How To Become A Prospecting Ninja In Q4

Board.

How is everybody doing today?

Here's what I want you to guys do in the chat box. Amanda, thank you for doing that in the chat box. I want in one word, one word. I want you guys to describe how you are feeling today, how you're doing today in one word. Put it in the chat box. Great. Stellar. Awesome.

Overloaded. Motivated. I'm waiting for somebody to be shitty. I'm terrible.

Wonderful. Perfect. Great. Awesome. All right, guys, here's what we are talking about today. How the heck you can become a prospecting ninja in Q4. So I'm going to pull up my presentation. You guys can give me one second.

Everybody should see this. How to become a prospecting ninja in Q4. That's what we are talking about today. So what I want to help you guys with is this is the time of the year that you're either in one of three places when it comes to producing. You're kicking ass right now. Far exceeded your goals. You're sitting in a good spot. Hopefully you're not taking the foot off the pedal. But you know what, you're doing pretty well right now. You're on track. You still, you know, you know, you still have to get after it. You're on track to hear goals, but hey, got three months. Got to keep getting after it. Or the third one, which unfortunately is where a lot of people are at right now is, oh, crap, I still got a long ways to go to hit my goal, and how the heck am I going to hit that in Q4? So what I want to do or teach you today or just go over today is, you know, some things you can do to quote, unquote, leave it all on the field between now and the end of the year to give yourself the best chance. I can't guarantee you're going to hit your goals if you're way behind them, but what I can guarantee is if you leave it all on the field, you're going to give yourself the best chance to do it. And so that's what I am going to talk about today is what I do right now, what I'm doing and have been doing, what we do at complete game to really become ninjas, to get out there and prospect as much as we can with the limited time we have. Because that's the thing everybody is going to have a limitation on this year is time. Or I'd say this year, this last quarter is going to be time. So if anybody was curious, I looked up the definition of ninja and here's what I read. Ninjas may seem mysterious, but the origin of their name is not. The word ninja derives from the Japanese character ninja, meaning persevere. Over time, it developed to extend to conceal and move stealthily. So this is why I'm going to teach you how to be a ninja. It's I want you to have people looking at you, going, you are everywhere. How the hell do you do it? All that is the goal for Q4, is if it comes to prospecting, you have got to try to figure out how to be everywhere as much as possible. And here's what I'm going to tell you. We're going to talk about mindset shifts with prospecting. I don't won't need any or won't make anybody answer this question, but I want you to ask yourself right now, do I still need to kick a little ass between now and the end of the year?

Ask yourself that question. Be honest with yourself. Because if the answer is yes, here is a reality.

You're going to have to annoy people.

Now, there's two different ways to annoy people, and I'm going to go through both of them today. But just know you're going to have to be everywhere. And by the way, if you annoy anybody, they weren't going to buy from you anyways, so don't worry about it. So I'm going to go through how you can be everywhere. And I see some recognizable faces. Some of you have gone through my workshops, some of you have gone through my academies. So some of this may sound familiar, but it's a good refresher nonetheless. So who feels like this is what they're going to look like in Q4.

Especially if you have a ton of accounts to renew. You see one of the biggest challenges you have in the Q4 for most advisors is most advisors, especially the ones on the call, don't just sell. You actually also manage a book.

So this is the time of the year where you've got to focus on managing a book, renewing the business you have, which is extremely important, but you're somehow supposed to still get out and get after it and try to grow your book at the same time.

And when we're forced to do both. And for some of you who also might have management duties now, you've got three things you have got to try to balance in the fourth quarter. I was talking to one of my clients last week during our coaching call. He does a mix, a large group, small group. He's still trying to manage small group book meaning anything under 50. He said he has 52 renewals. Him. He's him himself. Him alone has 52 renewals in the next three months. I'm like, good, how are we going to go out and sell some stuff? So, guys, I understand this is a balancing act. And come December, when I talk to advisors, this is what they look like.

Now, when you are stressed out in Q4, this is something I need to. Can you mute yourself if you're talking to somebody else? Thank you. When you don't have a plan, here's the reality. When you lack a plan.

This is what you spend the majority of your time doing. You sit at your computer and you let that inbox ding constantly treat you like Pavlov's Pavlov's dog. And you're constantly answering in emails or when you lack a plan, you are just in the game of shuffling paperwork.

When I talk to advisors and I ask them, what is your plan to prospect right now? When they lack a plan, you end up doing what comes easiest. And what comes easiest is this stuff. You sit at your desk answering emails, you move paperwork around for clients, and at the end of the day, you look back a week or two later and you're like, I have done no prospecting in the last two weeks.

So we have to get off this train. And what's going to help you get off this train is having a plan, having a weekly strategy to be everywhere. That's what today's. Today's webinar is about, because you have to get after it. Guys, I'm going to use a lot of sports analogies today, and I'm going to say leaving it all in the field is one of your biggest things you have to do.

So here's the question I want to ask everybody right now.

I'm not Even talking about Q4 here with this question, but my question is on how many wins do you need to change your business? Now, you don't need to answer this in the chat box. If you want, throw it out there. But I want you to think about this question. How many wins do you actually need to change your trajectory of your business?

Because if you're thinking about it from a logical standpoint, the answer is probably not a whole lot. If you go after large group, maybe you just need three or four wins and it would change everything. Maybe you need five, maybe you need 10. Heck, maybe you write smaller groups, you need 20 wins. Even with 20 wins at the end of the day, that is not a ton of victories over the course of time.

So think about that. How many wins do you need right now to achieve your goals? Or heck, let's think big to completely change the trajectory of your business.

Because I bet you it's a lot less than you realize. And here's why. That question or the answer to that question is important when I ask my clients that question. Again, we're not talking about a lot of account wins. New AORs, it could be 5, it might be 10. Let's say it's 10. If all you need is 10 more 10 wins in the next year or so and it would completely change the trajectory of your business.

Then why do you keep using old tricks to try to get those 10? This is one of the biggest issues we have in the insurance industry today. This is one of the reasons my business, Complete Game Consulting, exists. We are trying to teach new dogs old tricks.

Guys. We do not win AORs like we did in 1995.

And this is the other question I pose. Here's why I bring up this old tricks. You and I both know what the old tricks are when you think about the fact you only need five or ten wins. Maybe 15, maybe 20. I don't know. Why are we trying to create lists of thousands of people?

This is one of the things that drives me nuts. You're getting me on a soapbox today, so I apologize. Why do you go out on Zoom info or or all these other platforms and want to create a list of thousand or 2,000 people?

Here's what we do right now. Here's what most agencies and advisors do, especially this time of the year. Let's go build a big list, as big as we possibly can. So pick a market. Let's go try to talk to the entire city. And here's how we're going to do it. We're going to do it through direct marketing. We're just going to punch people left and right.

How? First thing is we're going to spam them with a bunch of email. We're not even going to ask if they want to receive our emails. We're just going to start firing them at them.

And then after we're done that, we're going to cold call them and then go, you don't remember me?

Of course not. Guys. This is how we're still trying to win business right now.

Especially in the fourth quarter when your time is valuable. Why are you calling people spamming email, people who have no clue who you are.

And trying to do it by thinking the bigger the list I build, the better it's going to be.

Direct marketing does not work like it used to.

I can't tell you how many times I talk to agencies that don't hire us for our services. What we do is called brand marketing, not direct market. They don't hire us. You know why they don't want to invest the money because they've been burned by direct marketing. They hired somebody to go get instant wins for them. It didn't work, so they said it was a waste of money. Happens all the time.

Because we can't be direct marketing. We can't be constantly trying to punch people in the face with emails and cold calls. We have to have a better approach. And that's why I wanted to do today's webinar. I've heard too many advisors, especially lately, talk about doing this stuff when. If you're under pressure, especially in the fourth quarter, this stuff isn't going to work. Should you pick up the phone once in a while? Yeah, you should. Can you send an email directly to a prospect once in a while? Yeah, you could, but it can't be your only strategy.

And so that's what I want to talk to you about today, is how the heck can we change the trajectory? How can we shift our mindset of what you and I have all been taught? This is where I'm very empathetic. And guys, we just all have been trained the same way.

So we need to change the way we've been trained. Remember what I said? New dog, old tricks, be a new dog with a new trick.

And the new trick that we have to focus on. Oh, I forgot this slide. This is what we end up doing, which is literally just asking prospects over and over, please buy my. Please buy my. Please buy my.

So we got to change it up. Here's how we change it up.

Anybody know who this is on the screen?

Anybody want to wager a guess? Some fruitcake. What do you say?

That's Seth Godin.

Seth God. I heard somebody say a fruitcake.

No, this is Seth Godin. Whoever said Seth God, you are correct. Seth Godin wrote a book, wrote a book called this is Marketing. If anybody ever has a chance to read it Small, easy read. In the book, he talks about smallest viable market. And this is a place most in our industry don't want to go. And that is go find the smallest viable market of people who can do business with, you.

Know what it is you do best and who you do it best for, and go find that market, no matter how small it is.

And this goes back to the comment I made earlier. Now that I'm all fired up. I'm going to tone it down a little bit.

You don't need lists of a thousands, gang.

It feels good to go purchase a list of a ton of people. I get it. But you just need a few. Imagine you just need 10 wins to change the trajectory of your business forever. Okay, what kind of list does it take to find 10? I'm 100, 300, 500. It's not as big as you think it is.

So let's start with the philosophy of smallest viable market.

Now, once we have that concept in mind, here is what you have to focus on in the fourth quarter.

This is a phrase that defines our business and that is exponential awareness.

When you look at the time blocks you are dedicated to prospecting.

I want you to look at each block and the activity you're going to achieve in the block and ask yourself, is this exponential awareness or is this linear awareness? Linear awareness is picking up the phone, calling up one prospect at a time, and trying to get them to take an appointment with you. Now remember, cold calling by definition means cold. You're calling somebody who doesn't know you.

Linear awareness is again sitting there going, okay, I'm going to send some emails to prospects one at a time, and I'm trying to come up with what I should say that I think will get them to reply and maybe accept the meeting.

The reason linear awareness is a challenge these days is one, people aren't picking up the phones.

Two, we all get hundreds of emails a day now. So the, the chance somebody who doesn't know you is going to reply is very slim.

And third, it takes a lot of time. Remember what your most valuable resource is right now in the fourth quarter. It's time to. So if I've got to make a hundred phone calls today, that's going to take me a couple hours. That's a lot of time.

Exponential awareness is completely different. It's what can I do to get one message in front of a lot of people at once? Because my time is valuable and so is theirs. So I want you guys to look at this phrase and this, I want this to become the, the North Star for you guys in the fourth quarter. What can I do to get one message in front of a lot of people? Now remember what I just said, that a lot of people doesn't have to be thousands.

Right now, our list, I'll share this with you guys. At Complete Game Consulting, we have two lists that we focus on. I've got my text community and I've got My email community, my text community has right around 300 people in it. The email community has right around 650. Those really aren't that big of lists at the end of the day. But we are still very effective because we're creating exponential awareness for these lists. So what do I mean when I say that this is where brand marketing comes in?

Remember what direct marketing is? I am sending a message right at you. And every time I send that message, I am trying to create an immediate result.

Brand marketing, on the other hand, is different. Now, here's why a lot of people don't like brand marketing. I can't measure brand marketing, meaning when I hire somebody to cold call for me, I can measure how many calls they made, how many appointments they set. That's easy to measure. When I spend money on an ad, I can measure that. What? You know, how many clicks per dollar did we get? How many website views did we. I can measure that. I can't measure brand marketing. That's why people don't like it. But it's the most effective type of marketing there is today.

Because here's the reality.

The name of the game in prospecting today is not who you know, it's who knows you.

So when you look at your prospecting activities between now and the end of the year, you have two choices.

You can fill it with blocks of cold calling and what I will call blind emails, or you can fill it with activities that are going to help you accomplish a lot in a short amount of time.

Here are things I would be telling you to look at right now in the fourth quarter. Social media.

If you've been on plenty of my webinars, you've been on enough. You know, I talk about LinkedIn at length, right? Social media, especially if you're selling business to business. Anybody on this call who's a wholesale partner that sells to brokers got to be on social media. Be on LinkedIn, be out there making connections. Be out there putting out content that teaches your audience that lets people get to know you. Send direct messages to people. Remember guys, you have the feature on LinkedIn that you now can send voice messages to people. Send messages, connect with them, get to know them, but do it every day. You can't just do it once and think it's going to work. You have to be doing this stuff all the time. Because I can send out one post on LinkedIn and I can get hundreds of thousand or thousands of views and a lot of those people will be your prospects. That's brand marketing. How about webinars. I would be running webinars as frequently and as often as I can right now. I don't care if five people show up or 15, I'm going to keep running them. You know, you know why? There's two reasons. It's a great way to teach. Worst case scenario, you've got a recorded webinar that you could use to share with prospects, and it's a great way to bring prospects to you. So I would challenge you to run webinars as often as you can. Monthly, maybe twice a month. Heck, maybe weekly.

Now, with webinars, if you want to know what you should be talking about, think about topics that are very, very important to your prospects today. I do. I'd go two paths right now if I were running webinars. If I wanted to stick to your area of subject matter expertise, I would focus on helping companies make their renewal season this year successful. I would use my webinars to teach companies how to have a more successful renewal this year.

Now, if you want to go the other path and be more of that host of the webinar, maybe you bring on other subject matter experts. You can go down the path of what content is going to be really important to those CFOs or those HR directors I want to grab the attention of and go find experts in those areas. Maybe it's taxes, maybe it's recruiting. Maybe it's work from home in the new world. Maybe it's dealing with millennials. I don't know what it is, but what topics would your prospects want to know about? Another great channel with webinars is think about interviewing one of your clients. Let them talk about their business. Let them talk about their success they've had with what you've helped them with. These are all great ideas, but the most important thing is execution. You gotta be doing this all the time. Don't judge. Don't try to be perfect, because you're not. Just get out there and get after it. Public speaking, that's another. Webinars are a form of public speaking. But how about some local SHRM chapters or CFO groups or other events locally, chambers of commerce that are looking for speakers between now and the end of the year, most of these organizations have monthly lunches where they're looking for speakers. Challenge yourself to get on stage. There's still an opportunity to do it. There's still time. And then the emails. If we're going to use emails gang, you want to be using nurture emails. The emails we're all used to sending out are what I call sales emails. I'm coming right at you and I'm trying to sell you something and I'm trying to sell you on getting an appointment schedule. How about from now till the end of the year? Once a week you send out an email to your prospects, mainly the warm ones.

With some content that brings them a lot of value. Teach them how to set up, get ready for a successful renewal season. Teach them questions they should be asking their broker.

Just arm them with ammunition to help them have a successful renewal or whatever it is. Because I'm here to tell you though, there will be somebody who might use it against you and give it to their broker. The majority of your prospects are going to respect you're sharing this information.

But the most important thing with these four channels is the exponential awareness it creates. In one social media post or one webinar or one speaking opportunity or one email, I can get that message in front of tens or hundreds of people. Again, you don't need thousands.

It may just mean need. You may just need five or 10 wins to change your business. All you have to do is go find those five or ten people.

That believe what you believe, that align with the message you're sharing.

At the end of the day, this is what you want to be doing, gang.

Every week we leverage opportunistic chaos here at Complete Game every week. This is why I want I run a weekly webinar. This is why I send out a weekly newsletter on Fridays. This is why I will go on LinkedIn and send a bunch of messages to connections just to see if they want to connect. It's why we're on social media every day. I want you to think about your prospecting activities like you're taking a bunch of balls and you're just throwing the balls in the air. And if you do this often enough, some will fall and break, but some will fall and bounce right back up as opportunities. You have to create opportunistic chaos. If you are sitting back right now and just scared to pick up the phone one time to call a prospect, yeah, you're not going to have any opportunity between now and the end of the year. But if you leverage things like this and every week you make sure you are hitting one or more of those and you're just throwing these balls in the air, you're going to create opportunities. I guarantee it.

The only thing I can't tell you or can't do for you is the actual execution.

But I will tell you first from firsthand experience Guys, this is how you build a business today.

Because remember, it comes back to this. The more you do the four things in the previous slide, the more people are going to know who you are.

So if you do pick up the phone or you do send that direct email, there's a good chance they know who you are, which is going to enhance the direct marketing activities. But if you completely ignore the brand marketing and just go with direct marketing, it's not working like it used to. That's why we are so passionate about these areas. This is how you create opportunistic chaos. And today's webinar was probably as much motivation as it was teaching tactics. Because I am here to tell you guys, if you have a desire to win and I look, I know people on this call and I know people on this call are athletes. You're former athletes. You gotta leave it all on the field this year, guys. Between now and the end of the year, you have to leave it all on the field.

If at the end of the year you don't hit your sales goals yet, you can look back and say, dang, I'm exhausted because I got after it. That's a victory in itself.

And there's two ways you can do it. You can do it picking up the phone one at a time. You can try to send a bunch of emails out to prospects who don't know who you are. Or you can try to start building some brand marketing into your prospecting strategy.

If it works for us guys, it can work for you. We are no different than you.

So we have a couple minutes left. We'll go. We'll go a minute or two overboard. If you guys got the time. What questions do you have? Especially when it comes around brand marketing activities like you see on the screen.

This is your chance to fire away.

I got a question for you, Andy.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, so what, how do you approach it? It's not so much me, cause I'm fully on board. I hear exactly what you're saying. But there's a corporate initiative from above that's that they are drilling a lot of this stuff down. I was literally laughing. While you're going through some of your earlier slides about just the one on one emails, the pounding, the lists, all the things. How would you tackle that if your approach corporately is to get sucked into that?

Here's what I would tell you, Ryan. It's an awesome question. I just had this conversation with a client yesterday. If you have to play nice in the sandbox with the corporate initiatives, Basically, that's a reality. Yeah. Here's what I would urge you to do, to have a conversation with them. Brand marketing is not created when a prospect gets some kind of email or anything from United Health Care. United Health Care. Hold on, Ryan. I'm sorry, whoever's talking, can you mute yourself? Thank you.

You're never going to create brand recognition when a prospect gets that email from your company. This is what I've, I've argued with forever is sending out newsletter nurture emails from the company does no good for the producers. Now, if you could take said company initiative or email and have Ryan send it.

Yes.

To his prospect. So Ryan can include his own little editorial of, here's why I'm sharing it.

With you, put some personality behind it.

That is just fine. So that's what I would tell you, Ryan. If you've got to be part of the corporate initiative, which happens a lot, especially with industry partners, just say, hey, is there any way I could provide. Take what you guys are doing and provide it to my own prospects? Yeah. Because I want them to hear from me. Because at the end of the day, and this goes for everybody on the call, they're buying from you, they're not buying from your company. Yep. Yeah. Okay, cool. Rock and roll. Yep. I know that one's not easy because sometimes, again, you got to play.

I'm kind of stuck in the middle with this, but I. Yeah, good. Good approach. Thanks.

Yeah. Anybody, any other questions, guys? No, I just. Ryan. I'm in the same boat, dude, so no worries. This is good. Here's the key, guys, and I'll share this with you because I got my butt in trouble with this about four years ago. You do want to build. You do want to build brand recognition because again, people buy from you, not your company. That, That's a, That's a truth or fact these days. But be careful. Don't. Don't go at it from the fact that you. You're trying to build a brand that you think is bigger and above the company you work for. I got my butt in trouble with that with an agency I was with in the past, Ryan. Not the one we worked at together. No, I know another one. I have a feeling.

Because they thought I was trying to go above and beyond what they did. And, and, and there were probably some times there that I was guilty of that. But. Yeah, play nice. Play, play.

I want to be careful that. Because I, There's. There are some personalities and egos on the other side of this that I want to be you Know, respectful.

Ken, Same thing with you, man. I know. I know where you work. Right. And so people buy from you guys. So take whatever your company is putting out there, but let it come from you. Yeah. Because they want to hear from you. They don't want to hear from the logo. It's just. It's just a fact these days.

And if anybody here, I can't see who everybody is on the call. If you work for a big, big, big entity, I know that can be very difficult. Difficult. But do everything you can to have whatever content's being provided by your company come from you to your prospects, not from the company.

Last thing I'll put up there, guys, in the chat box, I did put a link. I say it every webinar. This is what we teach in our online course, Broker Branding Academy Online. The link to learn more about it's in the chat box. If you want to go check it out. It's right there. We're proud of this course. Just because, guys, that brand marketing I talked about today, this is the name of the game. I'm gonna share something and I want to share this with you guys. Not to brag. I share it because I want to tell you it's possible.

We have built complete game consulting to the where it is today without one cold call and without $1 spent on ads. Now we're gonna have to do it. No doubt. But my point is, when you focus on brand marketing, it works. And when you get a lot of people to know who you are, it works because that's how prospects start knowing you and liking you. That's why direct marketing is more challenging today than it's ever been. If they don't know you, the odds that they're going to do business with you is very, very slim.

So focus on brand marketing again. I'm going to say it one more time. Just get after it. Between now and the end of the ninja move is when you're focused on social media, you're focused on webinars, you're sending out these nurture emails, maybe you're out speaking. That's how you get people to look at you and go, holy crap, you are everywhere. And at the end of the day, you look like you're everywhere because you're focused on the right things.

So nobody else any. Any last questions before I let you guys go for the day?

All I ask of you guys is to get out, get after it execute on this stuff. Go check out Broker Branding Academy Online and invite your friends next time. I hope you guys are finding these webinars.

Valuable. We also do this stuff, guys, to lead by example. This is what I'm talking about. Like, do what I'm doing. Get out there and host a webinar every week if you have to. I don't care. You know, you're going to annoy people. But if you want to write business, you got to annoy them once in a while. All right, guys, get after it. I'll let you guys get going. If you have any questions, email me. The recording will be out in about an hour.

That's all I got for you guys. Leave it all on the field. Have a good weekend.