Stuck in a Cul-de-sac and You Can’t Get Out

Knowing what to say in every situation isn’t easy. This is especially true if you’re a newer agent. It could take you several years to be in a majority of the situations that you might require you to respond to a specific scenario, question or objection.

Due to the nature of the business, there could be huge gaps of time between experiencing some dialogues while others might occur almost daily.

When you say certain words over and over again they can flow off the tip of your tongue almost subconsciously, the way a major league baseball shortstop like Derek Jeter doesn’t have to think when he slides in position to glove a sharply hit ground ball and spins effortlessly to turn a 6-4-3 double play.

In the absence of daily fielding practice or being in front of enough clients week after week, you’re going to have to find a way to rehearse your dialogues so they come out without much thought. Sounding “planned” as opposed to “canned” should be your ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is not to have the right words, phrases and answers memorized but internalized. 

The brain controls your mouth but all too often the brain may be a few steps behind as it processes all of the syntax needed to make a credible statement. I’ve seen it and I know I’ve been there myself) where our mouth starts spewing a response and it takes a while for our brain to realize what we’re saying. By the time we have a good idea of where we want to go with the conversation, it’s too late. We try and analyze if our last few lines made any sense and if the client or customer has caught on that we are just making stuff up.

We have driven into a cul-de-sac and we have no idea to get out.

Slow down and take your time. There is nothing that says you have to rush through your conversations or consultations. Do you best to remain in control of your emotions and be confident about what you want to say and how you want to say it.

Just like you have to re-calibrate your GPS every once in a while, it might be time to re-calibrate your dialogues and delivery.

 You know where you want to go this year. There’s no time to get lost.   

Photo credit: Johnny Jet via Creative Commons 2.0