Understanding People:
All Different – All the Same

What are some common characteristics you must understand of all the people you meet?

• Their number one fear is rejection
• Their number one need is acceptance
• You must manage relationships to protect or enhance their self-esteem
• Everyone approaches every situation concerned about “what’s in it for me?”
• Everyone prefers to talk about things that are important to them personally
• People hear and incorporate only what they understand
• People like, trust and believe those who are like them
• People often do things for other than apparent reasons
• Even people of quality can be, and often are, petty and small
• Everyone wears a social mask. You must look beyond the mask to see the person.

Although every person has each of these characteristics in common, we are still unique as individuals.

It is imperative that you take the time to understand each prospect as “one of a kind,” with an combination of values, beliefs, biases, philosophies, perspectives on others, wants and feelings about themselves that are unique to them based on their life experience.

Why You Must Take the Time to Understand People

Your ability to understand the uniqueness of each individual prospect will greatly influence your long-term care insurance sales results.

Here are some of the questions that must be answered to ensure you understand each unique prospect:

• What do they value most in their lives?
  Ethics? Money? Success? Strength? Compassion?
• What really matters in their outlook on life?
• What are their expectations and beliefs about how life does and should work?
• What resistances or predispositions – fears, biases, prejudices – do they have?
• What positions, approaches or philosophies are they most likely to accept or reject?
• What do they need to hear from a person to conclude that that person is fundamentally “okay” and can be trusted?
• What sorts of things do they consider relevant?
• How do they feel about themselves?
• What do they want most in their lives?

The challenge in understanding people is you can not ask these questions directly.

First, most people don’t know the answers to these questions at a level where they can honestly answer them.

Second, their “social mask” precludes answering many of these questions directly, even if they did know the answers.

The burden falls on you, the long-term care insurance agent, to discern their perspective through your observations of their behavior and through carefully structured questions.

People …
People who need people …
Are the luckiest people in the world

Barbra Streisand