The insurance sales cycle has changed. If you’re not building brand awareness with your ideal prospects, you’re quickly falling behind.
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Video Transcript:
This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.
How you can adapt to it so you can have more success with it. So let’s dive in. Let’s start with pillar number one. The first phase of the modern day sales cycle looks a lot like the traditional. It starts with a suspect, right? It starts with somebody who does not know who you exist. They don’t. To know how you’re different than anybody else.
They can see that you’re a broker. They may not even know you exist today. The first thing you have to do, if you want to leverage the modern day sales cycle to its fullest, is you got to get clear about who that suspect is. Who are you trying to attract in your world? Stop trying to call just any suspect.
Who are you trying to do business with? Hello. One is clarity. Get clear about who you’re trying to attract in their world. What are their demographics? Who are you trying to go after from a size perspective? Industry perspective? Geography? What decision makers are you trying to get the attention of? That’s step number one. Before you even try to turn a suspect into a prospect, you got to be clear on who the suspect is you’re trying to attract.
What do you want to be known for? What problems do you want to solve? What are your top prospects today? Need to know to hire you? If you’re going to build a content strategy to turn suspects into prospects? It has to start with leaning into content that’s built around what you do best, and what top prospects need to know to hire you.
Be an educator. This is how you build awareness. This is the first bridge. Remember what I said about the outdated sales cycle? Literally, the bridge between suspect and prospect was cold. Outreach. That’s it. Cold activity. Well, now the bridge between suspect and prospect is actually awareness. You have to start by building awareness with those prospects using the marketing channels that exist today.
Social media, email, webinars, podcasting, whatever you name. Public speaking. Right. So that’s how you master plan number one, you got to be clear on the suspect, and you have to create content that build awareness for you so they know you exist. Now step number two. Now you turn awareness into a prospect. How do you do that? By leveraging some of the activities you’re doing today.
Because you’ve built awareness. Maybe it’s sending DMs on LinkedIn. Now that people know you exist, suspects know you exist. I promise your activity is going to become more effective. This we call capture pillar two is capture pillar one is clarity and content. You got to be clear on where you’re going after. You got to create content to make them aware that you exist.
Pillar two is capture. Now you got to turn them into a prospect. By the way, my definition of a prospect is at the point they accept a conversation with you, a meeting, then they become a prospect. Up until that point, they are not a prospect, but you do this through capture and if you’ve done a good job building awareness capture becomes more effective.
Step three is credibility. Better yet, pillar three is credibility. Just because they’re a prospect does not mean your job is done. Even though you’re they’re in your pipeline now, you still have to work hard to build credibility with the prospect. The best way to do that is to continue using your content on social media, on email, on webinars, however you want to distribute to them on LinkedIn, you’ve got to find a way to continue to build credibility with these prospects, and content is the best way to do that.
Kind of starting to figure out content is the secret sauce to this whole thing. Pillar three is about credibility. Now that their prospect, your number one priority, is to build credibility. It’s not to go get a bunch of quotes and hope you block the right markets. Now you have to build credibility. How do you do that? You continue to teach them, and I would urge you to teach them as hard as you can and as much as you can.
Almost to the point. But they need somebody like you to hire them. I’m going to take that risk because I know I’m going to get rewarded more than I’m going to get used. But. Number three is all about credibility, which leads to power number four. Now that you have credibility established, you have got to have a defined and repeatable sales process to convert them into a sale.
And these appointments will become more sales more consistently. The four pillars. Pillar number one is clarity. When you have a list of suspects, be clear about who you’re actually trying to attract and use content to build awareness with them. Pillar two is the capture phase. Now that you’ve built awareness, you still have to put in the activity. It might be the calls in the emails to turn suspects into prospects, but it’s going to be more effective because you’re creating awareness.
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.