The three things you should never do are exactly what you're told to do, so this may be shocking to you or comforting. When you do these three things you're setting yourself up for a painful path to failure. It explains why over 90% of the people entering the insurance and financial services industries fail in less than three years. The first thing you never want to do is cold call. If you've tried it you already no it's a low failure ego eroding waste of time activity.

When you cold call you immediately put yourself in a bad position. You wouldn't be calling absolute strangers begging for an appointment if you weren't desperate and the people you're calling realize this. People aren't going to buy so they can help you out. They'll only buy if they're the ones with the need.

Think about all the time you're investing making those 100 cold calls. Dialing for dollars takes hours. After all that time and effort you're lucky if you've talked to 3 people and scheduled an appointment with one. Then the person who agreed to the appointment stands you up. Even when you do meet with them you find they aren't likely to do business with you because they don't trust you. Yet you continue to waster your time and theirs chasing after them. You have all this time invested without any results to show for it.

Hanging out at chamber networking events is the second thing you never want to do. When you think about it the reason is obvious. The only people at those events are starving sales people desperate for a sale.

Pitching someone is the third thing you never want to do. A "presentation" is nothing more than a pitch with the intent of manipulating the sales conversation. No one wants to be sold and a presentation makes the buyer feel they're being sold and decreases their trust in you.

You have to get business, and you may be wondering how to do that. Stop wasting your time on the things you shouldn't do and learn how to do the things you should do. Then do them. Learn how to: get the people you want to work with to reach out to you, interact with your ideal prospects on their turf, build and strengthen a connection based on mutual respect and trust, hold a conversation that helps them to buy.