Why is it that my best “insurance or financial plans” don’t always get the best results? What do I have to do to get people to buy the insurance I recommend?We used to say that there are two ways to sell – “from the Head” and “from the Heart”. From the head means you make a factual presentation. From the heart means your presentation is founded in their feelings. When you cobble together a top-notch insurance plan based on just the facts of the situation, you are selling from the head. You are appealing to logic and reason.

It seems so right, especially in the financial/numbers business. But it’s wrong for life insurance products. Here’s the problem. Most people don’t buy life insurance based on the numbers. How many people sit down, consider their financial risks dispassionately and then take quick action to mitigate them? There must be some, but there are not many.

People are different than that. They buy from the heart. This means they buy what they need because they want the feeling they believe they will get from the purchase. Because life insurance products presuppose the worst, few feel the need to subject themselves to the pain of considering the worst case scenario. That’s for reality TV.

People don’t want the discomfort of thinking about what could happen to them so they avoid the discussion. They need a guide to carefully and gently craft the scenario so they can create the financial security they want. They need you. With life insurance products, sell from the heart so you can turn a want (good feelings) into a need (family lifestyle protection).

When you sell from the heart, you talk to people about what really matters to them. You help them remember the feelings of love, loyalty, liability and longing that get them to do what they need to do because it’s the right thing to do. Even beer commercials pull on heart strings to remind us how much we can love the weakest among us – like puppies. How insensitive do you have to be not to have a tear in your eye watching puppy love in action?

There are those that say that an emotional plea is unprofessional because it is not facts-based. That’s just not true. Proper emotional presentations are always based in fact. If they are not, they will ultimately fail.

This strategy helps create a “people case” for a purchase over and above the process, product and price involved. Help clients understand their true feelings and what matters to them and you will help them do the right thing for their situation. Emotions always enter into it, eventually. It can either be part of the preparation when you sell or it can be part of the problem when the worst happens. You and your clients decide when it is best to have that tearful discussion.

Clearly, the best time is when you can do something. So, do a “feeling-finding” every time you do a “fact-finding” and you’ll be selling from the heart. You’ll get the full story about what people want and need to do for themselves and their families. And you’ll get a lot more compliance with your plans.

I’m an idea junkie. I get a lot of ideas but too often I don’t implement.
What can I do to take advantage of my great ideas?

The critical difference between idea and implementation is initiative and inconvenience. Ideas are easy – “a dime a dozen”, as they say. Without implementation, an idea is just hope. Implementation makes the difference. That takes something much rarer than an idea. It takes doing something extra – taking initiative and persevering through the inconvenience. The reason so few ideas make it to reality is that implementing ideas means changing.

Changing means you have to feel uncomfortable, at least for a little while. Few of us are happy being uncomfortable so we avoid it, regardless of how good an idea is and what its potential might be. Therefore, if you are not prepared to suffer discomfort to achieve a new goal, you will likely not implement anything. If you believe it has to come easy, you will “think” a lot more than you “do”. Your best ideas will languish, unimplemented.

How can you change this? The solution is in the first sentence. If you want to be more than an idea junkie, you have to add two things to your idea processing system. First, you have to accept that ideas do not implement themselves. That means you, and only you, must take the initiative to get the ball rolling. You must do something constructive to put the idea in action.

Just like in physics, to move a heavy object, you need what’s called “impulse energy”. It takes a burst of energy driven by enthusiasm and excitement to get it moving. That’s initiative – the energy and enthusiasm to put an idea in motion so it can be of some use to you. But, that’s not enough either. Excitement and enthusiasm wane. Bursts of energy are spent. Then, it takes good old hard work to keep the idea moving so it becomes installed in your system. That’s the inconvenience of ongoing effort.

The good news is that every great idea comes with a booster pack of enthusiasm if you pay attention. Good ideas already come with built-in energy. You know the feeling. Use that energy to get the implementation started. To come to life, every good idea needs you to take command of it and do something. Doing almost anything is a good start. It doesn’t have to be the exact, perfect first step. Any step is a good step because it’s just the impulse the idea needs to get moving. Once you get it moving you can move it where you want to go. That just takes effort. There is no magic, just effort. Nothing else makes ideas happen besides effort. That starts with initiative and is maintained by your resistance to discomfort.

I don’t think there is anything much more important to long term success in any business than initiative – giving ideas impulse energy to get them started and a resistance to the discomfort of the effort required to keep it moving down the road to full expression. If you can accept these two concepts, you will be implementation royalty and more successful than you ever dreamed possible.