By Agent Kira Schnell-Harrison
Have you ever heard a phrase that stops you dead in your tracks?
It’s happened to me.
A week ago, I was on my Peloton cranking out a ride, and as the coach was hyping up the riders, she went into a monologue about how there are times in our lives when we have to “adapt and overcome.”
I put on the brakes, grabbed my phone, and made note of that short but impactful phrase: adapt and overcome. It’s stuck with me ever since.
There are many times in our lives when we have a Plan A, Plan B, or Plan C, to discover that none of them work, and we have to pivot to something completely different.
We have to identify the problem, adapt to it, and then, overcome it.
Take a moment and think about the last time that happened to you in your life. It could be a considerable issue with your finances or a home repair, or perhaps just an everyday situation where your toddler is screaming because their blanket is in the washer and had to make some quick pivots to keep them from having a meltdown. (Yes, this just happened to me.)
One of the times that I had to apply “adapt and overcome” was during my first year of my Agency. To say my first year was a whirlwind is an understatement. I will spare you all of the details of everything that went sideways that year and tell you the story of qualifying for travel in 2020.
I opened my Agency in November 2019 with visions of rainbows and butterflies and people running, not walking, into my Agency to get all of the policies. Bless my naive heart. Little did I know that I’d be pregnant, soon navigating a pandemic, have the roof blow off my building, experience staffing issues, and more.
Consistent production was a struggle for my team and myself for a multitude of reasons. We would submit and issue a Life policy here and there, averaging a handful a month. We stumbled with underwriting and getting Life policies issued. It came down to a lack of fully grasping the process and the proper steps once a policy is submitted.
I came up with 45 versions of a sales plan (not an exaggeration) on how we were going to qualify for travel… what to say, how to say it, and why to say it. I thought of everything.
On several occasions, we had to adapt to the changing landscape and overcome the challenge of operating a business in a pandemic. Things finally clicked for us in mid-November of 2020.
The team and I recognized that we had a chance to qualify for “first-time travel,” which is 80 issued applications and around $30K in premium. We were only 50% of the way there on November 1, with just 41 Life policies issued. We had a ways to go to hit the goal and not much time.
We held an in-depth strategy session: we pulled all the different lists, talked through how the conversations would look, and role-played how we’d talk to the prospects. Then we hit the phones hard. Some nights we called until 8:00 PM just to make sure we submitted a Life app that day.
Our adapting and overcoming paid off! In six weeks we submitted 50 Life policies, and when it was all said and done, we qualified for travel with 81 issued applications.
In life and business, there will be times we have to recognize that our original sales plan won’t work or isn’t the best path and that our only choice, or our best choice, is to adapt the plan. Overcoming obstacles means adapting the sales plan. Sometimes numerous times. And that’s okay – know that you can!
By first adapting and then executing, the result will be that you will overcome what may have seemed like an obstacle and ultimately end up meeting your end goal.
