The Perfect Prospecting Playbook For Today's Insurance Adviser

Good.

How are you? Good. All right.

Here's what I love about the webinars, by the way. I'm giving everybody a heads up. I'm a little fired up today. This webinar was created out of a little bit of frustration. I'm just giving you a warning.

Now. We're going to have some fun. Some of you, quite frankly, I know somebody from me. No, but you're good, man. Trust me.

I see some names that consistently show up, which is awesome. So honestly, some of this you might have heard already, but it's always a good refresher. So what we're going to talk about today, guys, is what I think I'm not going to go into. Like, here's the perfect script you should use on a cold call. What I'm talking about with the perfect prospect playbook is how should you be thinking about your prospecting this year and moving forward? Maybe that's different from how we viewed it in the past. Okay. I know a lot of you have been in the industry longer as long as me, or if not longer, And I'm at year 20 right now where we were taught a certain way when we got in. Right. Well, a lot has changed, especially in the last two to three years. So when I think about how I do my prospecting for my business today, I thought I'd share those thoughts because I think it's going to help people not only with like time blocking and time management and time efficiency with prospecting, but what activities should I be focused on? Does that make sense?

Now, let me ask everybody a question before I kick it off. And I can't see everybody, but I'm going to ask you to give me a show of hands for those that I can see. Has anybody. This is one of the problems I see in prospecting right now. And I was there a lot early in my career. Has anybody ever found themselves at a point in their selling career where you were outselling a product or a strategy that you weren't totally confident in?

So you're out trying to win business, but at the end of the day, you're actually not confident in the ability of what you're selling. Right. It is so hard to win that way because the prospect senses that.

And I talk to a lot of advisors where I hear what they're saying to themselves, self talk. And they're going into these opportunities without any confidence. And when you don't have the confidence, you're not going to win. I see it a lot when an advisor who normally maybe writes business in the 20 to 50 group space, 20 to 50 life space has now got this 200 life opportunity, and it could be a huge home run. But the problem is they're going into.

The proposal or the opportunity already lacking confidence. And a second, the prospect smells that it's over. I'll give you a real good life example. Has anybody been watching the Olympics?

Did anybody see what happened last night in the women's skiing event? I think it's a classic case of what I would refer to a weak, weak weakness mindset. I don't know if anybody watched. What did they do the combined last night, which is what? The super G and the slalom, I can't remember, but American. One of the American skiers is Michaela Shiflin. Can you guys mute yourself, please? Somebody's got some stuff going on in the background. Thank you. Michaela Shifrin is one of the American skiers, lives out here in Colorado. After the first run, which I think was the super G, she was in fifth place. Sitting in fifth place. And I don't know if anybody saw the interview they did with her between the races.

The interviewer said, are you ready? What are you expecting from the second race, which is the slalom? And she literally said, I'm not confident in it.

I fell three days ago. So all I can picture is myself falling around the gate. And did anybody see what happened?

She fell at the exact gate she saw herself falling, and she did not qualify or finish. That's what we're doing to ourselves in prospecting opportunities.

We're going in lacking confidence. And if we don't have the confidence, the buyer is not confident in buying from us. So that's one thing. The second thing is what I want to talk about today is the strategy, the activities you are deploying to your prospecting. And this is where the frustration comes about. I said, I've started this webinar came out of frustration. I see advisors who jump on these webinars. I talk to them all the time, and I'm giving them ideas on how to prospect, and then I'll check up with them. A month, two later, I'll say, hey, what are you doing to prospect? And they're still doing the same thing, which is cold calling. Well, I blocked a couple hours of cold call today. It's like, guys, you can keep doing that. And if you're a good cold caller, God bless you. I suck at it.

But you have to start leveraging different ways of prospecting.

And so what I wanted to go over today is what I believe today is the perfect prospecting playbook for benefit advisors or for insurance advisors in general, and that is this. I want everybody to write some things down. Number one, your number one goal with prospecting should be to compress time.

What do I mean by that? If I'm going to designate time to make 100 Kohl's calls today.

Somebody give me an idea of how long it will take me to make a hundred calls.

Somebody throwing time out there? Two hours. Two hours. Good. That's good. Good estimate. So I know nobody answers. Well, yeah, if you're, if you're literally just flying through them and getting voicemail after voicemail, maybe you can take it to 60 minutes. But two hours is probably a good estimate. So I'm going to dedicate two hours. And as I shared last week, not that I'm poo pooing, cold calling guys, you still got to do it. But every time I pick up the phone, I can only call one person at a time.

And remember, 95% of the time, you're calling somebody who doesn't know you, they don't know you from the next broker.

So that's not a great way to compress time.

What compressing time to me means is, for example, I'm hosting a webinar right now, right? I'm hosting a webinar for you guys. I have. We have 30, 29 people, including 30 people, including myself. On the webinar. I am Talking to technically 30 of my potential prospects. Some are clients, but I'm talking to 30, 29 potential clients in one call.

That's compressing time. And this takes a half hour. So I'll give you guys some statistics. I do these webinars every week, right? And some of you have been showing up every week, which is awesome. On average, these webinars get 20 to 50 people, depending on the topic. Think about doing that in your own prospecting. If I can get 10 to 20 to show up consistently, even if you do these once a month, what you're starting to do is compress time. I'm talking to 10, 20, 50 people at once.

So when you think about the weekly prospecting activities, this is where I really want to go today. When you think about the weekly prospecting activities, you put in, number one, how can you add webinars to the game plan if you're not already?

Webinars are a form of compressing time.

And I'll share with you guys what I do right now. Now, I've been doing it for a couple years, so it's a Little more dialed in, but anybody can do this. When I wake up Monday morning, I have no idea what the topic for the webinar is going to be.

Just to be honest with you guys. But what I do do every Monday morning is I block about 45 minutes where I sit and I think about what it is I'm going to make. What, what topic do I want to talk about this week?

And then what I do next is I create a landing page. That's the page you guys use to register.

And I set up an email that goes out on Tuesdays to invite everybody on the email community. Some of you came via that way, some of you know I have a text community. So I set up a message to go out to the text community to invite them. And then on Tuesday I make a post on LinkedIn.

All of that guy's preparation takes 30 to 45 minutes. But now what I've done is I've prepared myself to get a message out to my email community, which has a few hundred people, get a message out to my text community, which has a couple hundred people, and get a message out to LinkedIn, which has thousands of people. And every week now 20 to 50 sign up. And again, I'm not sharing that to brag numbers. I'm saying think about compressing time.

So if you just ran a webinar guys, once a month.

Where you had a system down where think about what it is you want to present, what's the topic? Maybe it means you bring a subject matter expert on.

What'S your strategy to at least invite your prospects.

And if you get that standard operating procedure locked in.

You can rinse and repeat that thing every month. Maybe you ultimately do it more frequently. And what's going to happen is every time you host a WEBINAR you get 10 to 20, maybe 30, 40 people showing up.

That is a massively effective way to use prospecting time.

And so don't overthink the webinar process. I think a lot of times agencies get stuck on making everything a little perfect. Who cares? Make it a good topic they want to hear about.

Get the invite out, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat and stay consistent.

So takeaway for the first one. Compressing time. Webinars, how often do you want to do it?

What topics could you talk about?

Current event topics are always good.

What things do I have to create to make it happen? Maybe you build a landing page. If your agency has a software or the ability to build a landing page.

I'm going to set up an Email, little email promo. If your agency uses a email platform, you can schedule that, which is perfect, even if you just have Outlook. Just send out one big email to your prospect list.

And if you do that over and over again, you're going to get people showing up consistently compressing time.

And here's the beauty of webinars. This is. These are mindset shifts I want to help people make. Who here likes.

Presenting to prospects? Who likes getting in a conference room and presenting to prospects? Anybody get fired up when they get to do that? That's what a webinar is. Think of a webinar as you get. Not it's virtual, but it's your chance to present. It's your chance to do your thing. Think about webinars that way you all are good at what you do. This is your chance to bring that value to a lot of people.

Now, this is the next challenge I have for you. Again, thinking about compressing time.

Webinars.

Sales presentations, proposals.

Are all a form of public speaking.

Anybody here like giving a sales proposal?

Nobody. Come on, now.

Anybody feel comfortable when they're giving a sales proposal?

Therefore. Yep. Therefore, you are comfortable. Public speaking. This is what I want to make. I want you guys to make the tie here because so many people fear public speaking. I'm like, why? You love. You love being in a sales proposal in a conference room. That's public speaking.

But now, how could you leverage public speaking in your prospect?

Here's a. Here's an example, guys. If you work with HR professionals.

What is an association most of us know that is tailored for HR professionals in the U.S. what's the name of a big organization?

Sure.

Yep.

Every state has a SHRM chapter. There's probably multiple subchapters within the state. But what would stop you from going to one of the chapters and saying, hey, I've got a really good talk I'd love to share with you group on this specific topic.

That I would love to have a chance to present at one of your lunch. Lunch. Your luncheons or your annual symposium, whatever you do.

And all of a sudden, now you get a chance to go speak on stage.

To an audience again. I don't care if there's 10 in the room, but there could be a hundred or 200.

And you're literally talking to 100 to 200 prospects at once.

Not to mention, when you're public speaking and somebody has hired you to speak, that audience naturally thinks of you as the expert because there's a reason somebody hired you.

But again, guys, it's compressing time.

I get a chance to speak on stage in front of dozens if not a hundred plus people and they all could be a prospect.

So now all of a sudden you've got webinars, you've got public speaking.

Let's talk social media, quick. You guys have heard me talk at length, exhaustively about LinkedIn. Think of LinkedIn as just another opportunity to get your message out to the masses.

This is why I'm so bullish on the comments. And the likes do not matter.

The views matter. Because if you can make a post, if you can share content that teaches your prospects, that maybe talks a little bit about you so people can get to know you and they generate a hundred, five hundred, two thousand views.

That'S compressing time.

And so what can you do to be more active on a platform like LinkedIn? And here's the shift I want you to make. This is where people get stuck. Do not make posts on LinkedIn so your broker buddies react and comment. That doesn't help you out at all. And we see a lot of people doing that. Your only job on LinkedIn is to talk to your prospect.

Most people don't think, most people won't believe me when I say this. I frickin hate social media. But I know I have to be there because that's where our audience is. But the point is, think about how you can use your expertise to share content on LinkedIn so that we can get a lot of eyeballs. The views.

And then the last place I really want to you want you to think about right now as far as prospecting activities.

Is how can I use my email.

To bring a lot of value to my prospects? And I often reference this as the email email newsletter.

Because again, guys, newsletters are compressing time. If you've got 50, 100, 500, 1000 prospects on an email list.

I can get one message in front of them with one click of the send button.

Now you gotta provide some value in the newsletter.

But if you can get consistent on putting out some kind of good email content to the masses, you are now compressing time. So here's where I'm going with all this. Let's just think about the four channels I brought up. Webinars, public speaking.

Social media and email.

If I were you on a Monday and I'm going, what is going to be my game plan this week? To prospect. Yeah, you may block some time to pick up the phone, but if you also designate as much time to go, okay, what am I going to put out on LinkedIn this week.

We have another webinar coming up in three weeks. What am I going to do to get that to the masses, to promote it to the masses?

Our newsletter's got to go out in a couple weeks. What content can I put in it that's going to go to the masses? And part of your prospecting, just like you're snooping for prospects on My Edge and other places. What about snooping for opportunities to speak?

Because what you're doing, guys, is those are activities that compress time.

And it's going to allow you to get your message out far, fast and wide.

And that is literally what I do every morning, every Monday. My job on Monday, as I view it, is to write my email newsletter. My email newsletter goes out every week. I write my text for the community. I get my webinar ready. I look for speaking opportunities, and I think about what I'm going to put out on LinkedIn for the week. Because I know all of that stuff is going to allow this message to. To get out exponentially.

And I challenge everybody else to do the same. Because when I hear that your only strategy still today is just picking up the phone.

It tells me you don't have another plan. When there's a lack of clarity, you go back to what you know. Even if what you know you don't enjoy, you go back to what you know.

And I challenge everybody to think this year, how can you compress time with your prospecting? And some of it's going to be uncomfortable, but here's where you take compression even more. Guys. Brian, I'm looking at you, Brian Lehrer. You're the one who happens to be on my screen or Rob Lair. Excuse me? I said Brian. Geez. Rob Lair, you are on my screen. Let's say Rob today, or let's imagine today is Monday. Excuse me. Rob decides he's going to shoot a five minute video.

And he is going to use the five minutes to educate his prospect, maybe about what he does. A misconception with health insurance. I don't care what it is. But what Rob's going to do with that video.

Is Rob's going to go put it out on LinkedIn.

Massive awareness.

Rob is going to put that same video in his newsletter.

That's going to go to a lot of people.

Heck, Rob could even put that video, embed that video in an email that invites his prospects to a webinar he's going to run that talks about the same topic.

What Rob has done now is with one video.

He has repurposed that one video for three of the different channels.

Compressing time.

And so I know I'm repeating that phrase a lot, guys, but that's the phrase I want locked in your brain right now. What can you do to compress time with your prospecting? What's worked for me when I moved out here, what worked for me was speaking webinars, email campaigns, email newsletters, social media. That is how you compress time.

So if you know who your prospect is, your ideal prospect, you know the message, you want to speak to them.

Now go. How can I use these channels, these activities to compress time and get it out there fast? Because at that point, gang, as long as the message is decent, it is a numbers game. And you're going to start getting the right prospects to raise their hand.

But unless you're a cold calling savant like some are, I'm not doing this every day is going to make it really hard to fill that pipeline the way you want to.

Five minutes to go. I keep these short and sweet thoughts, challenges, questions. Now is your time to ask. Feel free to chime in, guys. Hey, I have a question.

Andy, can you hear me?

Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

This is Rob.

When you, when you're alluding to these webinars or public speaking.

Are they more geared towards HR people or are they more geared towards the C suite?

It depends on who you're trying to go after, Rob. So if you're somebody who does prefer to work with a CEO or a cfo.

That'S who you want to target. Now, with that being said, I'll say this.

Sometimes it can be hard to get a CEO or CFO on a webinar. Why? Because their time is extremely valuable. Right. That's why. If I were targeting CFOs, CEOs, I would make a webinar 15 minutes.

Short. Don't do these long, drawn out, 60 minute webinars. They don't have time. But here's the value in webinars. Guys, I forgot to share this. When you do a webinar and 20 people sign up, on average, half of them will show up, half of them won't. That's just the statistics. But what you've done with a webinar, if you record it, is you got some valuable content to share.

So think about how you can use your webinars, your recordings, to also get it out to the masses. Whether it's on LinkedIn, whether it's in emails, the recording can be just as valuable as the live version.

But to your point, Rob, you pick who you want to target. There's no wrong answers, depending on who your ideal prospect is.

All right, thank you, Andy.

You bet. What else, guys?

One quick point. Andy. Brian, Cheddar. You didn't. Maybe it's obvious, but with all the webinars and the people on there, that's who you call, not the now. You're kind of a warm call versus a cold call. Now you actually can probably get some traction and get somewhere.

Great. Great. Great point, Brian. And I will. I will put up one little red flag on that because I see a lot of agencies do this, and this is the last thing. Guys, I will say the number one key to winning this game, the strategy I just shared. You got to stay consistent. Here's why I see agencies fail. They host one webinar, and here's what they do. They get the list of all the people who attended. They hand out the list to their producers, and then they say, go call them all and try to get a meeting.

That just completely turned the prospects off because what they saw was, I came to your coffee hour and now you're trying to marry me.

What you should be doing is saying, hey, thank you for attending a webinar. This isn't an email. Send them in the recording so they can share it with their team and then in that email try to come up with a way to continue the conversation versus Hey, I saw you on our webinar. We'd love to schedule a meeting with you to talk more.

No.

Figure out how you can keep the conversation going. The best follow up, in my opinion, to webinars is give them the recording and then try to keep the conversation going.

Andy, Chad here. Appreciate all the continued help and support. Hope all is well. But question knowing that there's obviously through this virtual life that we've been living and there's been an absorbent amount of webinars, and I think a lot of people are fed up with them. My question is the balance of doing something that maybe someone wants to they're interested in, like a wine tasting, a whiskey tasting, something of that nature to have more of a personal relationship or connection, especially if you don't know these people, versus doing something tutorial or educational. What's your thoughts or what your experience is?

Perfect, Chad, that's great. Here's what I want. Here's the punchline, guys. Any prospecting activity where you can get multiple people, hit multiple people at one time is what I'm talking about. That's compressing time. So whether it's webinars or you're going to. By the way, guys, people want live stuff again. So if you're going to host live events, a wine tasting where you bring people together, perfect as far as webinars go. Brian, to your point, when we roll out the same topics everybody else does, people get sick of it. That's why I say, why not do a webinar for CEOs that's 15 minutes short, sweet, fast, but bring topics they want, topics that are relevant to their world today. Inflation, bringing people back to work, trying to find good people, labor costs, whatever. Bring in a labor attorney, bring in topics that are super relevant to them today. The last thing they probably want to hear is a webinar about benefits.

But whether you do it live, virtual, you on stage, in emails, guys, the name of the game today is to hit a lot of people at once. It will change your results. It'll change your career. I promise.

All right, Andy, this. Craig, speaking of that, hitting a lot of people using social media, in my universe of prospects that I identify with and that are my ideal prospect, what if hardly any of them are following me or I have no link to them? They're not anyone I've connected with yet. They're just in my universe, who I want to chase.

You got to start connecting with them, my friend. So on LinkedIn, for example, okay, if they're there, because some might not be there, right? But if they're there.

Start bringing them into your community. Start going and finding them on LinkedIn and just saying, hey, Bill, would love to connect with you on LinkedIn. If you're open to it, send message. It's going to be a game, Craig, of some will, some won't, right? But if they accept, now they're in your community, if you're putting content out there, they're seeing the content, which is good. They're getting familiar with you. So that when you do reach out to them, whether it is to schedule a meeting, invite them to a webinar, they're more apt to say yes. So if you feel like you don't have a connection right now to these prospects, I'm telling you, the number one place to go is go to LinkedIn. If they're active, invite them, connect. Don't try to sell them right away. Just connect.

Because here's why social media works, Craig, to that point. I now can see Craig, right? Visually, I can literally see your profile. And if I see your content, I'm now hearing from Craig. I'm getting to know Craig a little bit. That's valuable. And Craig hasn't asked for anything from me yet.

Do you like using the videos or voicemails in LinkedIn voicemail messages?

Guys are ninja moves. Yep. Because the voice message feature on LinkedIn's been around for two years. Nobody knows it's there. So if somebody connects, accept your connection and you turn around and leave them. You got to use the mobile app guys to get the voicemail. You send them a voice message, it catches them off guard and you instantly stand out.

So when you guys time block your weeks and this will be the last thing I'll say and I'll let you go when you guys time block your weeks, think about where can I time block for these exponential activities? Social media, speaking, webinars, email campaign. That's we got to get the message out far, fast and wide. And you will. This is where you will get it out faster in less time, which gives you more time for actual prospecting meetings, more time for your existing clients. That's what we want. That's why compressing time is so important because most of you lack time right now. So you need a compressed time.

And the last thing I'll share guys, the next if anybody wants to more know more, please hit me up. My next Academy is starting May 4th. I was going to do it live. I'm going to do it virtually just like the current one. If you want to know more, hit me up. What I'm doing for people who lock in a seat right now is it just takes 500 bucks to lock in the seat and I'm giving those folks strategy sessions in March and April because they're as a reward for signing up right away. So anybody wants to know more, hit me up. I know I have some current academy members in the group right now, but yeah, that's it, guys. Go create exponential awareness.

Peace out. Thanks, Andy. Awesome, guys. Have a good week. You too.

Thank you, Andrew.