07 Jul Cracking The Insurance Sales Code With David Duford

If there’s one human experience that we all share, it is death. In this episode, Matthew Sullivan talks with David Duford about how he has gained success while helping others through insurance sales. He talks about having to deal with the grim necessity that is final expense insurance and how it has helped him help others. David is the head of the Duford Insurance Group, a virtual insurance agency that offers new or experienced face-to-face and telesales agents nationally to sell final expense and Medicare among others. He also talks about how he has cracked the insurance sales code and shares his experiences as a mentor.

—

Watch the episode here:

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

Cracking The Insurance Sales Code With David Duford

David Duford, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

I gather that you are a bit of an influencer in the insurance space.

That’s correct. Everybody knows me. I’m a celebrity that nobody knows.

David, we’re going to change that.

I know I came to the right show.

At least a dozen more people are going to know your name.

That’s good for me. I’ll take it.

That’s the important thing. I used to sell insurance. My first job leaving university was working as a life insurance salesman for Endsleigh Insurance.

Endsleigh is where in the UK?

It’s in England. I was a student. I was involved in selling life insurance products to students who were like, “What am I going to do with this?” “I don’t know. Sign here,” all the tutors and all that stuff. I had a fantastic time. I remember driving around. I remember greeting the people. We were in our early twenties and in some fantastic times. What led you to insurance?

Desperation and no other choice.

They sure just welcomed you with open arms.

If you’ve got to a pulse, you already got a job that you don’t know, selling insurance.

You can be an insurance agent but being a good insurance agent is difficult.

It is. You’re in business. It’s the way to think about it. You’re an agent of a company but you’re running an agency of your own. This means running a business, you have to deal with sales, administration, prospecting, client service, follow-up, etc. That’s tough. A lot of people fail out of the business but if you have an act for it, it’s good.

It’s a bit like when people say, “I can be a realtor. I can be an insurance agent.” Is that the pathway that you’ve followed when you suddenly realized, “A) This is quite difficult to be good at it but B) There’s a business here because if I can find out how this thing works, there must be other people like me who could benefit from that?” Tell me about what your company does.

My company is Duford Insurance Group. We train and recruit new agents and experienced agents to sell products called final expense, burial insurance, Medicare supplemental policies and products like annuities targeting predominantly seniors, Baby Boomers. The concepts are simple. We teach them a sales and marketing system, a business model like a franchise type of setup. The agent takes that and does what they will with it, to go sell something. I play the role of mentor, sales trainer, assistant overall and helping them get up and running. I duplicate that process as much as I can to find the few people that are cut for the business and try to build them up.

What training do you normally get from the firm? There are many firms. Is that where the gap is? Is that the problem?

Your readers, if they’ve ever looked at an insurance sales opportunity or if they’ve ever had a friend approach them to sell insurance, they’ve likely had somebody try to simultaneously recruit them to sell insurance or to teach them how to recruit. There is a big influence in the insurance business of what I would call multi-level marketing. This is a direct sales hierarchy from an organizational standpoint but the culture of MLM, picture an MLM-type of the sales pitch you’ve been on. Most people don’t like it. That’s very common in this business. The problem is that where the attention is paid is on building a downline. It’s recruiting and how to recruit other people. It’s not on how to sell insurance to other people. There’s a big status quo of this is just a hype-y type of MLM culture where so many people fail in part because they don’t have the proper training to be successful. When I got into the business, my goal was to be the anti-multilevel marketing type of agency to focus on selling.

There are some companies that have become enormous and huge through MLM. I don’t think it benefits anyone other than the owners of the company. I can’t remember the name. Was it Pacific something? That probably narrows it down to a couple of thousands. I remember reading about this. I was talking to someone about this years ago. They have the ability to recruit other people. All that happens though is that you don’t end up building your own business. You end up relying on other people’s efforts, who themselves are relying on the people behind or underneath them.

I don’t think there’s been an insurance company that’s been an illegal pyramid scheme but you get that accused a lot and for a good measure. Because you will find commonly going into many of these organizations, the person recruiting your manager has never sold the first policy. They just drank the Kool-Aid that they’re about to serve you and you find you’re all alone. You don’t know where to turn and run it.

Out of adversity comes opportunity.

It works. What I found is that you get this initial honeymoon period when you start up because you go to all the buzz and the enthusiasm of your new job. You’ve got the framework. You normally go to a group of people that you will approach first like your friends and your family. Once you’ve exhausted those contacts, that’s when the work begins. Tell me a bit about the programs that you run because there are all sorts of different sales methodologies. Which ones do you think work best for you?

We’re like a B2C type of organization. We’re selling to consumers. We go to Mr. and Mrs. Jones’ house for a sit-down one-on-one session. We do more telephone sales or virtual sales now with everything that’s happened. We do a one-call course. We sit down, we build rapport, introduce ourselves, pre-qualify the prospect to see if they’re even worth spending time with, if they can afford what we’re offering or if they fit what we’re trying to help them with. We demonstrate what our product does. We compare and contrast the other options out there and then we close and handle objections. It’s all done in one call including qualifying because in the insurance business, just because you want it doesn’t mean you get it. We’ve got to make sure they’re, from a health standpoint, eligible to get approved. We qualify them on the spot and we get a decision and we’re done. We leave, we’re out of the door, it’s a one-call close and then we go onto the next.

Has that become easier with COVID and the fact that people aren’t expecting someone to knock on the door? Because the traditional sales process was building that rapport with someone because you’re dealing with something that’s quite fundamental. Has it become easier to scale?

It’s crazy. We deal with people who are predominantly 50 and older, retired, disabled and health-compromised in some way. Despite maybe the first month after COVID started, nobody knew what to expect, nobody was flipping out. There’s been no change. I had my best year as an agency in 2020. Part of this too is when you’re shown death all the time on the news, what do you think people are thinking top of mind? It’s dying. Some of them will come to the conclusion that maybe I should be prepared to die.

Is that what final expense insurance is? It’s your last medical bill. As you step off this mortal coil, one of the benefits of being dead is you don’t have any more medical bills.

You got to pay to get in the ground or light the match and cremate you. It’s death and taxes.

Did you choose this particular sector? It’s a grim sight. It’s one step removed from being a funeral director.

I was desperate and I like sales. I had a personal training gym prior to this and I knew how to sell on a one-on-one scenario. Insurance is a great opportunity but there’s a lot of verticals or niches you can choose. I chose final expense because it’s a relatively simple concept to explain, “You’re 70. You’re going to die soon. You should probably insure yourself because you don’t want to pass that to your loved one.” It’s an activity-based type of insurance. It’s not a technical sale where you have a long sales cycle. You’re taking leads that you purchase. You’re knocking on the door calling to set an appointment. Now we sell over the phone for some agents as well. We either close it now or we never closed it and we move on. It’s very much oriented towards that person that wants to get out there and hustle and not deal with it.

The great thing about this is that you’re embracing something that other people wouldn’t have the common sense to look at. I would imagine the sale is quite straightforward. It’s quite a matter of fact. I guess the biggest challenge is probably trying to teach people to stop uhm-ing and ah-ing. Is that the biggest challenge with your sales guys that you train?

There is a sense of just grimness to it. There’s an old saying in this business from a famous insurance agent named Ben Feldman with a Guinness Book of World Records of production and volume sold for many years. He coined the term “disturbing questions.” Our job as an insurance agent is almost an evangelizer. We got to go talk about, “You’re going to die.” You don’t want to ask these questions. It can make them feel uncomfortable but somebody’s got to ask it. Because you got people who in your family are going to be responsible for this bill. You got to get comfortable asking those questions.

A lot of people are okay with this because life insurance is something that for most buyers, the idea to buy it stemmed because of some inflection point earlier in their life. They lost a loved one or their spouse passed away. They saw the good of having insurance or what it was like not having it. They’re very open in many cases to talking to you about it. We’re talking to older people so death is more often on the mind and it’s been experienced. It’s different than talking to somebody who’s 30 and just, “What dying? I’m living.”

This is something that you chose? Is it this particular product or after extensive market research and months spent?

I had the benefit of doing some due diligence. First, I researched the business. I never wanted to do it. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I was excited to do this. I just couldn’t get a job anywhere else. I like being an entrepreneur. If you’ve ever been an entrepreneur, it’s hard to not be an entrepreneur. You’re usually a dysfunctional employee. I didn’t want to go to work.

You’re being too far too humble here. Because even though one is desperate, you can still be desperate and do nothing. You can be desperate and sit down and watching YouTube all day crying into your cheese sandwiches or you can do something about it. I don’t think it was desperation. That moment may have been the moment that caused you to think, “I need to take control of stuff.”

I make light of it because insurance is, for most people, regard as boring and not a first career or occupation, which I understand. It certainly wasn’t for me but desperate times call for desperate decisions. You began to look at things differently when you’ve got mouths to feed and a wife and a kid like I had. You start considering things.

“An ounce of adversity comes opportunity.” This is the sector as it were. I would imagine that the company that is selling this is probably pretty circumspect when it comes to the training because it’s like, “This is the product. Go out and sell it.” How does it work from a financial perspective? Because if you’re insuring something that you know is going to happen, like life insurance, how do those premiums work? You just pay each month until you drop dead and then you stopped paying.

For this product, there are different whole life products or term life products you could use to form fit the need. In this case, we need a product that’s flexible with underwriting because a lot of our clients are older with health conditions and they’ve got to be accepted. They have to last forever versus term insurance which terminates at a later date. It may not be a good choice for our clients because what if they don’t have it when they need it because they outlived it.

I can see the benefit of this. Because it’s one of those things again. What you are trying to avoid, the problem that you’re solving is someone dying and being in a position where there are all sorts of stuff that needs to be catered for like funerals, tying up. If they don’t have a huge amount of money in their estate, who’s going to pay for that? The burden is passed. It’s a great product. I can see that but as I said, I’m smiling at myself because I can imagine the sales process can be quite Monty Python-esque. You must have some great stories of people that you’ve trained or people that you’ve seen that were quite unexpected in terms of what’s happened.

I can share a couple. This was funny. You’re dealing with the salt of the Earth types here. When you sell final expense, you’re dealing with a working-class clientele. You’re not dealing with these stuffy, white-collar types. You’re dealing with the people who make America run. You see all sorts of crazy stuff. I had a client who threatened to kill me and bury me in his backyard in Alabama. He still bought a policy from me. Interestingly enough, he died three years later. There was a sign on his front lawn that said, “Anybody who walks on my property, their property or their person will be shot.” I still ran the appointment because I got off the sales feeling really good. I was like, “That’s good.” He referred some family friends.

What do they say? “Never trust a man who owns a backhoe.”

Especially in Alabama, up in the mountains.

What are your recruitment numbers? Have you got people slowly growing? Now that there’s this space, is word spreading throughout the insurance community?

The nice thing we have is a demographic confirmed trend of 10,000 to 11,000 people turning 65 a day for the next twenty years. What this represents overarching is a lifestyle shift. People are leaving work and entering retirement. When you go through that transition, there’s a change. People start thinking about not accumulating wealth but making sure it’s still there long enough so they don’t outlive their money. They start thinking about death seriously and having money set aside. There are so many people coming into this Baby Boomer retirement age that it presents this multi-decade opportunity for a variety of products, final expense, being one of them to help somebody with defined needs. Because a lot of people are also retiring and they don’t have any money. This is a product built for those prospects that have very little savings or are worried because poverty is generational to an extent and their family usually isn’t any better off and they still want some dignity to handle something they feel is their responsibility.

These are all serious issues. These are issues that are not talked about every day because they’re not terribly sensational. As you say, it’s a necessity, it’s salt of the Earth but therein lies the opportunity. I noticed you’ve got a pretty big following on YouTube as an accidental guru in this space. Are you finding that you’re attracting the strangest people? People that you would never expect would want to move into this industry.

I don’t think any of my agents are strange.

I mean unexpected, in other words.

You get people who are in their fifties and they would claim ageism is counted them out of work. They’re at a point where they can do this. The kids are moved out. They don’t have as many financial obligations and they’ve always wanted to do this. This is their opportunity. You get people now especially with any recession, where people stopped working. It’s great for this business because what else they got to lose? They don’t have a job. I got into this in the Great Recession. You see an eclectic mix of people. I have agents who are top producers that came from training Tennessee walking horses back in the day that was medical device salespeople, ran companies before or flip burgers. It’s such an interesting and diverse collection of people. They stumble across it. They’re not out looking for it, they just find it after some random curiosity.

How did you put your program together? Was it entirely based on your own personal experiences? Because there are all sorts of different so-called professional sales processes. You’ve got three books that you’ve written on different insurance products. How did you assemble that?

I started as an agent. I did well in my first year then progressively worsened and failed out of the business. I got back into it after working for Corporate America and vowed I’d never make the same fundamental mistakes that I made as a first-year agent. From that point on, about 2.5 years into the business, I started my agency and it was strictly based on what my experiences were. What I noticed at that point, there was a great opportunity for the trends, the demographics, etc. Also because most of the recruiting organizations out there were fixated on mass recruiting in an MLM fashion and not directly training agents to be self-sufficient producers that could make money on their own pen. I just stuck to that principles and I still do. Over time, I’ve been more interested in business. There’s been aging people in and more awareness and I’ve been there and doing my thing and sticking to what I do well. People notice and I start getting attraction.

Nobody’s going to sell something better than yourself hearing yourself say that you need this.

The profile of the people that you’re working with, has that changed over the last few years? In terms of the profile of the people that you’re training?

A lot of people are 50 and older. In the beginning, there was more of that. Now, I am getting more that are younger than that. I’ve seen more women than I’ve ever seen in the past 1 to 1.5 years. If I look at my YouTube stats, 85% of my viewers are male and the other 15% are female. It seems to me like a third to maybe even 40% of my new recruits are ladies. That’s unique. I don’t know why that is. It’s been interesting and it’s certainly grown. It’s all people who are tired of working for somebody else. They want to set out on their own. They want to create their own freedom. Freedom’s a big deal to them. They want to sell something that they can believe in and that helps people.

What you’re looking at is providing people with fundamentally sound training that is product-independent. Even though you have a number of products that your training is skewed towards, this type of training is something that can grow with people and be applied to other products.

Sales are sales to an extent. We started my business niched in final expense to begin with because it was what I know. As I’ve grown in influence, we’ve brought on other products and trainers. For example, Medicare supplemental policies and annuities as well. It’s a great opportunity. You can take the same sales tactics and apply them to different products. People are people. There’s a process of persuasion that no matter what you’re selling works, you just got to fine-tune it for the product. There’s some overlap.

What is the biggest mistake that you think that your sales guys make when they start?

Pre-qualifying is a big deal for us. When we say pre-qualifying, what I’m referring to is figuring out if the prospect you’re having a presentation with is a good candidate objectively. Meaning not just, “I think or I feel,” but objectively discerning whether or not your client’s a qualified prospect or an unqualified suspect. There are a series of specific questions, mostly open-ended questions that we ask to discern the level of desire. Do they want it? Do they need it? Need is important for what we sell.

There are some other factors like, “Can they medically qualify? Will they allow us to set up a bank draft? What’s their budget that they can absolutely, positively afford?” It’s not necessarily what we’ll sell them down to the dollar but we need to know that, “They’re willing to pay money.” A lot of agents pass it up because they are questions they don’t want to ask like, “God forbid, if you die tomorrow, Mr. Jones, what happens?” That’s a disturbing question to ask a stranger you just met ten minutes ago but it tells you so much about where they’re at.

Is this something of interest to them? Do they need it? That questioning builds all the urgency and desire if it’s there, to begin with, from the client. It makes them self-obvious that, “This is something I need,” if they need it. Many don’t want to ask those tough questions. They wanted to skip to the fun part, “Here’s how this product works versus that.” They spend all this time presenting to somebody that doesn’t have the need or the desire for it. That’s frustrating. We work a lot on pre-qualifying.

It’s funny how selling has changed over the years because I remember going on a sales course a long time ago with Pitney Bowes. It was all talking about your features, functions and benefits. There was never any real discussion about identifying a need. I think the sales processes have evolved and you’ve got various methods. The Sandler Method is one.

People have accused me, in a good way, that what I do is similar to that Sandler approach.

These approaches work because they’re needs-based. They talk about the pain. I think that’s a fundamental point because businesses succeed if they satisfy or if they solve a problem. What you’re doing is you’re identifying to that person that there is a problem. You’re not creating the problem. You’re getting them to articulate their problem. I think that’s half the battle, isn’t it? It’s getting the person to hear themselves say what they need.

Nobody is going to sell something better than yourself. Hearing yourself say that you need this and this is of urgency. That’s what we’re trying to get them to do is give them enough rope to hang themselves so they’re like, “Yes, I need it. It’s obvious.” There’s something that’s powerful to convince yourself. You’re getting more power by convincing yourself than having a third party tell you that you need it. It’s a matter of questioning that.

Do you find that as you spend more time doing this that it’s a lot simpler in terms of psychology and process? People have made fortunes teaching people how to sell with extensive complex programs where if your client says one thing, you must say another. Do you feel that the sales process is simpler now? Do you spend more time? Does it get more complex as you dig deeper?

Any master communicator will understand that their goal is to make the complex simple. That’s what we try to do in our presentation. Teaching it to the agents as well as the presentation we give to the clients. It’s really simple. If I could just describe what a good sales presentation consists of, you have to have some connection with the prospect to lower their guard enough that they’re open to what you’re presenting, building rapport and trust. You’ve got to set an agenda so the client understands where things are going to go. They understand what the purpose of them being there is.

You’ve got to know how to figure out if the client is a good fit. That’s largely based on asking what I believe are open-ended series of questions that give you 2 to 3 levels lower into what it is that’s driving them to help them. We call it creating a need. We don’t create a need. We uncover a need. Maybe one they didn’t know they had but based on an open-ended question. There is a place for features and benefits. We’d like to compare ourselves to the competition. Luckily in our business, the competition does suck. We show them the fine print and the terrible outcomes of buying. We then say, “Which one do you want?” It’s simple. We don’t do 100 different closings. All that stuff is nonsense. We only use one close. I’ve sold over 1,500 final expense plans as an agent. I only did which one of these is a good, better, best type of approach. Which one of these do you want to go with? It’s simple but it’s not easy. I’ll put it that way.

Did you find people have a problem with hanging on to clients? In other words, not being able to accept no as a valid answer or not wanting to hear no.

I’ve never found that as much of a problem as helping agents embrace their safety numbers. The other big problem we have is doing enough activity. It’s running enough appointments and helping the agent understand that “Until you hit fifteen completed appointments a week, you’re going to have ups and downs of significance in your production.” It’s so often that we see agents who when they are averaging fifteen a week of completed presentations, they’re consistent.

We’re running a business as much as selling insurance. For our strategy to work, they have to invest with lead programs that we pair. Whenever you do that, there’s psychology, “That’s the money I could spend on something else or what if this doesn’t work. I’m just going to get the cheaper leads,” the fewer quality leads are what that translates to and then they have problems. We try to encourage our agents to understand, “If you want safety and security and consistency, which we all do in this business, it’s found more in going all in to have the activity, to run those appointments than barely getting enough and not having the volume to realize what the potential is.”

Is that the biggest reason for the fallout? The people that don’t make it. Is it the lack of activity? This is maybe driven by not getting enough good leads. What would you say the biggest reason for people not being able to make it past the three-month threshold as it were?

Cashflow is probably a big one. This is unique to our model which relates back to they don’t have a marketing method that they can make work, our prospecting method. That’s a big one is running out of money. Number two is probably picking the wrong agents. The people that show off their money, the Ferrari and the whole bit. It’s part and partial in this business, a dime a dozen and people get seduced by it. They think that’s what they’re getting into but then what they get versus what they were sold on is completely different. There’s this misalignment on what the agency does versus what they say they were going to do and the agent fails that way. A very few people, we did a survey on. We surveyed 104 failed agents and few said they quit the business or they failed because it was a wrong fit, which is sad. It was either a money issue, meaning a prospecting issue at the base level or they went to the wrong agency and they didn’t know what they were getting into. They didn’t do their due diligence.

You can help them with those. I suppose the more people you have and the bigger community that you build then you’ve got these safety numbers where you can say, “I know you feel like you’re about to run out of money but it’s always darkest just before dawn.” If you continue on this process, something will happen. It’s the law of nature. If you put the effort in on one side and do the numbers, do the curves then they will close.

There’s always an essence of a faith argument to make here. Nobody can tell you that you’re going to be successful in this business. That would be a lie. You have to take a leap of faith. You have to give yourself all that you can to give yourself a chance. It may not work out but many times, the reason it doesn’t work out is that the agent just didn’t do everything necessary to be successful. If you want an extraordinary life, ladies and gentlemen, you’ve got to do something extraordinary. You got to go out of the ordinary. That means paying a price to be successful. Many gurus said that’s the case and it is. I’ve found it out personally. There’s a sacrifice.

I was talking to someone about faith in yourself and how you’ve got to take that leap. One of the interesting things he said that I agree with which is success breeds success. Once you’ve got those first few deals, it gives you a bit more resilience. You’ve got all this stuff to share. How do you chop this up and deliver it in ways that resonate with people?

It’s a difficult task because you’re taking people who are moving in from employment to entrepreneurship essentially in many cases. There’s a lot of not just technical know-how to learn selling insurance but also the mentality and the mindset that comes with being a business owner versus being an employee. There’s no perfect methodology. We’d follow the immersion method. I look at it this way. If you want to learn Spanish, probably the best thing to do is airdrop yourself in Mexico City and 6 to 12 months later, you’ll probably going to learn Spanish well by desire or by necessity. That’s what we do with our training.

We don’t throw out agents to the wolves. We take 2 to 3 weeks tops and go through a variety of training. We have a lot of self-study modules and a connection with me. They ask me questions on a one-on-one basis but there comes a time when you got to pull the trigger. You got to go out there and do something because that’s where the real learning happens. You can only get so ready preparing and then you’ve got to go test it and see what it does for you. Get some feedback and learn through action. A lot of agencies, “Here’s the book. Here’s a script. Start calling.” I was like, “What about the products? What about the people? What about this?” There is room to prepare for that but there comes a day where you still have to go out there and pick up the phone or knock on a door.

How do you scale your business to maintain that same connection? People are buying into this program because of you. What challenges are you facing which come from the success of your company?

It’s great because I remember when I had twenty agents after a year and I was thrilled. I recruit 80 plus a month now. It’s a sales process. I have to qualify my applicants, if you will, my agents that much more. For example, I require my agents to invest money of their own into a lead program. If they can’t invest money into leads, they don’t get to join. It’s no other reason than you don’t really have a business unless you have a marketing plan.

You want to set yourself up for success, don’t you?

Yes. The other thing I don’t do is I don’t put my phone number out publicly, which is strange. The reason is I’m very service-driven and training-driven. The people in my agency are my number one concern. What I don’t want to do is have outsiders who haven’t gone through and been vetted, direct access to me. I forced people to jump through hoops, which is a qualifier in itself because it shows that they can follow directions. It shows that they can be patient. These are all character traits we’re looking for in good agents. That saves me a ton of time too. Now, I’m at the point in my business where I’m looking to hire some assistants to aid with the onboarding because things have been great for us. It’s this constant revisiting the process, the funnel and seeing what works. Tinkering with it to free up some time here and time there and give someone else responsibilities as things get busier.

I know of a handful of companies that have started out by growing this distribution base, which is incredibly valuable to an insurance company, to have an effective distribution arm. Do you see yourself becoming not an insurance company but becoming very closely aligned? Rather than just focusing on individuals and giving them the choice of who they work with, you provide the entire package. That could create an incredibly valuable buyout opportunity for you.

I’m thinking like, “I want to beat my dad. He retired at 46. Maybe I can get it done in ten years.” That’s an interesting thing that’s happened. As your business grows, you recognize circumstances have changed. I originally thought of myself as just a final expense agent, then an agency owner when I built my YouTube Channel and social presence. I realized it morphed into more of an influencer basis for all insurance sales. What I’ve grown into is I’m a trusted person in this business. That’s my perception. People follow what I say and that’s a thing of power. It’s a thing to respect and appreciate. I have the ability now and for those people, for example, who don’t want to sell final expense for reasons they are just not attracted to it. Now, we have opportunities with other types of business models, like for example, Medicare and others. That expands my influence and my ability to grow this distribution arm but you’re 100% right.

The great thing about what you do is you speak from the heart. It’s the business, “Let’s run it up the flag pole and see who salutes it,” type crap. I think that with genuine, direct, no-holds-barred stuff, the biggest challenge is making sure that you don’t succumb to the corporate mess and you don’t sell your soul. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Anybody who wants to be an influencer or be a source of influence of any kind, this country, this world is in a crisis of trust. People know and smell BS everywhere. People don’t know who to trust, who to turn to for all sorts of reasons. It’s a problem of humanity but it’s been magnified for many decades. People are surprisingly refreshed to find somebody who speaks plainly, who doesn’t BS them, jerk them around sound like everybody else and show off all their stuff. With some people but not everybody, it resonates because that’s what we all want. We want to trust. It’s being human and if you can tap into that, there is power.

I’ll ask you the question. What’s your view on people who say, “David, you’ve got to be vulnerable?” That’s my pet hate with all of this social media trusting and influencer stuff. This concept that you’ve got to create vulnerability. I don’t see that with you, frankly.

I don’t think of having an agenda in the sense of, “What’s the buzzwords? What do we have to do?” You’re selling out in a sense and people will detect that fakeness. In a way, that’s weird. That sounds strange but if you just do what you’re going to do and you believe the way you’re going to do, you’re going to attract a certain person who is attracted to that. If you sell out, you fake, you’re hooting and hollering and doing all the nonsense that’s so common in our business, you’re going to attract people to it but it’s not going to be the person that I think is a quality person. I get what you’re saying for sure. Be yourself and it’s harder to do than you think for some people.

Everyone’s so afraid. It is refreshing to meet you because you don’t have any of the buzzwords or the predetermined agendas. That’s why I’m sure that your business will do nothing other than growing at a furious rate to the point where you will indeed retire well before you’re at the age of 46. I’ve decided that now is the time to introduce the show’s quick-fire questionnaire to ruin everything. Are you ready for this, David Duford?

Go for it.

Question number one, what is your favorite word?

BS.

Number two, what is your least favorite word?

There are so many I hate. It’s vulnerable.

Question number three, what are you most excited about?

Every day is getting better and better. I’m excited about the next day. Life is good.

Number four, what turns you off?

Such simple questions.

I didn’t think of them. They’re not mine.

Do people rapidly answer this normally or they sit here thinking about it?

Some prepare beforehand and others don’t because it’s more fun.

You can tell which one is prepared.

You don’t want that preparation.

What do I hate the most?

What turns you off?

I don’t know.

It could be mac and cheese or something.

Any master communicator will understand that their goal is to make the complex simple.

This new Biden tax plan. Does that count? I don’t like the idea of getting taxes.

I’m sure you and several million other Americans would raise a fist, salute and go, “Yes.” Question number five, what sound or noise do you love?

I got one. It’s a lady that we dialed. We triple dial on the phone to get people. We call our clients. They don’t pick up. Nobody picks the phone up so you got to do what’s called triple dialing. You drive them nuts and by the third time, they pick up. They go like, “What’s going on? What do you want?” You then do your pitch and they’re like, “I sent that card in. Let’s talk insurance.” I got this recording and the guy triple dials and she goes, “Hello.” She screams into it. It’s hilarious if you listen to it.

Next question, what sound or noise do you hate?

Whining, complaining and excuses. The sound of excuse and whining.

Number seven, what is your favorite curse word?

The F-word.

It’s brilliant, isn’t it? The way you deliver it, each person that says that delivers it in an entirely unique way. The next question, number eight. What profession, other than your own, would you like to attempt?

I would’ve made a good attorney.

I think you would have scared the pants off the defense. Would you be defense or prosecutor?

I would be a defense. I’m a devil’s advocate.

I see that. Question number nine, what profession would you not like to attempt?

Probably an accounting type of thing. That would be terrible. It is something boring.

To many people, that is the definition of hell but to others, they live for it. Isn’t that funny? That’s what makes a market. The final question, if heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

“It’s nice to have you. You made it.”

David, it’s been such a pleasure having you. My final question is how do people get hold of you? How do they learn more about this fantastic amount of knowledge that you’ve got and how do they hook into your program?

Thanks for having me, Matthew. There are two places to go. You can go to my website DavidDuford.com. Check out everything there if you want to learn more about how my agency works. I think the best way to learn about me more on a personal level and all the information we have is to go to YouTube and put my name in, David Duford and start watching some videos and go down that rabbit hole.

David, thanks for being a brilliant guest. I can’t wait to look at all your stuff and follow your progress. Hopefully, we have you back on again sometime very soon.

Thanks, Matthew. I enjoyed it.

Important Links: 

• David Duford
• YouTube – David Duford

About David Duford

David Duford is the owner and operator of DavidDuford.com.

He specializes in recruiting and training new and experienced insurance agents to become top producers utilizing proven sales and marketing systems such as:

1. Final Expense,
2. Annuities,
3. Mortgage Protection,
4. Medicare Supplement, or
5. Medicare Advantage

Dave began his insurance career in 2011, jumping into the final expense business as an act of desperation.

His existing business (BodyElite Personal training) in the fitness industry was going down the tubes financially due to the negative economic factors of the Great Recession.

While the experience was tough, it molded David’s perspective about the importance of following a tried-and-tested system of success without deviation, as part of his short-term struggle was due to deviating from that system.

Fast-forward to the present day, David and his agency program are rocking along!

David has recruited more than 1,500 agents, teaching them how to sell final expenses, annuities, Medicare Advantage, and Medicare Supplements, following the same system of success David has employed throughout his career as a personal producer.

Many of the agents he has recruited have developed into six-income earners following this same model of success.