Andy Neary says agencies waste energy trying to sell everything to everyone. Pick one thing you do better than anyone else, target prospects who need it, and you'll control the sales process instead of chasing RFPs.
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And I am a big believer in the energetics of selling. Call me woo woo. Call me whatever you want. What's going on between the ears determines how much sales success you have.
I've said it at length in past episodes. It's not a magic script. It's not a certain product or solution that's going to change your career. It's what you're thinking as you're going out and meeting with prospects. It's what's going on, the self talk that is going on between the ears as you're prospecting. If you come at it from an abundance mindset, if you come at it from an attitude of there are plenty of people to help. If this one is not a good fit, no harm, no foul, on to the next, you are going to have a lot more success. But today's episode is really focused in on how can you determine who's a best fit for you. So you stop trying to be all things to all people. So here's the advice I'm going to give you. It's something we teach in our Complete Game Marketing playbook. If you want to broaden your reach, if you want to broaden your opportunities, go narrow. Now you might be sitting and go, dude, what are you. What do you mean go narrow? Hear me out.
Instead of selling all of your services and capabilities to the market, which is what 98% of the agencies in this country do.
Ask yourself this question. Of all the things and all the capabilities and resources your agency has, what's the one thing you think you do as well as anyone in the market?
What's the one thing you believe you do as well as anyone in your market?
Now lean into that. Make that your differentiator.
Instead of trying to go out and find prospects who just want to have a conversation instead of puking all of your services at them, build your entire sales and your marketing and sales strategy around this one thing you do as well as anyone in the market. Because here's what happens. Here's the mindset shift that happens when you realize you have the one thing you do as well as anyone else. And you're going to make that the one thing you become known for.
You're going to start proactively going out and trying to find the prospects who are a good fit for that one thing. And when you go out and proactively target the prospects that are a fit for that one thing, the shift that occurs in your process is you're now interviewing prospects as much as they're interviewing you. Think about that for a second. How many times have you gone out to a prospecting opportunity and they're interviewing you amongst four or five other brokers, you're part of their process. At that point, your opportunity to win is completely out of your control. Instead, when you know who, you know what it is, you do better than anybody else, and you're trying to find the people who are fit for it, you're now interviewing them. You're bringing them into your process, not theirs. This is why I never liked the RFP process, other than the fact, you know, beyond the fact, questions are stupid and ridiculous. It's their process. You're becoming part of their process. The second you become part of their process, the second they're interviewing you. Every opportunity, the opportunity to win a business is completely out of your control. And I don't know about you, but there's one thing I want to do in a sales process. I want to maintain as much control as I can. And the best way to do that is actually to bring prospects through my prospect process, not theirs.
So I want you to think about these mindset shifts. What do you do as well as anyone in the industry? Some of my peers, the ones you know, some of our clients we coach for, some might be captives. That is the one thing they do better than anybody else. I have a client right now who we've done some work with that they still. They truly believe they're number one differentiator is their customer service. And I know how cliche that sounds, but here's the deal. They've actually built an entire process around it. They've named it, what is it you do better than anybody in the market. In 2014, when I realized I had to shift.
I had to start interviewing prospects and trying to find the people who are a fit for me. I realized self funding was my differentiator at that time. But at the beginning, I was just trying to talk to anybody about it. It's when I got really clear about who's a good fit for me for this process is when everything changed. And I'm gonna talk about that in a second here. But the question I want you to ponder as a team, as an individual right now is what do you do as well as anyone in the market? And I'm gonna challenge you to lean in on that one thing. Go narrow, to broaden your reach, to broaden your name recognition. I am seeing it happen time and time again with producers. We work with producers who are peers of mine that are absolutely killing it. It's not because they're just trying to sell anything to anyone. They know exactly what they're good at, and they stay in their zone of genius. It is that simple.
