38: Jason White - Building a $130M Book of Business in Insurance Sales Through Consistent Persistence

0:08 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, I'm joined by Jason White, who is the managing director at CRC Swett. Welcome to the show, Jason.

0:33 Jason White: Thank you.

0:35 Scott Ingram: So after 30-some episodes, I finally found somebody in the financial services industries to bring onto the show. And thanks once again to Steve Harville, who wrote the book 21 Secrets of Million Dollar Sellers. And as a thank you to Steve, I'm once again going to give away a few copies of his book, which is the result of his own efforts of having interviewed 175 sales superstars, all selling at least $1 million a year. So all you have to do is join our mailing list at top1.fm Or in the US, you can text TOP1 to 444999. That's T-O-P and the number 1 without a space. And all you got to do from there is reply to an email with 21 Secrets. So that works just as well for those of you who are already on the list. Just hit reply to any of the newsletters with 21 Secrets, and I'll choose the winner, uh, the winners at random about 1 month after this episode goes live. All right, Jason, let's kick this off like we always do in an effort to front-load some serious value. What do you believe are the top 3 things that have allowed you to get to the top in your industry?

1:43 Jason White: Thank you, Scott. Um, you know, I've been in my industry for over 26 years, and, um, there's a few things that, that come to the top of my mind. Number one is, you know, the execution of repeatable actions and actions that you can do better than your competition. Uh, the second thing is giving meaning to what we do for our customers. And the last thing, Scott, would be learning how to change about, uh, what you want for yourself out of your career.

2:18 Scott Ingram: So let's, let's talk a bit about each of those. So the first is just executing on those, those actions. What types of actions? I mean, give us, give us an example or two.

2:28 Jason White: Yeah, sure, Scott. So when I got into my industry, a couple things that were repeated to me over and over were, this is all about service, and this is all about relationships. And so I started to think about, well, you can't build a relationship unless you first have good service. So what are those components of service that we deal with on a day-to-day basis? And in my industry, it's one of Phone calls, emails, in the old days faxes. But one thing that I realized is that if I could be more responsive than my competitors and I could do this every single day, then I could stand out from them. And that was something that early on proved to be true. I would make sure that if I received a phone call, I was really quickly returning the phone call. If I received in the old days a fax, which many of you probably have not seen, but in the old days I'd get a fax, I'm not waiting around to send a fax back. I'm picking up the phone and acknowledging that I received their fax and talking to them about the particular account that I'm gonna work on for them. And by way of a bit of a background, I do specialty insurance, and we do things like directors and officers liability, professional liability, cyber insurance, and these are all what I would call technical sales. Again, back to being responsive, it was always being consistent about getting back to people quicker than your competition could do it, but doing it every single day, doing it all the time. I remember a couple times I'd be on a flight in the old days, get off and check my voicemails, and I would not start and call people back from the oldest voicemail. I would call the latest voicemail, and often those people would think that I was really responsive because they had gotten the call back first. I knew I was already late for the folks that had called me 2 or 3 hours ago, But at least for part of my clients, I could appear to be very responsive, and that worked out very well in what I did.

4:48 Scott Ingram: That makes a lot of sense. And for the rest, you can explain that you were on a flight.

4:52 Jason White: Exactly.

4:53 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So talk about giving meaning for your customers. What does that mean?

4:59 Jason White: Well, you know, for the listeners today who maybe tuned into TED Talks, this is kind of like the TED Talk called, you know, Why? Why do we do what we do? And I do recommend that for anybody in sales, that they should listen to that. But this really comes down to how do you want your customers to feel about why you do what you do for them? Not just what you do for you do, what you do for them. Oftentimes in my early days, you would go out, you would tell a customer, well, I have this and that, I have this product and I have this. Place I can obtain it. And at the end of the day, what all I was doing is what we call weather reporting. And everybody can weather report. Everybody can walk in and say and give out 10 different facts about their company or their business and what they do. But that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about having them think about you in a different way. So I started to think about What do I want for my customers? And I decided to answer that question, but to also answer that question without them asking me that question. And I'll give you an example. So instead of going in and talking to my customers about, you know, I have this product, that product, I went in and said, listen, I'm here to help you to deliver the best possible solution for your customer. 'Cause I knew that's what they wanted. I knew ultimately they could never say no to not wanting to do that. Everybody wants to deliver the best product to their customer and help their clients get the best solution. And then, but the second thing that I realized is that all of us are looking for somebody to help us. So I said, well, wait a minute, I'm not here just to help you deliver the best product for your customers. I'm here to do that, but in addition, I'm going to help make your job easier. That was music to a lot of people's ears. No one ever really walked in and said, I'm here to make your job easier. I'm here to take some of this off of your shoulders and help you and work with you to deliver that product. That was very effective in actually verbalizing that to my customers. Again, I wanted them to think about, I'm here because I want to get your client the best product, and I'm here to help you make it… make your job, uh, easier.

7:37 Scott Ingram: Beautiful. And then the last point you talked about was changing how you think about what you want for yourself and your career. Talk about that a little bit more.

7:46 Jason White: Well, it really is an extension of, um, you know, what do I want, um, for my customers? It's really the next question is, well, what do I want for myself. And another thing I did early in my career is I actually, I worked with a coach and there was 2 really important pieces of information that came to light during this process. And that was that you will never ever do more than you think you can do. So it's really like goal setting, but it's really more, it's really saying I'm going to Pick some things that I don't think I can do, but I'm going to decide that's what I want to do. This particular person I worked with said to me, all right, I want you to write down what you want. Well, in this process, I actually stopped. I said, okay, well, I want to double my income. I want to work less. But in my mind, I believe that the only way you can make more income is if I worked harder. I really had to overcome that and realize that is not at all true. You can double, triple, quadruple your income without working harder, but you can't do it if you don't believe that you can do it. And so that was something that was really an epiphany for me. And then the other thing I really loved along these lines is that this coach told me a story about how they put an ad in a newspaper and the job description was the same. And the, um, salary on one of them was $25,000 and the salary on the other one was $40,000, but the exact same job description. Now, Scott, do you know which one got most responses?

9:31 Scott Ingram: Probably the lesser.

9:32 Jason White: You're exactly right. More people responded to the lesser amount because that's how they viewed themselves. And so it made me realize that you're never going to make more than what you think you can make. You're never going to write more business or produce more business or more income to your company than you ever think you're going to do. It's just not going to happen. You have to start getting beyond those numbers that you're at today. You have to start setting the number into the future. Hey, you may never make the number, but I personally, I've, I've made every number I've put out except the latest number because I always keep moving, uh, that number out. So that's why it's important to really start thinking about what you want for yourself and starting to put out some things into the future and saying, that's where I'm going, that's where I believe I can get. And, and, and then, you know, you'll start doing things that move you along that path.

10:30 Scott Ingram: Beautiful. And we'll probably come back to, to some of those things in, in terms of your work with the coach and, and some of that kind of goal setting that you're doing. But before we do that, let's, let's provide a little bit of context. You gave me a pretty good quick education before we got going here, but just talk a little bit about your role and your industry so those who maybe aren't familiar with your, your business can understand it a little bit better.

10:53 Jason White: Sure, Scott. We are a wholesale insurance broker firm, and that means that our clients are retail insurance brokers. So we have 3 value propositions in this context. Number one is specialization of types of insurance that we can bring to the retail broker. They don't necessarily have to go out and hire somebody like me. They can come to us and work with us on a particular account or a need for a particular client. The second thing is market access. Oftentimes there are insurance companies that only will work through wholesale insurance brokers. And the third thing is market leverage because We work with thousands of retail insurance brokers. We're able to aggregate premium, and therefore the retail brokers who work with us can also benefit from our premium leverage in the marketplace.

11:53 Scott Ingram: Perfect. And, and maybe just give a little bit of context around your role and kind of your book of business as well.

11:58 Jason White: Yeah, so I'm a managing director of the Professional Executive Group, and our group specializes in specialty types of insurance such as directors and officers liability, cyber insurance, employment practices, fiduciary liability insurance, crime insurance. So we have a very specialized focus. Now, we're in a large firm, and so one of the things we did a number of years ago was to create what we call practice groups. Because we wanted to be able to deliver to our customers the best of what our company had to offer on a national basis. So for example, if someone came to me in a particular need, I'm able to go out to 70+ of my colleagues and get advice or information in order to assist in providing a solution for that retail broker's client. So it really is the power of us working together in a practice group that it allows us to, to deliver a better solution than we could ever deliver, uh, if we were just working on our own.

13:10 Scott Ingram: Excellent. And then your book of business, or whatever the best way to quantify your results for us would be?

13:17 Jason White: So, um, our practice group is $1.3 billion in premium, uh, and my team, my own team's book of business is about $130 million of that.

13:27 Scott Ingram: Perfect. So let's go all the way back to the beginning and kind of delve into your origin story. How and where did you get started in sales in the first place?

13:36 Jason White: So, um, when I graduated, uh, University of California at Riverside, I, uh, I moved to London and, uh, I knew that if I'd worked in London, that would probably be good on my resume. So I ended up, uh, over there and through, um, some connections, ended up at a brokerage at Lloyd's of London. And I did that a couple years and then came back to the States, back to California, ended up working with a retail broker in Los Angeles and subsequently went to work for the company that I… is the predecessor of the company I work for now. And have been in my role for 26 years.

14:27 Scott Ingram: Awesome. And if you were starting over today, is there anything that you would have done differently? Or maybe the other way to think about that is, what advice would you give to somebody that wanted to start a career in insurance?

14:40 Jason White: Well, I think the most important thing is to look at your own personality. You know, there's different aspects of our business from underwriting, analyzing the risk, pricing the risk. To what we do, which is brokering. There's also a claim handling aspect of our business as well. I think you kind of look at, you know, what type of personality are you? Are you an outgoing person that's not afraid to take a risk? I mean, part of the amazing thing about sales is that it is a huge risk-reward proposition. And if you get into the right position, it can pay off handsomely. You know, one of the things I would always ask is whether you're… whatever company you're going to look at, what does the top salesperson make? Because that's going to give you an idea. It's not necessarily meaning that's your ceiling, but that gives you an idea. What is possible in that particular industry? What is possible in the type of insurances that are available? Is to always ask that question, what does the top guy make? Because I want to know what is possible, what has been done. And I think that's a good question to certainly ask if you're examining a career in any kind of sales position.

15:59 Scott Ingram: So from an accomplishment perspective, I mean, you've been at this a little while. What are you most proud of?

16:06 Jason White: You know, I'm proud of being consistent and persistent and watching it build a business. And that's something that I look at today and say, wow, you know, you went the extra mile, you know, you went above and beyond when you had to. And you know what, all of a sudden, 26 years later, you're like, wow, I actually built something. And that's something that I'm proud of doing, you know. People have to remember anything worth having has to be paid for, and it has to be paid for through time and perseverance and effort. And I like what Napoleon Hill said, and that's, you know, he would always talk about the law of the extra mile, and that's basically doing more than what you're paid for, going above and beyond for folks, because you will always have to be paid for what you do Either by the person you're doing it for or by folks that recognize it from the outside. I always give a simple example. If you go to a restaurant and you have excellent service, what are you compelled to do? You're compelled to tip them very well. Kind of that same thing. If you really go above and beyond for your clients, you really do things a little bit better than everybody else, people feel compelled to, um, to do things. And, uh, I will give you that story. The, um, I remember a time I worked on an account and I worked really hard. I mean, this account went on for weeks and weeks, working, working, putting a solution together. And at the end of the day, I didn't get the account. But a few weeks later, I opened an envelope on my desk and there was a check in the envelope. Not because I earned it by, you know, getting the commission off the account, but because that person had recognized that I'd gone above and beyond and they felt compelled to pay me, and they did.

18:12 Scott Ingram: That's a great story. Now, you've had a lot of success over the course of your career. What's been the biggest challenge you've had to face, or place us at the time when you struggled the most?

18:24 Jason White: Well, there's certainly market conditions from time to time make us struggle. When we have soft markets and prices are declining, then obviously there's pressure on your revenue. When we have what's called a hard market, everyone used to, and still does, can't wait for a hard market. In other words, where prices go up. But they don't necessarily realize that the word hard doesn't just mean the prices go up, it means that the accounts become harder to place. In other words, there's less availability of insurance for particular accounts. And in those situations, there's pressure. There's pressure from, particularly from the buyers who are really up against a wall in some cases where, you know, they may have used to have paid $50,000 a year for this particular insurance. And now it's $100,000. So there's a lot of pressure there in those situations that you have to be able to deal with. It causes you to have to go out and unturn every single stone possible in order to show that client, yes, this is the best deal that the marketplace will give to you at this time due to market conditions. And so those are some high-pressure situations from time to time in those cases.

19:48 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Are other times, and this is something that's been coming up more and more as I've asked, as you'll hear, uh, as we get later into the conversation, I like to ask my guests, you know, what they'd want to know of other, uh, top producers. And there's been certainly a theme lately of them saying, you know, I want to hear the failure stories, right? We all, we've all had to get through kind of hard times. So, I mean, beyond the hard markets, has there been other particularly challenging either issues or really take it however you want, but something that you learned a lot from, from a failure perspective?

20:24 Jason White: Well, yes, certainly. I mean, there's been certain failures that have occurred on particular accounts where you have to look at it and go, wow, that, you know, that certainly should have been handled differently. And, you know, one thing that I, you know, I even deal with this today is, you know, as you build a business, you have to build a team. As you build a team, you have to relinquish some responsibility to that team, and you have to live with their results because there's no way you can do it all yourself. You'll never get past a certain point if you're going to try to do 100% of the work yourself. As you build a team, you have to realize there's going to be some failures that occur, and you have to look at it and go, had I personally been doing that, which I couldn't have, had I personally been doing that, I would have handled it differently. So at that point, you've got to be able to work with your team members and say, hey, this is how this should have been handled. Instead of you sending that email, this should have been a phone call. And that's one big challenge we face today is we have a lot of the younger folks who are more attuned to communicating email and text. And we all get this. However, there are, things in any business in which you need to pick up the telephone. On a telephone, you can judge a response and you can manage a response in a way that you cannot do with text or email. And that's one thing that we're always trying to instill in our team, is that pick up the phone, talk to people. People have a harder time saying no to you, or when you, when you're talking to them and asking for something, especially if we're asking for a particular type of insurance to be done a certain way, it's better for us to pick up the phone and have that conversation than simply send an email and have someone simply reply no. So that's been a big challenge in the last few years with our business. And again, we're just really working hard to get folks to stop, pick up the phone, and have a conversation, and not what I call hide behind email all the time.

22:30 Scott Ingram: Well, and I think that's pretty universal these days. I mean, do you have a particular rule of thumb or triggers that you sort of suggest that people look to to make that decision that, hey, this is a time I should be picking up the phone versus sending this email?

22:44 Jason White: Well, anytime it's bad news, it should be picking up the phone. You can follow it up with an email, but if you don't think the person on the other end of this phone is going to be happy with what you're going to tell them, then you pick up the phone. And that's something that we work hard to try to get our staff to understand, is pick up the phone, have the conversation. If you, if you think it's going to be bad news or something you're… you don't think that that's the answer they're looking for, then pick up the phone. Hey, this is what I have today, but reassure them this is what we're working towards.

23:17 Scott Ingram: Nice. Good rule. So let's, let's change gears a little bit and talk a little bit about routines and habits and things like that. So the first question I typically ask Jason is, are you a morning person or are you a night owl?

23:30 Jason White: Uh, morning person.

23:31 Scott Ingram: Perfect. My favorite kind, because I am one. So talk, talk me through your morning routine. When, when does that start and what, what happens?

23:40 Jason White: Well, I get up at around 5:30 in the morning and I go to the gym. But before I go to the gym, I'm on my emails and sometimes I have a phone call or two. I go to the gym and actually check my emails while I'm on the elliptical. Then after I'm done at the gym, I get ready for my day and again, the whole time I'm always following my emails and doing phone calls as needed. And that goes from early in the morning to late at night.

24:17 Scott Ingram: Got it. And from there, is there a particular way that you tend to structure the rest of your day?

24:24 Jason White: Nothing. I mean, I'm depending on what I'm working on. It's a matter of prioritizing what I think I need to get done that day, right? So typically the night before, I'm realizing, okay, I got to do this tomorrow, I got to finish this project tomorrow. So I'm basically on to those projects, and at the same time, I'm managing what's coming into my inbox, making my phone calls, responding, reaching out to people on a particular deal. So it's just, it's just, that's what I do every day, all the time, no matter if I'm in the office or out of the office.

24:57 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, and as we learned at the, at the top of the episode, I mean, it sounds like everything is based on sort of the rapid reaction and staying on top of those inbound requests.

25:06 Jason White: That's correct. We are, we are always looking to respond quickly. And this is another thing I'll say. We have had trouble sometimes with folks who don't want to respond because they don't have the answer. And that is something you have to not do. You have to respond even if you don't have the answer. So for example, if I get a request in, I don't know the answer, I'm going to respond to that person and say, hey, got your request. I'm checking into this, I'll be back to you shortly, or I'm checking into this, when do you need this by? So immediately responding to that, no, so they know I got their response and I am working on their question or their issue and not waiting. Sometimes people will get a response and wait, it could be 24 hours before they get the answer. Well, that's too late to respond to somebody in our world, so we're looking to respond right away and at least tell them Hey, we're working on this.

26:00 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, and at that point you also can understand what their expectation is. You know, maybe it's like, well, I didn't need that for 2 weeks. No big deal. Um, great. I don't have to light my hair on fire and go chase down that answer versus somebody else that, you know, I need this by noon today to make a decision on X, Y, or Z.

26:15 Jason White: That's right. Don't, don't, I mean, don't assume everything's a rush, but if you don't know when somebody is looking for it, then ask when they need it by, you know, and oftentimes when you do have the answer, then immediately respond with the answer. Then you look like a hero.

26:29 Scott Ingram: Yeah, there you go. So are there other habits or routines that you think are central to your success?

26:36 Jason White: You know, I think the biggest, um, reason for my success… and I'll go back to what I talked about in the beginning… is just being consistent about what I do. And that's something that I think in any sales job, when you look out in the landscape and go, who's my competition? There's lots of folks out there who can't be consistent. They'll do it for a while, they'll do it here and there, but if you can be really consistent about how you do what you do in terms of responsiveness and getting back to people, and that is a huge, huge thing that's going to put you ahead, ahead of your competition.

27:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. What about your information diet? What are you reading, listening to, and, and watching besides, uh, Simon Sinek's Why video on, on, uh, on TED, because that's, that's come up so many times on this show. If you haven't watched that at this point, I'm gonna insist that you press pause and go look up that video. We'll have a link in the show notes because it pretty much has a permanent place in the show notes as well. What, what else is on your, on your, uh, on your list there, Jason?

27:46 Jason White: Well, you know, I'm following industry information, industry news. I'm following blogs on particular types of coverage in our industry. But you know what, I'm also, I read a lot of news and I read a lot of different kinds of news because I find that the more you can get out there, read business news, that oftentimes you're talking to a client and something you've read comes up, you're able to add to something just because something you've read in the last week. And I think it's important that you just stay on top of the general news, your industry news and business news. You know, what's going on in the business world? How does that, you know, how does that affect potentially the insurance industry if certain things happening to a company? So those are things that you always want to kind of be aware of because if you're in a meeting or on a call, you oftentimes can draw from information that you've read that you may not even have thought that was that important at the time, but all of a sudden it pops back into your mind in a meeting and it was germane to the issue, or you were able to add, uh, to that conversation as a result of, of that information.

29:03 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, that makes a lot of sense. Are, are there other tools and apps that you use that you find you can't live without?

29:10 Jason White: Um, I will go back to the fact that I am, uh, I live in an email inbox, so that's my tool. Um, that's… I mean, I'm on LinkedIn, and, um, but I mean, I'm generally… I'm communicating phone and email, and that's, that's really my world in terms of how I communicate. And I'm not in… not really using a lot of different applications. I like to keep things simple, um, and, um, you know, it works for me.

29:38 Scott Ingram: Yeah, there you go. What about sales philosophy? Do you subscribe to a particular approach?

29:45 Jason White: Yeah, I think persistence is the one I subscribe to. I think that if you read a lot of sales literature, oftentimes sales are what, on the 3rd or 4th try? I think that's true. I think that you have to not give up, and we'll do that in our business. Someone may tell me, for example, if I'm dealing with an underwriter on an account, That underwriter may tell me no, but oftentimes I'll wait. I'll call them back. They may say no again. I'll wait the next day. I'll try again. And it's taken me 3, 4 times sometimes till I basically wore them down into getting them to say yes to what I wanted. And so there's a lot of value in persistence if you do it the right way. You know, a lot of times calling and And, you know, making humor out of it, making it funny that, hey, all right, I know I'm calling again. I know I'm bothering you again, but come on, you got to help me out here. And oftentimes that's effective in getting people to, uh, to come your way on, on a point of view.

30:52 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So it's, it's interesting you bring that up, Jason. I just sent a note to a client of mine that I was working with, and I was asking him for a 3rd or 4th time, uh, for to do something for me. And I, I referred to it as polite pestering, uh, in, in my ask, and he came right back and said, hey, I appreciate that. I've always thought of it as being professionally pesky. So whatever your peepee word is, I think that there's, that there's absolutely something, uh, to the, just the persistence in, in all of this. So at this point, I often like to ask about kind of what motivates you and, and motivation in general, but I also want to use this as an opportunity to remind me, uh, about your, your earlier point before you talked about kind of using the coach and setting that benchmark out there. So maybe, maybe this is a good point that that all comes together. And I'll just kind of open the floor from, from there with that setup and let you kind of talk through motivation and goal setting and that kind of stuff.

31:51 Jason White: Yeah, I think, um, one thing that motivated me was actually serving others, helping others. Uh, I, I always learned and believed that, um, you know, money shouldn't be the primary goal. Uh, the money will come if you will do something that's valuable in the marketplace, then the money will come to you. And also, one of the things I learned, going back to the coaching, and by the way, I do recommend finding a coach and at least doing it once, maybe a few sessions with a coach, a business coach, to help you think through some goals and things that you're doing and have someone objectively look at those is very, very helpful. But one of the things that I realized is that we don't want to be limited by what we think or how we think something can be obtained. And so, back to my example of working with that coach, and she said to me, she goes, well, what do you want in a year? And I started to write stuff down and I was stopped because I'm like, well, I can't do that. How could that happen? I started questioning what I was writing down because I was trying to figure out how it could be done. And that was another huge lesson for me, and that was don't worry about how you're going to get there. As long as you set the goal, believe you can get there, don't worry about that you need to know steps 2 through 10 and what you need to do exactly tomorrow other than what you do every day, the repeatable success that you, you know, repeatable actions of success that you do every day. Continue to do those, but don't necessarily get into and try to figure out how am I going to get to that number over there, because you'll never be able to answer that question today. But as you move along and as you start moving towards that number, things will, things will open up. Things you'll start realizing, some things where you realize, okay, well, this can change, that can change, I can add these people to my staff. That's how, you know, and you can start to see how you're going to get there. But don't set… don't be limited by that at the moment you're setting the goal. Don't think, well, I don't know how I'm going to get there, so I shouldn't set this goal. Never do that.

34:14 Scott Ingram: Well, I think that's such interesting advice because you really bridged the gap. I think there's too much information out there that articulates what you described, right? That is, oh, you set this really big goal. Don't worry about how you're going to get there. What you emphasized is you still have to be doing the work in that direction, right? You can't just sit back and wish and hope really hard and, and have that, have that outcome come forth.

34:41 Jason White: That's correct. I mean, but, you know, a sale… someone that's in sales today may sit there and go, you know, and I want to double my sales over the next, you know, 2 years or 3 years, whatever their goal is. And they may say, well, I, I don't know how I'm going to do that. Don't worry about that. Keep doing what you do, but keep pressing towards that goal. Again, opportunities will come. Sometimes you're going to have to be… in my case, I had to raise my hand and say, hey, I need more staff. I need it now. I remember one time they were, well, you shouldn't have this much staff. I'm like, okay, well, which clients would you like to fire? Silence, right? Well played. You kind of have to… yeah, you, you've got to sometimes turn things around and go, well, okay, that's what you want, then, uh, why don't you call my customers and tell them that, uh, we're not going to be, uh, you know, helping them anymore. So, you know, there's some ways that you can push things in your direction, uh, but again, if I didn't have that goal, I wouldn't be thinking in that direction, and, and that's the key.

35:49 Scott Ingram: You know, yeah, excellent, excellent. Is there something, uh, that the average, uh, producer believes that you think is nuts?

35:58 Jason White: The, the average producer is… it's really what they don't believe that I think is nuts. In other words, the average producer is most likely that person who doesn't believe they can be much more than where they're at. And I think that's nuts. I think, although, you know, I guess candidly, maybe there are average producers who don't want to be anything but average. But, uh, I think that's wonderful in the sense that if everybody wanted to be a superstar, then it would be harder for the rest of us to be superstars that want to be superstars. You know what I mean?

36:39 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

36:39 Jason White: Yeah.

36:40 Scott Ingram: Um, well, it kind of goes back to your early statement about the, the same job listing and the 2 different price points. It's just sort of what you believe you're worth and what you're capable of.

36:49 Jason White: Right, right. So if everybody wanted to apply for the $40,000 job, then my chance of getting it was gonna be far less, right? So, luckily, we're in a world in which there is a range of people who success means different things for them. I chose early on to believe success was something big. And, uh, it still can be bigger. And I also realize there's people, you know, uh, that'll always be bigger than you, right? You're never… no one's ever at the top of anything, really. There's always somebody better than you. Uh, and that's how I, you know, I think you got to be humble about that. You can't start thinking, oh, I know everything, I'm the best, and there's no one better. I, I think that's the wrong attitude to have as well. I think you've got to be humble about what you do. But at the same time, you've gotta say, where can I go and start to think about, and think big about it. Again, don't limit yourself because you don't think you can be beyond a certain level. And again, it may not be at your own company. It may take you moving to another company to achieve that goal. Or it may take you getting into a different line of sales to achieve that goal. But it's something that, you know, you've got to keep, um, keep thinking about and keeping it in the forefront of your mind every day.

38:11 Scott Ingram: Awesome. So what have been the most… I mean, we've already talked about a couple of these, but what have been the most important decisions, uh, you've made or lessons you've had to learn to get where you are today?

38:24 Jason White: You know, in my business, I think probably the one of the most important lessons was to realize if there's an outcome on a particular account that didn't go my way, then that was something I needed to accept happily. Because these were… my customers are repeat customers, right? So just because an account that you work on doesn't end up going in your direction is not a reason that you need to be, you know, upset or concerned. You need to, you know, you need to smile and say, okay, what can we work on next? And not, not be upset about a particular outcome in any, any particular account.

39:03 Scott Ingram: Yeah, just, just kind of managing. I mean, this has certainly come up a lot, just managing the, the roller coaster of emotions that, that is sales, right?

39:10 Jason White: Right. You're going to win and lose. You're going to win and you're going to lose. And I think for, you know, sales, it's, it's, you know, for us, we, we… the new business pipeline is critical. You got to have, uh, you got to have the new business pipeline because Um, in our, you know, fortunately in the insurance world we have what's called renewals, right? And, and those are wonderful and that's a big part of what we do. But guess what? You don't keep every renewal. So there's always an attrition in your, in your book of business and you always need to have a robust new business pipeline that is working to replace and hopefully do more than what you lose. Not because, but by any fault of your own, but because that's just part of the business. That's the nature of what we do. There are all kinds of reasons that are outside of us that cause us not to necessarily keep a sale, uh, the next year.

40:05 Scott Ingram: For sure. So this is kind of the soapbox session where you get an opportunity to kind of give some, some advice to others. And so I'd like to start with the advice that you would give to somebody that's just starting out, uh, their sales career today?

40:22 Jason White: Well, I, you know, I think it all goes back to what I've already talked about and, and what has made me successful. And I would tell an individual who's starting out their career today is, um, number one, obviously look at the, look at the type of sales job that you're going to get involved in. They're not all the same, by the way. There's some sales jobs that are going to have limited opportunity, but try to find the one that's got the, the, the, um, the large bandwidth And once you're into that type of a position, then go the extra mile, work harder than everybody else, be consistent, be persistent. If you don't have something to do and you're working under somebody, go ask them for more. If you finished something for your boss, go in and say, I'm done, what else have you got for me? That's a big thing of somebody who's coming up in the ranks to be able to to show their management and their… that, you know, they're hungry, they're capable, they're gonna go and get stuff done. Because guess what? They're the person that keeps showing up at the boss's door saying, I need more to work on. So that's something that I think is important. But again, going the extra mile, being persistent, being responsive, learn the technical aspects of your sales position if that's what it entails. If you're in insurance, learn the policies, understand the policies, go and do the education. Do that on the side, do that at night, read policies at night, um, get your job done in the day, but do the extra work that you need to do to become more and more knowledgeable about the product, uh, that you sell. So that would be, that would be my advice to someone who was a young person coming in, especially to my business.

42:10 Scott Ingram: And how would that advice change for somebody who's further into their career and maybe they're either struggling or maybe they're doing okay, but they just, they haven't made it to the top. There's, there's definitely more room for them. What, what's your advice for them?

42:23 Jason White: Well, the first question is, do you want to grow more? I mean, the answer is yes. Then, then I guess the next question is, well, why aren't you growing more? And what are you doing on a daily basis to, to, to reach, uh, the goal that you've set for yourself? Because oftentimes folks and people can set goals, but their actions don't match what they need to do to obtain those goals. So you're going to have to go back and say, what am I doing on a daily basis? Am I… have I got a model for success that I can repeat every single day?

43:00 Scott Ingram: Perfect. And then for you, out of your own curiosity, what would you want to know about top sellers in other organizations and what they're doing?

43:11 Jason White: Well, I certainly would love to hear about what folks are doing on a day-to-day basis. The reason I keep coming back to this day-to-day thing is because we only live one day at a time. We can only do what we can do in a single day. I think it'd be very interesting to understand what any particular salesperson does on a daily basis and how that that moves them forward week over week and month over month.

43:43 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And is there anything else that we didn't get to in, in your own day-to-day that you think is a significant contributor? Is there some secret sauce in there?

43:52 Jason White: You know, there's, there's nothing really secret about it. It's, it's really about, um, it's really about execution. I, I really believe that it's about understanding what you do, become knowledgeable about what you're selling and executing every single day. I really, I don't think it's anything beyond that. I think it's, and figuring out ways to go the extra mile for your customers, to do something maybe they didn't ask you to do, but you do it anyway, or respond to them at a time they're not expecting your response. These are things you can do in order to make yourself different and noticed in the marketplace.

44:33 Scott Ingram: Well, what you've talked about and what it sounds like you're doing seemed to certainly be aligned in that it's, it's a pretty simple, straightforward formula. I'm wondering if we can find a way to make it really actionable for the person listening to this. And what we try and do is see if we can't boil everything down into some type of, call it a 2-week challenge, because that just happens to be how long it is between the time that we release new episodes here on the Sales Success Stories podcast. What would you, what is that challenge that you would give to the listener that wants to take it to the next level that they can put into practice over the course of the next 2 weeks?

45:13 Jason White: Scott, I think I would recommend that any person listening to this would ask, what is the most important element of what you do for your customers? And whether that be the service that you're providing, the knowledge you're providing, the advice you're giving, Uh, and examining how you are delivering that to your customers and saying, okay, my, my best day was like this. So I need to repeat that the next day and the next day and the next day and try that for 2 weeks and see what happens.

45:53 Scott Ingram: Fantastic. Jason, this has been really insightful. I appreciate all of your time. And if you're listening to this and loving what you've learned in this episode and are other episodes. I hope you'll join us at the Sales Success Summit here in Austin, May 7th and 8th. Uh, there is a whole episode talking about the details of that event. If you want to go check that back in the feed, that was in November. Uh, I think that episode was simply called Sales Success Summit. Uh, pretty obvious naming there. So you can kind of dig into the detail, the details, and then check out the website top1summit.com. And if you're ready to register, which hopefully you're a person of action, you can put in the referral code SSS and that'll save you $150 for having listened to the end of this episode. And I would love to see you there. Jason, thanks again. And thank you for listening. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.