Andy Neary's team spent 20 minutes designing a promotion plan for weak Broker Branding Academy enrollment, then executed it and fixed the problem. He argues insurance advisors should attack issues fast instead of procrastinating.
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When I look at a producer sitting here in early August.
Who is behind on his or her sales goals, they have got to make a decision and they've got to make a decision quickly, which is, am I going to keep trying to do more of what's not working when it comes to my prospecting activity, or am I going to make a decision to solve my problem as quickly as I can? And this is where today's topic comes in. So to set the stage for you, our team was on its one of its weekly L10s. If you're not familiar with what an L10 is, we have incorporated the EOS system, the entrepreneurial operating system. It's a great book that comes from great, great system that comes from the book Traction. So if you've never read the book, you own an agenc, I highly recommend you not only read the book, but you start incorporating EOS into your company. So one of the weekly meetings you host as part of the EOS system is the L10. So we're on our weekly L10 and we were talking about our to DOS, our 90 day rocks, our issues. And I brought up an issue.
That I had been concerning me, which was we have our next broker branding academy coming up. And you probably heard me talk about it at the beginning of the podcast and I was unhappy with the way we were promoting it because I felt like we were taking a very lackadaisical approach to getting people enrolled in the academy, meaning that we weren't putting forth a ton of effort to make sure that we were putting out the content, the messaging necessary to blanket the market, especially in the insurance industry, to try to get as many people enrolled in the academy as we can. I thought we were taking more of a laissez faire approach, like, hey, if we get 5, 6, 7, awesome. But we're not yet. We just, I just felt that unease that we had a problem. This is what we're going to talk about today. We had a problem. We are not putting good, putting forth a good effort to enroll people into the academy. So here we are on the L10 and this is a key moment and this is what I want to talk about today. And it's what do the most successful people do when they encounter a problem? Now, I'm not saying this from an angle of I want to share this because I think I'm one of the most successful. No, no, no. I'm going to share with you how we at success solve the problem, what we did when we encountered this problem. But I'm Also going to share with you what I've noticed about our best clients and what they do when they also encounter problems. So here we are. I'm not pleased with the enrollment with the Academy, not pleased about our approach to get enrollment into the Academy. And.
We decided that in the moment we had other to DOS to talk about in the L10, we had other priorities, other rocks. However, we kind of put all that aside and we, we got this problem front and center. And over the next 20, 25 minutes, we uncovered the problem, we talked about why it's a problem, and then we went to work attacking the problem.
And for the next 20, 25 minutes, we put together a game plan of how we were going to blanket the market, how we were going to get emails out there, how we were going to create a system of referral partners, how we were going to incentivize our clients and our former academy members to refer people to us and come up with a social media strategy to make sure that we are always talking about the Academy for the next three, four weeks. And after that 25 minutes was over, we had a very clear and I'll say confident plan.
To make sure we were doing everything we could to leave it all on the field when it came to promoting the broker Branding Academy.
And at the end of the week, when I look back and I look at, I kind of review the week and I look at all the wins we had, and wins don't necessarily have to mean new clients. Wins can be just progress, right? Those small victories we often overlook. One of the wins from the week, that week was what we did to attack that problem. When I felt we were not putting the effort forth to encourage enrollment into the academy. And I was really proud of the fact how quickly our team just saw the problem, we all agreed it was a problem and then we just committed the time and the effort to attack the problem.
And now we're getting enrollment, things are going the way we want it to, and here we are on the, the, the eve or the brink of our next academy. And I feel really good, not only about the enrollment we have, but I'm more proud of the effort we put in because we saw the problem and we attacked it.
And this is where I transition to you.
What I often see in the insurance industry is we get a lot of advisors who come to us or agents and principals, sales directors with a problem.
Could be my producers aren't booking enough appointments. Could be I'm struggling, Andy, because I'm not booking enough appointments, or.
I'm Getting appointments, but they're not really going anywhere. Or what I used to do as far as prospecting goes, is it working as good as it used to? And I need to get my mojo back.
But I don't see a lot of proactive.
Attacking of said problem.
And when I look at what differentiates, what separates the best from the rest is when the best see a problem, they don't hesitate. They don't negotiate with themselves. They attack it and put the time, quite frankly, and the money sometimes to solve it. So when I look at those advisors and those agencies who come to us, that now, looking back in hindsight, I probably bet our most successful producers and our most successful agencies are the ones that come to a problem, come with us to us with a problem, we show them how they can help, and in a matter of 10, 15 minutes, like, yep, we're in. We need to solve this. You look like you're the team to help us. Let's go. What do we have to do to get this going on the flip side?
We get the folks that come to us with that problem. We show them how we can help, but.
Then they got to take time to think about it.
Then they start negotiating with themselves.
Then they start talking themselves into, well, maybe it's just bad luck, you know, maybe it's just the bad timing. Maybe if I just keep doing what I'm doing, you know, luck's gonna find me and I'm gonna start getting momentum back. But you and I both know how that story ends, right? Exactly where it started. You, you. You're in the same place, the same level of stuckness as you were six months ago. The only thing has changed is you're six months older, you're six months closer to not hitting your goal.
So what I encourage you to do, if you're listening today and you know that you could be getting more better results than you are today, I'm here to tell you there's still a lot of time left between now and the end of the year to create the result you want to hit your sales goals. However, what I am going to encourage you to do is stop contemplating, stop thinking about what you're going to do, and just do it. Just attack the problem in front of you and figure out what you knew and what you need to do to solve it.
