The Ultimate Q4 Advantage: How To Create Credibility To Capture More Business

Record, so I don't forget this stuff. But here's what I want to talk about today.

Right now, you are sitting on this webinar in one of two positions.

It's September 20th, and you are staring around the corner at one of the busiest times of the year.

For some of you, it's going to be even more chaotic because you have a lot of business to renew. So the natural tendency.

Is going to put the business development to the side for a little bit and focus on renewals, which I get because clients who are currently paying you are more are more important than clients who are not paying you yet. But here's what happens for most advisors.

Because you put business development on the back burner for the entirety of Q4, you get all of your business renewed. But come January 1st, you're staring at a good old big goose egg in the pipeline. You've got nothing.

And the reality is, it takes at least 90 days to fill your pipeline. And if you enter January with no pipeline, you're not even looking at any kind of pipeline till April. And so you're already behind the eight ball, especially for somebody who does not own their agency. And you've got sales goals you have to meet.

One of the things most advisors lack right now is a way to consistently.

Keep the pipeline full. That's one challenge. Now, I'm not going to sit on today's webinar and talk about how you got to pick up the phone and got to send emails and put the activity in. That's important. But what I want to talk to you about today, though, is even if you do have a pipeline right now.

What are you doing to consistently create the credibility you need to win the business?

In fact, if you had your pipeline pulled up on your desktop right now, I would urge you to look at the pipeline, and I would urge you to judge the pipeline. And I want you to ask yourself, in this pipeline, how many of those opportunities are legit.

And how many of those opportunities are, yeah, they're in the pipeline, but let's be honest.

They'Re not really going anywhere, at least not right now.

And if you're like me, this is where I used to be. I was that guy 10, 12 years ago. I'd walk into the weekly sales meeting about this time of the year all fired up because I had a full pipeline.

And I got to brag in the sales meeting that I had a full pipeline made me feel good.

But then when I would go back to my desk and really face reality, the. The reality was of the 15 opportunities in my pipeline, 11 were complete crap.

They weren't going to hire me, but I got to tell my team I had 15 opportunities. So I was excited.

The reason the 11 of them were crap is I had not established any credibility with these people.

I was just having a conversation with a client yesterday, and we went over their pipeline and they just had an opportunity that went to another advisor, and they were frustrated. And I asked him a question. I said, okay, so we're sitting here on September 19th, which was yesterday. I said, when did you first meet, meet and engage with this prospect? And they said, a, in July. I said, that's your problem. You just met this prospect for the first time two months ago. You have not built enough credibility to get hired. The only way you were going to win this piece of business is if they were so fed up with their broker. There's two reasons, two ways he could have won this business. If they were so fed up with their broker they were leaving looking for somebody else, you might win that game. Or if they're just looking for a better quote and you were able to come in with a better quote, you might win that, too. But you had no credibility because you've only known him for two months.

So don't be ticked. You didn't win the business. It's just a matter of time. You just lost the game of time.

So what I want to talk to you guys about today is cool. How do we create the credibility we need to open doors and win business and have a legit shot at winning the business?

Because what I would love, nothing more for every one of you, is for you to walk into opportunities for the first time with all the credibility you need.

And I see the. I see the names of people popping in this webinar right now. And I know some of you are already doing this. Some of you are early in your journey doing this. I know some of you have come back to me and said, dude, I don't know if this crap works. That's where you are in your journey. But we're going to talk about this. How you can use credibility to build. How you can use content to build the credibility you need. There are certain ways you have to do this. Now, if you've been in any of my programs, you've worked with me directly, I will be totally honest with you. Some of the stuff I'm going to go over today, you've already seen.

But just like an athlete, there are things you've got to hear over and over again to get them Right.

And so what I'm going to go through today for you is some things we do here, some things I see our clients doing really well that I know are going to help you build all the credibility you need. Now I'm going to go into the chat. Some people ask questions here. I asked what are your biggest questions around content or fears? And here's what I see. What days or times do you think are best to post? Fear. I have nothing new to share. Good one. How much is too much or too little within a post? Great question. Fear of judgment on video. Unique ideas. Not every other advisor is posting same message as my competitors. We all seem to be following the same people and I always worry about my content being relevant. Awesome. We're going to hit all of those. So here's where I'm going to start, gang.

How many of you know who this guy is?

If you have worked with me, I have brought up Chris's name before. I want to share Chris's story with you. If you've heard it, I apologize. You're going to hear it again. But I want to make a very important point. What Chris is doing today, every one of you on this webinar can do. Now here's the reality. Sorry to be blunt, most of you aren't going to put in the work to do it either. You might be chasing a quick win, you might have the pressure of selling now.

But it starts with the drive and the discipline to put the work in to do it. So Chris came to me one year ago, August of 2022 and he was committed to create content for one audience, CFOs.

Now if you go check out Chris's profile and you haven't seen it before, I'm hard pressed to believe you have not seen one of his videos yet. He is on LinkedIn every single day creating videos like this where he's just talking to his audience, his prospects, CFOs.

And all he talks about is health insurance content, how to reduce your health insurance costs. Now for the folks who put in the chat box, I don't have any new ideas to share. There is not a dang thing Chris puts in his content. That's new by the way, guys, none of you will ever come up with a new idea. Some of the greatest minds in the success space, Tony Robbins, if you know who that is, they don't have new ideas. So if you're afraid that I don't have anything new to share, get that out of your head. Nobody does. It's who shares it. The best and who shares it the most. But Chris puts out content every day. He puts the work in. Now, here's what happened.

October of 22. So three months after he started doing this, he sends me a text and he says, dude, the haters are out in full force. I said, what are you talking about? He said, I'm getting messages from peers that are saying, what are you doing? Trying to become famous on LinkedIn. I said, don't worry about that, man. They're a little jealous. They're not willing to put in the work. Keep. Keep doing it. Two weeks later, I get another text. It's working. He got a dm, a direct message from a prospect that said, hey, Chris, I really like your videos. Would you be open to having a conversation? Because we are in the process of looking at our health insurance plan.

He ended up winning that account. That was a $70,000 AOR. He walked into that first meeting with with all the credibility he ever needed because of his content. And guess what? The prospect reached out to him. I don't need to see hands. How many of you would like to have that same thing happen? I'm hoping it's everybody.

Now. It gets better.

February.

Did somebody literally just belch on this call?

Please mute yourself.

Anyways.

He participates in an rfp.

He didn't want to do it, but he was urged to do it because he got referred in.

There are seven other advisors participating, all of which work for firms larger than him. He does it anyways, by the way. All the while, he is connected to the CEO and the CFO of this prospect on LinkedIn. And remember, Chris is putting content out every day.

Field of brokers get shrunk and shrunk and shrunk. He's now a finalist. He goes in and presents. Oh, by the way, this entire process takes about two months. The RFP process. I get a call from him in April. He's almost crying in his car because he won. He beat seven other brokers.

And I selfishly said, hey, Chris, I'm just curious. Did your content have anything to do with helping you win? Thinking he'd say no, he said, absolutely. Here's why.

Because I was connected to the CFO and the CEO while this whole RFP process was going on. They told me when they picked me, they said, because we have seen your content as consistently as we have. And what you were saying in all your videos was exactly what you said in your presentations to us. You had by far the most credibility of anybody in this room.

He beat seven other brokers.

Who all worked for the largest names in the industry. And this account generates almost a million dollars in commission.

Guys, anybody can do this. And what I'm going to talk to you about today, teach you today, we're going to go a little workshop masterclass here. I'm going to teach you how you can build this credibility.

Again, I'm going to say it over and over. It comes back to are you willing to put in the work or are you going to let excuses like I'm busy today or are you going to handle. Get your. Allow yourself to be caught up in the inbox to prevent yourself from doing this. It works. It if you put in the work. So let's start getting tactical.

I am just going to go right into a. An exercise we teach here that we call the Triple Crown of exponential awareness. If you're a baseball fan like me, the Triple crown is when you lead the league in home runs, RBI and batting average. This is a different kind of Triple Crown.

You are going to learn how to create content, the right content that creates credibility.

So what is the triple crown? Number one, what are you saying?

Two, how are you saying it? Three, where are you saying it?

So that's where you want to start. Content creates credibility. Remember this. I want you guys to write this down. Should have had a slide on this, but I don't. Content creates credibility.

Credibility creates confidence from your buyer.

Confidence from your buyer turns them into a client.

If you're in my text community, I just put that out this morning. Conf. Content leads to credibility. Credibility leads to confidence. Confidence leads to clients.

Now here's where you're going to get stuck with content. Everybody does. Andy, how do I create it? What should I say? Where should I put it? Right. Somebody put some of you put in the chat. I don't have any new ideas. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to come up with. You have that fear of creating a video, the judgment that might come with the video. Right. You got to remember, guys, let me, let me get some of the mindset stuff out of the way for you. If anybody chooses to criticize you personally about your content, it's because they're too afraid of doing it. And you're making them look in the mirror. That's it. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. They're too afraid to do what you're doing. That's it.

Now let's start with the how. There are three ways to post content. You've got video right Some people love to watch video. I'm a big YouTube person, so I do all my learning via YouTube.

Some love the written word, right? Some of you love reading articles and books and some love audio. It's why we have audiobooks and podcasts today, right? So the question you have to ask yourself is, is how or what channel am I going to create content? For now, the magic formula is to do all three because that's how we hit the most people. But if you're just starting out, which one resonates with you the most?

Personally, I think video is the most effective because you can see me, I can teach you, and you also get a feel for my personality all at the same time. Nothing. There's really nothing more effective to resonate with a prospect than video. Now, if you're absolutely afraid to hit record and will never do it, I understand. Go to the written word. The beautiful thing about the written word gang and even videos is guess who we can we get to have help us these days to make it easier. Good old friend called Chat GPT.

Writing scripts, writing articles, writing blogs has never been easier.

Now let's talk about what you should say. This is where the credibility comes in. Okay.

We believe in the five categories of content creation.

And I'm going to go in reverse order. Number one, you've got calls to action.

Once in a while you have to use content. Think of LinkedIn. For now, let's just think of LinkedIn. You make a post. You have to use a post to call people to action. Maybe it's you're hosting a webinar. Maybe you just want prospects to schedule a call with you. That's a call to action. You are asking your audience to do something. Now, you don't want to do that every time, but once in a while you can throw that out there.

Case studies. I'm going to focus on the buckets here that really create credibility. Case studies are an awesome way to create credibility. Why? Because you are showing me examples of your clients winning. Therefore, I now believe you can help me win. You are establishing credibility.

Credibility for itself as a category is where you have got to toot your own horn. Once in a while you got to let us know you're winning.

Think about a real estate agent you see on social media. If you follow any. What are they posting all the time? They're posting them selling houses. Why? Because I gotta believe you can sell a house.

So you've got to toot your horn once in a while, let us know you're winning. Hey, we Brought on a new client. Here's how we helped them. Here's why they chose us.

Lets your other prospects know you know how to win. That's a big deal. I know for some of you who are very humble, I get it, you're afraid to do that. But man.

Helps.

Then we get to the secret sauce.

I'm not going to spend much time today on personal stories simply because that creates likability. Okay, Your story creates likability. What I'm going to focus on for the sake of this webinar is education, guys. You want to build all the credibility you ever need. I am going to tell you to grossly over index with education.

Every one of you on this call has a wealth of knowledge about what you do.

But how many of you are turning that into content for your prospects?

Here's a great example.

Every one of you, I can guarantee loves to be in front of a prospect, in a meeting, in their conference room, at the whiteboard, educating them. If you didn't like that, I don't think you'd be doing what you do.

But here's the problem with that.

You don't have five meetings with prospects every day, all day. So you don't get to do that every day. This is where I was a decade ago when I was like, God, I love educating prospects, but I only have three prospecting meetings this week.

Aha.

If I create content.

I get to spend more time doing what I love, even when I'm not in front of the prospect.

And what I realized was when I put content in front of them, educational content in the form of videos, emails, newsletters, webinars, public speaking, you name it, I am now educating them without actually having to be in front of them.

And the more I do that, the more credibility I create.

If you look at your buyers today.

The farther their mind is today, their mindset, their beliefs, the farther their mindset is away from where you need them to be.

The longer the sales cycle will be.

My client, who just met the prospect in July.

They tried to sell this client or prospect on a very short timeline, but their mindset was still way over here. They weren't ready.

The farther the gap between where they are today and where you need them to be, the longer the sales cycle. Okay?

And if the only time you get to shift their mindset is when you're actually in front of them, this is going to take a while.

But if you use your content to educate consistent while you're not in front of them, guess what happens? This starts going like this, you start taking where they are and you start moving them, moving them, moving them. And then all of a sudden, before you know it, when you get that meeting on the calendar, here's what happens.

They're already bought in. You've already built credibility with them. Better yet, they may have been the ones who came to you.

This is how you get an advantage on your competition is content. The secret sauce is content. And I know I beat this to death, but this is why I'm screaming so hard about this. We have seen what this has done to change our clients lives.

And it's the name of the game today in the world of business. Doesn't matter what industry you're selling insurance, selling ice cream, selling hot tubs. Content. But education is the secret sauce, guys. So here's what I urge everybody to do. I would urge you after today's webinar and you're going to get the replay so you can watch it again.

I urge you to sit down and make a list of all the topics that you could use to educate your prospects. Make a list now. Here are some things to get you going. What should you talk about with education?

Pick topics based on questions and objections your prospects are already asking you. Think about your conversations in the last month.

What are your prospects? What are your clients talking about? What are they asking?

That's the content you should produce. Because if you have one prospect asking, guess what? There's a dozen others asking the same question.

We call this documenting. I have. I didn't make that up. It came from Gary Vaynerchuk, who I've learned from it. We call this documenting. Why? Because for my folks on this webinar who are afraid or who sit down and say, I don't have any new ideas, all you're doing is documenting the conversations you're already having. You don't need to sit down and come up with something new.

But talk to me about the conversations you're already having with prospects and clients. Talk to me about the questions they're asking you. Talk to me about the objections they're throwing at you. I'm going to find that content very interesting because I probably have similar questions or objections.

One of the best pieces of content you can create today, if you want to get very tactical.

Is imagine you're walking out of a meeting with a prospect or a client and you said something in that meeting that was like absolute gold. Or the. Or the client asked a really good question.

I would get in my car.

Get my phone out and hit record and I'd say, hey, just got out of a meeting with a client. They asked a really good question that I thought others would want to know. So here's the question. Here's what I told.

That's some of the best content you will ever create today, guys, because you're documenting what you're already doing. Everybody track with this. Give me a thumbs up if you track with this. Making sense.

But the name of the game right now is are you willing to be the best educator in your market?

Now, remember, when it comes to education.

You can do it with video. You can do it with written words like emails or articles, or you can do it with audio.

Chris Hamilton is okay with me sharing this, but if you follow Chris just to use him, because I've already talked about him, you'll notice he works with Hotchkiss Insurance. He's come up with a program he calls the Benefit Insider. He not only creates video content every day, he has email newsletters going out teaching his prospects. He has just launched a podcast called the Benefits Insider because his whole goal.

Is to hit these three channels with educational content.

Now, you might be sitting there saying, okay, Andy, I get it.

But my competition saying the same things.

When I get in front of my prospects, I know my competitors are talking to them about the same things. I had a conversation just the other day with an advisor in Louisiana. He's on the commercial insurance side. He sells captives to construction companies.

A lot of brokers in Louisiana are doing the same thing.

I said, perfect.

When you are in a world of noise, which every one of you are, you're in a market where a lot of people are talking about a lot of the same things.

The one I hear from the most is going to be the expert. I don't care if you're talking about the same things as everybody else.

But if I hear from you the most I see you the most, you are going to become my de facto go to expert, hands down.

And so for the folks in the room that have the fear of, I'm not sharing anything new, my competition's talking about the same thing. Who cares? You need to be the one who talks about it the most.

It's how you cut through the noise.

Now let me go look at. I see some stuff in the chats. Let's see what's coming up here.

Oh, these are just quotes. I'll get back to these at the end. So here's my point, guys. Start with number one. How am I going to create content? Do I want to use video? Do I want to write articles, write emails, write blogs. Do I want to use audio through the channel of podcasting? Whatever.

Then it's, what am I going to say as I, as I referenced to you? Focus on case studies, credibility and education. Right now, if you want to build credibility, those three buckets are the key, which is the case studies, which is the hey, we're winning. And let me educate the living heck out of you. If you focus on those three categories consistently enough, you will have a ton of success.

As far as time of day to post this stuff. If you're thinking about social media, I don't care. There's no time of day, day of week that's better than the others. Just get it out.

But if you stick to this plan, you are going to build credibility, awareness, name recognition, and ultimately you are going to have people who start reaching out to you. We see it every single time. Now, let me share a little secret with you. If this has been helpful so, so far, I'm going to share a little secret with you. I am sure all of you are sitting there listening to this, going, wow, okay, Andy, I get it.

But do you know what season's about to come around the corner? I have no time.

How in the world am I going to do this when I have no time? Awesome. Well, I want to introduce you to a formula we teach called the compounding content formula. If you lack time, this is the content strategy you want to deploy. Okay.

Here'S how it works. Let's start with my video people. You're willing to create a video once a week. Consistently once a week, you are going to create an educational video. Remember, as far as what you talk about, pick a topic you think is going to be relevant to your audience. Document the conversations you're already having and just hit record, talk about it. And here's what I urge you to do. Number one, you create the video. Record the video. Doesn't need captions, doesn't need, I don't care. Don't worry about the details. I'm going to give you guys a little secret on content because I hear it so much.

If you put fancy editing on a terrible message, it is a terrible piece of content.

An amazing message with no editing is an amazing message.

Focus on the message, not the editing, not the Captions.

Record a three to five minute video.

Post it on LinkedIn.

Take that video, put it in an email to your prospects.

If you have the ability to put it up on your website, you take that video, upload it to your website. By the way, anybody sitting in this call that has an agency, website, company website, I urge you to have a page on your menu called resources or library or content, whatever it is, you got to have a library of videos or articles. So you take that, upload it, and then, yes, you are seeing the fourth step, which is upload it to YouTube. And you might be sitting and go, really? YouTube, Annie for insurance, huh? Because it's the second largest search engine in the world, is how people look up stuff. If you're going to create videos, you might as well show up on YouTube. Whether it's your own personal page or your agency's page, have a page, it's another place to put your video. Why is this important? Well, number one, you just saved a lot of time. All you had to do is record the video, one video.

And you put it in four different spots.

But what this just did for you is make you extremely searchable. Here's what I mean by that.

Imagine you have a prospect on your email list. So they got an email with you from this video, right?

But imagine they Googled you. They just looked you up.

And now they see your LinkedIn profile with a bunch of content. They see your website with a bunch of content. They see your YouTube channel with a bunch of content. Because that's typically.

That'S typically what will show up right away. If somebody Googles Shannon Thomas, Rose street advisors, Shannon's LinkedIn profile is going to come up. The Rose street website will probably come up. And if Shannon or roastery has a YouTube channel, it's going to come up. And if I go to those pages and I see content, guess what just happened? Ding. Credibility.

You have built credibility with me because I see you everywhere.

If I search for you, if I Google you and I find nothing.

No credibility.

You'll be amazed, guys, how many agencies we search via Google. Not even their website shows up on page one.

I can't find you. You don't have credibility with me.

Here's a statistic I want you guys to remember, too, to, to put home the importance of content. Over 50% of decision makers on LinkedIn will actually vet LinkedIn content to vet you. So if they're making a decision to potentially hire you, over 50% of the decision makers who are on LinkedIn will actually use LinkedIn. Like, they'll look at your content to see if it's worth hiring you.

Now, for my people who say, andy, I'm not doing a video, no way. Okay, let me share the same strategy with you in the article format.

So the other way to do this is to write an article. You take the article, post it on LinkedIn as a LinkedIn article or LinkedIn newsletter.

Send that same article out in an email and then upload it to your website as a blog.

One article, three different places, you now become searchable. The only place you can't hit with the article is YouTube because it's video based.

And to make article writing even easier, today, guys, we've got this thing called Chat GPT. If you put the right inputs into chat, it can help you write a pretty dang article. I'll share this with you. Some of you may know we write content for some of our clients. We have a program where we actually do content for people. I was just on a call with one of our clients today and he said he got feedback from people on LinkedIn that his articles, which we're writing using chat GPT. I'm not taking the credit. His articles they are reading are some of the best articles they've read. On captive insurance.

He'S been told this is some of the clearest information we have read on what a captive is and how does it work. We're using chat.

We'Re putting in the inputs, but chat's still helping us create it. So, guys, use technology like chat to make your life easier. But this strategy alone, if you lack time, guys, this is how you create a lot of awareness without taking a lot of time. You either record video, you either write articles, do both, whatever, but then put that, repurpose it in multiple places.

And that's how you start putting yourself out there more frequently without having to be there all the time. But here's what starts happening.

Now. You're showing up every week. You're showing up in somebody's LinkedIn feed, you're showing up in somebody's inbox.

And you never know when it's going to hit them on the right day.

We had a client a few months ago win a 1200 life group. She got a call from a former client, a woman who used to work at a former client of hers. And she said, hey, I'm reaching out because we are having a. We've been having a conversation in our office about switching brokers. And I've been seeing your content and it made me think of you. I've been seeing your content and it made me think of you. Can we talk? That led to a 1200 Life AOR because that piece of content hit that woman on the right day.

The only thing that will prevent you from doing that is not putting anything out.

So your goal is to live in people's inboxes, live in people's social media feeds, educate them via webinars. The more you educate guys, the better this gets. And this leads to the questions one of you asked early. How much is too much?

I'm going to give you advice I had to get for myself because when I started creating content, that was my biggest, biggest fear.

I don't want to be annoying.

And this is the advice I got. If you're not annoying, you're not selling.

So when I get the question, how much is too much? My question back is, how bad do you want the business?

Now, I'm not saying you send somebody an email every hour on the hour. Hey, hey, hey. No, you can't create too much content.

And the reason people hesitate about this is.

They'Re fearful that the content's going to be too salesy. If all you do is throw out sales pitch after sales pitch after sales pitch, yes, there is going to come a point you're annoying. But if your content is done to come from a place of education, I am here to bring you value. You can't pump out enough content. No one's ever going to blame you for educating them too much.

So if you have that fear, throw it out. If you're educating, you're never going to be annoying.

So that is the takeaway for today, guys. Again, some of you I know have heard this from me multiple times, but I wanted to host this webinar because.

This is the time of the year where you're going to start focusing heavily on renewals, which I get. But you're going to put a lot of the important activity to the back burner, too. And unfortunately, when you do that, it's going to set you up for a really slow Q1 20, 24.

But I know you still have some opportunities in the pipeline between now and the end of the year. Some might be legit, some might not be.

But if you want to turn those into a legit opportunity, the more you lean into educational content to help these people, the more credibility you're going to establish with these people.

I firmly believe he or she who educates the most wins the most today. That's the name of the game. And I know, again, I'm going to say it, every one of you loves educating. Otherwise you wouldn't be doing what you're doing. Just turn something in, something you love into something you repeatedly do every week.

What I want you guys to do is I want you to.

Put in the chat box if you guys got any questions or raise your hand. There's a feature in chat if you have any questions. I'm going to go to the chat box first. Foreign.

I've been playing with chat GPT. It's amazing. Okay, Synthesia. So people are putting out. Nobody has a question. Warren, I know you were on this call. Still, Warren is a gentleman. A friend of mine who I've been have had a chance to work with. He gets it. He says include an offer along the way as part of the content. Add value eight or nine times before you ask or offer a lead magnet. Here's what he's saying. Guys, there is a book out there and I'm looking at myself. Anybody ever read this book?

This is written by Gary Vaynerchuk called jab, jab, jab, right hook. Here's what he's talking about.

A jab is a give. If you put out content that does nothing more than give, education, give, you're not asking for anything. If you put enough of the give out, you have, you actually have the right to ask. Now think about how we were trained in this industry.

Every one of you, including me, was trained how to do nothing.