A Case Study On Winning A 400-Life Group

What I'm about to say, I want recorded because I want the people who just sign up to get the recording to hear this. I want to thank every one of you for showing up and actually being here live. Because I guarantee the reason many others don't show up is they're too busy doing work that's not generating any revenue. So what we're going to be talking about today is a case study on a 400 life group. Who would like to know that one? So why we're here, I would say you better say yes or I'm going to kick you off the zoom right now. So what I want to walk through, guys, this is actual client of mine that I work with one on one. And he's with a fairly sizable firm, regional, not one of the big firms, but not small, small independent either.

And he had an opportunity with this 400 life group. Now, let me set the stage.

This was a company that had. It's an auto dealership. So they own I don't know how many locations around Midwest. And so he had an opportunity to go in. And they had multiple brokers on different locations. So the goal was they wanted to bring it to one broker, all locations and all in this thing is about $100,000 revenue account. And so they had an opportunity as a finalist to come in, present. They were going up against bigger players. So for folks who are small independents listening in, they were. He was going up against bigger players, definitely, for sure. And.

I'll never forget this. This was just about a month ago he won it. And on our coaching call the week before, we spent that coaching call getting him prepared for what he was going to present. And so what I want to walk through for you guys today, I thought I'd walk through. And I'm not going to share every detail to obviously respect him, but I want to walk you through what he did, to present this in a way that was completely different and made him stand out and look so different from the competition and make it all about the prospect.

So I'm going to walk you through it. If you guys got any questions, as I always mentioned, feel free to stop me ask. We go a half hour. We'll make this thing short, sweet, but very, very impactful. So let me grab some markers because we're gonna do a little drawing on the whiteboard. So this is your chance to take a lot of notes. Guys. I encourage you to do this. So I want you to set the stage, or I want to set the stage for you. I should say 400 Life Group, Auto dealer. So you could insert any industry, any prospect in any industry you're going into. And we had to come up with a way to create a prospect that or a proposal that was going to be very different. Make it all about the prospect. And some of you have been on my past webinars, you've heard me talk about what I believe is the perfect web. I can't talk today. The perfect proposal.

And that is, you have got to make the proposal all about the prospect.

So, because I like to have a little fun, let me. Let me show you guys something, because I'm going to set the stage for what he did not do. Because this is as equally. This is as important as what he did do. So what he did not do, as I share my screen here, is start the presentation. The proposal with a slide that looks like this, that says, look, we're top employers. Look, we're with the Rosetta, we're with uva, we're with Next Gen. We're one of the world's best workplaces. We're just awesome.

This is how so many people start their proposals.

I love these firms. I've been a part of these firms. But I got to be really honest, no one cares.

Craig, I know you're part of uba. I used to be a part of uava. At the end of the day, it's not going to win you the business.

So don't start your proposals off making it all about you and all of your credentials and designations. Nobody cares. Now, into the North. The slide like that can go at the back end if you want to establish a little credibility at the back. But don't kick it off with that. Here's what he did not do as well. He did not have a slide with the whole list of his capabilities.

And if you read this list, yes, I'm having a little fun down at the bottom. Yep. Even more compliance to bore you, spreadsheets that bore the shit out of you, reports you could do nothing with, and meaningless work that makes it appear we're actually doing a lot, guys. We don't need to throw all this at them.

In fact, I would tell you guys in a proposal.

When you show a slide like this, and I know I'm having some fun, but with all of your capabilities, what you're subconsciously doing to the prospect is introducing new goals and problems into their life.

If things on this list weren't a problem of theirs, and now you presented it as a possible problem, you've now confused them. You've thrown Too much at them.

And once they're confused, as they say in the book storybrand, if they're confused, you lose.

So, again, want to have a little fun? But the point is, guys, don't kick your proposals off with, here's who we are, here's why we're great. Here's why we're big, here's all our capabilities. That's not going to win you the business. What's going to win you the business is going to make it, is making it all about the prospect. So here's what he did do. This is what you want to start writing down. The first part of his proposal.

Is he walked through.

The goals and problems.

Now.

What he did a great job of.

In his discovery meeting, his first meeting with the prospect is he asked four questions. Some of you have been in my coaching calls. Some of you have been on my webinars. Enough. What are those four questions, folks? Somebody answer them.

Come. Oh, Brian, Craig, I'm looking at you guys right now, and I am a little offended.

What is one question we should always ask every prospect in a discovery meeting?

Number one goal right now.

What is your number one goal right now? Cole? Yes. You just heard this on Wednesday.

What is your number one goal right now? Second question, what would it mean to achieve it?

Third question.

Why aren't you there? What problems are keeping you from achieving it? And number four, how's that affecting you right now?

Because they just gave you a very large part of their story, folks. What is their goal? What would success look like if they got there? What's their problem, and what's failure look like today?

So now he took that information.

And using simple slides, by the way, if we want to get detailed, he just laid out their problems and their goals. And then what would success look like and what failure looks like today? Because he wanted to reconfirm that. That's exactly where they're at today.

Get them to reconfirm that. Yep, that's our goal. Yep. That's where we want to get to. Yep. This is our set of problems. And. And this is what's happening today. Yep. Awesome. Because think about this, guys. Between the time you first meet a prospect and the time you actually propose to them, it could be a couple of weeks. Right. They forgot a lot of what you talked about. They've got other fires, irons in the fire. So you've got to bring them back to what you've talked about.

So once he did that.

Then he went on to step number two.

And I'm going to keep it simple by just calling it solution. Here's what he did. Now for the folks, I got a couple people who've been through my academies, one that's currently in it. Guys, you need to develop a process that helps your prospects win, that helps your clients win. What do I mean by that? You need to develop a process and I challenge people to keep it. A three step process.

That helps turn unhappy prospects into happy clients. And it's a process you need to be able to rinse and repeat over and over because at the end of the day you're going to meet with prospects who have different goals and problems but your process should be the same every single time. So what he did is he built a little process, a little ecosystem, I won't give the name away. And he brought this process, he showed how this process was going to help the prospect win. And his process was broken down into three steps.

Control.

Access.

And rewards.

So he went through how his process, his solution is going to fit in to their goals and their problems. Control meaning, hey, might want to think about looking at self funding. Way to control your cost. Here's how we can help you do that. Maybe not this year, but over the next two, three years. Here's how we can help you do that. Because if we can control your cost through self funding, number two, second step is access. We're going to teach you how your employees can get better access to the health care system, how you can get better access to claims reporting, to transparency on how your plans perform. And number three, we're going to set up a reward system for your staff that when they make good decisions in the health care, in the health insurance plan, they actually can eliminate deductibles and out of pockets.

But you'll notice the solutions, not self funding, the solutions, not reducing deductibles or, or RBP or direct primary care. No. His solution comes down to three pillars. Control, access, rewards.

Because if somebody's goals and problems are different than this group, and by the way, this auto dealer wanted to save money.

He still can pivot his process and make it about control, access and rewards. Control, access and rewards can mean many.

Everybody following that.

So then he walked through how his process was going to help this prospect overcome their problems and achieve their goals.

And then what he did was where the magic was.

I'm going to call it.

Personalized.

After he went through and re established their goals and their problems.

What success would look like, what failure looks like today, he walked through his process, showed him with each step how he thinks Based on their goals and problems, they can help.

Here's what he did that really led to.

The victory, in my opinion.

Is he said, listen, I've done my homework. We've done a little research.

And we know that in our market, geographic mark.

Auto dealers, on average, the average sticker price.

Of a car in this market is $50,000.

And he said, I know that.

Gross profit margin again, because he did this homework. Gross profit margin in the auto dealer world in that. In that market, in that industry is 8 to 12%. So let's cut it in half and call it 10. So you guys do the math with me. If I'm an auto dealer and I sell a car for 50 grand, sticker price, and my gross profit margins 10%, how much do I make?

Craig, I saw your hand go up for five, $5,000.

Now, anybody know what the net profit.

For an auto dealer.

After all expenses come out? What Their net profit on a car is.

2%. You're spot on. It's 1 to 3. So cut it in half. So a net Profit on selling one $50,000 car.

Is $1,000.

You think auto dealers have to sell a lot of cars?

Now, guys, insert a prospect in any industry. Now, the one that maybe this does not apply to is nonprofits, right? They don't make widgets. They don't really have net profit margins as much as other industries. But insert manufacturing, insert construction, home builders, whatever it is, they've got a gross profit. They got a net profit. But here's why he set this up this way. He said right now.

Every year, because he did not know what their renewal was. In fact, they did this mid year because they got multiple plans. He said, every year, your overall health insurance budget goes up 10%. And that's on a.

$4 million budget. So somebody do the math for me. What's 10% on a $4 million budget? 400,000. 400,000 bucks.

Just to earn that with sticker price, they've got to sell eight more cars, right? But now you start factoring into gross profit. Let's not even factor in net profit. Let's just factor in gross profit. If their expenses go up $400,000 because of the health insurance budget, how many new cars at a gross Profit margin of $5,000 does this dealership have to sell next year?

80. 80 cars.

And Mike said, now imagine right now, every year, your budget goes up 10. Your sales reps have to sell 80 new cars just to offset. I'm not even factoring in net profit just to offset. Your health insurance increase.

He said, I'm confident through our program, our system.

If we implement the steps we take, we can save you 10% conservative because this group fully insured. Oops, I knew this would happen. 400 employees fully insured. I think we, I'm confidently, conservatively confident we can save you 10%.

What would it feel like.

If we gave you, we let you start next year.

80 cars ahead.

Instead of watching your expenses go up 400,000, what if we could reduce them by 400,000 and gave you an 80 car head start next year?

That statement right there Gang won him the business.

He did not make it about health insurance premiums. He did not make it about carriers. He did not make. He did not go into an, an epitaph about self funding and what it all entails.

He just shared his solution, thinking if we can get you to self funding, we can start controlling your cost which will give you and your employees better access to plan performance in the health care system, which will give us a chance to create a reward system to help your employees eliminate their deductibles and out of pockets. But here's the real kicker, Mr. CEO, Ms. CEO. Every year your budget goes up 10%. You have to sell about 80 new cars. Just to offset that. We want to actually give you an 80 car headstart.

Do you think your competition saying that?

No. So my point is guys, when you make the proposal all about.

The prospect and you actually take what you do, this was a health insurance conversation, but all of a sudden it turned into a new car sales conversation. It could be a new manufacturing, manufacturing widgets conversation.

And you spin it into their world.

You will have them saying yes faster than you could ever imagine. And I don't want to sound Pollyanna on that, but it's the truth.

Because often our prospects cannot take what you're doing. Even though it's an expense they watch go up every year kill their P and L, they're not equating to, they're not always equating to how that's affecting their sales or affecting cars or affecting widgets or affecting construction projects.

But if you actually show them how it does, it clicks for and when it clicks for them. And they can say we're hiring these guys, we're hiring this woman because she or he is going to help us actually impact our entire business. Yes, they're going to do it through the channel of health insurance, but the impact it has on us when it comes to selling cars or making more widgets. Now I get the Whole picture.

And the last thing he did was he said, if you believe, we can help you. Key word being believe. If you believe we can help you do this, we can help you start next year with an 80 car head start start.

Here's what the next 12 months will look like working with us. Here's what we've got to do to make this happen.

So in summary, he kicked it off with goals and challenges, just restating the information he gathered in the first meeting.

He then went through his solution. But remember, his solution is not a product, it's a process. So I challenge everybody on this call to think about how you can turn the products you're selling because you'll sell different products to different needs. How you can turn your products into a process you sell.

And then he went into the numbers and what the numbers meant to that company.

And he said simply, if you believe we can help you do this, here's what life looks like working with us. And that last piece there is what gives the prospect the comfort, the clarity and the confidence that they can do it. I've said this, I've said this a lot lately because I heard somebody else say this. So I am totally replicating and duplicating this. But at the end of the day, you don't need to get your prospects to believe your products work in the proposal. That's not the goal. Just get them to believe you believe.

If you truly believe in what you sell, show of hands everybody. You believe what you sell.

Put a little fire, a little passion behind that. Get them to believe you believe that what you're about to do is going to work.

And you will give them that confidence to take the next step.

So I wanted to run this webinar because for him this was a game changer. He's actually just started. He's been in the with the agency for a while, but he's really only been producing for about six to eight months. So he's trying to prove himself. This was the biggest game changing proof making he ever could have. Because with this one sale.

He just outsold the rest of his team this year.

And he's just getting started. So my point guys, is think about how you're looking at your proposals, how you're creating your proposals right now. I bet you many of you like me in the past. Every proposal, you're recreating the wheel with this new presentation and you're spending too much time on how are we going to let them know we're credible, how are we going to let them Know we're the one. How are we going to let them know all about our resources? No, just make it about them. Actually simplify your proposals. Because when you simplify them and you walk in with confidence and you make it all about them using terminology that impacts them.

They'Re going to look at you different. They're going to look at you like, this is a consultant. This is who we've been seeking. And you're going to win a lot more, especially those big opportunities.

And this applies to any industry. As I mentioned, you want to be anybody, go after construction companies. If I were you in a proposal talking about construction companies, not only would I talk about the numbers, but I'd talk about you being the GC of their health insurance.

How many general contractors are also the plumbers, the electricians, the roofers, the drywallers?

They're not, right? What do they do? They outsource it.

Every contractor you will ever meet with that is not a general, probably does work for generals. So if you walk in and you say, listen, my job today, just like you work with your general contractors in your business building a home, a highway or a commercial building, my job is to show you how we're going to be the GC for your benefits by bringing you the best partners out there. You talk that language to a contractor, you got their, you got their attention.

So we got five minutes. This is your chance to puke questions on me, so fire away.

All right, I'll ask you one. Andy.

Awesome. They have a bunch of producers on the call. You guys should not be afraid to talk.

So did, did this.

Was his complete goals and problems of going through the process and everything he put together as goals and problems, solutions, was it all built on just the four question or did he have a more in depth discovery?

Great question. So if he knew the goals and the problems and the success and the failure, right? That's what he knew, where they wanted to go and what they wanted to avoid in the process, between the proposal and, excuse me, the discovery meeting, the proposal, he had gathered some plan information, you know, some details about what they're doing today. Now, in this case, because they had multiple plans, right, we're looking at different plan designs, different geographies, different carriers. So he had a lot of that Craig in his arsenal ready to go. But it was just a mixture of the questions, the main questions, along with some current plan information that allowed him. That's why, that's how he knew they had a $4 million budget. That's how, you know what I mean, it was, it allowed him to give a presentation using their numbers.

Good. But I'll tell you guys, for proposal sake, you ask those four questions and you gather some of the pertinent, maybe plan information you need. You don't really need much more to come back with a powerful proposal. You don't.

Once in a great while you're gonna have to use a quote, right? To win business. I get it. But here's what I challenge everybody to do. This is a very, very big mind shift. If you can do this for anybody here who finds themselves having to include quotes in a proposal.

Make sure it's just part of the strategy, not the strategy itself.

So if you take the time to create a process, as I have mentioned, the three step process that you use to help prospects become happy clients, if you're selling that process, the quote is just a part of that process.

And I think the difference between a broker and a consultant, those names get thrown around loosely. A broker, their entire value is built on a quote. A consultant just uses a quote as part of their process.

Because yeah, if you want to move to a group to sell funding, you may need a quote and have numbers for self funding. Right. But I.