Why We Need Mindfulness Techniques Before a Sales Meeting
People who work in sales only succeed when they have quality interactions with clients. If you can’t close a deal, then you won’t get a fee, which means that you can’t pay the mortgage or put food on the table. This isn’t a place that annuity sellers want to be. However, in the face of competition, it’s there as a possibility. As we get older, we find it more difficult to manage life’s stressors. Our bodies are aging, and our kids need different things from us. We also tend to sleep less while we should get at least 7 to 8 hours of quality sleep per night. With all of this in mind, it makes sense that we should set ourselves up for success by adopting habits that make us feel healthy, strong, and sharp of mind. Here, I discuss the importance of using mindfulness techniques before a sales meeting because these require us to be at our very best. What It Looks Like You are sitting there at your laptop and saying to yourself: “This writer is crazy. Does he or she actually sell life insurance annuities to clients?” I assure you that I am in the very same industry, and I truly believe that mindfulness techniques make us better sellers. I recommend that people build mindfulness meditation into their daily routine, which could even include putting reminders on your Microsoft Outlook calendar or on your smartphone. With a mobile app like Calm, you can schedule alerts to tell yourself it’s time to meditate. I tend to need this alert every day about 11:00 am. I am into the thick of my day, and I am starting to stress out. There’s still an hour or two remaining until I break for lunch. I feel overwhelmed and need to relax my mind and body. I need to refocus my neurons on what I’m doing in the present moment. That’s when I close the door to my office, fire up YouTube on the desktop for a guided meditation, or just watch the inhale and exhale icons on my Calm app. What It Feels Like If you’ve ever been to a yoga class, you know that focused breathing works wonders for the body. I used to go to these classes years ago, but, it was mostly for time away from my youngsters and for the social relationships I formed with other yoga students. Now, I really need to go to yoga class, but it’s not something that I will get up two hours earlier to do before work. What does it feel like to do mindfulness meditation? When I close my eyes, I think about the fact that my mind, body, and spirit have reached a point of overload. I have too many things to concentrate on and negative thoughts won’t stop nagging at me. I tell myself this: “If I can just make two more phone calls or check my emails again, I’ll be able to put those thoughts aside.” I take the first inhalation, hold my breath, and then release it. I feel a bit of tension leave my body. Each breath makes me feel better. Suddenly, the day seems less daunting. I will be able to smile and tell the next client why she needs to consider a fixed rate annuity because she doesn’t like risking her money any more than she needs to. I will also steer her away from high-return investment options because she’ll be furious if one of them loses money. Think About Your Clients If you take 1 to 5 minutes to calm your body with meditation before a sales meeting, you can relieve tension from your being. Your face will look less strained, your shoulders will stoop forward less, you will sit up straighter, and you will feel less pain in your calves. Each of us carries stress in different parts of our bodies. If you’re so stiff that you look awkward to clients (even constipated or anxious), do a full-body stretch before showing them into the sales meeting. These steps may seem silly at first, but they can make a difference in how calm you feel. Your goal is to appear friendly and helpful so you can sell more products to clients. People want to learn about annuity products from a salesperson who is knowledgeable, of course, but also from someone who understands their needs.
Be Mindful of Sleep and Exercise Habits Because They Affect Your Sales Performance
Annuity sellers are like everybody else. We have to use our common sense when it comes to eating better, sleeping right, and exercising. Any change in our lifestyle (good or bad) can affect our work. When we suspect that something might be wrong with our bodies, we tend to consult a medical provider. At the medical appointment, we expect immediate results, and we desire to return to normal with as expenditure of effort as possible. What our bodies tell us is crucial, but we cannot expect to stay healthy over the long term without changing daily habits. The Prevalence of Sleep Apnea One of the things we’ve read much about in recent years is when people have trouble sleeping. It interrupts everything they do. Many adults suffer from obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) syndrome, but they don’t know it. This could explain why you often fall asleep at your desk. People with OSA may have symptoms such as loud snoring, daytime sleepiness, and daytime fatigue. They may stop breathing while asleep and/or make jerking motions. After they resume breathing again, they may experience another fit. People with multiple episodes like these could have mild, moderate, or severe OSA, which calls for medical treatment. The Background on Sleep Apnea According to a study published by the American Thoracic Society, there are estimates that 3 percent to 7 percent of the general population has a form of OSA. “Increasingly, obstructive sleep apnea is also being recognized as an independent risk factor for several clinical consequences, including systemic hypertension, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and abnormal glucose metabolism.” What’s more, people with certain risk factors have a higher chance of developing this syndrome (i.e. age, being of the male sex, obesity, family history, menopause, craniofacial abnormalities, and using alcohol or tobacco). If you know someone with loud snoring or trouble breathing during sleep, you could suggest seeing a medical provider. A medical physician determines if a patient should be evaluated through polysomnography, also called a sleep study. Exercise Can Help As we get older, it’s important to use exercise as a way to keep our bodies strong and to prevent disease. One meta-analysis study published in Lung found “a statistically significant effect of exercise in reducing the severity of sleep apnea in patients with OSA with minimal changes in body weight.” This study also found that the important effects of exercise on cardiorespiratory fitness, daytime sleepiness, and sleep efficiency suggest the potential benefit of exercise in treating OSA. If you are feeling sluggish, you want to get to the root cause. If you aren’t sleeping right, you might see your sales go down, but you can also develop other health problems. Get Ready and Feel Positive The best thing that people with a suspected medical condition like sleep apnea can do is to seek early intervention. As an annuity seller, I would like to think that I could choose the eating, sleeping, and exercise habits that will help me to live a long and fulfilling life. However, I know that my sales job makes it important to find a balance. Of course, I will do my best to follow my physician’s advice. When I take care of “me,” whether that is getting some extra sleep each night before work or hitting the gym four days a week, I should be ready to sell more policies. My brain will be more alert, and I will have more energy to give to my clients. How else will I help them choose the best annuity product for their specific situation? If they talk to me now, their needs might be different from when they called me a year ago and decided to wait. I want to be ready!
Reaching Annuity Clients Without Jargon
Annuity Seller Tips! Are you reaching for annuity clients with the industry jargon? The concept of an annuity is based on very human values like planning for retirement and passive income you can rely on, but all too often when it comes to financial matters, people have a terrible time seeing through the jargon and details. Insurance and tax policies tend to come with a lot of unfamiliar multi-syllable words that are downright intimidating. Especially to someone who is thinking about how to plan a reliable grocery and recreation budget for their retirement years. It is important for your clients to understand the kind of financial decisions they are making. So, you want to explain as much as possible in relatable terms rather than technical details. For annuities, cover the central human concepts, and skip the financial terms until the second half of the conversation. Annuity Clients Think About Personal Retirement Everyone wants to retire well, but retirement isn’t what it used to be. Social security only covers so much and company retirement policies often have contingencies. Introduce the idea that a personally controlled retirement plan can’t be revoked, drained, or have the terms changed without their knowledge. They get to know exactly how much to pay in and how much they will get out of it. Lay out the options, but leave the technical stuff to the side or keep it as final points. They will want to know the difference between the variable, fixed, and income annuities. Let them sink their teeth into the human-relatable benefits first. Annuity Clients Thinks About Passive Income Even if a client is not looking for a specific retirement plan, you can sell them on the idea of non-retirement passive income. Most people work for a lifetime contributing to a retirement plan to gain some passive income. Why wait? Explain that some annuity plans allow them to put in either large sums or regular payments into the annuity. The funds will transfer it into a reliable passive income whenever they want it to start dispensing. This is great for people who have a large saving that they don’t want to overspend. Also, people that get paid irregularly that would like to live on a regular supply of money. By highlighting the human flexibility of the plan types, you can help clients understand annuities. That they can be used for almost anything that could benefit from a steady monthly fund. Annuity Client Think About Funding for Loved Ones It is easy to get into a one-beneficiary mindset, but annuities don’t have to benefit your client alone. Most people have at least one person they care for that they would like to see taken care of. Older couples might want to set up an extra income for their surviving spouse. Grandparents can use annuities to make sure there is college money available for their grandchildren. One under-recognized group is the adult children of aging seniors. Think of adults with parents in a retirement home. These adults are often busy with their own children and are worried about being able to care for their aging parents. An annuity in their parent(s) name could create a safety net. This would ensure that their elderly parents will be well taken care of if they can’t handle it in the future. Clients need to understand what each plan has to offer them in terms of life quality, timing, and financial peace of mind. Once have an idea of what they want from an annuity, then they will be ready to talk about taxes, payments, and financial policies. Start with the concepts they know like retirement plans and assured income before you jump into unfamiliar financial jargon. We would love to help you with your annuity sales product needs. Contact Us!
How Mindfulness Benefits Agents and Registered Reps
I never thought I would write a post quoting what Aetna is doing, but life can surprise me! Yes, I know that Aetna is a big insurance company, but it’s also an employer of 50,000 people. I was reading on the Harvard Business Review blog that Aetna introduced mindfulness training to employees and over 25 percent of them participated. “Aetna also calculated the savings to the company, finding that, on average, mindfulness participants gained 62 minutes of productivity a week, which is an estimated $3,000-per-employee increase in productivity for the company each year.” Imagine if you had 63 more minutes each week. You could fit in one or two more appointments with customers (or perhaps 10 to 15 phone calls to prospects). In this post, I want to talk about mindfulness and how it will benefit your day. Why You Need Mindfulness Beyond the extra minutes that you will find in the workday, you could be wondering why you should try mindfulness training. You would go to a mindfulness training or try an app because you want to get the benefits for your mind, body, and spirit. I’m going to put this in layman’s terms instead of going on and on about medical studies. A typical workday has its own stressors. There are the tasks that you must accomplish and the interruptions of phone calls, emails, and people entering your office for which it’s hard to plan. These are factors that you must accept as part of your work-life unless you’re going to let calls go to voicemail, check emails only at certain times of the day, and work from home. However, if you work from home, you will have to spend more time on the road going to meet clients. How Mindfulness Helps You Given all these factors that affect a typical workday, you will have less productivity when you feel a lack of control over them. You will have greater anxiety, higher blood pressure, and you might forget to breathe deeply. With mindfulness, you take time for yourself, diverting your mind from these environmental stressors for a few minutes. You are going to be quiet, close your eyes, and listen to a voice telling you how to breathe in deeply, hold your breath, and then exhale. A guided meditation may also encourage you to calm different parts of your body, to let certain issues or pain points go, or to move you through a series of positive images. Guided meditations by experienced yogis are usually detailed enough that you feel calmer after you follow them. After a few minutes of meditation, you can feel less intimidated by environmental stressors and/or the anxiety that makes your brain go crazy. You will feel your chest expanding and contracting with fewer restrictions and then get back to work. It’s All About Perspective What I love about mindfulness is that it helps us to release anxiety and stress and to focus on our brain’s unlimited power. I will wind up with an example. The other day, an angry customer entered my office. She was disappointed with this year’s return on her annuity, and she suggested I should have sold her a different option. She couldn’t bank on the earnings of the annuity’s yield, and she was sure that she should switch to a new carrier. I hadn’t expected her arrival and I had to prepare for a first-time presentation that afternoon to a community group. Nevertheless, I understood her feelings of helplessness about how a financial product performs. She was ready for a guaranteed multi-year annuity. The next time this scenario occurs, I will excuse myself while an upset customer waits in the lobby. Then, I will do a quick meditation. Afterward, I will resolve the customer’s problem without letting my emotions get out of control. She caught me off-guard, and that was not a good starting point for helping her or for finishing my presentation.