90. What the Green Bay Packers Can Teach You About Making Sales Easy

Hey. Hey. Welcome back to Friday Bullpen Sessions. My name is Andy Neary and this is episode 90. Today I'm going to teach you how to build a community and why you need to build a community if you want to win in business today. But before we get there, I do want to make a quick announcement. If you are an insurance professional, listening in, the Broker Branding Academy is out, enrollment is open. Listen, 2020 changed everything. You are just wanting to have a better relationship with your prospects, right? You want to figure out why it's been such a struggle to communicate with your prospects in 2020 and here at the beginning of 2021. It's because everything changed. The way you connect with your prospect has changed and there's probably a really good chance your message is just off. But hey, the message has worked for so long. Yes, I know, but it has changed. And your strategy around prospecting, your strategy around building relationships with your prospects have changed. And that is why I built the Broker Branding Academy. It is an academy built for insurance professionals, built by an insurance professional. So do yourself a favor. If you want to take your prospecting, you want to build better relationships with your prospects, you want to have them follow back up with you when you are trying to reach out to them, you want to push them through the pipeline more effectively. That's everything you are going to learn inside the academy. Plus you're going to get a ton of coaching. You're going to do it inside a community with other high achieving insurance professionals and you will find that accountability. You need to take the massive action you need to be taking to hit your goals today. So do yourself a favor, text the word Academy to 414-622-1462. That's Academy to 414-622-1262. We'll jump on a call, get you enrolled and you will be on one heck of a four month journey. So do it today. Academy 414-622-1462. All right, let's get back to today's episode. Today I want to talk about Community. And let me give you a little backstory of why Community came up for me today. Over the weekend I was watching my Green Bay packers take on the Los Angeles Rams. And as if you're a fan of the sport, you know the packers won, they advanced the NFC championship and they're going to host next week's champ or this weekend's game against the Buccaneers in the frigid cold of Lambeau Field, which is the way football is supposed to be, especially here in January. But here's what really got me thinking about the Green Bay packers watching that game last weekend. Number one, can we just acknowledge that Aaron Rodgers is ridiculous? Seriously, the guy is 37 years old, playing the best football of his life. What does he have? 50 touchdown passes, I believe with five interceptions? Like anybody who plays Madden the video game. You can't do that on a video game. Like let's just hand him the NFL MVP already. I mean that's just absolutely blown away. And kudos by the way, if you are a fan to the NFL. The NFC championship is pitting a 37 year old quarterback in Aaron Rodgers against a 43 year old quarterback, Tom Brady. Like, can we just hand out some mad respect that those two guys are still playing at the level they're playing? I mean, I'm 43 right now. Think about being this age, playing behind, you know, playing against some of the most elite athletes in the world. Athletes by the way, who are 250 to 270 pounds and run 4, 3 forties. To be still playing at this level at that age is absolutely phenomenal. It speaks to the consistency that Aaron and Tom Brady both apply. And it's just, it's, it's absolutely fascinating. On the flip side, in the AFC you've got what the Bills and the Chiefs, Pat Mahomes, Josh Allen, I don't even know if either one of them is 25 years old yet. So just the complete opposites in both championship games. But let's get back to community. You know, watching that game, I really got thinking about the community the Green Bay packers organization has built over time. If there is one organization in sports that understands what it means to build a community with its fan base, it's Green Bay. If you've never been to the northern part of Wisconsin, Green Bay is not a big city. Right. I don't know what its current population sits at, but I know when I was growing up in Wisconsin it was what, 75, 90,000? Maybe not a big market in sports whatsoever. Probably one of the smallest markets in the game. That's why it's so cool to see them in the championship along with Buffalo, right? Buffalo's a small market team as well. But when it comes to building that community, think, think about what the Packer organization has done. If you're a fan of Green Bay, you truly feel like you're vested in the team, in fact, the organization lets you vest in the team, you actually can become a shareholder in the Green Bay Packers. Find me another organization in sports that does that. But by building this community around its fan base and not just looking at every season as an opportunity to sell them more tickets, think about what the result has been. Packer fan or Packer? The Packer organization doesn't have to try to sell tickets to its fan base. No. Like, they have been sold out. Every game, every season has been sold out since 1960. Do the math. We're talking about 60 years here. Every season has been sold out. In fact, if I wanted to jump on today and become a season ticket holder, I'm gonna have to get in line behind 130,000 other people. That's how long the wait list is. In fact, based on the estimation of when I'd get my tickets, I think I'd be about 75 years old.

What Green Bay has built around the packers organization by building a community around its fan base is nothing short of magical. And again, if you're listening in and you're a Packer fan, you know exactly what I mean. Walk around any town in Wisconsin and when the conversation of the Green Bay packers comes up, you don't hear a lot of, well, the team I root for, you hear a lot of the word we. Now, I'm not a huge fan of using the word we when it comes to sports because if you're a fan of that team, you are not on the team. You technically don't get to say the word we. But I'll say this. When it comes to the packers organization, there is definitely that family, that community mentality. We are one community. And it has been something magical to watch, you know, throughout my lifetime. I shared this earlier in a video on social media this week. I mean, as a Packer fan, think about this. Since 1991, you've watched one, or, excuse me, two quarterbacks get behind center in Green Bay. Think about that. Brett Favre took over in 1991, Aaron Rodgers took over in 2008, and that's it. Yeah, there's been a quarterback here, too, that's had to play because of injuries. But over, over the 30 year period, we've watched two quarterbacks come through Green Bay. Think about other organizations. Again, I use the Bears organization. No offense to the fans, to the south, but you probably have watched somewhere between 40 and 50 quarterbacks come through in that same time period. And so that consistency of that organization is off the charts. It's nothing short of unbelievable. But it's that community that they have built around the fan base that I want to talk about today. And I want to talk about how that applies to your business. Because when you think about building a community, and I, if I were to tell you it is time for you to start building a community around your prospects and you need to stop viewing your prospects like a list of prospects, you're probably going to look at me cross eyed and go, what the hell do you mean, Andy? You see, the day has come that you can't just treat your prospects like a list again. If the packers organization, year in and year out just viewed their fan base as a list of potential ticket holders, ticket buyers, they would struggle to sell out Lambeau Field each and every Sunday. But they don't. And so you need to apply that same strategy to your prospects who can help you grow your business. It's how can you start building a community around that prospect, around that prospect base? And to me, here's what community is. A community is something you look to bring value to every single day. And a prospect list is something you look to extract sales from every single day. So you need to start waking up every morning and figuring out what you're gonna do to impact and bring value to your prospects. Because thinking you're gonna hold everything in your secrets, your strategies, until you get hired is a losing proposition. In fact, you've already lost if that's your game plan. Our buyers are smarter than they have ever been today. They can see right through the crap. And you need to bring more value than your competition if you want to win today. And building a community around your prospects is the best way to do that. How do you do it? Well, think about how you can bring value. Do you host webinars for this community? What kind of emails do you send out this community that bring value to them, that share tips and ideas that help them win? Are you looking at your prospects saying, how can I connect this prospect to this prospect? Because I think they could mutually benefit each other's business. It does nothing for my business. But hey, I'm helping them win. What about free advising sessions? Free sessions to help them win based on what it is you sell. You're not even there to ask for their business. You're there just to bring value by helping them win today. That is how you bring and build a community together.

If you want to look at what the best in your industry are doing, that's where they are headed. They are starting to build communities around their prospects. It's no longer just a list with a bunch of prospects who have dollar signs over their head. It's a list of gold that they want to bring value to. It's a list of humans, a list of opportunities that they want to impact every single day. And so if there is one piece of advice, in fact this is the best prospecting advice I probably will ever give you is you need to start thinking longer term and you need to start figuring out how you're going to create this community. Yeah, it requires consistency, it requires patience. If you're focused on building a long term business, which I hope you are, it requires patience and consistency. If you just want an overnight win, the hack, the silver bullet that's going to change your career tomorrow. Number one, I'm here to tell you it's not coming. Number two, you've already lost. That only lasts so long. And so I hope you're here today. Whether you sell insurance copiers, you're just trying to build a community of good human beings around you. Start focusing on community. That is what it's going to take to win today. So.

Take advice from the Green Bay Packer organization. They don't look at their season ticket holders with a bunch of dollar signs over their head.

They actually figure out how they can bring immense value to that community, those fans, every single day. And they do that throughout the year, not just on game day. And so I'm asking you do the same thing. You need to show up every day, not just on game day. And you need to figure out how you are going to bring immense value to your community. Because when you start looking at your prospects like community.

Your list of prospects turns into gold. So do yourself a favor today, sit down, look at that list. Stop figuring out how you're going to extract sales from them. Stop calling them to see where they are in their decision making process. Stop emailing them to see if you can reconnect and talk about selling them again. And start figuring out how you can just bring value every day without wanting a damn thing in return. That is the secret to prospecting today. So do yourself a favor, sit down, look at the list, figure out what your prospecting strategy is going to be today. Whether it's webinars, whether it's free advising sessions, whether it's connecting your prospects to each other. You need to become the host of this amazing community. Because if you do that long enough, you're just going to have a community of prospects who want to do business with you. It's that simple. So do yourself and your business that big favor. And I promise, if you do that and apply a little consistency and patience, you are set up for one hell of a long term career. Just like Brett Favre, just like Aaron Rodgers. And you know what happens when clarity and confidence collide. Massive action happens. So go make it happen today and start building that community.