3 Pivotal Strategies To Boost Your Sales Confidence

Hey. Hey. Andy Neary here. Before we dive into today's podcast episode, think back to how you came upon this podcast. Maybe it was through a post, a share, or one of your own peers shared this podcast with you. I don't take any ads. I don't take any sponsorships. The only way this podcast grows is through word of mouth. So if you would be so kind to share this with a peer, with a teammate, with a friend, a family member, I would be forever grateful to you. This is how we impact more business professionals, and this is how this podcast grows. All right, let's dive into today's episode. Hey. Hey. Welcome back to Bullpen Sessions. This is episode 271. In this week's episode, I am going to help give you a little more confidence in your sales process so you can win more business without all the stress and the frustration. Here's a fact. Most insurance producers do not have the confidence they need to hit their sales goals. Why? Well, far too many insurance producers are given a really nice compensation package, but no blueprint to succeed. Far too many insurance producers, especially those that have been in the business for just a couple years, they're left out on an island to figure out on their own. And in winning in that environment is almost impossible. Number two, the insurance sales training that we are given today is still far too outdated, dated. But most importantly, the biggest problem insurance producers have today when it comes to sales confidence is they don't even know who they're targeting. They don't know who they're talking to. They don't know what they're saying to them. And therefore, they're stuck spraying and praying and hoping some message just lands on the right prospect. Well, in today's episode, I'm going to help you fix that. I'm going to give you the confidence you need to trust your sales process. And in doing so, we're going to answer three questions very clearly today. And I'm going to share a story from a recent full day workshop I led with a fantastic insurance agency to set the backdrop for these three questions. And by the end of today's episode, you're not only going to know what these three questions are, you're going to learn how to apply them so you can have a much more clear marketing strategy that you can execute on every single week. Because once you have clarity, you will have confidence. When you have confidence, you are going to turn conversations into clients and you are going to hit your ideal sales goals because you're talking to your ideal sales prospects. So with that being said, let's dive into today's episode. Welcome back to Bullpen Sessions. Let's dive into episode 271 today, shall we? All right, what are we talking about today? Today, we are going to talk about confidence and how you can create more confidence in your sales process. When I look across the landscape right now in the insurance industry, I see a ton of insurance producers who do not have the confidence they need to hit their sales goals. And you might be listening in saying, what do you mean, confident? I'm confident. I know what I have. I know I have what it takes to win. I get it. But I guarantee right now, when it comes to hitting your sales goals, you lack a little confidence. And today, I'm going to help give you some of it back. Because right now, one of the biggest reasons you're not hitting your sales goals is because you lack confidence. Now, let me be very clear about something. Confidence and ego are very different. They are two very different things. Ego is what often gets in our way from selling. But a lack of confidence is often the hurdle we have to overcome to give our prospects more confidence in us so that we can win more business. And what you're going to learn today is the secret to confidence doesn't come by way of some magical sales script or doesn't come by having the perfect closing statement in a proposal. It comes by by way of having a process you can repeat. You see, the reason most insurance producers are not having the success they would like today is because they lack a clear marketing plan they can execute every single week. That's it. I don't want to make it any more simpler than that, but it is the truth. The reason you are not hitting your sales goals right now is just because you lack a clear marketing plan that you can attack every single week. And so today, my goal is to give you three key questions to consider that are going to help you create that clarity you're looking for. Because clarity breeds confidence, confidence turns into sales success. We're going to keep it simple. We're going to make it clear, but we're going to make it highly effective at the same time. You see, when I look across the insurance landscape, I ask myself, why do so many insurance producers lack a clear weekly marketing strategy? Well, I think there's three reasons. The first one is far too many producers today are given a really nice compensation package, but they're given no blueprint to succeed. I've been a recipient of this before in my career. I've been paid a fat two year salary guarantee, but I've been given no blueprint on the back end of that to actually succeed. It's been more of, well, I paid you well. It's up to you now to go figure it out. And I see this more often than I'd like to admit. Even in 2024, where too many producers today are paid very well and they're also left out on an island to figure out their own success. And that's a challenge, especially if you're a newer producer. If you've only been in the industry for two or three years and you're still feeling like you're out on an island trying to figure out this thing called insurance, it is tough to win. It really is. Now, I started my career 22 years ago, and I was fortunate that I started it with a company called Federated Insurance who had a very good training program. Now, I will admit the training program they gave me 20 years ago would not apply today with everything that's changed. But I was given a very good training program early in my career. Which leads me to the second reason I see so many producers lacking confidence today, because they lack a clear marketing strategy. And that is the traditional insurance sales training we still have in the industry today. It's outdated. It is far too outdated than it should be in 2024. When you look at how producers are being trained today, we're still spending too much time focused on the sales tactics, whether that be handling objections that be better close.

Strategies, tracking activity like cold calling and cold emails and door to door and networking. And don't get me wrong, those are all important. But the way we sell has evolved so much in the last 10 years and even more so since 2020. If we're still applying traditional sales training to our young producers, they're not going to win today. At least they're not going to be as effective as they should be. And the third reason I see so many producers struggling today is because they don't even know who they're targeting. Therefore, when it comes to prospecting, they are applying the spray and pray approach. They're just hoping somebody is out there willing to listen to them. And today it's my goal at this episode to help you get back on track and most importantly, give you that confidence you need in your process. Because I have witnessed it time and time again in my own life and our clients. When you give somebody some clarity on what they should be doing every single week, everything changes. And if I do this right today, if this episode goes the way I want it to you're going to have a much clearer picture about what you're doing, which is going to give you that confidence and therefore you're going to turn that confidence into more agent to record letters, more revenue this year and more satisfaction. So where does today's episode come from? Well, last week I had the fortunate opportunity to lead a full day workshop with a fantastic insurance agency. And it's a pretty good sized agency. So in this full day session we had about 40 people participating.

And to describe this team of producers, we had anybody and everybody. We had males and females, people who have been in the industry for three months, people who have been in the industry for 30 years. We have people who have been with us agency for five months and people who have been with this agency for 30 years. So we had producers from all walks of life, all different levels of success. And this workshop was hosted to kick off our coaching and training with them. And there was a moment during that day that I had my own epiphany, my own light bulb moment, if I will say, say it that way. And it happened at the lunch break. So our full day workshops run from 9am local time to 4pm and then we take a nice lunch break in the middle because producers and the teammates or the people involved in the workshop, they got to go back, check their emails, have lunch. And so as we broke for lunch, the CEO of the agency came up to me and he said, andy, I just got to tell you, the feedback we're getting from this workshop so far has been fantastic. In fact, we've had people say we got more accomplished in one half day of this workshop than we have in four years with our previous training program or previous sales training program. And one, I was so blessed to hear that because that tells me we're focusing on the right things and they're getting a lot out of the workshop. But this is where I had my light bulb moment. When he said that to me. I sat back and thought about why do they feel this way? What did we just do in a matter of three hours that has them feeling like they've accomplished more with us in a half day than they did four years with previous sales training program. And I think it has to do with the fact that we helped their team get clarity. Because when you're clear, you're confident and when you're confident, you feel unstoppable. And what I'm going to go over today in this episode is exactly what I talked to this team about, exactly what we did to unlock this Clarity. And you could literally see it in the producer's eyes. You could physically see them get more confidence, especially the new producers. The ones who are young, new to the industry, still have a lot of doubts, still have a lot of fears. You saw their confidence elevate by the end of the day. And so when I look at that first half day and it can continued on into the afternoon, and I look at.

What we did for this team, there were three areas we focused on very clearly that unlocked this confidence. Now let me set the stage for you. This team was no different than a lot of insurance teams we see out there. A lot of agencies today have producers who are struggling with the following. Number one, they do not have a sales process. There's zero sales process. Not only from the team level, at the agency level, each producer lacks a sales process. Number two, too many producers are staring at an empty sales pipeline. So if you ask them how many opportunities you have right now, the answer is not many. Which leads to the third problem, and that is when you are staring at an empty sales pipeline, you start to take a desperate sales approach. You start to try to talk to anybody. You come off as desperate in your discovery meetings. Your prospects can sense that. And all of this desperation and this helplessness, this hopelessness is making it impossible to win any kind of business today. Hi, it's Andy Neary, and thank you for listening to the Bullpen Sessions podcast. Did you know the ideas shared on this show are things we actually specialize in helping you implement? If you're an insurance professional and you want to turn your credibility into consistent client acquisition, visit completegameconsulting.com and schedule a free strategy call. Again, that's completegain consulting.com to request your free strategy call. All right, let's jump back into today's podcast episode.

This team was no different. They all struggle with that, too. And so I look at and I say, okay, what did we do for this team that helped them get some clarity, which bred that confidence? They need to go out and execute a weekly marketing strategy. Number one, we focused on who they're talking to. The first question I asked this team is, who are you talking to? And we spent a good two hours getting very clear on who this agency's ideal prospect is. Now, when it comes to identifying your ideal prospect, you have to get very clear on a couple things. Number one, what does this prospect look like demographically? Location, revenue, number of employees? Maybe it's an industry. Are they blue collar? Are they white collar? What is it about this prospect? That makes them a good fit demographically. But on the other hand, you can't skip the psychographics. From a mental standpoint, why is this prospect good fit? Who are these people? What do they believe? What do they stand for? How do they make decisions? You see, the reason we have sales success in the first place is because we find people we can work with who are like us. It's that simple. We find people like us. And if you can get clear on who you're trying to target, especially within the psychographics, go find people who stand for what you stand for, who believe in what you believe in. This is where you start building a much clearer picture about who you are targeting. If you disagree with me and you think all prospects are good prospects, I'm going to challenge you. You're not a fit for everybody. And trying to go after everybody and believing you can help everybody is why you're not winning today. So get very clear about who you are targeting. Now, the second question.

That we spent a copious amount of time on and got very clear on is what are you saying to them? So once you've figured out who you are talking to, now you got to figure out what you're going to say to them. And what this team learned was a very important marketing tip that more agencies need to hear. And that is, whose story are you telling? If you look at 95% of the insurance agencies in this industry and you look at their marketing, Most of them, 95% of them are talking about themselves. All of their marketing talks about the agency, how long they've been around, how many resources they have, all their affiliations and partnerships, and they're constantly making them the hero of their own story.

When the solution, the answer, the unlock, is just shifting all of your marketing to your prospect store. You see, you're not the hero of this story. Your prospect is the hero of their story. The only thing your prospect cares about is what's in it for them. They don't care how long you've been around. They don't care how big you are. They don't care about all your resources. They want to know what's in it for them. And so we got very clear about what this team is going to be saying to attract the ideal prospect. So we built the ideal prospect story. Now, you can go back to past episodes where I've spent a lot of time on how to storytell. I'll make it very simple for you. You want to tell better stories. Follow this framework. There is a hero with a goal who has a problem, that problem is keeping them from their that goal. Therefore, they need a guide who is you who has a solution that helps them avoid failure and achieve success. That's storytelling 2000 years old. If you apply that framework to your ideal prospect, by building the ideal prospect story, you're going to start attracting more of the right people. And when you attract more of the right people, guess what, you start having better sales conversations. The right prospects start coming into your pipeline, not just any prospect. So the second question we helped them get very clear on is what are you saying to your ideal prospect? And then the third question.

Is where are we saying it?

So once we've uncovered who we're talking to, what we are saying to them, the third question you have to be very clear on is where are you going to say it? This is your channels of marketing distribution and this is where traditional insurance sales training is still far too outdated because the majority of the training today is still focused on cold calls and cold emails. What we call the cold one to one approach. It's not as effective as it used to be. It takes a lot longer than it used to have any kind of success. You're aware of how or where of your, where you're putting. Your marketing strategy has to be more expansive today. You have to be doing more things. You see, there's a grid that, that Alex Hormozy calls the core four and there are four ways you can outbound, you can reach out to prospects. There's cold one to one, there's warm one to one, there's warm 1 to many and there's cold 1 to many. What we did with this team that completely unlocked how they are going to get their marketing message out faster was focusing on the one to many, the warm one to many. How are you going to use social media? How are you going to use webinars? How are you going to use maybe having a podcast? How are you going to use public speaking? These are all channels to get your message out far, fast and wide. And I know I've talked about these concepts at length in my podcast, but this is why it's so important. I'm not going to shut up about this stuff until you actually start applying it. And once we helped this team answer these three questions, who you're talking to, what are you saying to them and where are you saying it?

You physically saw the expression on their faces change. Now, here's where it got better.

We have producers in this room at this full day workshop who don't need to win all that much business this year, to have a great year, we're not talking about having to win 12, 15, 20 new accounts, we're talking about winning. Lesson five, to have a great year. And I asked the team, knowing this, how many of you are going out right now and telling your prospects how many people you're actually looking to work with this year? How many of you are telling your prospects who's a good fit for you and who is not? How many of you are describing the ideal psychographics of the ideal prospect to your prospect?

None of them. And they're not alone. Because this is how most producers operate. They have no clarity. But if you get clear about who you're talking to, what you're saying to them and where you are saying it, and you go out and you use your marketing, you use your discovery calls to tell people who you're looking for, what's a good fit, what's not a good fit, and the type of ideal prospect psychographically you're looking to work with. Everything changes. And the most important thing now is you have a weekly sales process you can trust. And this trust gives you the confidence you need to go out and sell with confidence.

And when I looked around that room and I saw a team of producers that range from rookies to 30 year veterans, I saw a team of confident sales producers by the time the day was done. This is the transition I love seeing when we get a chance to work with agencies.

And so my advice for you today, listening in, is if you feel like you're not as confident as you could be when it comes to selling, you're not alone. Most producers are are there right now, which is why you're not hitting your sales goals.

Please take these words of advice today and just get clear on the following three questions. Who are you talking to? Remember, focus on the demographics, focus on the psycho GRA psychographics, get an ideal picture of what this prospect looks like. Number two, focus on what you are saying to them. Build their story.

And number three, have a clear plan of where you are going to say it. Whether you decide to use cold calls, cold emails, referrals, social media, webinars, I don't care. But create a clear weekly plan that you are going to execute every single week.

Philadelphia Sixers became famous for the phrase trust the process.

I'm going to tell you to do the same thing when you get clear. You just have to trust the process. And I promise you a clear process is going to breed the confidence you need to sell more now.

Before we wrap up today's episode, I do want to make one quick announcement. On February 14, Valentine's Day, a day filled with love, we are launching our next Social Media Sales Academy. I say next. It's actually a rebranded version of our former Broker Branding Academy, but this might be the best academy we have ever put together. It is a six week crash course teaching you how to use LinkedIn and create content for LinkedIn to grow your business. You are going to learn the strategy we use here at Complete Game Consulting to help us generate more than one inbound lead per week on LinkedIn. Our strategy works if you want to leverage social media this year as a part of your weekly game plan, I have put a link in the show notes. You can go learn more schedule call, I'll fill you in on the details. It starts February 14th. Your sales will never be the same if you jump into Social Media Sales Academy. It has to be a part of your strategy today. It's why not kick it off with a clear blueprint on how to use LinkedIn to attract the right prospects. But with that being said, I'm going to leave you with this. When you have a clear marketing plan you can execute every single week, you will become more confident. And when you are confident in the process, you're confident in your weekly marketing strategy. You will start having better conversations with prospects because you're attracting better prospects. And better conversations lead to better opportunities which lead to more wins. And that's all I want to give you today, is a little more confidence to go out and have the sales success you know you deserve. Because at the end of the day, it's all about reaching your full potential. And clarity leads to confidence. Confidence leads to clients. Be good. Thank you for taking the time to listen to today's podcast episode. Remember, if you found value in this episode, do me a favor, give it a like share it post about it. Go subscribe to make sure you get every episode from us every single week. And my only ask from you is that if you have anybody in your life, whether it be a teammate, a peer, family member, or a friend, please share this podcast with them. That's how we grow. We only grow through word of mouth and I would be forever grateful if you take the time to do that. All right, now it's time for you to take what you learned and it's time for you to go out and share your message with the world. Execution, clarity and consistency is everything. Be well.