Episode 283: Fireside Chat - The Insurance Lab with Vlad Cherchenko (Recast)

You're about to ask for the sale, and I know exactly what you're about to say just by looking at you, because I know you're following that process. And when you have that repeatability where everybody in your organization is using the same sales process, where you can predict the next few words that they're going to say, then you don't have to micromanage people and try to personalize your coaching with everybody because, you know, everybody's following the same process. The importance of having the right sales process is to make sure that you're spreading the right message. And then when it comes to documenting it, That is the only way that you can take what's working and have it work at scale with many people.

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Autopilot Recruiting. Join over 1,200 State Farm agents in putting your recruiting on autopilot. Any successful insurance agent will tell you how important team is. Finding those rockstar team members doesn't happen when left to chance. It happens through consistent recruiting. You never know when you're going to lose a team member, and the key to an incredible team is constantly searching for the best talent. Autopilot Recruiting is a continuous recruiting service where you'll be assigned a recruiter that has been trained to recruit on your behalf every business day. This recruiter will take over and revamp your CareerPlug, send out assessments, do pre-screen phone interviews, and schedule your in-office interviews. All you need to do is to show up and give a thumbs up or a thumbs down. This ongoing service is extremely affordable and a no-brainer for taking your insurance agency to the next level. Listeners of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, go to autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code Club Capital to get started. Again, autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code Club Capital to get started. Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hemner, your host. Hey, did you know Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory for insurance agency owners in the country? They provide monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax prep. Check them out at club.capital today. On today's episode, we have Vlad Turchinkov. Vlad has been in the insurance industry since 2014, and he developed his own sales and referral process that helped him to be able to write over 150 policies in his 9th month and continue to write over 150 policies since then. In 2016, after a ton of agents reached out to him, he began his own coaching and consulting business, and he's been working with agents all across the country. I'm excited to dig into this episode with you. We talk about sales processes, compensation plans, and referrals, and a lot more. Here's my conversation with Vlad Tchurchenko. Are you ready to get out of the daily rut and begin working at your highest level? Coach P Consulting will help you do just that using the same strategies he did to sell over 500 life insurance policies in 2020 and on track for over 600 life insurance policies in 2021. No, this is not your regular one-and-done type coaching. You'll get personalized coaching 2 days a week, every week of the month, and you'll get a live look at the behind-the-scenes team training in an office performing at the highest level. Coach P currently has a 100% retention rate for everyone who joins, and hey, those numbers speak for themselves. Coach P will train your team alongside his own to show you the exact steps they are taking to achieve Chairman's Circle in 2 agencies, Exotic Travel, and Multi-Line Presidents Club. So whether your goal is to be the top of your local market or amongst the best in the country, this training will give you the strategies and tactics to get you there. For just $250 a month, you'll get high-level coaching each week from someone who is already getting it done at that level. His strategies work, and it's time to put them to work for you. Sign up at coachpconsulting.com and get 50% off your first month of coaching when you mention the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Again, that's coachpconsulting.com. Vlad, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Glad to be here. Thank you.

I'm excited to have you. So we always start with background and origin story. And so for people that don't know you, how did you get to where you are today?

Yeah, 2014, I left my corporate job. I was in retail looking to climb the corporate ladder. I was at Best Buy at that time. I was already in leadership. I was in a supervisor role, had a team to lead. And the next logical step was to be an assistant store manager and then the general manager. And then after that, maybe a district manager and then territory. And then you advance from there if that's what you want to do. And I looked at where I was in life at that time thinking, man, I'm working weekends, I'm working evenings. I am fine with working more than 40 hours a week, but dang it, if I'm going to work this many hours, I want to get paid more than what I'm getting paid right now. I was getting paid like $19 or $20 an hour. And part of why I was hired to lead that store was I was really good at sales as just a sales guy at my previous store. They said, hey, why don't you come to our store, which sucks. We're not really good in the computer departments. And why don't you train the sales guys on your sales process? And maybe that could help us hit the numbers, revenue numbers that we have for our store. And the first 6 months was an epic fail because I didn't know how to lead people. I didn't know how to come in and inspire people to hit their personal targets. It was more of what Vlad wants to hit as a department. So it was a painful first 6 months because I thought I could just come in and perform myself and then people would follow, but I realized that that That's not how you lead people. And luckily, one of the best things that happened to me was I went through a few managers and I saw different styles of leadership. And one of the managers taught me a few principles that I live to by this day, which is find out what the people that you lead care about and align their goals with your goals. And that was how I started looking at things. And shortly after, I with the help, of course, of many others. Our store was one of the best stores in the company, and this was right after being one of the worst stores in the entire company. So it was a good turnaround story. And then I looked around and I thought, man, why am I not getting paid more than any other supervisor at any other Best Buy? And I thought, let me look at different opportunities. What's out there? What can I do that isn't going to limit my income potential and also allow me to be a little more free with my schedule, not have to work evenings, not have to work weekends, not have to work nights. And as I was planning on getting married, starting a family, I thought, you know what, this is the time. If I ever make a move, this would be the time to do so. And I looked at being a real estate agent. I looked at being a loan officer. I looked at being an insurance agent, and I was going to be a real estate agent. But then I thought, you know what, let's fast forward 5 years from now. If I am a successful real estate agent, what does life look like then? And I realized that I'd be making a lot of money, making $30,000, $40,000, maybe $50,000 a month or more. But when I'm out traveling with my family, I'm walking on a beach and a buyer texts me and says, Vlad, we need to put in an offer right now on this house. Otherwise we are going to miss out on this home. What am I going to do? What if that becomes an issue? Then. And I thought, what type of business model can I be a part of where I can build a real business, where I can put the right people in place, make a good living, but not have to be in the day-to-day grind? Think of it more like of a franchise opportunity, Bradley. You look at Subway, you look at Chick-fil-A, you look at McDonald's, the owner doesn't run around doing all the work. They have the right people in place. And that's why I decided to go into the insurance industry, P&C Insurance, because I wanted to build a business like a franchise where I could hire a sales team, hire a service team, and have them do the work. And to keep a long story short, I decided not to be an agent right off the bat because I didn't know anything about insurance at that time. I didn't know how to sell insurance. I didn't know anything about comprehensive collision coverage, what full coverage meant. I didn't know anything. So I thought, let me be a team member first. And the company that I worked for has a program where you become a team member, you do that for 18 months, and then you then become an agent. And that's what I decided to do. And I really wanted to figure out a sales process that wouldn't allow me to just be an average salesperson, but be the very best in the entire company. Not just in my agency, not just in my state, not in our territory, but the entire company. So by my 9th month, I wrote 152 apps or policies in one month, and then I continued to write over 150 policies per month because I had a really good sales process and a good referral process that was repeatable. And that's when other agents took notice. Other local agents reached out and they said, hey, you have a great sales process. We hear, why don't you teach that to our team members? And I did that first just locally. And then I started traveling the country and I did that for agents and team members for the company that I was a part of. And then I started doing that for other companies like Farmers, Allstate, independent agents. And at that point I thought, you know what, this is really exciting. I love this whole consulting opportunity. I'm making a serious impact with agents, agents who by the end of their first year were planning on getting outta the business because they were just not making money. And now they are actually profitable and I made that happen. I helped them see things differently, helped implement a sales process in their agency. So I started seeing these case studies after case studies, agents after agents who I helped turn around. And I thought, you know what, let me do this full-time. And I went back to my company. I said, hey, I'd like to run my agency and be a consultant. They said, nah, you gotta pick one or the other. So I decided to go into full-time consulting and that's what I've been doing for the last 5 years. I've been working with captive agents, independent agents, mainly in the P&C industry. So not so much in life and health side. And now I'm in the process of opening up my own agency and basically going back to the original dream of where I was 7 years ago. Opening up an agency has always been the goal and it is happening now. So I'm going to be running an agency and running the consulting business. So that is where I'm at right now.

A true entrepreneur. So you've mentioned it a couple times, sales process. It doesn't matter if you're selling insurance or you're selling widgets, everybody understands intellectually, logically I should say, the importance of documenting a sales process. But very few people actually do it, and if they do do it, it ends up sitting on a shelf in a three-ring binder collecting dust. Why is it so important, number one, that we actually go through the hard work to create a sales process, number one. And then part two of that question is actually implementing said process into the organization across the board so that we can grow at scale.

Yeah. I think the first note I wanna make is that if you're going to document a process so that you can repeat it many times over, it better be a really good sales process. You can't have a person who sucks at sales document their process because what are they gonna do, Bradley? They're going to spread a crappy sales process amongst many other people. Bless you. So that's the first thing that I look at is if I'm going to document a sales process, it better be something that actually works. And the reason I wanted to document my sales process is because it worked and it worked exceptionally well. Had it have not worked really well, No one would've ever asked for my process. And Bradley, to be honest, I didn't document a process at first. I just did it automatically. But when agents started asking me, they said, Vlad, can you teach this to my team members? I thought, okay, what is it that I do in the beginning of the call? How do I start a phone call? And then when it comes to explaining car insurance and homeowner's insurance, how do I actually do that? Can I break that down to bullet points? Here's how you get into the conversation. Here's how you do this part. And here's how you get out of that conversation. When it comes to asking for the sale, how do I ask for the sale? What are the words that I use? What is the sequence in how I say certain things? And then once I started putting that on paper, I thought, okay, well, this I can teach. I can give this to 20 people. And if these 20 people all use this process, I can walk into the room and predict what you're gonna say, Bradley. You're about to ask for the sale, and I know exactly what you're about to say just by looking at you, because I know you're following that process. And when you have that repeatability where everybody in your organization is using the same sales process, where you can predict the next few words that they're going to say, then you don't have to micromanage people and try to personalize your coaching with everybody because, you know, everybody's following the same process. So I don't know if that answers your question, but the importance of having the right sales process is to make sure that you're spreading the right message. And then when it comes to documenting it, that is the only way that you can take what's working and have it work at scale with many people.

Yeah, it does. And there's a concept that I like, it's called the Rainmaker's Dilemma. A lot of people listening to this call as insurance agency owners, business owners, they did so, they grew their company. On the back of their ability to connect with customers really well—business development, sales, customer relations, client relations. Well, that can only get you so far, right? And so what ends up happening is people are unconsciously competent, right? And so whenever you described, you said, "OK, wait a minute. Let me kind of step back. Let me architect exactly what it is I do." I think it's that part of it that we just struggle with. Because whenever you put us into a conversation with someone, they're just kind of doing it naturally. They are following some sort of process. They just don't consciously recognize what that process is. Do you agree? Absolutely.

It's kind of like asking a professional athlete to coach you. They won't necessarily be the very best coach for you. Sometimes you can ask Michael Jordan, you can ask LeBron James or Steph Curry to coach you, but a lot of things that they might have done are, like you said, unconsciously competent, where they're not thinking about what they're doing. It's all done automatically. If you want to get better at something, you have to get that information from someone who can break it down into little steps so that you can repeat those things. And with the 4 stages of learning being first, not aware of— you don't know what you don't know, you're unconsciously incompetent. Then you start knowing what you don't know, you're consciously incompetent. And then the third stage is where a lot of people get stuck at, where They can do things, but they can do it proficiently only with efforts. They're consciously competent. And I think that's the part where if agents just spent more time, and I know this is a separate conversation, but if agents spent more time practicing the process with their team members, practicing the sales conversation every morning for 20 minutes, they practiced objections over and over and over again, then they can get to the unconsciously competent. Level, because if you know the process, if you have it in front of you, it doesn't mean you're going to execute it well. And when you— we're talking about having a process, we want it to be executed well. So just having a process is part of the equation. If you want everybody to use it, you need to make sure that there's repetition and practice involved. That ultimately is what gets people to the unconsciously competent stage.

You know, you actually bring up a really good point there. Somebody may be listening to this and say, "Okay, yeah, that makes sense, but reality is we don't want to strip away the personality of my team members. Like, I want them to still be able to be themselves. I don't want us to necessarily have to follow a script. It feels cold. It doesn't— yeah, I get all the repeatability stuff, but you know, with where we're located in my small town, that's not going to work." Okay, debunk that myth.

That is a myth. You said that right. Personality is not something that we want to remove from a conversation. You call AT&T, you call Verizon, you call some of these companies. You can tell that they're reading a script. They can't add any personality in there. They can't ask you how your day is outside of just that line that comes up on their screen. That is not what we're talking about. There are companies like I called ADT. ADT moved into a new home and I needed a security system. I would challenge all of the listeners of this podcast to just call ADT and say, hey, I'd like to get a security system for my home. If you don't live in a home, you live in apartments, make up an address for a house, give your parents' address, friend's address, and just listen to their sales conversation. It sounds very personalized. It sounds very assumptive, like there's an assumptive close built into their conversation, but it sounds very conversational. It does not sound scripted, yet they're using a sales process. That said, there are parts of a sales process where you just want to read the lines or have the lines memorized. And then there are other parts where you use your personality and you use your own word choice, your own examples to deliver that process. Let me give you an example. When I'm explaining car insurance to you, Bradley, I don't go line by line and say, here's what you're going to have for comprehensive, here's what you're going to have for collision, here's what you're going to have for bodily injury liability, here's what you're going to have for property damage liability. I don't go line by line and explain those things. Instead, what I do is I follow a process, and the process is very simple. I first identify two similarities, so two things that I'm going to keep the same in your coverage, and then I identify three gaps, so three things that I'm going to modify in your coverage and build a story around that. And explain to you how if you were involved in a car accident today, how keeping the coverage the same right now is what you have, how that might cause you to be financially burdened. Whereas if you had this better coverage, then you wouldn't be financially burdened, using the example that I would give. So that's a process, finding 2 similarities and 3 differences. But the way, Bradley, you go about executing the process You would just use your personality, use your examples, you use your own words, but you're still following a repeatable process and how you go over car insurance. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does. Absolutely. Because I think a lot of times when people hear script, they think about what you mentioned about the Comcast and the Verizon and the big companies that they're just reading off and you're like wanting to reach through the phone and say, just talk to me like a human being. I think I heard it said once, you know, it's more like a movie. They've memorized those scripts, but you don't see them reading off of a teleprompter, right? At all. So I think that's well said. You know, there's so many different places we could go with this conversation, but I was excited to talk to you today about compensation plans and just the importance around compensation and incentive plans. Look, there are as many different business owners out there as there are compensation plans. Let's be real. Okay. But just as you have architected in the right way to be able to have a sales process, you've been able to do so with what compensation plans actually matter and which ones don't. And actually, how do you want to do it in a way that's both beneficial to the business owner, the agency owner, as well as to the employee? And at the time of this recording, my goodness, across the country, people are really struggling, struggling to be able to find employees. So they understand that they're going to have to pay more. But that really gets into the— for the business owner, into a cash crunch. Right. And so there is in this dilemma, to use that word again, of what do I do? And so what are your thoughts? Number one, philosophical thoughts around compensation and incentive plans.

Three things when it comes to having a really good compensation plan. One is that if you're running a sales organization, philosophically, these are the big bullet point ideas. And if you want to see an actual compensation plan, I can give you a website later where people can go to and download the compensation plan. But what I look for in a compensation plan when it comes to running a sales organization is one that discourages poor performance and rewards excellent performance. Let me break that down. If you have a team member who is just average or below average, they're writing maybe 1 or 2 accounts a week. That's not the kind of team member that we want long-term, right? If their main job is to sell and they're closing 1 or 2 accounts a week in our industry and insurance, that's not enough. So I need to build a compensation plan that will make this person who's closing 1 or 2 accounts a week want to close 5 a week. And if they close 1 to 2 versus 5, there needs to be a significant payout. So what I do is for someone who's not closing 5 accounts a week or 1 a day, they get punished, so to speak, where they don't make any commission. They just get their base. Once they get to a point where they're closing 1 every other day, so the way I look at it is 10 accounts or 10 households, then they start getting paid commission. We pay 'em 1 amount per sale or for all the premium that they write. And once they get to the target amount where I want them to be at, which is 20 households for the month or 1 a day, Then I pay him a really high commission rate. So the goal is to have every team member feel like, okay, if I want to make the kind of money that I want to make working here, I need to produce at this high level because if I don't, I won't make the kind of money that I want to make. That is one part of it. You want to encourage high performance and reward excellent performance and then punish poor performance. And the people who aren't performing well, they're just going to quit. Right. Or they're going to get their act together and start performing well. So that's the first key component. The second component is it needs to be simple to the point where a team member can calculate the commission in less than 10 seconds. They can just pull up the premium amount they wrote and then run a few numbers through their calculator within 10 seconds to know exactly how much they're on pace to make that month. If they have to solve for a difficult formula, then it makes things difficult for team members to know at any given time throughout the month what they're on pace to make for that month. And you know exactly what I'm talking about. You've seen enough compensation plans, I'm sure, where you need a math degree to figure out how much you're going to get paid. That's not good. So it has to be simple, where a team member with less than 10 seconds can calculate their commission. So there are a lot of other components to it, but you're running a business as an agency owner, if you're a business owner, in some industries, it may be difficult to pay high commissions, a high base, pay for advertising, marketing, and profit on a team member in the first month. In other words, whatever my sales producer sells today, this month, I may not make money on them or may only make money on this person 6 months from now or a year from now. And the challenge then becomes, if I'm an agent where I'm not clear on when I start making money on my producer, then I'm going to be reluctant with growing my staff and adding more people. Because if I'm just running purely off a guess and I think, well, if Bradley sells this much, then I think I'm breaking even, but I'm not sure. I think I'm breaking even at the 6-month mark. When the policies renew. If there's that guess, that work that you're dealing with, you're not going to be confident with offering an aggressive compensation plan, and you're not going to be comfortable bringing on more team members. So two subpoints to this main component is that you as an agency owner need to know the math on when you're making money on a team member, on a staff member, and you need to know when you're doing that. And ideally in the insurance industry, that first renewal, that 6-month renewal on car insurance is where you want to break even or make a profit if possible. And there are compensation plans where you can do it in that way. Heck, you can even build it so that you break even or make a profit in the first month. So those are some of the key components that I think about. The first one is discourage poor performance. Make sure that you're rewarding great performance. The second point is make sure team members are able to calculate their commissions in less than 10 seconds. And the third one is you have to be able to know your math as a business owner, when you make money and how long it takes for you to make money.

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Yeah, I think compensation plans are often looked at as the reason of why people work in that organization. They say, well, if I pay a higher base than everybody else, then people should come here and work for me. If I pay the highest commission rates, then people should pick my agency or my business versus my competitors. And that's a very naive outlook on running an agency because team members look for more than just that. So you can have the greatest compensation plan out there and you outpay everybody else, but if the culture sucks in your organization, A-players won't want to work for you despite you having a good compensation plan. And if there is no growth trajectory where people don't see how they can advance within your agency and into leadership roles and other roles within the business, they might completely dismiss your compensation plan. So that's the first thing to keep in mind, is that compensation plan is just part of why people would want to work in your organization. But when it comes to that exact compensation plan, I've evolved over the years on my thinking when it comes to how to pay people. And a few more recent things that I've been thinking a lot about is the following. One is, especially in the climate that we're in right now, it's hard to find people because people are getting paid for sitting at home. I have started offering a significantly higher base than what I would normally pay by adding an extra $1,000 or maybe $1,500 to their normal base. So instead of them making up that through commissions, I just pay them a higher base. But what that does is allows me to recruit higher quality people, people who normally wouldn't work for me if I just offered them $2,000 as a base, right? But now I'm offering, say, $3,500 as a base. When people look at that, it attracts that employee that works at Best Buy as a supervisor, or maybe works at Verizon, AT&T, that would've never worked for me because they just see that base and they say, well, I know I can make that difference up in commissions, but they just like the security of having the base. So what that does is it allows me to recruit better team members, the A-players. And when those A-players start working for me, I already know they're going to kick butt. So they're going to pay for themselves because good people don't cost you money if they're performing at a high level, if they're selling enough. So upping that base has been one of those recent aha moments for me. And then the second thing is paying benefits like health insurance. And that's one of the things that Amazon does really well. They could flip a switch. They did this a few times last year where they hired 100,000 people very quickly. Amazon is not the greatest place to work at. They work their people really hard. But one of their biggest selling points is that you get to get health insurance benefits if you're full-time in month one, day one, first day on the job. So a lot of people, very talented individuals, go end up working for Amazon because of the health insurance components. So then you ask yourself, can I afford that? And there are different vendors, and we can talk about this at a later time, but there are vendors that can give you really good health benefits for your staff at a very affordable rate. I'm talking less than $500 a month, less than $300 a month. And by the way, you don't even have to pay the full amounts for health insurance. You can just contribute to their health plan that they have. But just by adding that piece to your benefit plan, the having the fact that you offer health insurance will yield another group of people that may have never applied to work in your organization. So they might be looking at you and saying, I see that they offer a good base, but they don't offer health insurance. Let me work for that other guy. Let me work for that other girl or apply at this other organization. So those are just a few things to keep in mind. And last point on that, when you opt for a higher base, when you offer health insurance, you're going to attract a higher caliber set of candidates, and those people will pay for themselves, where the extra cost or expense of having health insurance or having higher base won't be a factor as much as if you hired just average B and C players, because those are the ones that will cost you money if you have— give them a higher base and pay for health insurance.

Reduces turnover too, which by and of itself, if you reduce turnover, it reduces your expense. I mean, turnover is incredibly costly, more costly than what we would actually probably all want to know if we actually quantified it in our organizations. I think that's so true. I think what you just mentioned there, if we go back, this is pre-COVID. So, I mean, let's go back to 2019. The market was already shifting. That the paying an $18,000 base salary, $20,000 base salary, that was just going out the window. No way. People were not gonna stand for that. And then COVID has just accelerated it. And so you're right. I mean, $24,000 or $27,000 base salaries, people are like, I'm not gonna do it. I can go somewhere else. You know, I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago. I had to go by In-N-Out Burger, right? And so I went there and they had a sign that they were recruiting. $22 an hour starting out. Now, granted, it was San Francisco, I get it. But I mean, still, it was at In-N-Out Burger. And so it just made me think, wow, we have to think differently. Everything you just described there to me is a mindset and then backing it up with, if I get better people, they will pay for themselves. I think that is an important point that I hope that folks don't miss.

Yeah. And most companies that like big corporations, ZoomInfo, Salesforce, A lot of these Silicon Valley companies are having their sales staff and their engineers all work remote, and they're offering a hybrid opportunity. In fact, I just interviewed a guy 2 hours ago and he's saying, since COVID I've been working from home. I haven't worked from the office. And he asked if that's an option working here. And I thought, well, I have this phenomenal candidate who's asking to work from home. He's not even asking to work from home. He's asking for a hybrid model. Do I like that? No, I want him to work from the office, but at the same time, I know that there needs to be some room for negotiation where maybe the first 2 months he's working from the office as he's getting trained. Once he hits his sales targets, demonstrates that he can run independently, then yeah, we can do a hybrid model. Because if I don't offer that as an option, it doesn't matter how well I pay them. It doesn't matter what the growth trajectory looks like. He's going to pick a different company that offers a better option. So compensation and what you pay them is just parts of a big picture of why people would want to apply to work for you, and more importantly, stay with you once they're working for you. Well, here's what I picked up so far.

Number one, have a sales process, but make sure the one that you document is good. Just having one is not good enough. You actually need to have one that actually works. Number two, with our compensation plans, we need to think about and understand When are we actually gonna get a return on investment? Be willing to pay people higher base salaries, but make sure that we reward that high-level performance and discourage the poor performance. And then also consider benefits packages, all within the context of understanding we're gonna get better people, and through those better people, we're gonna get a return on investment. Love that so far. All right. We gotta talk about referrals. So everybody, I don't, again, it's kind of goes back to any business says, yeah, we wanna write a lot of business from referrals, good ROI, right? We've been talking about return on investment. What is your thoughts around a referral process?

Yeah, the way I look at referrals is I don't want to get a list of 10 names and numbers from you, Bradley, on who to call. I don't want all of your family members on a sheet of paper and their phone numbers because when I call them, it's still a cold call. Yes, I can drop your name and say, hey, Bradley gave me your number. Are you interested in getting an insurance quote? But that's not as effective as you telling your sister to call me, because when she calls me, that's a done deal, right? Because you've talked me up. The likelihood of me closing a lead like that is significantly higher than any internet lead, live transfer, any other form of marketing. And when your sister does business with me and I ask for a referral, then guess what? The likelihood of her sending me a referral is significantly higher because she came to me as a referral. So that's the first thing that I want to establish is I want people to send their friends and family members to me. Okay, how do I do that? If I just ask you for a referral, Bradley, if I say, are you happy with the service I provided? And let's say you were really happy and I said, can you send me your friends and family members that— or do you have friends or family members that you can refer my way? What would you say if you were happy with my— okay. And then I ask, all right, well, would you be comfortable sending them over my way? I'll send you my contact card with all my information. Can you ask them to call me? What would you say to that? Sure. Okay, sure, send it to me. Okay, so I send you the contact card. What is the likelihood— and just be honest— on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being heck yeah, I'm gonna do that right now as soon as I'm off the phone, to 1 I'm not going to do that at all. I was just lying to Vlad just to make him feel good. Where are you in that scale? What's the likelihood of you picking up the phone and calling your sister and saying, hey, you got to call this Vlad guy and get insurance quote from him? He just helped me out. 4. Okay, now how do I get you to a 10, or as close as possible to a 10? This is what I would do. I'll first give you the in-between step, then I'll give you the final step. What if I said, Bradley, I'll give you a $10 gift card if you send me your friends and family members. Does that number go up from a 4 or does it stay at a 4? I mean, maybe it goes to a 5, maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Okay. So what if I did this? I said, well, who do you know that I could help you? Say your sister Amanda. I say, well, look, we give you a $10 gift card every time you send us a referral. So why don't I just give you one now? If I'm in person, I just give it to you, or if I'm doing a Zoom call, I email it to you, but I need to make sure that you open up your email and you see that $10 Starbucks gift card or Amazon gift card. So I'll say something to the fact of, Bradley, what do you prefer a $10 gift card for? Amazon, Starbucks, or just a Visa gift card? What do you prefer?

I'm drinking Starbucks, so we're going to say Starbucks.

Great. So I just sent you a gift card for Starbucks. It was sent to bradley@gmail.com. Did you get that email? And you'll say, oh yeah, I see it here. I say, oh, go ahead and click on it. You open it. And then I say, do you see that barcode there? You say, yeah. Okay. The next time you're driving through a Starbucks drive-through, show them that barcode and you'll have $10 in that card. So what did I just do there? I walked you through, I dumbed it down to the simplest way possible so that A, I know you got the gift card. Two, you opened it and you saw the barcode. So the next time you go through a drive-through, guess what? You're gonna have that barcode. It's gonna have my contact information, all that in there. Okay? Let's say you end up using that gift card the same day, the next day. Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm going to follow up with you via text or, or call you 3 days after I give you that gift card and say, hey Bradley, I have yet to hear from your sister Amanda. She hasn't contacted me to get a quote. Have you had a chance to share my number with her? And you're gonna think, if you didn't do that, you're gonna think, oh crap, let me go and contact her, send her Vlad's contact card. Now you have an obligation because I fronted that gift card. I'm basically guilt-tripping you to do that. So I do a follow-up 3 days from the original time that I send out the gift card and 7 days later from the original time that I send out the gift card, call and text. And what that does is forces you to feel like, man, I owe Vlad something. So where are you on a scale of 1 to 10 if we went through this process? I followed up 3 days later, 7 days later through text, and I gave you that gift card. On a scale of 1 to 10, what's the likelihood of you forwarding my contact card to your sister Amanda? It's really strong.

Really strong. Really strong. Yeah. Real wife's name is actually Amanda. So. Oh, yeah. Good guess. No, no, no. I think that's fantastic. I've heard a lot of different referral strategies over my career, as most people have. I've never heard that one. I think that's really good because it shifts it in the mind of the prospect of who you're trying to get the referral from.

I really like that. Yeah. And let me add some more pieces to this because this is what makes this work. And this is how I justify fronting $10. Okay. So if I'm going to do the follow-up process diligently, the 3 and 7-day follow-up, here's what you can expect. When you do this over a large group of people, what you'll find is that 1 out of 3 people that you send a gift card to will send you a referral. So if I'm sending out 3 gift cards to get 1 incoming call, how much should I pay to get that incoming call, Bradley? Hmm. It's $10 times 3 gift cards. That's $30. $30 to get an incoming call for an insurance quote or whatever business you might be in. That's a steal, right? Steal. Because the close rate opportunity is significantly higher in this type of lead versus someone else. So $30 for an incoming referral call. Heck yeah, I'm gonna do that as much as possible. So what you do there is you're building a system where people become advocates of your agency, your business. They start sending you business, and those that come to you as a referral are far more likely to send you a referral. And get this, when you send me your sister as a referral, I'm going to call you back and say, Bradley, thank you for sending me so-and-so Sally. To get a quote. She was pleasant to work with, and I'm going to ask for another referral. Who else do you know that I can help the same way? If you've been trained to do it once and you've done that before, you've sent me a referral, the likelihood of you sending me another person is significantly higher because you've done it before. So I just double down on the people who have already sent me referrals, and I want to see how many I can get out of them. So that's another key component in making this work. But last thing I'll say to this is if you're going to front $10 gift cards, make sure you do the follow-ups. If you don't do the follow-ups, it won't work. Yeah. 1 out of 10 people that you give a gift card to but never follow up with will send you a referral, which is still $100 for an incoming call. It's not terrible, but it's a lot better if you do the 3 and 7-day follow-up. And the more you can automate this process by setting up reminders, text messages that are templated, the easier this will be for you to execute.

I was listening to just one of the greatest internet marketers in the world, and he sends a lot of emails. And somebody was challenging him one day on a call that he turns into a podcast. His name is Frank Kern, by the way. And I know Frank said, you know, Frank, yeah, yeah, he's awesome. And Frank said, they were basically saying, Frank, you send a lot of emails. Why do you send a lot of emails? He said, well, I'm going to tell you something. People are not looking at your stuff. Like you think that they're looking at it. They're not looking at your stuff. You have to follow up with people on an ongoing basis. It just made me really think about that, the importance of follow-up, because the times that we think we're following up versus whenever it's on— people are busy. People are busy.

People are personalized. Yeah, personalized follow-up is what makes this really successful. If I just follow up with you, an automated text 3 days from now saying, hey Bradley, I haven't gotten a referral from you, 'Who do you know that you can refer my way?' is different than saying, 'Hey Bradley, I wanted to make sure that the gift card worked for you. If it didn't, let me know. I'll help you work that out. Secondly, I have not heard from your sister Sally yet. She hasn't contacted me to get a quote. Have you shared my contact information with her?' Just by using her name, saying it's your sister, you read that text, you read that email, and you think, 'All right, it looks like it was Like written just for me, not for anybody else. And that results in a higher return rate or response rates than just a generalized follow-up. Same thing with voicemails. When you're following up with people, it's one thing to say, hi, this message is for Bradley. We got your request for insurance quote. Give us a call back before 5 o'clock. This is the number. We have great rates. Bye. Versus saying, hey Bradley, we, Received a request for a car insurance quote, looks like, uh, for a 2019 Tesla and a Prius, 2012 Prius. Our rates have recently changed, or whatever your rest of the message is. But the fact that you just use the vehicles and your information, your name, ups the likelihood of them giving you a callback. So personalization is very key with any kind of follow-up.

We've covered a lot. I can't believe we've been on, on the call already for 45 minutes, but sales process, compensation plans, and referrals. We're going to go into E9 rapid fire here in just a second. But Vlad, somebody wants to get their hands on that compensation plan that you mentioned earlier, where would you point them to? And then also, if somebody wants to get in touch with you and see how you can help them, where would you point them to as well?

Yeah, so if you have someone to write this with, maybe in your notes in your phone— nobody's carrying pen and paper— take out your phone and write this down: insurance-sales-lab.com. InsuranceSalesLab.com is the website where you can learn more about what I do with insurance agents and my sales process. You can just get it from that website. You can see a free training immediately. Now, if you want the comp plan, you can ask for that when you're on that website, or you can simply text the word comp, C-O-M-P, comp to 503-864- 6974. Again, if you just text the word COMP, C-O-M-P, to the phone number 503-864-6974, it'll ask for your email as a response, and then we'll send you that comp plan. Awesome.

We'll also put that— make sure that we put that in our episode show notes so that people get that. Vlad, all right, you ready for the world-famous E9 rapid-fire questions? Ready.

What is the last book that you read? Last book that I read is called Automatic Customer. It talks about how to change— not change, but how to run a subscription-based business versus anything else.

Von Wierlo, he's a great author. What's the book you recommend the most to other insurance agency owners?

If they read only one book and nothing else, I would read E-Myth Revisited. Starts kind of slow. You got to get into part 2 of the book for you to really start getting the aha moments. But I'll cheat and I'll give you a second one. The second one is called Four Disciplines of Execution. So the Four Disciplines of Execution works hand in hand. Different authors, different organizations with E-Myth Revisited. E-Myth Revisited talks about how to treat your business and build like a franchise prototype where you're not the operator, you're not the person who does all of the things in the business like we see so often business owners do, but you put the right people in the right place. You put the right systems before even the right people in the right place. And then the book Four Disciplines of Execution talks about how to make that be part of your operational Workflow, how to implement your systems in your agency. Love that.

All great books. All great books. Must reads if you're a business owner. I totally agree. What's your favorite travel destination?

My honeymoon location. It's called the Finest Playa in Cancún, Mexico. I was there 6 years ago, June 26th. My wife and I got married and we went shortly after, and it was a brand new resort at that time, all inclusive. We loved it. And we will probably go there within the next year. So I don't know what the restrictions look like now. But yeah, that's our next place to go to.

When you're not working, what do you love to do?

If I'm not working, and I'm not working out, then I am with my kids. I have two kids, a 3 and a 2-year-old. And that's it. So whatever I do is usually with them. And I love it. That's my new life I subscribe to.

If you were on a plane, you could sit next to anyone dead or alive for 10 hours on a plane, who would it be?

I'm going to use someone alive. I'm going to do from now. There's so many names that come to mind, but it could be Jeff Bezos. I know he's hated by so many people for whatever reason that may be for them. In the past, I would have said Elon Musk, but he's a visionary. Yes, I like him more, but I think I will learn more from Bezos because he, he's a systems guy, he's a process guy, still a visionary. And I would like to ask him a lot of questions that have been lingering in my mind for a long time because I think that he's built something that very few people have done, and, uh, it's something that will last for a really long time, and it's a formula that he continues to repeat over and over and over again with everything that he does. And I'd like to pick his brain on that.

Recently saw on social media somebody posted his very first job posting. Oh, I saw that online. Did you see that? That was pretty amazing. If you've not seen that, just Google Amazon Jeff Bezos first job posting. It was incredible. I think it even said something like equity ownership. It's like, oh yeah, yeah.

You know what I was thinking about? Doing this morning. Actually, I was getting ready. I thought, what if I just copy and paste that job and just change the company name and the job name? Because the first thing he says there is well-funded startup or something like that. And I just want to see how it would play out today on Indeed.

It's a good idea. It's a good idea. I like it. I like it for sure. What did you learn about yourself the most during the COVID-19 pandemic?

To me, I have to to stick to my principles and care about what I can control and focus on that. I think during COVID so much happened in the outside world with politics and elections and all that stuff that people took that to heart and they spent a lot of time thinking about that. It's important to think about, it's important to plan ahead, it's important to do all of that, but they made it their their life to think about that, talk about that, and they forgot about themselves and their families and where they're going. For me, I constantly remind myself that there are things that I can control, and those are things I should zoom in on and focus on. And there's things that are outside of my control that I should let other people handle. So mind my own business, Vlad, and that's where my mind is right now.

Other than the apps native on your iPhone or Android device, what is your favorite tech tool you use every day?

My Oura Ring. So I don't know if you've ever seen this ring before. It tracks your sleep. I'd say that is my favorite technology piece that I own, I think, because it just shows how much time I spend in REM sleep, deep sleep, and gives me data. And I'm a data nerd, so it gives me that.

Okay, fill in the blank. 5 years ago, I I had no idea this would be so hard.

5 years ago, I never thought hiring good people would be so hard. I think a lot of people go into any business thinking, yeah, I just build a good business and people will come to me. It's a very competitive space, and I think that was something that I underestimated. Luckily, now I have a process and system in place, but that's something I grossly underestimated. Last question.

This is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast after all. What is the best piece of leadership advice you've ever received?

I think John Maxwell puts this really well, or he says that your company will only grow as much as you grow. In other words, when you look at your leadership lid and how high that lid is, your organization will stop at that lid unless someone else runs your organization. But if you're running your organization and you're not reading these books that we just talked about, if you're not listening to this podcast, if you're not surrounding yourself with people who are winning at the highest level and you're doing the opposite, you're not reading, you're not listening to these podcasts, but you're Netflixing every night, you're hanging out with people who are always complaining, they're not looking to achieve great things, then you're never going to grow and nor will your business, nor will your organization. But if you're growing and the people around you are seeing that growth, they're going to be pulled up with you as well. So I think that to me was great insight from Mr. John Maxwell that I live by and absolutely respect that mindset.

Vlad, it's been a pleasure. Hope to have you back on in the future. Absolutely.

Thanks for having me on.

I really enjoyed that conversation with Vlad. You know, there are a few things I mentioned actually in the podcast itself that really stood out to me. Number one is whenever he said, hey, if you're going to document a sales process, you want to make sure that it's a good one. And I think that making it explicit instead of it being implicit is really important and saying, wait a minute, is this the absolute best sales process that I can get my hands on? And if it's not, and we haven't proven to be able to have success with this documented sales process, Man, go out and get, make sure that you get one that is actually going to work at scale in your organization. No. 2, whenever we began to kind of talk about the importance of, you know, not just scripting—nobody wants to be able to read a script—but the importance of practicing so where it becomes unconsciously competent, not just for yourself, for your team members. I loved how whenever we began to talk about compensation and incentive plans, No. 1, make sure that it discourages poor performance, rewards great performance. Number 2, it's simple. And then number 3, just know your math and know whenever you're going to be able to get an ROI. We went on to talk about, you know, some of the things that are really important. It's just a really challenging time right now for a lot of different businesses, let alone insurance agency owners, and making sure that we take a look at and rephrasing our minds around what really should we be paying from a base salary and even some of the benefits. So I hope that, that some of the things we shared there challenges your thinking and mindset. And then lastly, got a ton out of the referral process. I love that it puts the obligation back on the person you're asking for the name. And so, you know, it's one thing to be able to get 10, 15, 20 names. And while that is certainly successful, I love his different approach to that. So those are a few things that I picked up. Glad to have Vlad on the podcast. Hope to have him back on in the future. Make sure that you go to insurance-sales-lab.com, insurance-sales-lab.com, and then make sure if you would like to get a copy of that compensation plan, you text 503-864-6974 and put in COMP. Coach P Consulting— if you're ready to take your agency to the next level, then there's nobody better who's getting it done at the highest level than Coach P Consulting training and development for your team twice a week, every single week. As always, big thanks to Club Capital, Micah, the entire founder team over at Club Capital for everything they do to support the podcast. If you do not know and have not called Club Capital to see how they can help you with your financial analytics, your outsourced CFO services, or your tax preparation, Go to club.capital today, book your no-obligation demo. Hey, they're the biggest, largest accounting firm for insurance agency owners in the country. Why would you not work with the best? Big thanks to our sponsors as always. Big thanks to all of you for listening. I'm grateful for the time that you spend, whether you're driving a car, hitting golf balls, cutting grass, or just in between, maybe at the grocery store, whatever you're doing, we're grateful that you would spend a little bit of time with us and continue to share on social media. Hey, would you do me a favor? Would you go on to Apple iTunes and leave us a review? That helps us to be able to help more people to be able to find our podcast. Until next episode, everyone, lead well.