hey keith
it’s awesome to have you on thank you so
much for taking the time to talk to us
today
thanks for having me yeah absolutely i’m
going to ask you a few questions
and our goal here is to give other
agents out there a small glimpse into a
day in the life of an insurance agent a
life insurance agent
so tell us who you are the name of your
company a little bit about what you do
and why you love it sure sure okay well
again thanks for having me
i’m honored to be on a call like this
especially for your company that’s out
there really helping
agents and uh i know different niches
kind of kill it with what they’re doing
as far as prospecting
but again my name’s keith mccrary i’m
with family first life
it’s a life insurance brokerage we
represent about
tons and tons of top rated top a rated
insurance carriers i’ve been in the
business for about
five years um mainly specializing in
mortgage protection final expense
a couple annuities and iul’s here and
there but my main focus has been
the simplified issue market as far as
life insurance okay
awesome um do you do any kind of
prospecting on a regular basis
definitely uh prospecting is the uh the
life of my business
um so yeah definitely definitely awesome
so what does a typical day of
prospecting look like for you
okay okay so as far as the way i run my
business i uh i like to work leads
uh that’s i mean you’ll get different
answers from different people
people like work referrals won’t market
for me i like to
have leads i like to have a predictable
income and i feel like having leads is
the best way to do that
um so a typical day for me is uh of
course starting with my leads
depending on how many appointments that
i need for that week whether it be 30 40
and i make sure that i have i like to
have more than what i need
twice this amount of appointments twice
the amount of leads
to how many appointments i need so if i
need 40 appointments for the week
i personally i want 80 to 100. it’s not
that i’m not good on the phone but i
just can’t control people answering
their phones i can’t control wrong
numbers
i can’t control uh
nowadays people can put their phones to
where if they don’t know the number it
can’t come through i can’t control that
so i like to control what i can
so a typical day prospect for me is i’m
eastern standard time
i would like to have my leads uploaded
and prospect boss ready to go
and by 8 am i’m on the phone and i’m
running through my list of leads to set
my appointments i might know what i need
i know i have what it takes to get there
and just me prospecting doesn’t stop
until those appointments are set
excellent so we all know that that sales
is a numbers game so the more numbers
you can get through the more sales you
can make and the more money
you make ultimately um
do you have a favorite way of
prospecting or a combination of methods
that you like
best gotcha um i use i still use a
little bit of direct mail
and online sources whether it be a
facebook lead or
you know some type of search engine just
the internet internet generated life
insurance lead
um now the best thing about prospect
buses whether i’m
dallying an older lead or newer lead the
ability to have the three line dialer
versus a one or two or three the newer
leads that i’m dialing
um i don’t need i just i so here’s the
thing i have a three line dialer
in case it’s time to get extremely busy
but depending on how new my leads are
i’m only using a one
if that makes sense because the the the
the rate that pickup ratio is so high
the nor the lead
i don’t need a bunch of leads answered
and now they’re hanging up because i
kind of left them on hold right but
after a lead is about a couple weeks old
i’m pushing through them with the three
line hardcore
um just trying to get people on the
phone when it’s crunch time to get my
appointments
but my best way to prospect is a mixture
direct mail and
online leads okay i’ll take them all so
you’ve got kind of a strategy then
you just look at the age of the lead and
that will determine that’s going to tell
you
what you need to do with that lead as
far as
um you know what kind of time you need
to dedicate to those people
definitely that’s fantastic is there any
advice
that you would give to someone who is
brand new in life insurance
um know what you want meaning
there’s a ton of imo’s out there a ton
of organizations you can get with
but you kind of have to know what it is
that you want to do so you can make sure
you partner with an
organization that’s going to help you
see your vision through some people want
to sell on the phone
if you join in a field agency it’s
probably not going to help you with
selling over the phone and then vice
versa
um a lot of people don’t like to
just door knock there’s companies out
there that all they do is door knock
to where you can get with a company to
teach you how to buy leads at
appointments there’s companies out there
that
all they do is work referrals um warm
market
i again i knew i wanted here’s the thing
warm market can run out
so i like to buy leads because there’s
millions of people in the world that are
constantly filling out requests every
day for life insurance right so i want
to tap into those people i don’t care
how much i need to pay to get to it
um so my i guess my thing i would say to
a new agent is know what you want
and make sure that who you’re partnering
with can help you get to exactly
where you want to be follow that vision
through okay
awesome um is there anything you wish
you had known
when you first started that you know now
um yeah
uh probably
the ability to tap into
truly be independent and not
rely on an organization to tell you
where to get your leads from but to know
where to get them from on your own
okay so that you can tap into any
territory
that you want and no one’s saying hey
you can’t go there because this agent is
working that that territory
um i think that for me for starters
that’s what it was i started out doing a
lot of traveling but it was great
but now that i know that it’s like okay
i can create leads right where i am i
don’t need to to travel unless i unless
i actually
want to travel yeah um so first
that’s what i’ll say just kind of know
what you want and
um if i don’t think i could change
anything
i don’t think i would change anything
i’m happy where i am i’m happy with the
way things are going
i can’t say i would personally change
anything i i got lucky a lot of agents
can’t say that
a lot of people get burnt by bad
organizations
yeah i was lucky enough to find one that
really helped me to get to where i want
to be
that’s awesome and sometimes you know
kind of that struggle in the beginning
helps you become a better agent
and you know because you find out little
odd things that you’re like oh i know
exactly how to do that now
exactly yeah there’s no success there’s
no real
learning lesson when everything is going
good you can’t learn
when everything is only good it’s when
things are really challenging it makes
you think different how could i do this
better how can i make sure this doesn’t
happen again
and the lessons are learned in in the
struggle
in the beginning i say embrace the
struggle it doesn’t have to be a
struggle for
long as long as you have a good mentor
but embrace what you’re going to go
through
and um focus more on the activity and
not the results if you’re focused on the
results
you can kind of mess with your own mind
but if you focus on the activity hey i
need 30 appointments a week no matter
what might not what no matter how much i
walk out of this with
that activity the which what you’ll sell
what you’ll make would be the byproduct
of the activity that you put in
and being realistic with your numbers um
you can’t
say i’m going to work 10 appointments
this weekend write ten thousand dollars
in annual premium it’s just
you can do it don’t get me wrong but the
odds are just aren’t in your favor doing
it that way
are there any secrets to the to the
craft
the activity the act hard work uh
everyone
everyone got to put it in it’s hard work
there’s there’s no way around it that’s
the secret
that’s the secret sauce buy some leads
and get the work that’s it
all right all right so
keith give us a way to get in touch with
you okay
um you can find me on facebook my name
is keith mccrary
k-e-i-t-h of course last name is
c macquariemcc a r y um you can find me
on linkedin
keith mccrary and you can find me on
instagram keith
underscore m for mccrary jr
and um you can find me either one of
those ways if anyone’s got any questions
i’m glad to help anyone um doesn’t
matter what business you’re in
dialing is dialing i’ve been in a couple
different businesses and that’s what
kind of got me where i am so
i get it i get it
struggle it’s real
all right well we’re gonna wrap it up so
now that you know how prospecting can
help your business
go take a look at prospectboss.com and
then go check out
keith mccrary we’ll see you next time
good luck guys