, positive manner and they are much more likely to believe in you and what you can offer them. 4. Reach Out to Your Clients Now that you have begun to reinvent yourself, it’s time to build stronger connections. Seek out new clients and rekindle relationships with preexisting ones. Clients who knew you before will be amazed at your positive change in demeanor while new clients will immediately trust you and want to be ‘on your team’. Altogether, by conquering your self-doubt and taking charge of your business life, you can massively increase your sales and relationships with your customers. Self-doubt doesn’t have to rule your life. Simply by taking charge of your behaviors and inner dialogue you can quickly begin to treat yourself with more respect, dress for success, develop a more confident manner of speaking and build stronger client connections. Through a combination of motivation, confidence, and hard work your sales are sure to see significant improvements. For more helpful advice on increasing your personal performance and relationship with your clients, check out a few of our other articles!