HL Conf Call August 18,12

The speaker discusses how to achieve a regional vice president promotion in Primerica. They emphasize the importance of proving the ability to transfer skills and knowledge to those being promoted, as well as consistently achieving personal and team results. The speaker also mentions the need for multiple directs who can function independently and the distractions and responsibilities that come with the promotion. They emphasize the importance of having administrative support and focusing on prospecting, recruiting, and field training to grow the business and income. The speaker shares their personal experience and the significant increase in income after being able to solely focus on these activities. Hey, good day, everybody. Hey, listen, I just wanted to share. I know there's some people are asking me all the time about how do you make a great RVP promotion, regional vice president promotion. And I want to talk about that because I know there's a bunch of talk about that all over the company right now. And I just wanted to give you how I went about doing that. And as a result of the way that I promoted RVPs, we built a pretty significant business. And I think person for person, we have the highest payroll in Primerica, more people making more money than, I think, any other organization. That's what I saw recently on television. So this may help you. I don't know. But here it goes. How you go RVP and how you promote RVPs will dramatically affect your long range success, and especially everyone involves income. People frequently ask me, how should I go RVP, Hector? My answer is simple. The promoting RVP, the one that's going to go RVP, must prove they're capable of transferring their skills and knowledge to those that are being promoted. If you don't prove that you have the ability to transfer the skills and knowledge you've developed to the people within your base shop, the people that you've recruited and trained, you've got to be able to prove, one, that those people can get consistently great results personally. So if I'm wanting to go RVP, I need to prove that the people that I've got to, the directs I have, and people within my base shop that are active anyways, that they can get personally great results. And then the RVP that's getting promoted needs to prove that they consistently get great personal results as well. If you aren't capable of closing six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 12, 15 transactions in a month yourself, then you're really not capable. I mean, that's not very difficult. I think I averaged 10 or more life sales a month from 1984 until 1992 when I basically got out of the field. I pretty much averaged, on average, that number of sales, right? I mean, they weren't all personal sales. They were training sales. I was field training lots and lots of people. But you've got to be able to do that consistently month in and month out if you're going to develop enough people. Number two, the promoting RVP, the person that's getting promoted, has to have multiple directs who are capable of getting the same kinds of results and capable of developing their own team completely independently of the person, the RVP that's getting promoted. So if I'm going RVP, I need to have three, four, five, six people that are direct to me that are able to go train and develop their own team independently of me, where they don't need my help. They go do it. They make sure they get people to op meetings. They make sure they set up their appointments. They make sure they close deals. They make sure they're field training their people. They make sure their people get trained properly, right? If I can't get multiple people to be able to function completely independently of me, then I have no business being an RVP, none, zero. Because what's going to happen is you're going to fail. So if you can't do those two things, you have no business going RVP, because you're going to struggle. Most likely, you're going to fail and ultimately wash out of the business, because that's how you earn income in Prime America. That's how you make money. Your ability to train and develop people, to be independent of you, to be able to transfer the skills you've developed and the knowledge that you've acquired to people so that they can function. This is the important part of this, OK? Completely and totally independently of you, where they don't need your help to recruit somebody. They don't need your help to close a sale. They don't need your help to do an F&A. They don't need your help to do anything. They know what they're doing. And they can function. And they're building their businesses within your business. Independent of you, which allows you to go find other people to do that with, OK? You're never going to grow your business or your base shop unless you have a lot of independent people that are able to go recruit, train, and develop people without your help, so that you can now take your time, instead of working with them all the time, right? Because you haven't trained them well. You can now go higher directs and get wider and keep building that base shop, keep growing that base shop. Working with new people all the time. That's what you want to be doing, is working with new people. If you have a bunch of people who are always needing your help, then you're spending time with them and not finding new people and not developing new people. And that doesn't work in Prime America. The problem with promoting RVPs before they've proven that they can do those two things is when they go RVP, they take on a bunch of added responsibility. This is what you have to do. Once you go RVP, that person, they must now pay rent. That's a distraction. They must now process all of their business and their teammates' business. They now must be totally responsible for their entire team. They now must handle all the pending business. They now must handle all of the licensing. They now must handle all the meetings and training. They now must handle all the QBI. They now must process all their security sales. They now must be handling all the compliance issues. Meeting with, getting audited a couple times a year. They now must handle all the issues with the home office. So unless that promoted RVP is making money and can afford office help, they're going to be distracted. Now they're totally distracted. They can't focus on prospecting, recruiting, and field training, which is how you grow your business and your income. And then it's even worse. I see this happen over and over. People go RVP, and they don't have their 26, or they don't have their securities license, and they're trying to get their securities license. You need to have your securities license and your 26, because trying to get your 26 or your securities license afterwards, it's totally distracting, totally screws up all the momentum you might have, and gets you distracted from your business. And those of you who experience this, they know what I'm talking about. You're better off getting all that stuff done before, and you're better off getting in a position where when you go RVP, you're making money so you can hire somebody to help you. I'll tell you my own personal situation. I went RVP in July 1985. I was doing about 50 apps a month. Life apps a month would be close to $50,000 a month. I gave up three full-time, direct, fully-trained, totally-competent, productive agents as my replacement. These were full-time agents. They had quit their jobs. They were doing Prime America full-time. That was my replacement. And I didn't worry about that replacement, because I knew how to recruit, train, and develop people. I knew how to do what I'm saying you should be able to do. The replacement for me was a non-issue. I didn't really bother me one iota. I knew that as soon as I had my contract, because I knew how to do that. I knew how to recruit people. I knew how to train them. I knew how to develop them. I knew how to pass on the skill sets and all the knowledge I acquired. I knew how to develop people to become independent, because I'd already done that. To have three, and I had more than that, I had probably five or six full-time agents in my base shop at that time, and I was a regional leader. So I knew how to do that. You don't do 50 apps a month in your base unless you have a bunch of independent people writing business on their own. I learned how to do that before I went RVP. And so when I went RVP, I was just excited at the fact because I knew I'd go prospect and recruit and do whatever it took to go get wide and recruit the right people. So what I did is I went RVP, gave up that replacement, and I didn't really explode that first year as an RVP. From July to the end of basically September of the following year, 1986, I made about $86,000, which is decent, but I was doing all the administration. I was doing everything because my wife, Jan, was still an x-ray technician, and she had a job, and we have two small kids, and all that. So I was doing everything. I was the secretary, the motivator, the trainer, the recruiter, everything, right? And it's difficult to grow when you have to do everything. So what happened in July of 1986, my wife, Jan, quit her job, and she took over 100% of all the administration. From that point in September of 1986, I have never done one iota of administration since that time in my career. Nothing, zero, nada. Even today, I don't do any. I have nothing to do with that. My wife still oversees all that. I have people that handle that, but I don't do any administration at all. And I haven't done one iota of any administrative work since September of 1986, when Jan quit her job and went full time and ran our office, OK? So in my first year, like I said, I made about $86,000. When she took over all the administration, it freed me up totally to focus 100% of all my attention on prospecting, recruiting, and field training new agents, and putting on great training meetings, how-to trainings, no ridiculous motivational mumbo jumbo, just how to do the business. Those seven fundamentals I talk about all the time, that's what I did. I taught people how to get results, how to become professional at the kitchen table, how to become professional closers, how to get checks, how to make money. So the next year, now that I was freed up to do that and focused on that entirely, right, in 1987, my income grew to $409,000. So just being able to free up and focus all my attention, all my energy on prospecting, recruiting, field training, and putting on great training meetings, how-to training meetings, no motivational meetings. I do not believe in motivational talks, motivational meetings, and stories. I'm a trainer. I'm a developer of people. My job is to take a new person and teach them how to be successful, which means how to get results, how to close recruits, how to close business, and how to make money. The next year, like I said, we grew to $409,000. The following year, right, we grew to $855,000. Today we've earned well over $60 million in Primerica. Why? Because all I've focused on since September of 86 is prospecting, recruiting, field training new agents, and putting on great how-to training meetings. Let me say that one more time. I want to make sure this gets through your brain here, that you get this, because this is why I was able to build the business that I built, because I focused all my attention, 100% of my attention, on prospecting, recruiting, and field training new agents, and putting on great how-to training meetings. No motivation. How to do it. Look, when you recruit a really great person, they're motivated, they're showing up to the meeting. They don't need to be motivated. They need to know, how do I get somebody to meet with me? How do I put on a presentation that motivates that person to do one of two things, either join my business or do business with me? How do I overcome the objections that come up? How do I explain these products in a way that people are motivated to buy them? How do I explain this business in a way that motivates people to join? And how do I get those people trained, and developed, and they're independent, so that I can get overrides on the production they do? That's what really sharp, motivated people want to know how to do. They don't need another story. They don't need a motivational meeting. They need to know how to do it. I hope I'm clear on that. I know I'm being repetitive, but I'm being repetitive for a reason, because most people don't focus on this. It baffles me to no end that people don't get this simple, clear, to me, obvious reality. Look, in my 30-year Primerica experience, this is what I found, rarely, if ever, does anyone who goes out small, without proving that they've learned how to develop independent, self-sufficient people, very rarely do they ever build a big, high-income business. It's very, very rare. If you don't have the ability to train and develop people, and transfer your skill, you can't grow your business. You cannot grow unless you have a lot of people knowing how to get results out in the field. If you don't learn this prior to going RVP, then you're most likely not going to learn it later. That needs to be your top priority. If you're able to get good results, if you can close 5, or 10, or 15 sales a month, and you can recruit people, your future success is 100%, 100%, dependent on your ability to teach people you bring on board to be able to do that same thing. If you can't transfer your skill sets and your knowledge to these new people, and teach them those seven fundamentals, so that they can get results, independently of you, you're never going to do anything significant here. And you're most likely going to wash out of the business. Because it's going to be like a revolving door. You're going to recruit people, they're going to leave, you're going to recruit them, they're going to leave. If you're in a business where people are coming, and going, and coming, and going, and coming, and going, and not really retaining people, I guarantee you it's because you're not doing a very good job of teaching people how to make money, how to get results. That's the only reason people leave. They only leave because they don't get results, and they don't make money. So they're going, why should I spend all this time and energy doing this thing if I'm not making any money? Their spouse at home says, you're going to all these meetings, you're going to all this stuff, and you're not bringing any money home. My wife wasn't happy about me doing Primerica in the beginning. The first year I was in the business, she was not happy about me doing Primerica. What ended up happening is I started making money part-time. I made $18,000 part-time. I was bringing home checks. I'd give her the checks. Pretty soon, we had some credit card debt. We had about $8,000 or $10,000 in credit card debt. With the money I made part-time, we paid all the credit card debt and saved $6,000 or $8,000. So she goes, oh my god, this actually works, right? She could see, because I was bringing home money, I was giving her checks, she could see that the time I was spending in Primerica, going to meetings and learning all this stuff, making calls and prospecting and all that, she could see that it worked. I made money. So then she got positive. Then she got encouraged by it. And then she got supportive. Because people ask me all the time, how do I get my spouse to be supportive? Make money. Your spouse is not supportive because you don't make enough money. And you'll think that's crass and all that. But the bottom line is the truth. Why do people look for other jobs? Because they want to make more money. People rarely leave a job to go do another job to make less money. Why would you do that? So why would a person who's working a full-time job get in Primerica and start investing 10 or 15 or 20 hours a week, above and beyond their job, to not make more money? What would be the reason? So why would you not be focused all your energy on teaching people how to make money? And you've got to do all this and learn how to do this before you go RVP. Look, I'm not saying it's impossible to build it big, it's going out small, but it's very, very, very rare. And if I'm serious about winning big, I don't want to play those odds. I want to play the odds that give me the greatest probability of succeeding in the business. Look, if you look at any real legitimate business, there's someone who hasn't proven their ability, his or her ability to do the job well, and that they're super competent, that they really are competent, they know what they're doing, they know how to get results, does those people ever get promoted to a regional vice-president position in a typical company? No, of course not. So why on earth would you promote people that haven't proven their competence and their ability to get results? It's completely and totally ridiculous, okay? Look, my intention has always been to do whatever is necessary to help my people succeed in the long term. So it never makes sense to make decisions that don't recognize that intention. So if it takes a few more months or even a year or two longer to get it right, what's that in the long-term scheme of things? Look, folks, I've been in the business almost 30 years, so it would have taken me another year or two, over 30 years, you don't even remember that, right? The thing is getting it right, because you only have one chance to become an RVP, one chance to do it right. And then you get to live with those results forever. What I didn't want to have happen when I started promoting RVP is to say, well, how did you go RVP, Hector? Well, I did 10 grand and I had one or two people doing the business and I gave up a $2,000 a month replacement. Well, shoot, you mean you want me to do 20 or 30 or 40 grand before I go RVP and you want to take two or three full-time people and you want them... That ain't happening. You didn't do it that way. Look, folks, you don't think that's going to happen? Absolutely it's going to happen. You don't see that right now, because all you think is if I have that contract, I'm going to make more money. But look, you don't... Look, 0% of... I mean, 100% of 0 or 125% of 0 is still 0. It's still the numbers, right? You've got to do the numbers. Look, you've got to think long-term. Everybody thinks short-term. Everybody wants everything now. We've got the microwave generation, right? You've got to do things right. Look, it takes six or eight years to become an attorney. It takes, like, eight to 12 years to become a doctor, depending on your specialty. I've got a friend of my son's who's a neurosurgeon. I mean, he's been... He graduated. He's, like, 33 years old right now. He's still in his residency, because that's a very complicated, you know, specialty. He's still doing that. He's 33, graduated from high school 15 years ago. He's not even a full-fledged neurosurgeon yet, right? And he's not making any money right now. Not really. It takes four years to get an undergraduate degree. It takes another two to four years to get a master's or a doctorate. And even then, there's no guarantee of a job or significant income, even if you've got. There's tons of masters and doctors out there who are unemployed right now. They're broke. Look, but at Primerica, if you do it right, there's no limit to what you can earn. Look, your ability to transfer your skill sets and knowledge of how to do the business so as to get results, which are recruits and sales, right, to your people is the number one prognosticator of your success in Primerica. If you can't do that, you know, really well before you go RVP, it's highly unlikely with all of the added responsibility I talked about earlier, that you're gonna be able to do it after you go RVP, after you get your contract. The contract means nothing unless you know what you're doing, okay? The contract, look, there's a lot of people in Primerica. With my contract, right, I make several million dollars a year, right? Bunch of people have the same contract I have, right, RVP contract, and they're barely eking by a living. Why is that? Why does that happen? Because those people who are eking it out, they haven't learned how to transfer all the skill sets and the knowledge in a way that people can use it, utilize it, to go build their own businesses independently of them. That's really the only difference. That's the big difference. I'm not a genius, folks. You know, I'm not anything special, but I understood, I've always understood that developing your people is the key to a great business. It's not motivation. There's way too much motivation in Primerica and not enough how to do the business. Look at all the meetings you go to and how much of it's motivation and how much of it is actually teaching people how to do Primerica. I tell you, the proportion is wrong in the majority of cases, right? This may not, people might not like hearing this, but that's my experience in this business. Look, if you do it right at Primerica, there's no limit to what you can learn. Look, look, again, your ability to transfer your skill sets and knowledge of how to do business to get results is the number one progressive success you're missing. I know I'm being repetitive, but I'm doing it on purpose. This talk may not be popular, right? It may PO some people out there. I don't care because it's the truth. Regardless of whether you like it or not, it's the truth. You don't have to like it, you just really have to do it. Let me leave you with this, okay? Can you think of one great leader who doesn't have multiple leaders in their organization that he or she has developed either directly or indirectly in Primerica? I can't think of one. Everybody who's done really well, who's making a million bucks a year or more and really built a great business, right? They have multiple leaders who are completely and entirely independent of them. You must learn how to do that while you're in the base. I'm not saying while you're in the base you have to develop RVPs, but you've got to develop districts and divisions and maybe even regional leaders who know what they're doing, okay, before you go RVP to prove that you know how to get people from square one to being independent and getting promotions and knowing what they're doing. If you haven't done that, then you're not ready. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. Now, you out there, you RVPs, you can promote people any way you want. Even my organization, I'm not gonna tell you you can't do something. All I can tell you is a way to do it so that you can maximize your experience here. You maximize your results. You can maximize your income and you can get yourself to be financially independent and debt-free much, much sooner, right? Or you can do it your way. I mean, everybody has their way of doing it. I'm just sharing with you my way of doing it and it's worked out well. So take it for what it's worth. That's my opinion, that's my take. Maybe popular, maybe unpopular, doesn't really matter. That's been my experience. I look out around Primerica all the time. I see it happening over and over, right? People don't pay enough attention to developing people. They do too much motivation and guess what? They don't really develop any great people. Your number one intention should be to develop your people, to make them independent, to help them be successful, find out, you know, to teach them the skillsets that they can go and win. You know, one of the things I always thought about is I wanted to teach people so well that if I got, you know, for some reason, God took me early, right, or I got hit by a truck or whatever, right, that the people left behind, that I left behind, that I trained and developed, that they could succeed even if I wasn't around. That's my, that has always been my total conviction in the business, to develop people to the point where they don't need me, that they're so good at the business, they're so much understand how to do this, and they're so, their skillsets are so refined that they don't need me. That's really how you build a great business, right? That's, you know, I'll just tell you, I was talking to my son, and he's in the investment business. He looks at companies, right, to invest in and stuff. That's what he does now. He graduated from Wharton Business School, and now he's got this pretty incredible opportunity with this company, and that's what he's doing, okay? And, you know, we were talking the other day about that, about what he was doing and how he was doing with it and all that sort of thing, and he said one of the key things that they look at in acquiring a business is, you know, the owner of businesses, when they acquire those businesses, they look to see if the owner has developed leadership within their organization, so when they're not there anymore, that the business can be viable and can go forward and be successful even without the principal or the person, the entrepreneur that started the business. If they are out of the picture, that there's enough leadership that they've developed, there's continuity in the development of those people that they can be successful, that company can be successful even without the owner of the business, because if you buy a business from an owner, they might stay on for a year or two in a transition, but generally just leave, so if that person, that owner hasn't developed leadership within their business, a bunch of independent people that can run the operation without the owner being there, then that business doesn't really have any value. If the owner leaves and the business falls apart, there's no value. The only way that can happen, right, the only way a business becomes really valuable is that that owner of that business, right, in this case it's you, okay, has developed a bunch of independent people that can go on and function and grow their businesses even without the person who originated the business in the picture. That's the key. That's the key in any business, and it's definitely the key in Prime America, and that's the reason I have this philosophy on how to promote people, because it makes sense. It makes sense. You can argue with me all day long, right, but I'm telling you, the numbers don't lie. If people aren't highly competent, fully trained, and completely independent, if you don't have the ability to do that, if you haven't proven that you've got multiple people in your team before you go RVP that are completely independent, run the business, and after your RVP takes your replacement, you're still in good shape, because that's the other key. You need to be in good shape after you give up that replacement. You need to have a team, you know, aside from the team that you're giving up, so that you have, you know, some momentum going into your RVP promotion, and then, of course, you have to be capable of recruiting and training new people so you can grow that team and get that thing growing and build something big, folks. That's what anybody that does this right does, okay? So that's what you have to do. So I hope that makes sense to you. I hope you take it for what it's worth. I'm a very direct person, and that's all I know how to be, folks, because I think clarity is key to mastery, and if you're not clear with people, people misinterpret what you're saying. Hopefully, after this talk, you don't misinterpret what I'm saying. I'm not saying it's impossible that you can't do it. I'm just saying it's improbable, and if I were you, I would make sure, before I go RVP, and you RVPs that are promoting RVPs, I'd make sure those people know what they're doing, they know how to develop people, and they've proven that they have multiple independent people that are doing the business, getting results, recruiting people, closing sales, making money, and so are the people underneath them, completely independently of either you or the promoting RVP. That's gotta be the key. You gotta do that to win big. Talk to you next time.