Today’s market is about attention, and if you haven’t invested in content to grow your book of business, you’re missing out on the biggest advantage you could have over your competitors.
This week’s coaching video is a deep dive into creating championship content and the best methods to deploy content to your prospects, whether it’s through video, the written word, or audio.
Resources:
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- Connect with me on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/andyneary/
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Video Transcript:
This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.
All right. Now we are going to dive into one of my favorite topics here. Content. I think content is the secret sauce today to help you grow your business. Far too many insurance professionals don’t believe they have to create content to get their prospects attention. But here’s the truth. Your market’s too noisy, and if we’re not creating content, your prospects just are not seeing you enough.
And in this lesson, you are going to learn why content is got to be one of the main priorities in your prospecting strategy today. It has helped us grow our business at Complete Game Consulting to levels that we couldn’t imagine just in a couple of years. And it can do wonders for your business as well. So why is content important?
Content creates connection. Think about this. I’m willing to bet that you love standing in front of a prospect educating right? If you are selling insurance, that’s one of your favorite activities, is getting out in front of prospects and teaching them things they may not know today. Sharing your knowledge. But here’s the challenge. You don’t have five prospecting meetings every day, all day, so you’re not in front of your prospects all the time.
Well, now imagine you could be imagine that you could be in front of your prospects while you’re sleeping. That’s what content does. It’s easy. And if we put enough content out over time, it creates a connection you’re looking for with your prospects. Heck, they’ll feel like they even know you before you ever meet them. Now here’s another truth.
People can’t buy what they can’t see. One of the reasons you’re not winning as much business as you should right now is your prospect are not seeing you enough. Here is the simple truth. Imagine you pick up the phone today and you call prospect. And they say, interesting. I like what you have to say. The timing’s bad. Give us a call in six months.
So you are. You meet their obligation. You respect their request. And then six months, you make another call and they say, hey, you know what? We actually changed advisors three months ago. And you’re sitting there thinking what you told me six months. Well, guess what? They forgot about you. It’s a simple fact. If you’re not putting content out there, your prospects are not seeing you.
Therefore, they are not thinking about you. Therefore, they are not buying from you. We have got to make sure we are staying in front of our prospects consistently. And the last thing is your prospects expect value today before they ever will consider hiring you. If you think you can get into a prospecting opportunity without sharing any of your good stuff, the strategy is you’re never going to win.
Your prospects want value delivered to them before they will ever consider hiring you. A phrase I learned from a mentor of mine is this people come for the information they pay for the organization and the application. Your content is the information they’re going to digest to determine if they want to hire you. So in this lesson and the ones that follow, you are going to learn how to create championship content.
Now here’s the problem. Today when I look across the landscape of the insurance industry, I see too many outdated operators. What’s an outdated operator? Number one an outdated operator. Someone who deploys tactics that are not as effective as they used to be. Here’s a great example. Cold calling. Now, I’m not telling you to stop cold calling, but let’s be honest, cold calling is not effective as it used to be.
Today, it takes 18 calls to get one prospect on the phone. You want to get ten prospects on the phone? That’s 180 phone calls. If you’re speed dial and you can do that every two minutes, that’s six hours to get ten people on the phone. Number two, they don’t believe in marketing. I can’t tell you how many times I talked to insurance agency principals who tell me they don’t believe in marketing.
Marketing is the oxygen of your sales today. Without marketing, you don’t have sales. And an outdated operator also acts as if social media and the internet don’t exist. See, when I got in the industry, I was taught two lessons. Number one, dye my hair gray so I look older. And two, go buy a membership at a country club I couldn’t afford.
Because that’s where the CEOs hang out. Well guess what? This phone we hold in our hands every day is the modern day country club. That is where people are hanging out. They’re hanging out on social media. And you need to be there as well. Now, here’s the reality. You and I can agree. Sales is about who knows you, likes you, and trust you.
We can also agree relationships are built on trust, and I hope we can also agree that building a relationship today is a bit harder than it used to be. So how are you going to get prospects to know you and like you? How are you going to build a better relationship with prospects? If it’s hard to get in front of them these days?
Here is the opportunity. Good content gives you that opportunity to stand out in a crowded market. You can build a relationship with someone before you ever meet that meet them. Imagine walking into a prospecting opportunity and they already feel like they know you. You want to have a leg up on the competition and imagine having prospects actually reach out to you.
Good content can do that. You see, good content not only builds name recognition and likability. It actually leads to inbound opportunities. Imagine having a prospecting opportunity. Reach out to you to ask to do business with you. That is what can happen when you create good content. Let me share my story of how we built complete game consulting. And I’m going to share this story from a recent example that happened in our business just a few months ago.
Doing this before doing this recording. We had hired a sales rep to help us scale our business, and in doing so, I had given up all responsibility for outbound prospecting. See, growing my business is no different than yours. We still have to do outbound prospecting. And what we found out and discovered quickly is our sales rep we had hired did not have time to engage in it.
The level of outbound activity we thought we would. Now, our content that was going out every single day still helped us bring in inbound opportunities, but not enough. And by passing off the bulk of outbound to a sales rep who didn’t have time to do it. We saw our pipeline start to dry up. Now, soon enough, I took back responsibility of the outbound activity, and within a matter of two weeks, we had completely filled our pipeline again.
But here’s the secret. We would not have been able to do that without our content. You see, because we’ve been putting content out every day for 2 or 3 years, we have built name recognition. And when we turned on the spigot of outbound prospecting, the pipeline started flowing again. And this is what I want to help you do as well.
When you leverage content to back up your outbound activities, it is going to make your outbound prospecting so much more effective. And more importantly, it’s going to check that box of expert credibility. You need to go win your dream account. Because here’s the truth. Exponential awareness leads to exponential growth. You see those activities you’re engaged in today? The cold calling the direct emails.
That’s linear awareness. You can only pick up the phone and call one prospect at a time. You can only send one email to one prospect at a time. When I went door to door, I could only knock on one door at a time. That takes a long time. Exponential awareness is about getting one message in front of a lot of prospects at one time.
And that’s what content to content. Content can do. And then the lessons that follow you are going to learn how to create that championship content. You need to grab the attention of the prospects you’ve never been able to get in front of before. Now, before we dive into the Triple Crown of exponential awareness, I want you to remember something I said in a previous lesson, and that is today.
It is no longer about who you know. It is about who knows you. And content is the secret sauce to make sure you stay in front of your prospects. So they know exactly who you are and they do not forget you. There is nothing worse than having a prospect make a buying decision. A decision to change without having you involved.
Because they simply forgot who you were. Now, before we dive into the Triple Crown. This is where you’re going to have to set your fears aside. Because I’m here to tell you that if you want to grow your business today, it does require content. Require content requires work. Content requires effort, but with it, there’s going to come a lot of fears.
Fear of judgment. Fear comparison. Fear failure. And I know it’s easy to let those fears paralyze you, but my goal with this lesson is to help you set those aside. Because I’m here to tell you content can be the one thing that unlocks everything you’ve been wanting to build in your business. It just requires a little time and a little effort.
So let’s talk about the Triple Crown of exponential awareness. Triple Crown represents three questions. What are you saying? How are you saying it? And where are you saying? So if we want to create effective content to go out and attract the prospects we want into our pipeline, we have to know what we’re saying to them, how we’re saying it and where.
Now, in a previous lesson on crafting a targeted marketing message, we built out the what? If you’ve gone to that lesson, or if you haven’t, hit pause and get back and go back to that lesson, you need to build out a targeted marketing message. That is the what you are saying. Remember, it’s about telling your prospects story. We’re going to figure out how you’re going to say it, and then we’re going to talk about where you want to say it.
So let’s start with the where are you going to get stuck. When we work with advisors who know they have to make content a part of their strategy, they ask us questions like this. Well, Andy, how do I create content? I don’t even know where to start. What should I say and where should I post it? If you’re there right now, good news.
We’re going to answer these three questions. You see, most people get stuck because they don’t even start. They don’t know what to do, what to say, where to go. Now here’s what’s funny. Here’s what’s interesting. If I put you in front of a prospect in the next five minutes and I said, you have got to drive a good conversation with your prospect, you would know exactly what to say.
You’ve done it 100 times, but now I’m going to tell you to put yourself in front of a camera and create a video talking to your prospects, and all of a sudden you don’t know what to say. We’re going to fix that right now. We’re going to help you build some championship content. So let’s start with the how you should post.
Here’s what I want you to remember. Number one, some people like to watch. Too. Some people like to read. And three, some people like to listen. So when it comes to digesting content today, these are the three main channels of content digestion. We have video, we have the written word and we have audio. I don’t know about you.
I’m a video learner. I love jumping on YouTube and watching educational videos. Maybe you’re a reader. You like reading articles and blogs to learn books. Today we’ve got the EarPods right? We can plug in a podcast and jump on the treadmill and listen to a podcast or an audiobook while we work out. What you want to figure out is how you want to post your content.
Now, the magic formula is to be able to hit all three channels, because that’s how you’re going to hit the widest margin of your prospects. But if you’re uncomfortable doing that today, my goal is to just get you started on one. But what I wanted you to remember is that some people watch some people read, and some people listen.
So start by figuring out what channel is going to be most effective with you, for you. Now, once you know, now we dive into what you should say. This is where people get stuck. And I have no idea what I’m going to say in the content that I’m putting out there. I’m going to help you do that. We call this the five categories of content creation.
Now I’m actually going to go backwards and I’m going to share why I do this. You see, the first type of content you can put out there is what is known as the call to action. A call to action is a piece of content where you are asking your prospect to do something. Maybe it’s to sign up for a webinar you’re hosting.
Maybe it’s to book a call with you. All you’re doing in a call to action is you’re asking your prospect to say, take some kind of action. You’ll probably include some link to some page where they can register. Now, the key is you can’t put calls to action and every single piece of content you put out there, because after a while you just become known as very salesy and people get sick and tired of it.
Quite frankly. But calls to action have to be in your content once in a while because without that, you’re not selling. But the rule of thumb is we want to spend the majority of our time giving more than we’re asking, which is a hard thing to do, because you and I were brought up in an industry that told you or taught you how to pick up a phone, send emails, and go door to door and ask over and over and over again.
Well, we’ve entered a time where we’ve got to do a lot of giving, and you’re going to learn how to do a lot of giving in your content. Second category. Case studies I love case studies. Right. It’s show us examples of your clients winning today. Why is it important to share case studies? Well, case studies prove to me your prospect you know what you’re doing.
If I see examples of your clients winning, that tells me you must know what you’re doing. Now I hear what you’re saying. You might be afraid to put a case study out there, because I don’t want to share the name of one of our good clients. Let me put those E’s to rest. If you have a client out there who is happy, who’s winning with you?
And they’re letting you are willing to let you put a case study out there with their name on it. Do you think they’re leaving you any time soon? They’re not. I wouldn’t let that get in the way of putting out a very effective case study. But here’s the key. With a case study, don’t just show me the results.
Show me the problem your client was struggling with in the first place. Talk to me about your process. You used to solve it, and then show me the results are getting because of the process. You walked me through those steps in a case study on the prospect. If I’ve got the same problem, your case study now resonates with me.
Let’s talk credibility. Yeah, once in a while you have to toot your horn. Now, don’t get caught too in your horn too much. But once in a while, you do have to let us know you’re winning. Have you been nominated for an award? Maybe you were featured in an article. You’re on a podcast. What are you doing today to prove to me you are winning?
Testimonials. Go in this category as well. Do you have any good written or video testimonials from your clients? See, the more you can show me your winning, the more credibility you’re building with me. If you ever follow anybody in real estate on social media, what do you see them posting all the time? Sold houses. Why? They want to prove to you they can sell houses.
Now you’ll notice again I went in reverse order here. Why did I save personal stories in education for last? Because this is where the magic is. If you create content that accomplishes these two things, your content is going to connect with the right prospects. Remember the lesson on building your personal brand? I asked you two questions. What makes you unique and what do you do as well as anyone in the market?
This is where they come into play. If you put content out there that lets people get to know you and educates them, you can live in these two categories the rest of your career and create effective content that’s going to help you grow your business. You see the personal stories. I’m not talking about the pictures on the beach that just let me see you and your family having fun.
No no no no, that’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about with personal stories is what are those things that have happened in your life? Maybe you’re a former athlete. Maybe you went through a tragic event. Maybe you have certain passions or hobbies that teach you lessons about business and life. That’s what I’m talking about when it comes to posting content where you’re sharing personal stories.
Now, education speaks for itself, right? Your job is to educate your audience and your prospects want more value from you today, before they ever will hire you than they’ve ever had before. So if you spend your time sharing personal stories with lessons and educating your prospects, what you’re going to do over time is create that likability and credibility you need to win your dream business.
Now, this does not happen overnight. This does not create overnight wins. But if you apply consistency sick consistency to it, you’re going to establish all the likability and the credibility you need. You’re going to walk in to those meetings with prospects, with prospects already feel like they know you. Let me give you a couple examples. Personal stories, tips you want to share, stories that have business and life lessons tied to.
Why? Because it’s letting your prospects get to know who you are. But they are also learning from you at the same time. Here’s a story I shared on LinkedIn a few months back. This was my journey when we moved to Colorado. What you see on the left was the picture that was taken of me the day I went to work for Vogue Bell when we just moved to Colorado.
That image on the right is me today, that personal brand I’ve built. This post here got almost 10,000 views, but the point was not views. The point was sharing my story with a lesson that resonated with you. You see, when you put those personal stories out there, you’re going to have prospects who jump on calls with you or in the meetings with you say, you know what’s so funny?
I feel like I know you ready? One of the best compliments I get when I meet with one of our prospects is when they tell us, and I feel like I know you already because of your content. That’s the name of the game. That’s how you get a leg up on the competition, because they’re not willing to put in this work.
Now, a couple tips on education. Pick topics based on questions and objections your prospects have. Just answer their questions. You see, you get stuck when it comes to creating content because you think you have to come up with new ideas all the time. It’s not how this game is played. The point is to create content that educates them on the things that are going on in their life, and why not share the questions and the objections you’re getting from prospects and clients?
Because we know your prospects are going to the same things. This is where you want to document what you’re already doing. Think about the conversations you’re already having with prospects. The conversations you’re having with your clients. That’s the best content, because your best prospects are going to be going through the same things. And when you share those conversations, it’s going to resonate with them.
I tell people educational content needs to be searchable. This is where you have to make sure you lean away from trying to be clever and just be clear. Focus your education on the simple problems your prospects are going through today. Here’s an example. There’s a book out there called They Ask You answer. If you’re a reader, I highly recommend you go get this book.
It’s books written by Marcus Sheridan. He owned a pool building company in Richmond, Virginia, and Marcus wanted to grow his pool building company. So here’s what he did. He made an effort three times a week to write a blog about all things building pools. Now, did he try to write clever articles? Did he try to write articles to display his high level of knowledge?
No. He wrote simple articles, in-ground versus above ground, fiberglass versus concrete. Who are the top five builders in Richmond, Virginia? He created content via blogs around the questions his prospects were asking. And here’s what happened. In a matter of a few years, he became the most searched pool builder in the world. That’s what I’m talking about when it comes to creating searchable content.
I want you to create content that if somebody were to go to Google and search for that topic, your content pops up. Now that’s being searchable. Here’s an example. We put out some content about LinkedIn, and I built a four step strategy to help grow your business, which, by the way, you’re going to learn in a future lesson here.
And in this hour in this video and this article, I’m just sharing step one very educational walking you through step one on how to build a successful LinkedIn strategy 2023. Now imagine somebody going to LinkedIn and saying, how can I win with a LinkedIn strategy in 2023? There is a chance this YouTube video is going to pop up that’s searchable.
I’m going to say it again ditch fancy, ditch clever for the simple problems and questions your prospects are dealing with and asking. That is what is going to create effective content. Because here’s the reality. If you just take this content, personal stories, educational content, and you apply it to social media, email, public speaking, webinars, podcast, if you want to have it today, what you are doing is casting a huge net of exponential awareness.
You’re getting one message in front of a lot of prospects at one time, and if you want to build an amazing book of business, we have got to get prospects to know you and like you far, fast and wide. Because here’s the truth consistent content creates consistent connections, and consistent connections turn into consistent clients. But the one thing that triggers that entire formula, entire process is content.
So my question to you is, are you willing to put the time and effort to create the content that make sure you stay in your in front of your prospects all the time? Now, in the next lesson, you’re going to learn how to create a lot of content that doesn’t require a lot of time.
Business is no longer about who you know. Business is about who knows you. In a noisy industry like we’re in gang, you got to get people to know who you are.