Author, Morris Sims shares how to create understanding with clients. Learn the power of influence in sales. View more at MarkMiletello.com. Note: “Where The Insurance Pros Meet” is an audio podcast and is meant for the ear. A transcript of the audio is provided for referencing a particular section or for you to follow along. Listen to the episode to get the most out of our show. We use both speech recognition software and human transcribers to create the transcripts so they may contain errors. If you’re going to quote us in print, please be sure to check the corresponding audio.

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TRANSCRIPT

Speaker 1:

Where the Insurance Pros Meet, Episode 6.

Morris Sims:

What we do, Mark, as insurance agents, we change people's lives. We change people's lives for the better every day.

Speaker 1:

Where the Insurance Pros Meet is a podcast that brings the greatest talent in the world together: managers, coaches, and producers, the very best experts the insurance and financial services industry has to offer. Get ready to change the way you do business to have your most successful year ever. Now here's Mark Miletello, a top 1% producer, manager, and your host of Where the Insurance Pros Meet.

Mark Miletello:

Welcome to Where the Insurance Pros Meet. I'm your host, Mark Miletello. Today we're going to discuss influence, understanding influence, increasing your influence, and principles of influence. Of course, in sales, we use our influence on either leading a team to increase production or as an individual just to increase sales. Influence is in everything we do. Our guest is an expert on the subject. He has trained over 80,000 agents and managers. He's written a book called Practical Influence. Highly sought-after leader and coach. I love welcoming Morris Sims to the show. Welcome, Morris.

Morris Sims:

Well, thanks, Mark. I really appreciate it.

Mark Miletello:

Glad having you and I'm excited to jump into this. You know, Morris, I kind of designed this show to run alongside a format of, and I gravitate toward, professional athletes. Many times, I was watching Major League Baseball this weekend and I was thinking the practice, from an early childhood they are practicing their skill. Even when they're late in their career, they still practice almost year around and honing their skills. They must have a coach. They have coaches throughout their entire career. I think there's a lot of similarities. What my goal in going into management was to bring that same understanding that we need, our clients really need us to be professionals out in the field. As we're recording this show, Major League Baseball is in the heat of the season. Teams are jockeying for the positions. But, Morris, professionals, they're in the spotlight, right? I would say they have a huge influence over others. Correct?

Morris Sims:

Oh, I think so, Mark. I think there are a lot of different principles of influence academically that are not necessarily the same principles that I have in the book, but rather maybe a little more academic principle that they've studied over the years in universities. The kind of influence that we're talking about there is the charisma and the collegial, if you will maybe, type of influence. It has to do with seeing someone and wanting to be like them. "I want to be as good as Dak Prescott. I want to be as good as," et cetera.

Mark Miletello:

Right. That's what drives me sometimes is watching others win awards. You know? Influence affects us. Aren't those major league athletes, aren't they influenced by others as well?

Morris Sims:

Oh, I think we all are. We all allow ourselves to be influenced by others around us all the time. I guess it's what you would call more of kind of influence: "I want to be like Mike. I want to be able to achieve the same things that Mark has achieved. I want to make MDRT." All those kinds of things are the kind of influence that comes along with other people. We're influenced by their lives, by what they've made of their lives, and we want to be able to be as good as they are.

Mark Miletello:

You hit it perfect. I want to be like Mike. That type of influence really still today, we know what that means, and they did a good job marketing that. Right off the bat, we're jumping into this, but, Morris, we're going to put you up to bat at first. We want you to step up there and hit us a home run on the first pitch and give us a professional tip right off the bat that can help us. Do you have a professional tip for us?

Morris Sims:

A professional tip. I'll come up with one for sure, Mark. You know, something I've been working on lately, let me just put it this way, folks. Social media is not dead. It's like what Mark Twain said, "The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Well, social media is far from dead. In fact, it is something that I believe we all should be very, very involved in because there are a lot of people out there and there are a lot of people going through that all the time.But here's the deal. You and I are experts in our own business in what we do. You all are experts in the insurance and financial services arena. You know more about insurance and financial services than a guy on the street knows, for sure. Now today, certainly with a Google search, you can learn a whole lot, but you still are much more expert in that than the average guy on the street. Work within your expertise, on your area of expertise, and hire a marketing professional to do your social media for you, or at least set you up to do your social media.The professional tip is one that I've worked on a lot, and I hope we get to talk about it some more, is focusing on what you do best and getting other people to do the things that are not in your area of expertise. You're an insurance expert and chances are you're not a marketing expert. Let's get a marketing expert involved.

Mark Miletello:

Perfectly said. We will have more time to talk about it. We're excited to dive more into it. Before we jump right into that, I want to know a little bit more about you, Morris. I've read up on you. I've read your book. I've found some articles. I see all the coaching that you've done and the great career that you've had, but I'm just having a hard time understanding how a chemical engineer with a master's degree in science, those aren't usually the prerequisites for having a successful 30-year career in this business. What were you going to be at first and how did you transition into this wonderful industry?

Morris Sims:

It's like I thought, "What were you thinking?" Yeah, I know. It makes for a really good story, though. I'll tell you that. After five years of being an engineer, I was okay. I was not a walk-on-water engineer. I was good, but I wasn't excellent. I didn't see myself becoming excellent. Frankly, I wasn't having any fun. I wanted to do something that was fun. I wanted to be recognized for the work that I was doing. I wanted to be able to have some control over my life. About that time, my agent came over and we looked at buying some more life insurance because we just had a child. I looked at what he was doing and how he did it and I thought, "You know, that might be fun." I went through the interview process and became an agent with New York Life. My life changed overnight. It really, really did. I've had more fun over the last 30 years than I ever did as an engineer. I've had the opportunity to work with some of the best in the business. I've had the opportunity to meet people, and go places, and do things that I would never have had as an engineer working in a chemical plant or sitting behind a desk designing pumping systems. It would not have happened. It turned out well in the long haul, but at the time I wanted to do something that was fun, Mark. This looked like it was going to be a lot more fun. Again, as I said, I have a lot more control over what I do and what I make than I was as an engineer, as an employee.

Mark Miletello:

We're sure glad that you did. Thinking about influence, and freshly reading your book, I guess, everything I'm thinking now, and one thing is that agent that came out to work with you on life insurance must have done a pretty good job or had some pretty good influence on you.

Morris Sims:

He did. It was interesting. He did what I guess we always trained our agents to do. If someone expresses an interest, you immediately defer to your manager because the recruiters are the guys that really know what they're doing when it comes to that kind of thing. That's what this gentleman did. He referred me to his manager. His name, just as an aside, is kind of cute, or funny at least. His name was Ernest Gordon, but everybody called him Flash. He was Flash Gordon. He did a great job of sharing with me how I could be in control of my life, how could I be in business for myself, but not by myself. With the backup provided in his team and the team at the company, we were able to find a way to get out there and go sell some insurance, which we did. That was fun. I enjoyed it. To this day, my son chides me that I didn't stay in the world of being an agent, and why in the world did I ever go into management? But the management turned out well for me, too, I guess. It worked out in the long haul all three ways.

Mark Miletello:

Yeah. Yeah, just I've been there. You and I spoke last week. There's a lot of similarities we have together. I really looked forward to having you on the show because of that. I was an agent as well. I don't know. I just think sometimes individuals are led to help and work with others. My gosh, you must be one of the leaders in this country of working with agents. Looking back over your career with literally tens of thousands, almost 100,000 or more, of mentees and the positions th