Free — From the book Let Them Say It
The GUIDE Field Kit
Everything the book points at is on this page. The question banks, the Illuminate sequences by gap type, the objection sequences, the self-scoring sheet and the thirty-day schedule. No email, no form, nothing to download. The book said build your own version first and find out where it gets hard — this is here for when you’d rather start from something.
Go Straight to the Card ↓each one gets a sentence out of him
both gradable off a recording
that is the whole ask
no follow-up
Before Anything Else, Score Two Calls You Already Ran
Pull two recordings from last week. Not your best ones. Two ordinary calls that went the way calls usually go. Then answer two questions about each, and nothing else.
Did the customer talk more than you did? And how many minutes in did a number come out of your mouth?
Most people who do this are surprised twice. First by the talk ratio, because you cannot hear your own — your words don’t take up space in your memory the way the other man’s do. Then by how early the price arrived, which is usually inside the first two minutes and always feels later than it was.
Why adjectives can’t do this job
Write both numbers down before you read another line of this page. You cannot show a gap closing from a baseline you never took, and thirty days from now you will not remember where you started. Nobody ever does.
The Card and the Question Bank
Five moves, in an order. Each one is built to get one more sentence out of your mouth and into his. Nothing here is a script — the words have to be yours or the customer hears a recital.
Ground
Buy permission before you ask anything. Acknowledge the interruption, ask to ask, offer the exit. No product named, no pitch, nothing to defend against.
Uncover
What he has, how he got it, when anyone last explained it, what matters besides price. Follow the thread. Write down his exact words.
Illuminate
A number he doesn’t know, then an event that makes him compute it. Then three seconds of nothing. This is the whole book.
Deepen
Consequence first, then value. One of each. Reflect his own words back at him rather than improving them.
Enable
His words, the fix, the ask. Then stop talking. If you close on your language instead of his, you have taken the call back.
The card — select it, copy it, print it, put it where you dial
THE GUIDE CARD
From Let Them Say It — daitalink.com/guide
G — GROUND. Permission, no pitch, calm.
Acknowledge the interruption, ask to ask, offer the exit.
"I know I'm catching you out of the blue. Got two minutes for a few
questions, and if it's not a fit I'll get out of your hair?"
U — UNCOVER. What he has, how he got it, when anyone last explained it,
what matters besides price. Follow the thread. Write down his exact words.
"How'd you end up with them?"
I — ILLUMINATE. A number he doesn't know, then an event that makes him
compute it. Then three seconds of nothing.
"If that ran past your limit — who covers the rest?"
D — DEEPEN. Consequence, then value. One of each. Reflect his words back.
"What would that do to you guys?" ... "What's it worth to know it's handled?"
E — ENABLE. His words, the fix, the ask. Then stop talking.
"You said the big thing is [his words]. This closes that. Want me to set it up?"
RESISTANCE: Clarify -> Reflect -> Resolve.
When he hesitates, go back, not forward.
THE TWO THAT CAP THE CALL:
He talks more than you. No price before a felt gap.
THE ONLY QUESTION THAT MATTERS:
Did he say it, or did you?
The question bank — twenty questions, and not one of them tells him anything
Read these for shape, then rewrite them in your own words. A question you would not actually say out loud will come out of your mouth sounding like a form.
TWENTY QUESTIONS
From Let Them Say It — daitalink.com/guide
GROUND
1. "I know I'm catching you out of the blue — got two minutes for a couple
of questions, and if it's not a fit I'll get out of your hair?"
2. "Before I quote anything I'd rather understand what you've actually got.
Mind if I ask you a few things first?"
UNCOVER
3. "Who are you insured with right now?"
4. "How'd you end up with them?"
5. "When's the last time anybody actually walked you through what that covers?"
6. "Besides price, what matters most to you about protecting the place?"
7. "You said [his words] — tell me about that."
8. "If something happened tomorrow, how sure are you that you're covered?"
ILLUMINATE
9. "Do you happen to know what your liability limits are set at?"
10. "If you were at fault and the bills ran past your limit — who covers the rest?"
11. "Is your deductible a flat number, or a percentage of what the house is
insured for?"
12. "Does your policy replace that roof, or pay you what a fourteen-year-old
roof is worth?"
13. "If the wind drove rain in around the windows — is that a wind claim or a
water claim?"
14. "If the house did what your driveway's been doing and you were looking at
fifteen thousand in foundation work — where's that money coming from?"
15. "Have you ever had a claim denied, or known somebody who did? What happened?"
DEEPEN
16. "If that landed on you — what would that do to you guys?"
17. "Where would that money come from?"
18. "What's it worth to you to know that's just handled and it can't reach you?"
ENABLE
19. "You said the big thing is [his words]. This closes that. Want me to get it
set up?"
AND THE ONE FOR WHEN HE HESITATES
20. "Fair enough. When you say you want to think about it — is it the coverage,
the money, or something else?"
Every line on that page is a question. Not one of them tells the customer anything. That is the entire method, and it fits on a page.
Illuminate Sequences, and What to Do When He Pushes Back
Nine gaps, and the mechanics are national. They are features of how policies get written, not of weather. What changes from one state to the next is which peril sets them off, and sometimes what your regulator has to say about it. These are one man’s versions out of one territory. Translate as you read.
The nine — copy the block, then rewrite each one for your market
ILLUMINATE SEQUENCES BY GAP TYPE
From Let Them Say It — daitalink.com/guide
Each one is TWO questions: a number he doesn't know, then an event that
makes him compute it. Then three seconds of nothing.
1 THE ROOF SETTLEMENT hail / wind / ice / plain age
"How old is the roof?"
"Do you know if your policy replaces it, or pays you what a
fourteen-year-old roof is worth?"
2 THE PERCENTAGE DEDUCTIBLE wind-hail / hurricane / earthquake
"What's your deductible on the house?"
"Is that a flat number, or a percentage of what the house is insured for?"
[Let him go look. He believes a number that isn't his number.]
3 THE STORM THAT TAKES EVERYTHING BUT THE HOUSE
"What else is out there besides the house? Fence, shop, vehicles?"
"If it took all of that — do you know which ones your policy picks up?"
4 WIND-DRIVEN RAIN
"Have you ever had water come in during a storm?"
"If the wind drives rain in around the windows and you've got water down
the wall and in the flooring — is that a wind claim or a water claim?"
5 THE GROUND MOVING clay / frost heave / settlement / sinkhole / slide
"Any cracking in the drive or the slab?"
"If the house did what your driveway's been doing and you were looking at
ten or fifteen thousand in foundation work — where's that money coming from?"
6 WATER THAT COMES FROM OUTSIDE
"Has the street ever backed up out front?"
"If we get one of those nights where it comes down for six hours straight
and it comes in the house — you think that's on the homeowners policy?"
7 UNINSURED MOTORIST
"If the guy who hits you has no insurance at all — who pays for your car
and your medical?"
"Do you know if you kept that coverage or signed it off?"
8 THE TOYS boat / RV / side-by-side / snowmobile / tractor
"Where does the boat sit on all this?"
"Is that riding along on the homeowners, or is it on its own?"
9 THE KID
"You said your daughter's driving now."
"If she's at fault in a bad one, whose limits are answering for that?"
BUILDING YOUR OWN
[ ] Name the three perils that actually hit claims in your territory
[ ] For each, find the sentence in the form that limits or excludes it
[ ] Write the number question he won't know the answer to
[ ] Write the event question that makes him compute it
[ ] Test it on somebody who is not a customer. If they answer in one word,
the second question is doing the telling. Rewrite it.
The objection sequences — clarify, reflect, resolve
When he hesitates, go back, not forward. Every one of these is the same three moves: find out what the words actually mean, say it back in his construction, then deal with the real thing rather than the thing he said first.
OBJECTION SEQUENCES
From Let Them Say It — daitalink.com/guide
Pattern every time: CLARIFY -> REFLECT -> RESOLVE
Never answer the first version of an objection. It is almost never the real one.
"LET ME THINK ABOUT IT"
Clarify "Fair enough. When you say think about it — is it the coverage,
the money, or something else?"
Reflect "So it's the [his answer]."
Resolve Deal with THAT. If it's money, you have a Deepen problem, not a
closing problem. Go back to consequence.
"I NEED TO TALK TO MY WIFE / PARTNER"
Clarify "Of course. What do you think she'll ask you that you don't have
an answer for yet?"
Reflect "So the open question is [his answer]."
Resolve Answer that one, and give him the sentence he'll use at the table.
"IT'S TOO EXPENSIVE"
Clarify "Compared to what you're paying now, or compared to what you had
in mind?"
Reflect "So it's [the gap he just named]."
Resolve If he never felt a gap, price is the only thing left to judge on.
That is your fault, not his. Go back to Illuminate.
"I'M HAPPY WITH WHO I HAVE"
Clarify "Good — who are you with? What do you like about them?"
Reflect "So they've been easy to deal with."
Resolve Don't argue with the relationship. Ask one Illuminate question
about a gap the relationship can't fix.
"JUST SEND ME A QUOTE"
Clarify "I can. What would you compare it to — do you know what your
current limits are set at?"
Reflect "So we'd be comparing price to price."
Resolve "Let me ask two things first so I'm quoting the right thing."
"I ALREADY HAVE THAT COVERED"
Clarify "Good. Do you know what the limit is on it?"
Reflect [Wait. Don't fill it.]
Resolve If he doesn't know, you have your gap and he found it himself.
WHEN YOU BREAK A RULE MID-CALL
You will quote early. Everybody does. The recovery is not to pretend
it didn't happen:
"That's the number on what you've got now. Before I put a price against it,
can I ask you two things about it?"
The Self-Scoring Sheet and the Thirty-Day Schedule
Self-scoring is worth doing and it is not worth trusting. You cannot hear your own talk ratio, you cannot hear your own tone shift at the close, and two days later you will review the call you meant to run rather than the one you ran. Score anyway. Just know which parts of it are reliable and which parts aren’t.
The sheet — tab-separated, so it pastes into a spreadsheet in proper columns
GUIDE SELF-SCORING SHEET — daitalink.com/guide Date Customer Call type THE TWO THAT CAP THE CALL Yes / No Note Did he talk more than I did? Did I get to a price before he felt a gap? If either one failed, the call caps low no matter how good the rest sounded. THE FIVE MOVES Band What actually happened G Ground — permission asked, exit offered, no product named strong / needs practice U Uncover — each question built from his last answer strong / needs practice I Illuminate — HE named the gap, in his own words strong / needs practice D Deepen — consequence first, then value, in his language strong / needs practice E Enable — closed on his words, not mine strong / needs practice THE TWO NUMBERS This call Target Talk ratio — his share of the words 60–70% Minutes before a number came out past 6–8 min ONE CORRECTION FOR THE NEXT REP Only one. A man given six things to fix will fix none of them.
Bands, not numbers, and that is deliberate. A number invites you to manage the number. See 71 and you start asking what gets you to 78, and inside a week you are optimizing a score instead of learning a conversation.
Thirty days, at forty minutes a week
One move at a time before the whole call. Short and often beats long and rare, because forgetting happens in the gaps. And expect the first two weeks to be worse than your normal calls — that is not a warning, it is arithmetic. You are replacing habits that currently run without supervision with ones that still need watching.
Week One — one rule, one move
The rule: don’t quote before he’s felt a gap. The move: Ground. Write three openers in your own words. Five short reps, thirty seconds each.
Week Two — Uncover, and write things down
Ask “how’d you end up with them” on every call. Capture his exact words on paper. Eight or ten reps, scored on talk ratio only. This is the week it feels worse.
Week Three — Illuminate, which is the whole book
Two questions, then count the three seconds in your head. Ten or twelve reps on Illuminate alone. Don’t run full calls. Score one thing: did he say it, or did I?
Week Four — Deepen, Enable, whole call
Three or four reps, end to end. Now the sheet above gets used properly, and now the correction is one thing rather than a list.
The whole schedule, ready to copy
THE THIRTY-DAY INSTALL
From Let Them Say It — daitalink.com/guide
Forty minutes a week. Two sittings of twenty, not one of forty.
BEFORE DAY ONE — take the baseline
[ ] Score two ordinary calls from last week on the two rules only
Talk ratio ______ Minutes to price ______ Date ______
WEEK ONE — ONE RULE, ONE MOVE
[ ] The rule, on every live call: no price before he's felt a gap
[ ] Write three Ground openers in your own words
[ ] Use one of them on every call until it stops sounding like a sentence
[ ] 5 reps, Ground only, thirty seconds each
[ ] Count how many times you broke the rule. It will be more than you think.
WEEK TWO — UNCOVER, AND CAPTURE
[ ] Ask "how'd you end up with them" on every single call
[ ] Pen and paper. Write his exact words, in his construction.
[ ] Mid-call check: are his answers getting LONGER or shorter?
[ ] 8-10 reps, Ground into Uncover
[ ] Score on talk ratio only
[ ] This is the week it feels worse. That is the handover. It ends.
WEEK THREE — ILLUMINATE
[ ] Two questions: what he has, then what happens when
[ ] Count the three seconds in your head. Out loud is too fast.
[ ] 10-12 reps on Illuminate ALONE. No full calls this week.
[ ] Score one binary thing: did he say it, or did I?
WEEK FOUR — DEEPEN, ENABLE, THE WHOLE CALL
[ ] Consequence question, then value question. In that order.
[ ] Close on his words. Read your notes back before you ask.
[ ] 3-4 reps, end to end
[ ] Full self-scoring sheet on each one
[ ] ONE correction carried into the next rep. Only one.
DAY 30 — WHAT TO ACTUALLY LOOK FOR
[ ] Talk ratio moved. Not close rate. Close rate is noisy and slow.
[ ] Time-to-price moved out past six or eight minutes
[ ] You have sat through the three seconds without filling them
[ ] A customer has worked it out loud while you said nothing
Day-30: talk ratio ______ minutes to price ______
AFTER THIRTY DAYS
[ ] Forty minutes a week, forever, or it comes apart
[ ] That is the part that never happens in any agency, ever.
It is the only reason the next section of this page exists.
Everything is on this page, in plain text, because a file you have to fetch is one more thing between you and starting. Highlight it, copy it, put it where you dial. I’d rather you built your own version first and found out where it gets hard. Take these, use them, and don’t tell me about it.
If You’d Rather Not Practice Alone
Nobody Stalls on the Method. They Stall on the Reps.
You need somebody who will be a guarded customer three or four dozen times while a producer installs this, and a few times a month after that, forever, going cold every single time he pitches. You need scoring that doesn’t drift with who is listening. You need one correction before the next rep, delivered by something with no opinion about you. Nobody in your office has the hours for that, and your manager has a job.
Abby Teaches It, Plays It, and Scores It
She is a voice you call. She teaches the move you are working on, in the order it goes, before you try it. Then she plays the customer — a situation, a budget, an objection she is holding — and she reacts to how you ask. Ask well and she opens up. Lead with a pitch and she goes short and guarded, exactly the way a real one does.
She Will Hold Whatever Character You Hand Her
A claim that went badly three years ago, a woman who says her husband handles this, a man who decided before you dialled. She will drop something into the middle of a call hard enough to knock you off your sequence, if that is what you asked her for. A hundred common scenarios come written out and ready to paste in, for the days you don’t feel like inventing one.
She Grades Against the One You Just Read
Not a standard written for your agency. The one in Chapter 14, held still, the same for you as for everybody else. You should know exactly what you are being scored on before you open your mouth. Two rules and five moves, and none of it is a secret. What comes back is a band and one correction, never a raw number, for the reason given in that chapter.
Flat Monthly, for the Team, Whatever They Use
Charging by active user would mean every rep a producer runs costs the agency money, and a manager looking at that invoice has a quiet reason to be glad when people practice less. That prices the one behavior the whole thing depends on, pointed the wrong way. So it is one number for the team you are covering. Usage stays a coaching conversation instead of a line on a bill.
You do not need any of this to use the book. The method is in the sixteen chapters, complete, and everything above on this page is free and always will be. Plenty of people will be fine with a coworker and a stopwatch, and I would rather you did that than nothing. This is here for the reader who already knows the reps are where it falls apart.
What It Costs, Since Nobody in My Business Will Tell You
$XXX per month for the agency — the whole team, however much they use it. No per-seat count, no minimum, no annual commitment. The price is on this page rather than in the book because printed prices go stale, and a book that opens the way that one does has no business quietly revising its own numbers after the fact.
Start with Abby → Talk to Me First Follow Along on LinkedInThere is nothing to schedule and nobody you have to talk to first. The call option is there because agency owners buying for a team usually have questions about rollout, and because Chapter 16 asks something of you that the other fifteen chapters don’t.
Ask the question. Then be quiet.