EXCLUSIVE Roofing Leads From Insurance Agents? Interview w/ The Industry Expert Matt Danskin

Alright. Hey Matt, thank you for joining us today. Matthew Danskin here, the creator of the Restoration referral system. Matt, thanks for joining.

Yeah, thanks for having me on, man.

Awesome. So for anyone that doesn't know Matt yet, Matt has an awesome system designed to help you develop referral relationships with insurance agents. So we connected on a common thing. Actually he reached out because he saw some things he thought might that he could do different or better and we had a conversation, said, hey, let's just share this with our audience because at the end of the day, who you serve, who I serve, we have some mutual clients that are doing this stuff together and having great results. So let's share some wisdom. So today we're going to be covering some tips and actionable resources to help you connect with and generate referrals. A lot of referrals from insurance agents. So Matt, thanks again for being here.

Yeah, absolutely.

So first question for you, Matt.

Okay.

How many, what percentage of people do you think are actually actively pursuing relationships, referral relationships with insurance agents.

In terms of like roofing contractors? I would say legitimately putting in some effort. 10%.

Yeah, that might be. That might be.

Yeah, it might be. And then, and then especially my sampling is kind of off because the people that talk to me are the people that are, that are into it. Right. So but yeah, it's not a lot for sure.

Awesome.

And there's a lot of old ways to talk today for everyone listening. This will apply to reps, individual reps and owners. Obviously Matt's system is designed for owners with teams ready to rock and roll. Correct, Matt, before we go in there, and obviously folks are familiar with my stuff that is usable for an individual sales rep in the field. We're going to talk about some of the fundamentals of being successful old way of doing business. So you and I have seen some things circulating. I want to dispel some of the common misconceptions of what people think it means to network with an insurance agent. Can I pass this to you on? Like the old inefficient way of doing things?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know what people are used to is a box of donuts and a stack of business cards. You know, you go in, you let them know you're A plus rated with the Better Business Bureau, your triple double platinum preferred with your single manufacturer, you're going to do a really great job for them. And it's the same thing that they've heard from the 50 contractors before you and the 50 after you. And so people start to get creative. And I'm going to bring this guy lunch, I'm going to take him golfing, I'm going to do, buy my policies from him, do all this sort of stuff to try to compete on that level. And that's really, for me, I was in the same place, you know, I've brought in a box of donuts to an agent and he was like, yeah, go ahead and set them there. And I literally had to set them on top of somebody else's box of donuts. And I felt like a freaking idiot. So I mean, I think that to me kind of personifies the old way of going about this. Yeah.

And it's what everybody thinks. That's the thing. It's like, how do you stand out and be different? And I thought the same thing at first as well. You know, you do your routes, you do your stop ins and then it's funny, the video I just filmed before this was all about mindset shifts and getting into the mind of our customer. And in this case, I'd love to talk about the philosophy getting into the mind of an insurance agent. Because if you do that, you think about someone that drops off donuts, it literally feels like a bribe. Like, here's $9 worth of donuts. Send me thousands of dollars of work and trust your customers and your relationships with your clients with, with a stranger. Because I brought you donuts. Like when you say it out loud, it's kind of silly.

Well, here's what's even more ridiculous is imagine the tables are turned and you're referring business to an insurance agent every day, all the time, constantly. And his phone rings and somebody goes, hey, I need a roof. Do you know a roofer? And he goes, no. Hey, by the way, Adam, here's some donuts. What are you going to do? You going to want to punch them in the throat, Right? Like, you know, so that's what I look at the relationships out of balance. There's one person providing a lot of value, the other person providing very little value.

Yeah, yeah, it needs. Well, that'll get bring us to the philosophy that we're going to talk about. One thing I do want to get out of the way for people when they, when they hear referrals, immediately they think of money.

Sure.

We need to get this out of the way. Can you pay an agent?

Nope.

Hell no. By the way, for anyone listening, I need an answer to that one.

And that's not to say that it's never been done, that people can't do it. You absolutely should not do it. And it is bad news. It's going to. There's some horrible implications for that. But even if you don't get caught, it's just a dirt bag thing to do. And there's better ways to compete and.

More legal and ethical ways as well. And they're depending on some agents. If you even offer that you could just don't, it won't go well. And I've seen people talk about paying agents and it's against their code of ethics because now the. Just so everyone knows, and correct me if I'm wrong, Matt, a homeowner cannot have their decision influenced on who they choose by the insurance company or representative of the insurance company. So if the, if anything ever went to court and the. It was a bad faith claim, for example, or something, or something goes wrong, the contractor goes to court and then the homeowner says, my agent told me to work with them. And then the agent is up there and finds out they've been paid. That's a bad. That's bad.

Yeah, well, it's not, it's not such a big deal if they say, hey, I referred this agent or this contractor, that's not a big deal. But where the money comes in, now there's incentive, now it gets, it goes from fine to dirty real quick.

Yeah. So what we're going to talk about now is the philosophy. Like what? Getting into the mind of the agent. So what is it that, you know, we have on here the needs of an agent? What does. I'm curious, your stuff, because we haven't talked about this before filming, but I'd love to hear from your mind because mine might be the same, might be different, but what do you see the needs are of that agent at this time of seeing point?

You know, I've been looking at that a lot and for me, I. I've mostly taught on the mechanics. Here's all the steps that you go out and do. But I realized that people need to understand what they're trying to achieve, what they're trying to do. And I can share that stuff with people that aren't my clients. And you can take it and try to figure something out from there. But you've got to start with these needs. And I look at them from the bottom up. So least, least important of these motivators going up. And so the first one that I look at or the sixth one that I look at, I guess you could say is convenience. If all the other motivators are equal, you and another contractor are exactly dead even but you're more convenient. You win.

Right.

And so that. That's kind of an easy one. From there, we. We kind of go up from not just that convenience, but the integrity and transparency. And that seems like a big deal. And that is a big deal, as a contractor should be a big deal to you. But in terms of the agent's priorities, they want integrity, they want transparency into what you're doing. Some of them more, some less. Above that, customer service and communication.

Yeah.

If they're hearing back from their customers that you're not communicating, that you're not serving them well, the faucet's turning off. Right.

Whatever it's worth, that's the number one complaint of contractors in general is communication.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Contractors are typically not good at that. So those three things are. Obviously, all of those things are important. But even if you do all three of those things well and you don't have the next thing, then you're done. That's quality work. If you can't put on a good roof, you can't do whatever it is your trade. It doesn't matter what else you do. And that's the top priority. That's a thing that you're giving to the client. Everything above there is something that you're giving actually to the agent or doing for the agent. And so you, in one of the videos that I saw that you did, you really touched on what I call number two really well, which is client retention. That's important. That's the majority of the money that they make every year is through their renewals. And so they're always keeping an eye on that ball. And they, they don't want to lose clients. They know that when a claim is happening, that's the most likely time that they're going to lose that client. And that contractor can help them prevent that from happening. They can be their advocate, just the same way that they're your advocate for helping get you the job. But above all that, you know, I like to say insurance agents should really be called insurance salespeople, because the number one thing that they want more than anything else, just like a roofing sales guy wants to sell roofs, is they want new business, they want referrals. And so that's kind of the basis for the process that I teach is starting off with that understanding what do they want? What's the most important? And of course, the next step is how do I deliver on all those things? How am I going to fulfill the needs that they have?

Yeah, you got to follow through. You Got to follow through.

Yeah. There's a lot of things that you've got to do to check all those boxes and, and do so better than the, than your competition. But if you, if you don't have a roadmap, you don't even know what you're aiming at, you're probably not going to hit it.

That's true. It's very true. And I want to touch on one piece even deeper than what you brought up. Cause everything you brought up, I 100% agree with. And when you talked about their needs and this escalating piece from convenience to doing quality work, to showing up to doing a quality install, to understanding the retention piece. People switch insurance when they're not happy with a claim. That's why they have insurance. It's for a claim. And then something happens. They're like, this company didn't treat me well. And the agent is often jumping into recovery mode. Not all, but many times. Because they want to be there for the claim. And it's a distraction. It doesn't make them money because like you said, they're salespeople. They want to get their book of business. So this is an opportunity to keep that recurring revenue from a policy. Excuse me. Yeah, from a policy from a client or that client's going to jump ship. So it's like when your relationship is rocky, you know, you might invest more time in your relationship and stepping up. Here's what I'm going to do differently this time. You know, you've all heard we've all been in a situation like that.

I'm sorry, baby, I didn't mean it.

Exactly. And we're going to put in more effort. And that agent, the smart agents. I know we were going to touch on this at the end, but I'm going to move some of this up just for the time being. It's important to know the right agent because the right agents, there are some agents that don't care. They just don't. Out of sight, out of mind. It's on them. That's with the big company name. I'm going to stay away from names. But you know, I wrote the policy, the adjuster went out, that's with them. But the right agent, the people who really care about relationships, which at the end of the day, this is all relationship thing. Yeah, both ways. When you have that relationship to support it, those agents will get your commitment to the relationship as well because they're also serving their customers. So don't think that every agent is right to get business from. Because they're not.

No, definitely not. Yeah, I actually used to have a. Again, I won't drop a name. A. An agent of a carrier that went to the same gym as me. And he wore that, that company's shirt every day at the gym. I think it was like his advertising or whatever, which was screaming to me, stay away, stay away. So we got to talking in the sauna. He's like, oh, what do you do? And I was like, I'm in construction. He's like, oh, okay. What kind? I was like, you know, just general contracting. You know, like, I did not want to even like tell him I was a roofer to even engage on that level because it's just not worthwhile. If you're going to grow your business, grow it in an area that you can make efficient revenue, not in one where you're going to be getting a reinspect every time and battling uphill. And also, that customer who chose the cheap insurance is the guy who doesn't have money to pay his deductible or pay for upgrades. The people that paid for quality are gonna wanna pay for quality again.

Yep. You can expect similar behavior from people. My sales team, there's a guy on my team, when I was running one, his name was Brad and he called it the Walmart mentality. He said the minute that someone was like, all I care about is price, he's like, not your contractor. And he wouldn't waste his time. And I really admired that. And he coined that and I've used it. So Brad, if you're watching, that one's to you. But yeah, I like that. The Walmart mentality. And same thing. If you see the policies, the budget, insurance, polic. It's like, how do I get my premium to be as cheap as possible? And then they have a claim and they're like, what do you mean? My roof was acv. And this goes back too, by the way, because not all insurance agents actually understand what they're selling, unfortunately.

You should be vetting those agents. Yeah.

So speaking of which, on those, on that note about vetting the agents, I've been getting questions like how to manage the relationship. There's things you do that I don't do. And for whatever it's worth, we'll get there. Towards the end, we're going to talk about how these. How what I do has often complemented what Matt service provides and having clients that do both. Because they're not, they're not the same. They complement. Yeah, can complement. But the, the question I get is how do I manage those relationships? How do I manage expectations? What do I do when it's a borderline roll the dice? If it weren't the referral from the agent, I'd file the claim. You know, I don't want to hurt that relationship. So there's these, these things that come up and I faced one. I had an agent that was sending us work. We ended up filing a claim which, by the way, should have been approved and wasn't. And then they thought that we gave bad advice. You shared with me how you guys use company cam, which I know we'll talk about in a second, to provide those photos. I didn't have that back then. And then we had to do some damage control, so to speak. But what are some, like, top advice pieces or tips that you would give to someone in terms of managing that insurance agent relationship?

So like you said, transparency is huge. If you can offer that transparency, you know, we've got the tools, the technology to do it nowadays where it's not hard to provide transparency to the agent. But I think what I teach is when you're establishing that relationship, when you're sitting down and meeting with someone and you know, it's that first date, so to speak, and you're saying, hey, are we going to do this? That's when you need to set expectations. That's when you need to right out of the gate. And if they're not on board, well, baby, we ain't doing this right. Like, so you want to make sure either this is going to be a relationship where I get what I want, you know, not to say it in a bad way, but we're going to do this the way, the right way or we're not going to do it at all. And so I think a lot of that contractors are so used to being desperate to get these relationships to get business that they operate out of that desperation. And so, oh, well, you know, I'll take, take it however I can get it. Well, if you, you come into it and say, look, this is the right way to do it. This is how we're going to handle the claims and get their buy in. And you don't have to do anything crazy like, hey, we're gonna, you know, get $1,000 a square on a shingle roof or, you know, like, you don't have to go crazy but, like, let them know, like, and again, that goes back to the integrity piece. If we're doing it right, we should be able to lay all our cards on the table and explain this is the right way to do it. You know, we're using Xactimate, a component based system. And so I'm gonna provide all the documentation and include all the components that are relevant for this job. Is that okay with you? Like if we get denied, I want the opportunity to go through the photos with you and if you see the same things that I see, are you going to go to bat for your client? If you're not, I don't want to do business with you. And so that's kind of the way that I approach that is really setting the relationship up right from the beginning. Because you can also. I've had a, an agent or a adjuster deny a very valid claim. And it killed my relationship with the agent because I didn't set it up. I didn't give myself that back door to go in there and prove myself. There's like, oh, yep. And so if you're going to take the time to go set up the relationship. Set it up. Right.

Yeah.

And have it right or not at all.

Yeah, that's really powerful because ultimately the interests are aligned to serve the mutual client. It's about the homeowner. The agent should have a full vested interest in the right outcome at all costs. And you should have a full vested interest in making that customer whole at all costs. Well, not at the cost of ruining a relationship. But my point is when your interest, when you've agreed that you're here to serve that homeowner, that's where things are great. Just like not every roof opportunity that we have to sell is our customer. You have the Walmart mentality. You have people that refuse to pay their deductible or won't pay their deductible or say I want to, you know, just refuse to work with you in the way that you do business, then that's okay to walk away. But yeah, man, I love that. And it is important to explain supplements, explain that, you know, there might be a denial that that comes through and only calling things that are legit and which by the way should be.

And also I want you to help me. I want you to help me get it approved. If I can show you the evidence. Yeah, yeah.

Agents with a large book of business have a lot more pull on a corporate level than a guy who's got like 200, you know, book 200 homes that he writes insurance for.

Well, I mean even, you know, typically people's go to is their customer, get their customer to go yell at the carrier. They don't care if they lose One customer, I mean, they do a little bit, but not as much as they care about, you know, keeping that agent happy. Especially if it's a broker who can take that customer somewhere else or take all of their customers somewhere else.

Yeah, you know what, we didn't plan on touching on this, but do you want to share the difference about like agents, like an independent agent versus someone that's aligned with a, with a carrier? Do you have any different success stories? Like, are independent brokers a better relationship than someone who can say only right for State Farm, for example?

Yeah. So in captive, I think is the word, word you're looking for. So I typically prefer independent agents. And having met with a ton of them, talked with a ton of them, the majority, I would say, started off as captive agents for a carrier and they didn't like what the carrier was doing. They were making changes and they were just trapped. They hadn't, that was their job, that was their livelihood. They had no, no way to do anything but, you know, do bad business for their clients. And so they eventually got sick of it and said, I'm going out on my own where I can offer a whole, you know, menu of different carriers. And so I think to me, the, the independent agents are almost always better. Yeah, not to say there's not, you know, and there, there are good captive carriers and good captive agents, but by and large the, the independents are, are more there to serve the client and meet their needs instead of just doing whatever the carrier tells them to.

Agree 100% because the independent agent has, they're, they're in more of a problem solving position, in an advisor position. I've understood your needs, your general liability, your personal liability. Maybe they have a book of business, excuse me, a business that they're writing insurance for or vehicles or multiple homes and say, all right, here's your options. Here's quotes from four carriers that can help or three carriers that can help, or even the top two where someone that is captive, again, can only sell for one agent, excuse me, one insurance company. It's like, oh, you want insurance? Here it is. It's insurance in a box. And there's nothing wrong with insurance in a box if that suits your needs. But generally speaking, those independent agents, they think differently.

Yeah.

And they're also, they have a competitive advantage if there's an issue with the insurance company because instead of the captive agent and they say X insurance company treated me wrong, I'm out. I can reach out because I work with an independent agent and I could say I can't stand my insurance company, let's switch. But now I'm with the same agent but a different carrier.

Yeah, he doesn't have to lose his customer. Or on the other side, if the carrier decides to drop that customer. That's part of the client retention is, you know, sometimes the carrier decides to drop a customer or non renew the customer and there's nothing that they can do and so they lost them. Even if the customer is their best friend. Yeah.

And you're sol and same thing too. Especially when you start dealing with ultra wealthy people with multiple homes, homes in different states. Some carriers, they can't have the same agent write a policy for homes in multiple states and then they have different agents and then that's when they'll switch. They say, hey, well now I, you know, my ski home in Breckenridge or whatever is different than my house in Texas. I move into an insurance company that can write both. And then you have some additional leverage too on reducing policies. But you'll often find that when you work with those independent agents, their book of business will often reflect because they have their sweet spot. You'll find some agents who works with the higher income communities, larger homes, things like this, and then you'll find others that are, you know, your average working class home. And so do you find that, by the way, any, any difference in the types of referrals from any agents or similarities in their books of business?

Yeah, I mean, you know, they typically have clients that are similar to them or similar to their community.

Right.

And so like you said, the high net worth people, they, they don't go to the, you know, the agent's office down next to king supers and they, you know, they call the guy that maybe two states away because this is what he specializes in and he's an expert, you know. And you know, to that point a lot of, a lot of my clients are doing this with commercial too. Yeah. Don't recognize that is. This is a, this is not just a residential plan.

And if you can get in with a private insurance broker or private firm, they will often have different divisions and there will be a commercial division. And if you're set up to handle those leads, that's an amazing place to be in. Amazing place to be in.

Yep. For sure.

So do you have a few more minutes for us to chat, some, some tactics to help people begin this process?

Yeah, yeah, I'm good.

Awesome. Step number one, average person. What's the best, the best way to start dipping your toe in the water of developing Relationships with insurance agents.

I'm tempted to say just go into an insurance agent's office and get your teeth kicked in and take the lesson. But I don't want to do that. I guess for someone just starting off, hey, I want to make a foray into this. I would say start talking to your customers and I like, you know, you're getting the agent's information. Guess what, I can go on Google and get 500 insurance agents information here in five minutes, right? Yeah. Talk to the customer about the agent. Not just what their name is, what their phone number is, but find out about that relationship and see if there's a way to have them concierge hand hand you to the agent and show off for that customer. Let them know like hey, I want to prove myself on your job so I'm going to do an excellent job for you. But I want you to introduce me to the agent because one of the biggest hurdles here, even after you figure out or I've told you what the top priorities are, one then you got to figure out how to do them. And even if you know how to do them, you got to figure out how to get in front of that agent. And that's a, that can be a difficult piece for a lot of guys.

It is.

You know, it's, I'm really curious because you, you do things that I don't do and we'll talk about those because I think that some of the people who are watching should be working with you and some of the people who are using my stuff and working with, using yours. Again, you provide the part that I don't two way I don't, I don't like my part is get the conversation started. And, and then for those that are serious about using the system, the technology which we'll share at the end I think is an amazing fit to run with your system. What I teach and I'm curious what your thoughts are cause I didn't get into too much detail with this. I always teach to get the agents contact info from the homeowner because it's a relevant touch point. And my subject line of the email says introduce introduction serving mutual client and their and then their last name in the subject line of the email. Any even half decent agent is at least going to open that because it's about their customer and then it leads with value. Hey, we're doing the roof. And it asks for a reply. Hey, we're doing the roof. This is who we are. This is who we specialize or how we specialize in serving our customers, we have some unique service offerings for our agents that we develop relationships with. You know, priority service, complimentary inspection. So on which by the way, you're probably like, oh yeah, we do that. But all through our system, which I know you do, we'll go get in it because it's great. But the point is it's a relevant touch point to introduce yourself to prompt the reply. Because if they do reply, then throughout the other stages of the process, I encourage to send emails alongside with those status changes when the job scheduled install, offering to send photos of the, you know, and make sure that the policy.

Is up to date.

If you ended up doing a Class 4 Shingle upgrade, but at least out of the gate, you're offering to make them look like a hero through the process. And then if they reply, that's when you need to get the appointment set. And that's where I, you know, my, this is one piece of my sales system. So I don't have the full, you know, this is your expertise. And I think it'd be great for people to connect, say, how do I run the appointment then? But if you have your army of salespeople and you're reaching out to the agent of every customer, Sherry, pick the ones companies you don't want to work with, you know, get it. But it's almost a numbers game. It's like, here's service to you. If you're interested in me helping you through this, you will get replies and then from those replies you can set up the appointments and then take it from there. But anyway, I'm curious what your thoughts are on that.

Yeah, so. So my philosophy is a little bit different. And you know, I think what you're, what you're doing. Like you said, we have some mutual clients. I've heard nothing but good things. You know, I've watched some of your content. I like it. I had to pick apart my specialty. I was like, well, I don't know about this.

Yeah, go for it, man.

Yeah, well, sure. But you know, I like what you've got going on. For me, I am all about efficiency. Like when I walk out my front door, I cut across the grass to get straight to my truck. Like that. That's how, like that's the way my brain is wired. And so I always look at percentages. I always look at time in versus money out. And so, you know, I'm looking at if I'm going to send that email, how often do I get a response? And you probably have a pretty good beat on that right there.

The response rate is very high. Very high. I can't give an exact number because.

What would you ballpark?

Hundreds? Probably 70% response rate.

70% response rate. Okay. And then from that response to setting an appointment, what's your rate?

That's where it's going to drop. It's somewhere between 30 and 50%, depending on. Depending on the agent.

Okay, so we're about 35% of the original.

Yeah, right.

And for the 35% that we go to meet with, how many of them are going to start referring us business?

That's a good question. And that number I don't have. I don't know.

And that's another part of the sales process. Right. You know, each. Each piece of this is part of your funnel getting narrower.

Yep.

And so I have, you know, part of our system, and, you know, that's part of the proprietary information. We call that agent, and we get that appointment 90, 95% of the time. I mean, it should be illegal. And we're not doing anything unethical, we're not doing anything wrong, whatever, but it is just brutal. It's probably the piece of my process that I'm most proud of.

That's awesome.

And then we're very effective in that meeting. And so what that ends up meaning is that we don't have to cast a really wide net.

Sure.

We can be very targeted and go, you know what? This is the ideal agent. You know, I like everything about them. You know, they're the middle of the Venn diagram. They're perfect. Let me go get them. Because you don't need that many agents. If. And another key point is, how much of their business are they sending you? Are they putting you in a round robin? Are they sending you on a list of three contractors? And so if you can be very, very effective at closing most of those agents and they send you all of their business exclusively, you don't need that many agents.

I had a few million a year from a handful of agents. I think it was like three, including my own agent that I networked with. I'm curious, like.

And like you said, that's really strong. I can't throw down numbers of three agents, you know, a million a pop or something. I think my best agent, you know, was sending me 6, 700,000. But at the same time, if you can. Law of averages here. If every, you know, every agent's going to send you about 10 roofs a year that you get to build, and maybe you'll have more that didn't have damage or went with somebody else. But if you get to build 10 roofs per agent, I can back into the numbers. I can say I want to sell 200 roofs this year. And so I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna do 20 agents. If I'm gonna get half of the agents that I go after, I need to go meet with 40. We'll call it one a week. We'll call it one agent a week that I'm gonna go after. I'm gonna get half of those. And that. That was the difference for me is, you know, I was doing everything under the sun to try to develop business. And then when I looked at how much more efficient the income was for this, Instead of making 50 bucks an hour knocking doors, I was making 500 bucks an hour working with insurance agent referrals. I couldn't get that number out of my head. And I was like, this is what I'm doing. I'm burning the boats. Forget everything else. That's what I'm doing. And that's kind of how we got to where we're at today.

Sure.

And the reason that you have such a high rate on signing those deals is a tool that you developed that I did not have that was the ability technologically for them to book in. Right. I mean, that's what. That has to be one of the.

Things, because what I would say, that's 5% of it. It's a. It's a cool little tool. Yeah. And really, all these different things that we're looking at, that. That's addressing number six, convenience.

Right.

And so I want to be more convenient than anybody else, and it's going to help me win. But out of those six areas that we talked about, I look at those as battlefields.

Yep.

You know, you got your battle pack right.

How the name started. Because it is a battlefield.

It's a battlefield, but every one of those is a battlefield. And you're going against every other contractor that's been in there. Yeah. And in every one of those areas, you need to compete, if not win most of those. Yeah. But what's crazy about it is the number one area, sending referrals to that insurance agent. Nobody else shows up to the battlefield. And that is the. The battle that the entire war is won on.

Yeah. And so that's something I don't teach that.

That's why. That's why we're really effective, is because we're. We're going after the right targets and fulfilling those needs. Yeah.

Yeah. You know that this is incredibly Insightful. And there are, you know, it's funny, I share with people quite openly on the channel that this sales is a never ending craft and mastery that we never actually do. And you taught me a thing or two today. Everyone has things to learn. And the piece that I always struggled with that you had mentioned is the two way referrals was that because I had agents all the time. And maybe we can touch on this because I wrote it down, we didn't talk about it. People would say, I want you to buy insurance from me. And we already had a great relationship. And then the other one was everyone wanted referrals. So the way I teach in my program and in the material that I send to agents and that my customers and clients are sending to agents is it's all about giving value. But it doesn't address the exact referral piece because it was balancing who do you send referrals to? So I always kept a few and it was all old school. You know, talk to these three guys and then you choose. And again, that is a piece that I think is incredible, especially for owners, for individual reps. By the way, listening, when I was doing, man, I forget what the numbers were that when we did 3 million that year, by the way, that was a hailstorm in our backyard with big book of business, Huge book of business. So that was a really fortuitous event, getting that volume. But after that, those relationships continue. If you as an individual rep can create some of that networking, it will pay off for an owner who has the financial means and infrastructure to run this thing. And by the way, any owners listening, I personally think it's important for an owner to be there for the appointment. Would you agree? So they, they own the relationship with the agent. Because what I had happened is some sales reps that developed some good relationships, they left and the relationship stayed with.

The rep. No, I don't agree.

Really? That's awesome. Talk about this.

And so one of the things that we mentioned there was, you know, we talked about that calendar system and I guess that's the other thing of that calendar system is we teach our agents to refer us business through that channel. And so if Joe the salesman creates this relationship and then he decides he wants to go start his own company, he comes off the roster and everybody that stayed at the company gets to keep getting those referrals. And in my experience, Joe is probably not going to go back around to his 20 agents and convince them all to start sending business to him. Things were going pretty well where he was before and so the idea is he gets golden handcuffs and he just doesn't leave, and he makes a bunch of money working where he's working. But in the same thing you were talking about earlier, If I've got 20 sales guys, I need that army to go out there and create 20 relationships every week, week in, week out. The owner can't do that. The owner's got other things to do. And so, you know, it's a process thing for. For setting up this so that these guys are enabled, but at the same time, they are working for. For this company. They are, you know, getting paid to generate relationships. And depending on whether you're 10, 99 or W2, I won't get into all that mess. But open the can. Yeah, let's close that can and just move on.

Yeah, no, that's great, man.

I appreciate the open and candid conversation of where we agree and where we may have disagreements.

And I'll tell you, I don't.

One thing I learned not too long.

Ago was that I don't have all.

The answers in life. And when I felt like this was a person, it was a dietary choice for 18 years or something. And I started developing all these health issues, and I was, like, dogmatic that this dietary path I was on was, like, best. And then I kind of flip flopped to pretty far extreme, the other direction. And I was like, wow, it's amazing what happens when you think you know everything. And then something like, we must always be receptive to continually learning and improving. And I appreciate you jumping on challenging philosophies and bringing new thoughts and different angles. And the other thing I've learned is that people, like, in different markets have different experiences. And there's some companies, like HomeAdvisor, for.

Example, they're killing it. And then you see, you jump on. Oh, I know. See the eyes there. Yep, that was my thought, too. And they're like, I talked to this company in rural Minnesota, and I was literally about to say, drop them right now. And he goes, dude, I am closing 70% of those deals. There's no competition. And I was like, that is the first time I've ever heard that. And same thing. We worked in. We had an office for a little bit in Montana. Facebook ads crushed it for us. Facebook ads in our Wisconsin market flopped. Wild stuff. So awesome. Awesome to have you here and sharing these things. You want to take a few minutes and just share a little bit about your system and who might be a good fit to reach out for more info?

Yeah, yeah, I'd love to so like he said, it's Restoration Referral System. So my website is restoration referralsystem.com youm can find all my contact info there. You can schedule an appointment to talk with me and find out more about it. I don't make it a hard sell if you're. If you want to do business, we'll do business. And I'd love to introduce you to a bunch of my clients because the number one thing that I have going for me is my clients are very happy and so frankly, there's nothing I can do. I want your money. I'm going to tell you whatever I can, but my clients are going to tell you the truth. And that's been a huge thing for me. But really for that, that person that's an ideal client for me is someone that has integrity, someone that does good work, that they have a good business. But they're tired of constantly dumping in money or dumping in time to get deals back out. And they want to be able to figure out how to leverage, how to be effective in this area. So that can create those lead sources that are going to send business to them and they can be specific about. I want to work with this carrier, not this carrier.

Sure.

You know, and tons of benefits like we, we talked about in that.

But that's a really cool technology platform to support this process as well. If I'm, I do.

Yeah, yeah, we, we, we use some technology to make everything easy and convenient and automatic. So we're not having to do a bunch of follow up. We're not having to, you know, constantly calling people, texting people, visiting agents. It's not a big part of it. A lot of people are like, oh, I got my routes. You know, every week I go, you know, drive all over town and I'm like, what are you doing? Like if you're providing value, you don't need to bring coffee. So don't get me started. I appreciate you having me on, man. I really like what you're doing and let's do it again sometime.

Yeah, awesome. Well, thanks for being here. And I just want to close. I like to always close with something that people can do. Insurance agents are an opportunity that is sitting in front of you from a low tech. Because when Matt and I talked originally, I'm low tech for any team, any size, individual, big company, doesn't matter. You guys can use stuff in the field for anyone who wants to take their referral relationships to a new level to use the army of salespeople to start those introductions ignite those conversations, then set them up into a system with Matt's training. Talk to Matt. I haven't, actually. Maybe if you'd be comfortable sharing a demo with me at some point, but I haven't seen it yet. Again, I heard good things from clients, so make sure to lead with value, always do things with integrity, and find the right agents whose interests are aligned about making things right for that customer. Anything you want to close with Matt?

No, I think you covered it all.

Awesome.

Thanks again.

Yeah, thanks for being here. And there'll be links in the video and podcast description to get in touch with Matt should you be interested in learning more. We'll see you guys in the next.