Achieve More Of Your 2016 Goals With These 2 Simple Tweaks

Do you want to achieve more in 2016 and have your best year ever? Try these 2 little tweaks to your goal setting and see what happens!

For the last 5 years or so I’ve been following the same ritual  almost every day when it comes to my goals - every morning I get out a note card and list my goals for the year as things I hope to achieve during the next 12 months. Then I flip the card over and write down 5-10 things I can do TODAY to move me closer to my goals.

Not a bad system in general, because it’s been proven over and over again that those who take the time to write down their goals daily are FAR more likely to achieve them. But I recently came across some new research that suggests two little tweaks will help trick my brain into achieving more each year. I’ve got some pretty big goals for 2016, and if I can get my brain to think better and work harder towards achieving my goals, I’m all in! Here are the two tweaks, I’d love to hear what you think about them:

1. Write down your goals as if they’re already happening; write them in the present tense instead of the future tense. For example, instead of listing "50 paid life policies” as one of your goals, try writing “I issue 50 life cases per year.” If your goal is to sell more annuities, don't write "$500,000 in annuities" write "I help clients by issuing $500,000 of annuities every year.” Science suggests that when our brain sees and hears things like “I own” and “I do” and those things don’t yet match with your reality, your sub-conscious brain looks for new and more ways to make things match and help you achieve your goals.

2. Write down your goals twice per day instead of once. I know that a lot of people don’t even write their goals down once per day...or week...or month...or maybe not even once per year. When you physically write down your goals, your brain takes them much more seriously. If they’re not written down (with a date for reaching them) your brain considers them more of “dreams” or “wishes” than goals you ACTUALLY WANT TO ACHIEVE. 

The two best times to write down your goals are fist thing in the morning before your day gets going (I was already doing this part) and right before you go to bed at night (this one is new to me).

Writing down my goals first thing in the morning always made sense to me because I had the entire day to think about what I wanted to accomplish and take actions towards achieving my goals. But why bother writing them down again before bed? It’s not like I can do anything about them or for them overnight while I’m sleeping!

It turns out that I was wrong about that. When you write down your goals right before you go to bed, your subconscious actually works on the problem of achieving your goals all night long while you are asleep.

We don’t give our subconscious enough credit (or enough to do) when it comes to helping us achieve our goals. When you go to bed with your goals fresh in your mind, you may find that achieving those goals somehow winds up in your dreams or that you wake up with a fresh idea on how to improve your situation or solve a problem that was holding you back.

By writing your goals twice per day instead of one, your keeping your goals fresh in your mind AND keeping your mind focused on helping you get everything you want for the year. Give it a try and let me know what you think! I'm more excited going into 2016 than I ever have been for a new year in the past. I know that the agents who get creative, focus on the right things and work hard are going to have their best year ever, and I know my name will be on that list of agents.

Let's make 2016 the year ever and share the best agent ideas ever!

Other People's Wheels - The Best P&C To Life Cross-Selling Conversation

When I was growing up, my dad used to tell me that there was no need to reinvent the wheel if I could tweak someone else's wheel and make it my own. In other words, you don't have to start from scratch if someone else has already crafted something great that you could adjust for yourself. Save yourself the time, effort and energy of creating, testing and tweaking and use what others have already tried and perfected. That's exactly what Best Agent Ideas is all about, and I had a perfect chance to put into practice when I was reading this month's issue of Advisor Today.

I came across two articles that highlighted two different strategies for increasing life insurance sales from two different agent's. One, written by Ray Vendetti (who I had the pleasure of spending a little time with earlier this year) went over a great way to make the transition form auto insurance to life insurance. The other was the feature article for the month that shared great sales ideas from successful agents. Bruce Udell shared an easy 5 minute conversation that focused on asking clients and prospects the right questions in order to get better results.

While both articles shared great strategies to improve your life insurance sales, I found that for me and my style of selling, combining the two would give me the best results. We all have our own communication style when working with clients. While Brian and Ray's life conversations work great for their style, they weren't quite right for me. You need your conversations with clients to sound like your words, in your voice. Memorizing someone else's script or questioning sequence doesn't guarantee the same success for you as the person who developed it if it sounds like you're just reciting something you memorized. You're far better off doing a little tweaking and making the technique your own. Here's what my new Vendetti/Udell auto to life cross-selling conversation looks like:

Cross-Selling Life From Liability Conversation - Vendetti:

• How did you choose those liability limits for your car insurance?
• They may or may not be the right limits for you. Liability coverage protects you in the event that someone sues you. It’s designed to protect the assets that you’ve worked so hard to accumulate over the years. So, if you have $300,000 in assets and $100,000 of protection, how will those limits work for you if you are sued?
• If we were to take a few minutes to come up with the amount of assets you have, we could then set your liability limits at the right amount to protect you and make also make sure you’re not buying more than you need. How would that work for you?
• Let’s run through your assets real quick and see what we come up with.
• Do asset worksheet
•          You have a total of about $xx in assets. If you want to protect them all, you should have at least $xx amount of liability coverage, does that make sense?
•          How much of your assets would you like to protect? Your liability coverage options are…
•          It looks like you may also need an umbrella policy if you want all of your assets to be protected.

The Pivot - Udell:

• By the way, do you mind if I ask, do you have a will?
• What does it say about who gets your assets if you die?
• What would your wife do with the assets, would she need to get a monthly income from them?
• How much income would she need?
• How important is it to you that she has that $xx of income?
• How much money would she need to have to produce $xx of income per year? What amount of money would you need to generate that income? (help them find the answer)
• If you had all of those assets invested, what kind of safe interest rate do you think you could get?
• If you could get 5% each year, it would take $xx to generate the $xx of income that you want your spouse to have.
•          Right now, you have $xx of assets, which will produce $xx of income. That’s quite a bit less than the amount you said your family needs, maybe we should set up a time to look at ways to fill that gap if it really is important to you, what do you think?

By combining the best of what works for me from both the Vendetti and Udell ideas, I was able to create a 5-10 minute conversation that I can have with every new and existing client that has auto insurance (which should be just about everyone!). The Vendetti idea helps me start the conversation and the Udell idea helps me end it. It's a great example of the power of other people's wheel's and how using the best agent ideas can work for you. Don't be afraid to tweak a conversation or presentation to fit your style or even combine presentations to make it work for you. We're all in this industry together, and by sharing great ideas we can all succeed and help our clients succeed!