How To Build A Bulletproof Week of Prospecting

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. My name is Andy Neary, and this is episode 268. In this episode, I am going to teach you how to build a bullet plan, bulletproof marketing plan for 2024. If you are joining as this airs, this is the end of week one, 2024, and you are about ready to get back into the thick of it. And I want to use this episode to help you out. If you're one of my insurance producers who has been faithful listening to the podcast every week one, thank you for taking the time to do it, but you're going to get a ton out of this episode because I'm going to help you build a really effective and bulletproof weekly marketing plan to help you book more appointments with the right prospects. And when I thought about the episode I wanted to air for the first week of the year, I felt this would be really.

This was the right topic to be talking about because for most producers.

You'Re coming fresh off a little downtime over the holidays. During that time, you probably set some really lofty goals for the year, but without a clear plan to get there, it's almost impossible to achieve it. And right now, you're still dealing with the euphoria of setting that big goal. But what you haven't realized is you don't quite have a clear plan to get there. And without that plan, what's going to happen is you're going to start to stare up at that big goal. And come March, you're already going to start sweating. And so I want to help you create a plan out of the gate so you can hit the ground running and not only achieve that sales goal you have, I want you to blow through it this year. So here is what you're going to learn. I'm going to teach you something I learned from a mentor of mine. Now, I've never met this mentor. It's a young Gentleman who's probably one of the hottest risers, fastest risers on this in social media. His name is Alex Hormozi. What I'm going to talk about today actually comes right out of his recent launch, the book $100 million leads. If you are interested in how to become a more effective marketer, make sure you get this book. I have no tie to it, no affiliation to it, or no affiliate revenue I make off of promoting it. It's just a damn good book. And so what I'm going to teach you today is comes right out of this book. It's a lesson I learned from Hormozi that I have applied to our business and it's had tremendous results. So I want to share some of those insights that I learned from reading this book with you today because I think it's going to be very helpful. But let's level some. Let's talk about the problem right now. Far too many insurance producers do not have an effective marketing plan to win business. To book more appointments with the right prospects, have better conversations so you can win more business. And when I say marketing, you can interchange that word with prospecting. Marketing. A marketing plan is a prospecting plan. And too many producers just do not have a plan. So what they do is they resort to what they know, which is picking up the phone, setting time blocks to make a bunch of cold calls, send out a bunch of cold emails, and it's just not working like it used to. Let's be honest with ourselves. Cold calling today is a little harder than it used to be if you just think about the facts. Right now it is harder to use the channel of cold calling to book business. Why? Because it's taking longer to reach a prospect. In fact, right now it takes 18 phone calls to get one prospect on the phone. That's not even agreeing to an appointment, that's just to get them on the phone. 18 calls to get one prospect on the phone and we're calling cell phones more than we ever have. We're calling offices people do not report to anymore. And if you're calling a prospect cell phone and they don't recognize your number, they're not picking it up. Worse yet, their phone might tell them your spam, which is making it very difficult to get their attention. Trying to send out a cold email, equally tough. Unless it's a really well written email. It's getting lost in the hundreds of emails they get every single day. And so you've got to figure out a way to grab their attention. Now I Am not saying stop cold calling, stop sending out the cold emails. What I am going to tell you to do is you got to do much more than that today. You can't just rely on what we refer to as one to one combat. And that's why that strategy is very tough today is it is known as one to one marketing, which is you are trying to hit one person at a time. You could be successful. It's just going to take a very long time to do it. Today I'm going to teach you how to leverage the one to many strategy to be more effective in addition to the one to one combat you're already engaging with. And when you're dealing with a weekly calendar that doesn't have effective prospecting strategies in IT tactics, what you're facing right now is less appointments, less conversations, more frustration, more dejection. And you're just downright burnt out because you're trying to figure out what changed. And I have these conversations with insurance producers every single week when they reach out to us for help. And I ask them what is the hurdle keeping you from achieving your goal? More often than not, it's I'm not booking enough appointments. Most producers feel like they have the knowledge to win business. They feel like if given the chance to book more appointments, they win more. They're just not booking more appointments. They're struggling. It's harder to get a prospect on the calendar today. And so we're going to fix that. The solution I want to share with you is one I found in reading the book, $100 million leads. I give all the credit to this to Alex Hormozi. He teaches marketing in a way I've never seen before. I don't know if I've seen anyone who has put it in a more simple, straightforward format than he has. It's pretty impressive. And so I'm going to walk through a strategy I learned from him that will help you determine what activities you should be engaging in on a weekly basis to book more appointments. So here's what I want you to do. If you're listening and you're in a position where you can actually write something, I want you to take a piece of paper and a pen and I want you to draw a big square.

And then I want you to take that square and I want you to cut it. You know, draw a line down the middle, draw a line across the middle so you have four boxes.

And I'm going to try to do this the best I can without illustrating it to you. What I want you to do is in the upper right corner of that square, the upper right box, I want you to write cold one to one.

In the upper left box I want you to write warm one to one in the lower left box, right warm one to many. And the lower right box, right, cold one too many. So starting from the upper right, you've got a box that says cold one to one, upper left, warm one to one, lower left, warm one to many and lower right cold one to many. A good prospecting strategy touches all four boxes and we're going to go through each box and what what goes into each box. But a good prospecting strategy has to touch all four boxes today to be effective. So if you go to the upper right box in the cold one, that's where you're going to put activities like cold calling and cold emails. So if you want to go ahead in that box write cold call cold email. That is where the cold one to one combat goes. This is the box everybody in the insurance industry has been trained how to do. And unfortunately, this is the box where most are still only trained to do. And this is their only strategy right now is cold one to one. This is why you still see agencies buying really cold lists of prospects and asking their producers to just hammer these suss. They're not even prospects suspects. With one cold call, one cold email after another doesn't work like it used to. Now it is going to be a part of your strategy. It can't be the only part of your strategy. So in the upper right box you got cold one to one. That is reserved for cold calls and cold emails. Now in the upper left warm one to one is where things like referrals go.

Email campaigns where you're blasting out one email to a lot of people, but you're able to personalize those emails so they look one to one one. But these are people who have put themselves on your email list so they're qualified, they're warm. So under the category of warm one to one, you have referrals and you have warm email campaigns. Warm email messages. 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 completegame consulting.com to request your free strategy call. All right, let's jump back into today's podcast episode.

So when you look at your strategy for 2024, number one, what does your referral strategy look like? Do you have a strategy, a process to ask clients about referrals? Do you have a process to ask COIs about referral? What does your email campaign strategy look like? You have got to be better at nurturing your current prospects. You can't just hammer them with one ask after another. You have to nurture them with value. So what's your strategy there? Now let's go to the lower right for a second, the cold one to many. Now, the most common prospecting activity or marketing activity that would go under cold one to many is paid advertising. People use paid advertising to get a message in front of a lot of people who don't know them. A cold audience. We're doing that right now in our own strategy with Complete Game University. We know there are a lot of insurance professionals in this country who have no clue who we are. So we're gonna use paid advertising to get a message in front of them. Back in the day, a lot of agencies used billboards as cold one to many with advertising. So paid advertising is the most common form of cold one to many. Now, you might be in a position where you don't have the budget to spend money on paid advertising and that's okay. By the way, setting up a booth at a conference or sponsoring a hole at the in the local golf outing, that is another form of cold one to many. But there's another activity that I feel should go into cold one to many that a lot of people don't talk about or at least put in this box. And. And that's public speaking. Public speaking is actually going to also go into the box of warm one to many. But I believe it's one of those activities that can fall under the category of cold one to many yet still be one of the most effective prospecting strategies you have. Because you can walk into room if you have a public speaking engagement, you can walk into a room and stand on a stage with a room full of people who have no clue who you are, except for maybe the event planner.

And by the end of that talk, they can be hot prospects. There is nothing that will turn a cold lead into a hot prospect faster than public speaking. That's why I think it's a very effective cold one to many strategy. I love going into audiences with people who have no clue who I am because I know my keynote talk can turn them into warm prospects very quickly. Now, the last box the one in the lower left. Warm one to many.

This is the year I want to challenge you to dive headfirst into this category as hard as you can. What should go under warm one to many? Social media content.

Webinars, Podcasts. Maybe this is the year you start a podcast. Public speaking.

The most underutilized box in the insurance industry when it comes to these four boxes of prospecting is warm one to many. Not enough are putting a message in front of a lot of people as quickly as they can and people who actually know who they are. Let me give you an example. When you decide to make a LinkedIn post and you put it out on LinkedIn and you already have a warm lead list, it's called your first connections.

If they see your content, they're going to remember who you are. You're going to build name recognition with them. So why not make it a goal to build your connections with the right prospects? Oh, by the way, the LinkedIn newsletter feature on LinkedIn is another way to build a lead list. People are subscribing to your newsletter. You can see exactly who those subscribers are. That is as much of a lead list as an email list is.

Webinars. When people register for your webinar, there is a very good chance they know who you are. A podcast like mine, like you're listening right here, is just another way to get your message out in front of a lot of people at the same time. And then you've got the channel of public speaking. Like I shared in the cold one to many. Warm one to many is when you're speaking in front of a room of people who already know who you are, your credibility is off the charts.

So when you look at this box, warm one to many, what are you going to do to go all in right here this year? Now, I'm not telling you you've got to do all those activities I just described, but man, you gotta at least pick one or two. You gotta start creating social media content. I'm here to tell you social media content is as important today as cold calling.

You got to have a better webinar strategy. Maybe you this is the year you finally dive into public speaking. Maybe this is the year you launch your podcast. You've been talking about it. Maybe this is the year you finally do it. But an effective prospecting game plan, a bulletproof marketing plan, touches every one of these boxes. So when you look at all four categories, Cold one to one, warm one to one, cold one to many, warm one to many, Sit down and start looking at those activities and determine what you're going to do every single week. Maybe your marketing plan is to designate time to cold call to send out some cold emails. Be a lot better at asking for referrals with COIs and prospects with clients. Maybe you have a designated plan to take clients or cois out to lunch to have a conversation about referrals. How about social media? Is this the year you're going to start posting a couple times a week on LinkedIn? Maybe you start a YouTube channel because you like doing video? Is this the year you consistently host one webinar per quarter?

Maybe this is the year you go out and look for that first speaking engagement at that SHRM conference or that CFO roundtable you've been dreaming about and getting in front of. But if you develop a prospecting strategy, a marketing strategy that hits all four of these boxes, it is going to be bulletproof. You're going to create activity. You're going to do it with the right people. You're going to build so much fricking trust and credibility, you're going to have prospects reaching out to you. And when I look at our activity right now here at Complete Game Consulting and I look at what has been the secret sauce that has helped us grow as fast as we have, it is because we have gone all in on that box in the lower left warm one to many. We put out almost 50 pieces of content a week on social media. I am constantly looking for speaking engagements. In fact, my goal for 2024 is to be speaking at least once a month. We have the podcast Bullpen Sessions podcast going 268 episodes strong. We've got our YouTube channel with over a thousand videos. I'm hosting a webinar every single month. We have gone all in on that warm one to many and this is why we are growing. You can't just live in the upper right box of cold calls and cold emails anymore. That is the world, the land of frustration, dejection and eventually getting out of this industry. So please do me a favor as the euphoria of 2024 is still rolling all over you, you're excited to get out and get after to get back after it. After some downtime over the holidays, what are you going to do to build a of bunch better marketing plan? Yes, it's going to require you to get outside your comfort zone. You're going to start doing things you have never done before. In fact, when you try them the first time, you're going to suck. But the victory is in keeping going in consistency, persistency, and patience. So sit down before you really ramp up next week and figure out what you're going to do to have a prospecting strategy that includes a cold one to one activity, a warm one to one activity, a warm one to many activity, and a cold one to many activity. Because I promise you, if you do this and you stay consistent every week, every month, you will win. You will not only hit that sales goal you're excited about, you will blow right through it. 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. Share your message with the world. Execution, clarity and consistency is everything. Be well.