Andy Neary says agents waste money on slick marketing when they should focus on listening to prospects instead. He offers three questions to tell the prospect's story: what problem do you solve, what's your process, what results do clients get. Insurance agencies especially get this wrong.
Hey. Hey. Welcome back to another coaching video. Today I'm going to share with you the number one marketing strategy you need to deploy to make 2021 the best year you've ever had.
Listen, so much has changed in how we go and grab the attention of our target prospects. Covid, the pandemic, whatever you want to blame, has shifted everything forever. If you are not shifting the way you market, the way you go grab the attention of your target prospects, you're going to get left behind. And 2021 is gonna be no different than this year. And your future of your business will be no different than it is right now. So you need to change it up. Now, how are we gonna do that? We're gonna do that by asking ourselves a very simple question. Are you marketing driven or are you market driven? What the heck do I mean by that? Well, I'm reading a book right now called this Is Marketing by a marketing icon, Seth Godin. And in the book, Seth talks about the difference between being marketing driven and being market driven. What does he mean? Well. Well, often organizations are marketing driven. They're slick. They're focused on the offer, the surface, shine. Look how beautiful our marketing is. And they just want to make that next quick buck. The alternative is to be market driven, to hear the market, to listen to the market. Even more importantly, to influence it, bend it, make the market better.
Where do you stand right now in the insurance industry? Agencies are so prone to being marketing driven. Look how beautiful our website is. Our marketing slicks are gorgeous. I want it to be that color with that logo. And oh, man, our PowerPoint presentations, they are gorgeous with all those animations. Not once are you making it about the prospect. This is the advice I want to give you today. It's not about you, it's about them. So if I can give you one piece of advice, heading into next year, your goal is to be market driven. Make it all about your prospects. It's not about you, it's about them. If you simply make that little shift, it's going to have a massive impact on the future of your business. So how do you do that? Well, I know you've heard me talk about this before. It's very simple. If you want to start down the right path of being market driven, to listening to your audience, to hearing them, to influencing them, you have to start telling their story, not the story of your agency and how amazing it is. So how do you do that? How do you go about telling their story? Simple. Number one, you have to answer three questions. You've heard me talk about these before. Number one, what problem do you solve? Simply what's the problem you wake up every day to help your target prospects solve? Answer that, get laser clear on it, what it is you do every day. Then you ask the second question. What's your process for solving it? What is your step by step process? You take your target prospects down, that turns them from an unhappy prospect into a raving fan of a client. And then the third question you need to ask is, what's the results you get when they go through the process?
Answer those three questions and you have taken a massive leap towards being more market driven than you are marketing driven. Once you answer those three questions, you then have to start inserting yourself into their story. Now we've talked about this at length. How do you do that? Simple. You have to figure out what their story is, right? Every story is a hero. That's your prospect. Remember, you are not the hero. I get it. You reduce health insurance costs and you build better health plans for the market and for employees. But you're not the hero. Your target prospect is the hero. Your job is to make them look amazing. But with every hero, there comes a goal, right? They have this goal that they want to accomplish. If they can get there, life will be good, they will save the day. But with every goal comes a challenge. And that one challenge or two challenges right now is what's keeping them from achieving the goal. It's what's keeping them from being that hero they desire to be. This is where you fit in with that plan, right? That process. The question number two you just answered, you're going to show up as the guide with the plan. Because if you give them that plan and they take the step by step process you are giving them, you are now going to help them achieve success, arrive at that destination where they're the hero. And most importantly, you're going to help them avoid the failure they're facing today. And you have created this transformation from them for them, from this unhappy client who can't solve these challenges today. And now you have taken them to the promised land today. They're lacking self confidence. They'll have some doubt, they have some uncertainty, some frustration. And with your process as their guide, you're going to help and change all that. You're going to give them confidence, you're going to give them clarity, you're going to give them peace of mind, financial success, whatever that is. But if you literally take that approach with that message, you are market driven, not marketing driven. And you apply that story to your marketing slicks, to your PowerPoint presentations, to your website, you will stand out in 2021 like you've never done before. Listen, the bar is still very low in the insurance industry. Every agency, every industry partner wants to talk about themselves. They're not making it about the prospect. Not you, not now. You're going to change it up. You're going to be market driven and you're going to tell the story of the prospect. You're going to make it all about the prospect. And if you do that and you apply some consistency, some persistency and some patience, you'll stand out. You'll grab the right attention from the right prospects and you'll have them coming to you to do business. So my lasting advice as we head into 2021, and it's the number one advice I can give you to uplevel your marketing next year, is simply be market driven. No one cares about how beautiful your marketing slicks and your proposals and your presentations are. Make it all about them and you will win more next year than you ever have before. Go make it happen.
