In this Q&A, I’m answering five of the most common questions I hear from insurance producers and agency leaders about selling more effectively in today’s market.
Resources:
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- Connect with me on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/andyneary/
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- Connect with me on Instagram: instagram.com/andy_neary/
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.
Video Transcript:
This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.
Hey, hey. All right. We’re going to give this live Q&A thing a shot. Hope you like it. Every week I’m going to come on. And I’m going to go through five questions that I received the previous week in all the coaching calls that I do with our clients, producers, agency executives. And I am going to share them with you.
I’m going to share my answers with you, because when I hear these questions on coaching calls, I realize that my answers to those questions could be really could better be served to a larger audience like you. So I hope you enjoy and I hope you keep coming back every single week. So let’s dive in. Question number one. How do you get producers to embrace LinkedIn without making it feel like another task on their to do list?
Well, in order to do that, you have got to start giving LinkedIn equal weight to all the other prospecting activities you’re asking your producers to do. You see, most agencies don’t put LinkedIn activity on the same level as picking up the phone. And that’s the problem. I understand LinkedIn does not create an overnight win, but building brand awareness.
Online awareness is very important today, especially in a world where we are in a trust recession. It is hard to earn people’s trust. So you have to spend time building trust that can be done through LinkedIn activity, especially creating content that is valuable for your prospects. Now, as an agency leader, you can’t just ask your producers to do it.
You got to be participating to see. I hear a lot of agency executives who tell their producers to be on LinkedIn, but when I go look at that agency executives activity, I almost see nothing. You have a huge opportunity as well, because your activity can become a recruiting weapon. When you give producers an opportunity or your next great hire an opportunity to hear from you.
To hear the stories, the lessons you’ve learned in business and in life. You’re giving somebody the opportunity to say, hey, this is somebody I want to work for. So my advice is, yes, you have to put LinkedIn and give it equal weight, just like you do all the other prospecting activities, which means you have to block time for it.
But as an agency leader, you need to be practicing what you preach as well. Question number two what’s the biggest mistake producers make in discovery meetings? Simple move too fast, too quick. Trying to go for the close. We too soon. Let me give you an example from our business where we saw this happen in our model. At Complete Game Consulting, we typically have a two call close, so we’ll jump on a zoom call with a producer, an agency executive.
But it’s really a discovery meeting. And we know if we have a very interested buyer, there’s probably going to be a second conversation, either because there’s other decision makers or we want to give them a chance to chew on it, come back and ask them questions. We noticed that we had a lot of prospective buyers ghosting us after that first call.
They weren’t getting back to us. They were kind of brushing us off. And after doing a lot of introspective work, looking inward and looking at the data and just looking back at the call recordings, we realized we were going for the clothes too fast. We were trying to sell a product, trying to pitch something in that first call, and that’s what turned them off.
And I think that’s what’s happening with a lot of producers. They’re going for the kill too quick, too fast. The only thing you should be doing in a discovery meeting right now is to qualify or disqualify the prospect. Yes, you, not them. You are disqualifying or qualifying that prospect. So what should you do? Ask some simple questions. Number one, what intrigued you to take the meeting?
Find out why they were even interested in talking to you. They’re going to give you a lot of good information and then make sure you ask the power for number one. What’s your number one goal right now? What would it mean if you could achieve it? What’s the challenge problem keeping you from it? And how is that affecting you or the business right now?
Those are four very effective questions that are going to allow you to grab some Intel to determine whether or not you can hire, or you can help that prospect and then give them a little of your background and what you stand for to see if you guys are in alignment. That’s all you should be doing in this discovery.
Being the only goal of the discovery meeting is to get the second date. That’s it. If you go for the kill too quick, you’re going to lose the prospect fast. So hope that helps. Number three. How do you know if a producer needs more activity or a completely different strategy? Well, let me start by the fact that I wholeheartedly believe it’s typically more activity.
I was listening to Alex Hormozgan a while back, and he was talking about how he built his gym business, and in the beginning he had a mentor who told him that he needed to go car to car and put fliers on windshields promoting his new gym. And he went out one day and spent a whole day putting out 300 fliers.
And out of those 300 fliers, he only got one gym membership. So when he reported back to his mentor, he said the strategy doesn’t work. And the mentor said, really? How many fliers did you put out? And Alex, man, I spent all day. I put 300 out. He said, we don’t even start collecting data after we’ve put out 5000 fliers.
So more activity. Yes, it is typically a volume problem. However, I’m going to say this. I know I’m biased, but I believe our one of one sales framework should be standard onboarding for every single agency hiring producers today. Why? Because it covers three things. Number one, what’s your brand? You need to help a producer identify his or her brand so they can stand out in the market.
What do you do better than anybody in the market? What’s your zone of genius? Number two, you need to help them identify the ideal client. What do they look like demographically? What do they look like? Psychographics. And then you have to help them build expertise around a problem they want to solve, and give them the framework to help people solve it.
Those components allow producers to become known experts. Whether you’ve been in the business for three months or 30 years, and when you give a producer a unique sales message customized to their brand and their buyer, they will go out with more confidence and more conviction and sell with that confidence and conviction. And I believe when you have an army of producers who are confident in what they do convicted and what they’re saying who you become unstoppable.
Question number four can AI actually help producers sell more or is it just another shiny object? Good question. Yes, but it depends how you use AI. Number one, you should not be using AI to replace your thinking. If you’re a producer trying to win more business, do not let AI become the thought leader. You’re the thought leader. Let it be your thought partner.
Number two, AI can absolutely help you sell more if you use it the right way. Behind the scenes. If I were a producer right now, how would I be using AI number one if I’m recording? If I’m doing any calls with prospects live or virtual, I would record the call as long as you get there. Okay. Because that recording allows you to feed it to an AI agent who can then look at your recording coach you on where you went, what you did well, what you didn’t do well.
Number two, I would be using AI to help create sales proposals and RFPs. Saves a ton of time in that sales process. And then when I’m done with the RFP or I’m done with creating the proposal, AI help me build, I’m going to give it back to AI, have AI act as the prospect I’m trying to win, and then have AI dissect the proposal.
What looks good, what does it, what resonate, what doesn’t? This is where AI would be using AI if producer today not replace my thinking, but I would use it as an inherent sales coach to review my calls, review my meetings, as well as help me create a lot of those assets that often take a lot of time RFPs, proposals and then have it give feedback on the RFP and the proposal to see where I need to make it better.
That’s how AI can help you elevate sales. All right. Last question number five. What is the fastest way for a producer to open more doors today? Well, number one, if you have an established brand that’s going to help, but that’s going to take time for you to build it if you don’t have one today. But if you are in must win now mode, first thing I would have you do is I would have you pick up the phone, start calling every prospect on your list today and you keep calling until you don’t stop.
Number two, I would have you look inside your cell phone, go through all your contacts. I guarantee you have no less than five potential centers of influence inside your contacts on your cell phone. Identify them and ask if they know anybody that you could do business with. As long as you know who your ideal buyer is, that will become more effective.
And then I would start reaching out to some of your best clients and ask for introductions to other businesses they know that might find what you do effective or helpful. That’s it. Start making calls. Reach out to people who already know you and like you and ask for referrals, whether that’s the center of influence or that’s a client.
Referrals are the quickest path to cash when you are in need of a win today. I’m sorry LinkedIn isn’t going to be helpful tomorrow. Picking up the phone probably isn’t going to be all that effective. I’m going the path of referrals. Go to the people who already know you and like you, and can send you business to other people just like them.
Hands down. The number one strategy I can give you if you are in win now mode.