The Future of Producer Training & Development

To sell today, you need confidence, you need conviction, and you need consistency. Because all 3 of these build trust, which is more important today than ever because we're in a trust recession. Think about this, insurance-specific, we have more producers than ever before. Sales cycles are longer than ever before, and building trust is harder than it's ever been. And we have this new competitor in town called AI. So how the heck are we gonna go win consistently today when we have all these challenges facing us? That's what we're gonna talk about today. All right, I want you guys to close your eyes for a second. Do me a favor and close your eyes. Why don't you go back to your childhood, and I want you to get an image of your childhood dream in your head. When you were a kid, what'd you want to be? And keep that Keep the eyes closed. Keep the vision in your head. If anybody's just willing to share, go ahead and share. What was your childhood dream? Marine biologist.

Marine biologist.

Basketball. Basketball player. Keep your eyes closed. Jen, what was your dream?

I was, I was all over the place. It was not insurance, I'll tell you that.

BJ, what was your childhood dream?

Second baseman.

Ooh, all good up until you said the Cubs. Keep those eyes closed.

International lawyer at Bing Gordon Gager, why is the people suing us?

That was about as clear as I have ever heard. How many of you have a vision of becoming an insurance advisor in your head?

Sort of with the Gordon Gager.

You can open your eyes. How many of you got in this industry by accident? Most of us did, right? Any second, third generation? You can say yes.

Yeah.

But most of us did not get in by design. I know my childhood dream was not to become an insurance advisor. My childhood dream was to play professional baseball. I grew up 30 miles outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Wanted to play for my hometown team, the Milwaukee Brewers. But I had one small problem. Does that physique scream professional athlete? When you're a chunky kid, growing up is hard because you hate attention. When you're a child of the '80s, kids pick on you. Girls are definitely not attracted to you, and jean companies make a size for you. They call it size

husky.

Where? Okay, men, any husky-wearing men here? It's like a brotherhood. Now, my enemy in grade school was not the bully on the playground. No, my enemy Was the annual presidential fitness test. Who remembers that? I heard it's come back.

I don't know.

Is that true? I can remember walking into the gym at Parklawn Elementary and I'd see the ropes, pull-up bar, sit and reach box, and sweat would just start coming down my face because I knew what would lie ahead. I could barely do any push-ups. I couldn't do any pull-ups. Sit and reach could be measured in centimeters, not inches. Climb the ropes? Hell no. And there I stood, attention on me, and all I wanted to be was anybody but me. Anybody been there before? You see, when I look back at my childhood, all I wanted to do was fit in. I wanted to be a one of many. I wanted to look like everybody else. Now, fortunately, as I grew up, I did eventually grow out of the chunkiness. And as I got into high school, there was one place where attention started to find me and I was okay with it. And that was on the baseball field. And I had a lot of success in high school. I played high school baseball for my father, which comes with a whole different level of attention from parents and teammates. But despite the fact I didn't look like the prototypical pitcher size-wise, I excelled, which is so ironic because I was a chunky kid. I was too big as a kid and I was too small as a pitcher. But when I got into high school, I didn't care. I chased that attention and I wanted to become a one-on-one. I didn't compete with anybody else. I competed with myself. And by the time my high school career ended, college scouts started to pay attention. And I earned an opportunity to pitch at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the only Division I program in Wisconsin. And first 2 years at UWM, guess what? All I wanted to do was fit in, and it showed in my stats. I made a commitment after my sophomore year that, you know what, I'm going to go back to what I did in high school. I'm going to go chase becoming a one-on-one. I'm going to compete with myself. I'm not going to compare myself to anybody else. And Major League scouts started to pay attention. And 2 weeks after my college career, I got the call I'd always dreamed of. I was offered a free agent contract with the Milwaukee Brewers. Now, I wish I could tell you guys how I elevated my way onto Major League Baseball and ended up playing in Miller Park in Milwaukee, but I didn't because When I got to Helena, Montana— keep pressing the wrong button here— the fat kid came back. This time it was mentally. You see, all I wanted to do in pro ball was fit in. And when you are a free agent, that's a death sentence. And what's interesting about minor league baseball is you are being compared and judged every single day. You are competing with teammates to try to get promoted. Coaches are trying to get promoted. Umpires are trying to get promoted. Everybody on the field is trying to get attention. And when you're a free agent not getting it, you're not going to last very long. And when I look back at my pro baseball career, I realized I feared the judgment, the comparison, and the failure And that's why it lasted as short as it did. Let me share a quick story to really encompass my pro baseball career. So I'm playing in Helena, Montana, and we were heading over to Missoula, Montana for our first road trip against the Missoula Osprey, part of the Arizona Diamondbacks organization. And on the bus ride over, the coaching staff warned us that the crowd in Missoula gets pretty rowdy. College town, summer. School's out, kids love to come, they get drunk, they make the road team's experience a nightmare. So it's a Friday night, first game of the series, I'm in the bullpen, our starting pitcher's terrible. So by the 3rd inning, the call comes down, get Neary up, get him loose. So I start warming up, maybe 10 throws into the bullpen, here I am running into the mound, into the game, right into this loud, obnoxious drunk crowd. So I get to the mound, I grab the ball from The manager, Dan Norman, and I look to the on-deck circle to see who I'm going to face, and it's Andres Torres, one of the top prospects in the Diamondbacks organization. My chance to prove myself, right? My chance to get attention. I start warming up, and as I start warming up, the crowd starts chanting. And little by little, the chanting gets louder. And after my 4th warm-up pitch, I can now hear what they're saying. How can you pitch when you're 5 foot 7? How can you pitch when you're 5'6? And there I stood. And in my head, I'm going, yeah, who am I? I'm a free agent. I'm not the prototypical size. I'm 5'9, not 5'6. I don't throw 97 miles per hour. What right do I have to stand on this mound? And 2 years later, I was cut. And when I look back at my childhood, I look back at my pro baseball career, so many people say, Andy, it must have been— you were so lucky to play pro baseball. I said, yeah, it was great. But you know what? I didn't reach my full potential. Why? Because I didn't stand out. I just wanted to be like everybody else. And looking back at my childhood and my pro baseball career, I learned a very important lesson. And that is this: when you look like everybody else, It's easy to get overlooked, but when you become a one-of-one, attention will find you. And that is what I want to talk to you guys about today. We're going to talk about developing producers, but what I'm going to encourage you to think about today is how can you develop producers to become a one-of-one? in their market. Now, before I dive in, I would love to hear from you. Who here is in charge of developing producers? What are some of the challenges you see producers— and I'd love to hear from anybody— what are some of the challenges you see producers having today? Whether it's developing them, having sales success, what are some of the challenges you see today?

Yeah, call real estate.

Call reluctance. Confidence.

Challenges with connecting virtually versus

living in a— selling in a virtual environment. Great, great challenge. Anybody else? Oof, consistency, leveraging time. We're gonna talk about that today. What I'm gonna share is 3 Reasons right now that we need to change the way we develop producers today, because so much has changed in the last 20 years. Heck, so much has changed in the last 6 years. First key point about sales right now is business is about who knows you. This is one of the biggest changes that has happened in sales in the last 6 years. I got in the insurance industry in 2000 and 2. And I had a mentor back then who gave me 2 pieces of advice. One was, Andy, you should really think about dyeing your hair gray. It's going to make you look older and give you more credibility. I was 23. Second piece of advice he gave me was, I want you to go get a membership at a country club you cannot afford. And I want you to go eat lunch at the most expensive restaurants in town. Why would he give me that advice?

Networking.

Because that's where the CEOs hang out. You see, in 2002, it was all about who you know. It was your network. In fact, you guys remember we had these things on our desk called a Rolodex? Now, it is still important to have a network, but business is about who knows you now. And my question is, are we helping our producers become recognizable? You see, to sell today, You need confidence, you need conviction, and you need consistency. Because all 3 of these build trust, which is more important today than ever because we're in a trust recession. Do you guys agree with this? Yeah. Think about this. Insurance-specific, we have more producers than ever before. Sales cycles are longer than ever before, and building trust is harder than it's ever been. And we have this new competitor in town called AI. So how the heck are we going to go win consistently today when we have all these challenges facing us? That's what we're going to talk about today, because the challenge we see— I run Complete Game Consulting. We work with agencies. People like to call it sales coaching. I hate that word, but it's— we help producers stand out in the market today. But what we're seeing because of this lack of confidence, this lack of conviction, this lack of consistency is new producers are failing faster than they ever have. And we are spending a lot of money to try to help them win and they're going nowhere. But equally, veterans are lacking the conviction to keep growing and they're burning out. Veterans, anybody here willing to admit you have felt the burnout in the last few years? Now, what we're talking about today is how to develop new producers, but I'm going to show you how you have to keep developing producers throughout their career because it changes. But if We can give younger producers more confidence faster. We can help the veterans keep the conviction. Guess what? We continue to scale organic revenue. And if there is one thing I'm here to tell you today that is more important than anything, it's organic revenue. Anybody hear about this little acquisition a couple days ago with USI and Aon? How about the acquisition of Brown and Brown and Risk Strategies? Marsh McLennan and McGriff? I interviewed a director from Marshberry a few months ago on my podcast, Accelerate Your Insurance Sales. And I asked him, I said, okay, if you were to give me one tip on what I need to do today, if I wanted to sell my agency a few years down the road, what would it be? And he said, create a consistent system of organic growth. Well, we need good producers to be able to do that. Now, second, sales cycles have changed. This is our second challenge we face today. When I got in in 2002, this is what the sales cycle looked like. Hey, Andy, I want you to go take a list of suspects who have no clue who you are, and I want you to hammer them with phone calls and emails until somebody submits to a meeting. And then you're going to throw a bunch of quotes at them. And if you're competitive, you might win. Anybody remember those days? It was reactive, transactional, and we were not in control. All that did was create competition and a chase to the bottom. Right? Well, the game has drastically changed because this is what the sales cycle looks like today. We still have an audience of suspects who don't know who we are. But before you can convert them to a prospect, you have to build awareness. They have to know who you are. We call that creating trust. Creating trust. And if you take enough time to create trust, then you can convert it or capture it To a prospect. But your job's not done. Once you've captured their trust, you have to cultivate it. You have to build credibility with them. And then you can convert that into a high-value client. Remember, sales cycles are longer than they used to be. And it's all built on trust now. We call it the trust accelerator. You have to create trust. Then you capture the trust, cultivate the trust, and then you can convert it. This is proactive, long-term, takes time, but this is how you create sustained success for producers. Now, to increase the conviction that requires this to be successful. You have to help your producers identify a clear lane of expertise they're passionate about. The days of we are an agency, we sell medical, we sell dental, we sell vision, we sell life, we sell medical or Medicare, we sell individual. Those days are slowly going by the wayside. Anybody who wants to pitch everything they have is going to be restricted to a very local market. The people who become specialists, the people become experts in very few things. The market's going to expand. This is where we're headed. Buyers don't want brokers anymore. They want thought leaders. Help your producers become thought leaders. What does that mean? Help them find an area of expertise they're passionate about. Now, the third key point. So we've got business is about who knows you, sales cycles are longer. Third key point is a producer's development does not end once they validate. I think we often think if a producer validates and they're having success and they're growing a book, they don't need our help anymore, they got it figured out. Not true. Because Once that successful veteran becomes a flight risk, that can hurt your agency horribly. When we look at a producer's career, this might be a good picture, a good time to take a picture of this slide. When we look at a producer's career, we see 5 stages. First stage, we call builder. Brand new. The question they're asking themselves is, okay, do I have what it takes to make it? They're not validated yet, but at this point they just need some clarity. That's what they're looking for. Now they get some wins under their belt, they become a performer. They're not validated yet, but now they're showing the signs they can win, signs they can make it. At this point, they need more consistency. Once they validate, they become a professional. Now they need to learn the habits, the skills, the, the discipline. Figure producer. When they hit the 7 figures, they become an authority. Now they really need to leverage their expertise. And then eventually, they become a leader. And their job is to help others win. Hey, hey, Andy Neary here. I want to take a minute and make a quick and exciting announcement. I'm hosting our next one-of-one sales workshop on Thursday, October 29th. You are not going to want to miss this. Plus, seats are limited. So you can't Wait, we are deep within a trust recession right now. It is hard to build trust and credibility with buyers. It's even harder to stand out in a crowded market. So you need a message that helps you grab attention from the right prospects. And that's exactly what you're going to learn in this 2-hour workshop. I'm going to walk you through 2 of our most effective exercises so you can uncover your personal brand and the perfect prospects for you, and then blend the 2 into a sales message only you can take to the market. Imagine walking out of this workshop with a sales message you feel confident in, assets for your LinkedIn profile, your LinkedIn content, an elevator pitch, heck, assets for your website. That is what we're going to cover in this one-of-one sales workshop. But seats are limited. So whether you're looking to make 2026 a strong finish or you're ready to ramp up for an amazing 2027, this is a workshop you're not going to want to miss. So if you're interested, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go to LinkedIn. Or if we're not connected, number one, connect to me. But 2, then send me a DM and say, hey, I want to know more about this October one-on-one sales workshop. And we'll get a call on the calendar to see if it's a fit for you. All right. Let's get back to the show. Producers graduate. They don't just move on. And so what you want to think about is, as you look at your team today, You probably have producers at varying points of this development, but what can you do to help them continue to graduate to the right? Because if there's one thing that connects all 5 of these stages together, it's time. Builders and performers have plenty of it. Professionals need to learn how to leverage it to be more effective. Authorities and leaders wish they had more of it. Anybody at that point? I wish I had 36 hours in the day. Now, here's the key thing. What I want to talk about next is what all 5 of these stages need today. And this is why we're not just here to talk about how to develop these 2? How do you keep developing every stage of the producer development? Because if there's another thing that ties all 5 of these stages together, it is having a consistent sales message. Builders and performers must learn how to create one so they can start having consistent success. Professionals must learn how to harness theirs to become that 7-figure producer. Authorities have to learn how to amplify it so they can continue scaling their revenue. And leaders must also share a sales message to recruit more great producers. Everybody needs a sales message. And the main point I want to share with you guys today is when we think about producer development, Our initial reaction is to go right into the how to prospect, right? Make more phone calls, send more emails, network, join boards. But what I'm here to tell you guys today is before you start telling them what to do, help them craft a clear sales message they feel good about. When you give a producer that confidence and that conviction to go out and sell a message they believe in, they are going to have consistent success. That is the key. That is the piece we're missing in this industry right now. We are not helping producers develop a sales message they buy into. So I'm going to help you do it right now. Is that fair? We call it the One of One Sales Framework. We believe when you help a producer mix their brand with their ideal buyer, they will create a sales message only they can deliver to the market. That's the one-of-one effect. And they'll be able to deliver a sales message they feel confident in and have conviction about. So the first question I want you to consider is this: what do you do better than anyone in the market? So when you're helping a producer develop a sales message, The first question you want to ask that producer is, what do you do better than anybody in the market? Now, what we're really saying in this question is, what's your niche? Now, when you think insurance and you think niche, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Anybody have a guess?

Industries.

A lot of people think industry, right? In our, in our industry, the natural thought is a niche is an industry, right? And a niche can be 3 things. A niche can be an industry. Believe it or not, there are still some benefit agencies out there who have niches in industries. A niche can be a strategy. I know agencies who have gone all in on selling captives, or a niche can be a skill set. But when you're working with a producer 30 days into their career, you can help them identify a niche. It might be a skill set, it might be a strategy, but help that producer find the thing they do well. This is where we start building our expertise. The second pillar is identifying your ideal buyer. Who are you best positioned to serve? Now, when I started Complete Game Consulting, I would ask all of our clients this question. Who is your ideal client? Anybody have a guess what the most common answer I got was? Andy, my ideal client is anybody who says yes to me. But when you're trying to identify your ideal buyer, I want you to write these 2 things down. There are 2 ways to identify an ideal buyer: demographics and psychographics. Think of that word just as it sounds— psychographics. The insurance industry has always used demographics to identify a buyer. Think industry, think size of the group, right? Revenue. I'm targeting CFOs, I'm targeting fully insured groups, I'm targeting self-funded groups, whatever it might be. We have always used demographics to identify ideal buyers. But here's proof that we can't just use demographics alone. I've never had a client say, Andy, my ideal buyer is ABC Manufacturing because they have 75 employees and they're self-funded. The CEO's a jerk. He hates his employees. He offers benefits because he has to. But I love them because they have 75 employees. Nobody's ever said that. So you can't identify demographics— buyers on demographics alone. You need psychographics. When you help your producers find their right prospects, have them dig deep into who do they love to do business with? How do their ideal clients think? What do their ideal clients think about insurance? What are they doing when they're not working? You see, the reason we all have favorite clients today—if I if I forced all of you right now. To think about your favorite client. Could you do that? There's a reason they're your favorite, and it's not because you make the most money on them. It's because we do business with people like us. When you find the buyer who's got the right psychographics, it does not matter how big they are. It does not matter where they're located. It does not matter what industry they're in. You have found the person who's going to let you do your best work. So when you help your producers identify the prospects they are going to go after, focus on psychographics as much as you do demographics. Pillar 3. Now that you know what makes you unique, you know who your ideal buyer is. The next question is, what problem are you best positioned to solve? This is where agencies love to tell me, Andy, we solve dozens of problems. I understand, but what's the one you solve best? Remember what I said earlier— buyers don't want brokers anymore, they want thought leaders. Thought leaders do not solve dozens of problems. Thought leaders become world-class at solving one. When you're developing a producer— heck, if you're still out producing Figure out what problem you're best positioned to solve. It's probably tied to your niche, what you do better than anybody else, but identify the problem you love solving more than all other problems and go all in on being world-class at it and help your producers do the same. I know agencies that have made a decision that their niche is going to be captives because they're solving the problem of cost and they have literally built their entire agency around that model. And they have grown exponentially. Now imagine you're doing that with a whole team of producers. And the last pillar is, how do you help your ideal prospects solve that problem? We call that your framework. What framework do you use? What process do you use to help your ideal buyer solve the problem you are best positioned to solve? With these 4 pillars, you have identified your zone of genius. You have identified your ideal buyer. You have identified the problem you are best positioned to help that ideal buyer solve. And you have developed a process by which you are going to help them solve it. Now, this is the one that makes so many feel uncomfortable today. When I say, what's your process? What's your framework? What I want you to do is I want you to imagine you are literally sitting at the whiteboard with a prospect today, and they have told you that they have the problem you are best positioned to solve. And I told you, you have to go to the whiteboard and you have to tell them how to fix that problem today, right now. What would you tell them? The only answer you can't give them here is hire me. You see, if we're going to help producers become recognizable thought leaders today, they have to be able to— okay with sharing everything they know before they get hired. The days of I'm not sharing anything until you give me the agent of record are over. You have to give away everything you know. Everything we get hired to do today, you can literally go to my LinkedIn profile or my YouTube channel and get it for free. This is what we're talking about. Teach your producers how to go to the market with content and information that shares everything they know, because if they go out with a zone of genius, they're targeting their ideal buyers, they're talking about the problem they love to solve, and they have a way of helping people solve it. You know what happens? They now turn this into a sales message that increases their confidence, increases their conviction. And you combine those 2 together and you are going to have consistent sales success. I don't care if you've been in the industry for 30 days or 30 years. Our mission at Complete Game Consulting is to help new producers speed the path to success and keep the veterans' fire going so they can continue scaling their success. Remember what I said? Too many producers are failing fast and veterans are burning out fast. And if we know organic growth is still the key to our success, we've got to find a way to solve both. So now we've answered the question of why we need to develop producers into one-on-ones. You've got a framework to use to help them become a one-on-one. Let's talk about what they should do once they're a one-on-one. Remember, they're going to the market with these 2 things right now. That's going to make them pretty unstoppable. If you can give more producers confidence, you can give them conviction, They are going to have success as long as they stay consistent. As a 101, these here are the three things producers must do every single week. Number one, they do need to reach out to people who do not know them. We call that cold prospecting, right? This is how all of us were taught. In 2002, I was thrown into the old bullpen. And told to pick up the phone and make a bunch of calls. Now, here's what is interesting about phone calls today, cold calling. We have a client we work with right now that works for Gallagher. Gallagher meticulously tracks their cold calling metrics. Anybody wanna wager a guess, out of every 100 cold calls they make, how many prospects pick up the phone? 1.

2.

You just nailed it. 2.5. Out of every 100 phone calls, 2.5 pick up. Anybody know what email open rates are right now? Dreadful. They used to be high single digits. They're probably under 5% now. People don't respond to email unless they know the name or it's a re as part of a thread, right? So we know cold calling and cold email just got a whole heck of a lot harder. By the way, do you know what's come back around with cold prospecting? Snail mail. Dropping in. Right? Because we don't get mail like we used to. And you know what? It's good to see a human. But they do have to spend time reaching out to people who don't know them. But here's where the one-of-one sales framework works. If they've got a message they believe in, they got a message they're confident in, guess what? They're picking up the phone with confidence. They're sending that email with a message they buy into. When they're dropping in, they have an elevator pitch they feel good about. What that does is that doesn't just make them more successful, that makes them want to pick up the phone more. That makes them want to go do more drop-ins. The second thing they have to do every week is they do need to reach out to people who know them, right? The proverbial centers of influence, client referrals. But here's where that gets more effective with the one-on-one framework. When you're asking for a referral— by the way, does anybody here have a business that is purely built on referrals at this point and you are growing exactly the way you want purely on referrals? If you are, Take everything I'm saying with a grain of salt, because that is exactly where we all want to be.

But it's mostly—

Perfect.

But I still feel the need that I have to every once in a while go back to number 1.

Perfect. Here's where the 101 Sales Framework impacts referrals. Imagine you're sitting in a meeting next week with a client you love. I bet you would love to have more like them. But when we ask for a client referral, what's the typical way we ask for a referral?

Do you know of anyone?

The typical response, right, is, is do you know any more businesses who could use our help? Well, what does that do? Makes the client think, makes the client come up with the list, right? A little harder to get a referral because what do they tell you? They tell you, I'll get back to you. Let me think about it and get back to you. Do they ever do that? No. Here's how you take referrals up a notch with the one-on-one sales framework. List out all of the ideal psychographics of your client. This is why I love working with you. Do you have any other peers just like you? Remember, we do business with and hang out with people like us. When you describe the ideal buyer psychographically to your client, it makes it easier for that client to give you referrals. Same thing goes for centers of influence, whether it's a banker, it's an accountant, it's an attorney. Don't just say, hey, do you have any clients you could introduce me to? Talk about the ideal psychographics, 'cause it's gonna make it easier for the center of influence to know exactly who they should refer to you. And then the third one is you have to spend more time every week getting people to know who you are. And this is the part of prospecting the industry still ignores by far and large. When I'm talking about getting more people to know who you are, here's what we're talking about. We're talking about networking, social media, webinars, podcasting, public speaking. How many of you right now are using those channels to get more prospects to know you exist? When we train our producers today, we still say, hey, pick up the phone, go send a bunch of emails, go knock on doors. It's important. But can we all agree that just got a little tougher, especially if we look at the metrics? How much time are we helping our producers get more people to know who they are, expand their reach, expand their influence. This is where they become thought leaders. So my advice to you is help producers develop strategies for social media. Help producers develop strategies to speak on stages in front of target prospects. This is why you see a lot of people starting podcasts. All that is, is distributing that one-of-one sales message far, fast, and wide. As I mentioned, when I got in the business in 2002, I was told to go get a membership at a country club I couldn't afford, and I was told to go eat at the most expensive places in town because that's where the buyer's attention is, right? Well, guess what? This is the modern-day country club. When we train producers or watch agencies train producers, my question is, Where in the producer development do you have a strategy for this? Because this is where everybody's attention is. And if you want your producers to build more trust and build more credibility, they have to find a way to be in here. Because when buyers decide who they're going to do business with, they look you up, they check you out, and what they find matters. If your agency's website is not on page 1 of Google, We got a problem. If your producers have no LinkedIn presence, we've got a problem. This stuff matters today because remember, we're in a trust recession and we need to find a way to build trust. So my advice to you guys as we close here is help your producers Become an expert. You know, if I could go back and I could put my arm around that chunky little kid in Park Lawn Elementary, or I could sit next to that undersized free agent in the Helena Brewers bullpen, here's what I'd say to him. Stop caring about the opinions and the judgment of other people. Stop sizing yourself up with other people. Stop competing with other people. And just step up and stand out. And I'm inviting all of you to do that today. When you think about producing developers or developing producers, developing yourself, selling today is about getting people to know who you are. It is about attention. So what I would invite everybody in the room to do is, number one, help your producers build a brand. Because, hey, there is only one of them. And number 2, help them leverage the One of One Sales Framework so they can be the one, the expert prospects seek out. Got about 4 minutes left here. I'm going to leave space here for questions. Anybody have any questions when it comes to sales, producer development? Challenges you guys face right now. This is your chance to ask away.

So something we talked about yesterday, we're just like cold call version, this real thing.

Yep.

Right. And I hear you on becoming an authority and putting out there on podcasts and LinkedIn, but the younger guys that you work with, one of the faults of that because less comfortable on cold call. Yep. So in the firms you work with, is there like a go, go, go time where you say until you're going to make X number of calls and I see you have the hustle and the And you'll go do the really crappy part of the job, you don't get to do the fun part of the job. So you show me like if it's 90 days, if it's 6 months, like where's the hook sometimes to say go sell one deal before you start a podcast on everybody how great you are?

Great question, Vijay, because when you look at the graduation of a producer career, right, the goal is over time a producer is going to go after bigger stuff, right, as they become more successful. Well, the bigger the stuff they go after, they need more credibility, right? If you're going to go into bigger doors, those $100,000+ opportunities, you're going to need more credibility. So as you go on this side, you definitely need to get to more— know more people to know who you are because you need that credibility. But even back here, I'd say out of the gate what you're running into, and this is very common, is you have to reach out to people who don't know you. You have to reach out to people who do, and you have to get more people to know who you are. That generation loves getting people to know who they are. Yeah. They're really bad to reaching out to people who don't know them. But you cannot have success selling today unless you're doing the direct activity. The number one challenge we see today is people fall in love with the getting more people to know who they are, and then they wonder why they're not selling anything. It's because they're forgetting to do the activity of reaching out. So I don't think it's a you earn the right to do it. I think it's establishing that you have to do all 3 of these things every week.

So what's a good cadence for you for a new producer?

Yep.

First year, how much outreach and how successful their outreach needs to be?

Yep.

What point in a week, a month?

I would say out of the gate for a new producer, 30 days into the job, I would love to see 2 to 3 appointments a month. I would love to set— and I don't think there's a perfect number, BJ. They got to be making so many calls and emails a month or a week. And when it comes to things like LinkedIn, their job should be connecting with ideal prospects and just growing the network of prospects on LinkedIn.

That's all.

Because what they're going to run into on that is, well, I— who, who am I to— they're going to have imposter syndrome, right? I'm brand new, what do I know? It's just this is the space where they got to master the basics. They got to start putting in the activity.

I was just going to ask, Andy, do you see the outbound telephone call being equivalent to a DM or an audio message on LinkedIn?

Great, great point. Yes. So here's the other tip I would give you guys right now. The number one thing we're seeing succeed today in prospecting is be human. Here's what that means. Drop-ins work. Why? I see you. You asked about virtual being a challenge, right? People are sick of virtual now, guys. They want you back in the office. Not your boss, but prospects. Go see people. But to your point about messaging, The number one tip I'm giving our clients right now with hitting up prospects is video audio messages. Number one, if a prospect puts a cell phone number in an email address, email signature, or it's in their LinkedIn profile, that is carte blanche access to use it. Audio, video, notes on text, great way to stand out. If you're connected to somebody on LinkedIn, do you guys know you can send audio and video messages? Great way to stand out. And here's what I tell people. How many of you have made a cold call in your career and have been told to go pound sand? Everybody should raise their hand, right? How about an email? I have yet to tell me to have somebody tell me to go pound sand after a video or an audio note. So the more human you can be in your prospecting right now, the better it is. If I get an email from somebody, First reaction, AI generated. If I get a written DM on LinkedIn from somebody, first initial reaction, AI generated. You got to be human today.

You said 2 to 3 appointments per month was a good goal.

For a good start for a new producer. Yeah.

Does that back into a certain number of calls they should make to do that? Should we be measuring the amount of calls or DMs?

Well, here's the scary statistics. So I was raised in the 10-3-1. So let's do the math. If I just said it takes 100 phone calls to get 2 people to pick up, let's say 3, we're talking a lot of calls today to get 1 appointment. So yes, but the volume just got larger.

Right. So I have a young new producer, and we've talked about the number of calls per week, which he's not hitting.

Yep.

So someone else suggested have the goal be appointments and not calls.

I would say—

the number of calls need to be whatever it is to get these appointments.

I would disagree with that request, that suggestion from one standpoint. You can't control appointments. You can only control the activity. So if I'm going to measure something, it's going to be something I can control, the calls, the activity. Here's the main message I want to get across today, guys, and I'll leave you with this. We hire a producer today. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't even train them right now. It's just, go get them, kid. Or if we do train them, we train them on the activity. Trust me when I say this, when you help— and Hans, you mind if I— Hans, you've been in the business for how long?

6 months.

6 months. Hans, actually, we work with RB Muhah. I've been working with Hans. And what did we build out first?

The brand.

Your sales message, right? Awesome. We got a sales message locked in that he feels good about. Now what? Okay, now he's going to be more confident to make calls. Now he's going to be more confident to send out emails because he's got a message. Let's go there first before we tell them what to do. Does that make sense? So thank you guys. I know we're over time.