Why is it so important to have a clear, ideal prospect, and how do you find them?
On this week’s coaching video, I’ll share our process for identifying the prospects you want to sell to, including breaking down the 5-star prospect profile.
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.
Identifying your ideal prospect. I know this seems obvious you’d want to identify your ideal prospect, but most in the industry do not actually know who their ideal prospect is. So let’s talk about why it is so important to know who your ideal prospect is. Let’s do that. We start by knowing who is it, our ideal prospect. Here’s some tropes.
Number one, you will not be all things to all people. When I look at the industry right now, one of the challenges I see is I see too many insurance professionals who are trying to be all things to all people. Could that be you could? Do you feel like you can help everybody? And I sell insurance and if they need insurance, I can help.
I get it. But what you’re going to learn in this lesson, and the ones that follow, is not every prospect is a good fit for you. And the better you get at determining who’s a good fit for you, the faster your business is going to grow. In fact, knowing when to walk away from an opportunity is one of the secrets to building a successful book of business these days.
Number two, by speaking to everyone, you end up speaking to no one. I look at the marketing in this industry right now, and a challenge I see is there’s too much vanilla, there’s too much trying to speak to everybody. You got to know who you’re going after, and you have to make a concerted effort that all of your prospecting, all of your content, all of your marketing tries to speak to that one person because, let’s face it, in the industry today, this is what the traditional prospecting looks like.
We call it the prospecting. Two step. You buy a big list of leads. No clue who those leads are. I don’t know if the contacts are effective, don’t know if they’re the right fits for your agency and you just go to work hammering that list with phone calls and emails without a clue as who to who you’re trying to talk to and what you’re trying to say to them.
Could that be you? Right now? You feel that struggle of trying to put any message out there hoping something sticks, yet no one’s listening. It’s because you don’t know who your ideal prospect is. You see, the dejected producer today looks like this. It’s a producer who’s staring at an empty pipeline. You feel like you’re working hard. You feel like you are putting in the activity, but it’s going nowhere.
You’re talking to a bunch of unqualified prospects. You ever been there? Thought you had a prospect that was a good fit? Before you know it, you’re spending hours trying to push this prospect through. And let’s be honest, they’re not a good fit and they have no interest in buying from you. And, you know, you’re so much better than your current results are showing.
That’s you. I’ve got some good news. This lesson is going to help you uncover who is the best fit for you, and you’re going to learn how to take that concept, how to take that clarity and go to the market to figure out who is the best fit for you. You’re going to actually learn how to interview prospects as much as they’re interviewing you.
Let me share my story real quickly. 2014. Here I am in Colorado, in a market. Nobody knows who I am, and I thought I had a distinct advantage because I had come from a market in Wisconsin that had been leveraging the concept of self-funded insurance for years. Here I am in Colorado. Self-funding is a fairly new concept. I thought I had that advantage and I was amped up to go talk to everybody about it.
I didn’t care who the prospect was. I didn’t care what the business was. I just felt everybody needed self-funding. So off I went scheduling appointments, having one conversation after another, sharing my knowledge on this concept of self-funding. Here’s what happened I walked out of every meeting feeling like I killed it, but meeting one never turned into meeting two.
Why? Because I was talking to unqualified prospects. You see, when I want to have the concept of everybody should want to hear about this, I wasn’t clear on who I was trying to go after. I wasted a lot of time and pumped up my ego quite a bit, going after prospects who had no interest in doing business with me.
It wasn’t until I sat down I said, if I’m going to become known for self-funding, if that’s going to be my one thing I do as well as anyone in the market, I better figure out who is going to be the best fit for that message. And that’s what you’re going to learn. And the lessons that follow is how to create that ideal prospect.
Because here’s the reality. When your ideal prospect is clear, your path to the A or is near, the better you get at determining who the best fit is for you. The closer you get to writing business. You’re struggling right now because you feel like you’re working your butt off, but you don’t feel like your activity is going anywhere.
It could just be you’re talking to the wrong people, and we’re gonna switch that. We’re going to clean that up for you, and everything’s going to change when you uncover your ideal prospect. Because why we want to identify our ideal prospect is very simple. If you understand, you can’t be all things to all people, and you get really clear about who you are going to set your sights on, you’re prospecting is going to get a lot better.
All right. Now we’re going to dive into the five star prospect profile. This will be one of the most important exercises you do in this entire course. And yes, you probably know I’m a former athlete and I’m going to use a lot of terms coming from sports. Five star prospect profile is like that five star prospect profile that is being recruited by the top college football programs in the nation, right.
You’re looking to find your blue chip prospect. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to answer five questions to determine who your best prospects are. So let’s dive in. The first question we have got to answer clearly is who is your favorite prospect today? And we do that by asking who your favorite client is. So here’s what I want you to do.
I want you to look at your current book of business, think about your current book. Who’s your favorite client today? Who’s that one client you wish you could replicate over and over and over again? Now, if you’re in the business, the business space you work with companies, I want you to do two things. I want you to write down the name of the company, and I want you to write down.
I want you to write down the main contact you work with their. Now, if you sell to individuals, just write down the name of the individual. Who is your favorite client today. Once you have that done, now we got to answer question two. Why now? Before you start doing it, let me set some caveats here. The only answer you can’t give in answering the question why they’re your favorite client is Andy.
I make the most money on them. That’s why not a good reason to be a favorite client. But we want to dive into is the details behind why they’re your favorite. And the best way to do that is to figure out the demographics in the psychographic. So let’s start with demographics. In sports, the demographics of a good athlete are height, weight, speed, and business.
It’s where where’s their location? How many employees do they have? Maybe they’re an ideal fit because of their revenue or the industry they’re in. What I want you to do is I want you to look at that favorite client, and I want you to list out the demographics, size, number of employees, where are they located, what industry are they in, how much revenue they make, what are the demographic characteristics that make them an ideal fit?
Maybe you sell self-funding and they’re fully insured today and that makes them a great fit right out. The demographics of your ideal client now, demographics alone do not make for an ideal client. Let me explain. Imagine you niche into the construction industry. Now, you might think that all construction companies are a good fit because they’re in construction, not the case.
Let me explain. I’ve never had an advisor say to me, Andy, my favorite client is ABC construction. Because they are in the construction industry. The owner is kind of a jerk. He doesn’t listen to anything. I have to say. They never implement anything I tell them to implement. They don’t really respect me, but they’re my favorite because they’re in the construction industry.
Now. You see what makes a client ideal is the psychographics. What are the psychographics? How do your ideal clients think? What do they believe? What do they stand for? How do they make decisions? The reason they are your best clients is because you and they have psychographic alignment. Now, when I talk about beliefs and stances, I’m not talking about politics or religion here.
I’m just saying when it comes to what you sell, what do they believe? I’m willing to bet they believe things very similar to you. What I want you to do is I want you to take a look at that client, and I want you to write out the psychographics that make them such a good fit for your business.
You see, when we have a good idea of the demographics and a good idea of the psychographics, we are now starting to build a foundation of a good client. And when we get into content creation, you’re going to see where this really takes off, because I want you to imagine what content could do for your business. Putting yourself out there could do for your business.
You see, starting, finding, starting by finding the right fits happens with demographics, right? Imagine you’re, in a suspect case and you have all of the suspects lined up against the wall, and you’re trying to determine who is the guilty person, right? Well, demographics is like lining up all of the price for all the suspects against the wall.
It’s the psychographics. They’re going to get the right ones to take the step forward. And when we get into the lessons about social media and content, how you put yourself out there to attract the right prospects, you’re going to see what are putting the psychographics in. Your marketing is going to be the differentiator. Now we’re moving on to the back half of the five star prospect profile.
So so far you have answered two questions. Who is your favorite client today and why are they your favorite client? You should have a list of the demographic effects. Remember size, number of employees. Where are they located? How big is their revenue? What industry are they in? And you have a list of demographics. How do these people think?
What do they believe? What do they stand for? You have to have a good mix of both, and you’re going to learn why the psychographics are so important. Well, now let’s move on to question number three. Now that you have a good idea of the who and the why, what problem do you solve for your ideal clients? Now here you can take a slight transition away from your ideal client.
I just want you to think about what problem do you love solving? I get it, there’s a lot of problems you can solve for your prospects, but is there one that lights you up? Is there one that gets you fired up? What injustice are you out to solve every single day? Maybe if you’re in the benefits industry, it’s the health care system is screwing employees over, employers over.
Maybe it’s the rising cost of health insurance. If you’re in the commercial risk business, maybe it’s the uncovered risks today. Maybe it’s all these storms that are killing businesses. Whatever it is, what fires you up to get out and get after it every day. You see, even though you can solve many problems, there’s one you’re really good at.
Remember in the lesson about building a personal brand when I asked you, what do you do as well as anyone in the market? But it’s closely aligned with this problem. You love solving. What we want to do is figure out what that problem is, because what we’re building right now is the makes of a good prospecting message to go attract the right prospects.
And if we bake in the problem, you love solving into that message, guess who are going to attract the type of prospects that have the problem you love solving? Now with problems, there come three layers. What you’re most familiar with is the external problem. So in health insurance, maybe it’s rising health insurance costs in the commercial insurance space.
Maybe it’s uncovered risks. If you sell life insurance, maybe it’s inadequate life insurance. Those are the external problems. But what we want to work on getting really good at is addressing the internal problem. When that prospect looks in the mirror, they have those doubts, those fears, when they’re asking them, they’re some selves, those questions they’re unwilling to ask you.
What are they saying? What are the doubts they have in their head right now when they are faced with the external problem when it comes to developing a good prospect, the message driving a wedge into that internal problem is so important, because what you’re doing when done well is you’re renting space in your head, in their head, they feel like you’re talking directly to them.
And that is so key. When we want to build a good message to attract the right prospects, we can’t just keep it at the external level. We have to address the internal problem. Now, the philosophical problem is that injustice you’re out to solve, that’s you walking around with pitchfork and fire saying, I believe you deserve better health insurance.
I believe you should be able to run your business without any fears of any kind of uncovered risk. That’s the philosophical problem. But if we can get really good at uncovering the external, the internal and the philosophical problem, your message is going to land on your prospects so much more effectively. Now, once you know your problem, you’re out to solve, we’ve got to have a process to solve it.
Now, here are some key ingredients to a process. It’s got to be repeatable, and it’s got to be a process you can use no matter who the prospect is. Let me give you an example a complete game consulting. We have a process. It’s called the Complete game Marketing Playbook. Our job is to help advisors like you book better appointments with better prospects.
To create the expert credibility you need to win dream business, and we do it through our process. We call the Complete Game Marketing Playbook. The playbook has four phases clarity, capture content, and convert. This course I’m sharing with you right now comes directly from the Complete Game Marketing playbook, but it’s a process that we can repeat over and over and over again.
So what’s your process? What is that 3 or 4 step process you’re going to take to go help your best prospects? Now when you uncover a process, by the way, there’s no perfect process. Just having a process is more effective than having none. Here’s where the game changes. When you have a repeatable process, you’re no longer out going out and getting interviewed by your prospects.
You’re actually interviewing your prospects to see if they’re a fit for your process. It is a completely different way to sell. That’s going to be so much more effective with you. Now here’s some key ingredients for the process. Number one, it is repeatable. You see, most advisors out there today are recreating the wheel with every product, every prospect to that, to you.
Do you feel like every prospect feels different and you’re having to do different things every single time? Now, when you have a process, it is something you’re going to repeat time and time again, no matter who the prospect is. That is the sign of a good process. And number two, when you clearly define your process, you’re interviewing your prospects as much as you’re interviewing them.
This is why you get so frustrated with an RFP. What is an RFP? An RFP is somebody else’s process. You’re trying to win hard to do that. How about we create a process. You bring your prospects through. Now, one of the best things you can do with the process is give it a name. Ours is called The Complete Marketing Playbook.
When your process has a name, now you’re out selling your process to the market, not a product. Absolutely changes everything. Because when you have a process that is branded, that is named, that you are rinsing and repeating time and time again, the last question you have to answer now is what result is your process? Create? If you go attract your ideal prospects who have the problem you love solving, you bring them through your process.
What does their life going to look like after you solve that problem? I’ll give you a little hint. This is often just the opposite of the problem they’re dealing with today. Now, what we’ve just done by answering the five questions of the five star prospect profile. Who is your favorite prospect? Why? What problem do you love solving? What’s your process for solving it and what result is that process?
Create? You have started to develop the foundation of a masterful marketing message, which we’re going to dive into the lesson on creating a targeted marketing message. You will see where these questions set up the tone for a message. You can put out an email in your cold calls on LinkedIn, in webinars, wherever to attract the best prospects into your world.
But if there’s one message I want you to remember from this lesson, it is this the riches are in the psychographic niches. If there’s one thing you do with your prospecting, there’s one thing you do to go attract the prospects you want to replicate over and over again. Focus on their psychographics. What do they believe? What do they stand for?
How do they make decisions? If we can put that content in your marketing message and your prospecting message, we’re going to get the right prospects to raise their hand.
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.