Episode 104: Slam the Back Door Shut

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or are well on your way to the success you desire, with the right people, processes and promotions in place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromso. Greetings, friends. This is Mike Stromso coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. And I am pumped and I am excited to bring you the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. This is a topic that when we presented to our platinum coaching groups and all of our UPP Mastermind members, the feedback, the comments that came back were just off the stinking charts. And I thought, well, hey, if it was so well received and so helpful to all of our members, I need to make sure that I present this on the podcast so. So they can help everybody out there in Unstoppable Nation. And after thinking about it, absolutely, teaching everybody how to make sure that they slam the back door shut is absolutely critically important. So I want to share with you today just a little bit about slamming the back door shut on the podcast. So let's get started. In addition to that, a lot of the concepts and strategies that we teach that you will learn. Excuse me. Today on the podcast, we also teach in UPPTFastArt. So if you want to know more about UPP Fast Start, just go to upfaststart.com you can find out all about it. We'd love to see you on a Up Fast Start event where we share all of the strategies, all of the concepts live so you can immediately implement it. You get great detail at a UP fast start@uppfaststart.com let's get started on helping you today. So what happened in our own insurance agency business, if you will, our Living Agency Laboratory, which is where all of this information is born and brought to you on a silver platter. We got to the point where we had grown so much and we had so many team members that we need to figure out how to go to the next level. And so we reinvented ourselves transparently as we learned on prior podcasts, and we have learned through our own wins and lessons in the unstoppable agency world, hey, it's not always winning. There's a lot of failure or AKA lessons as well. We teach that a lesson is a failure, where you simply learn something. You know, nobody died. We can recover and move on. And so at the end of the day, we learned a lot of lessons through that, growing through, getting to Next level, we failed. We failed again. And the third time we got it, we didn't get it 100% right, but we feel that we got it mostly right the third time around. So we created a concept and I got to give big props out to my teammates, our leadership teammates. We went through all of this together to develop Team 2020 is what we called it. So that was the name of the third reinvention of the agency when we got it mostly right. So we have tweaked what we learned in getting it right that time and implemented it out of the gate so far this year. So it's absolutely phenomenal. And what I want to talk about today is slamming the back door shut. That's your existing clients and your retention. And it's so vitally important in one day coaching and consulting sessions with high performing agencies. They are so hungry for new business. They're so focused on getting new business, new business, new business, they forget about the business that might be going out the back door. So one of the things that we immediately do is focus on their retention, to get that retention number up. Because if you do the math, and remember, according to my grandson Nate and many others, numbers don't lie. Numbers don't lie. So do your math, know your math, and make sure that you've got that back door shut as tight as possible. Are we going to keep 100% of clients every single month of every single year? Of course not. But we want to do the best that we can to make sure that we keep that back door shut as much as possible. So to let you know what's happened, we started identifying at the end of last year that it was working and it was working really, really well. What caused it to work well? At the core of slamming the back door shut is what we affectionately call in our organization, in our living agency laboratory, our own retail independent insurance agency business is a scorecard. It's a scorecard. We keep the score. And that's one of the things that we learned over the failure. Failure, finally a win is that our teammates want to know what the score is. They are working so hard to keep cl save clients, to go the extra mile, to do a lot of things to make sure that those numbers stay up. So they want to know, hey, if I'm going to work that hard, I want to know what the score is. So that's where the scorecard was developed. And we developed it within our leadership team with the help of one of our coaches. Yes, three coaches is what I invest in right now. Three different coaches in three different areas of business to continue to get better every day. You never want to be a silo. You want to run with the package. So make sure you're running with the right pack. That's why we've created unstoppable nation to make sure people in the unstoppable profit producer program to make sure people are running with the right pack. So what we started identifying our retention numbers were tickling up and I'm going to share with you over a three month period where they're at so far out of the gate this year. And it warms my heart so that all of the hard work of our total protection team is finally paying off in such a big way. So I got all the numbers for January and I looked at them, I said, all right, maybe it's a one off, right? And. And then it happened again. And I thought, wow. And then it happened again. So I'm going to share with you the real numbers. And we measure retention in three different ways, right? We measure it by premium, we measure it by policy, and we measure it by client. So out of the gate this year in January, 97.80 in premium, 97.45 in policy, and 98.01 in client. And I'm going to hallelujah. Great job, team. Way to go. That was fantastic. So I was kind of waiting to see what happened the following month as well, just to make sure that, you know, what we were consistently doing was working. And so at the end of the day, I was waiting for the next month to come around and sure enough, 98.08 premium retention for the next month and February. The policy retention was 97.93 and the client retention was 99.24. And I'm going, yeah, great job, team. It was working really, really well. So then I just got the report for March and I'm looking at the retention again and I'm going, all right, where are we at? Well, premium retention, 98.15, policy retention, 95.75, client retention, 96.01. So consistently, month after month, we have been successful at slamming the back door shut. You may be thinking to yourself, well, how's that happen? I'm going to give you a couple of tips today. So if you need to pause and find something to write with and write on right now, I strongly encourage you to do so because at the end of the day, I'm going to share with you some ninja stealth tips so you too can immediately implement this in your business. To make sure that you continue to keep that backdoor slam slammed shut all the time. You know, an overriding thought process that I've learned in my own personal training and development. And I love this mindset and I think about it all the time and I encourage others with it all the time. I learned it from my old buddy Ben Franklin, who I've never met. I wish I could have a lunch with him to learn so much. But Ben Franklin said, if you're failing to plan, you're planning to fail, so you've got to plan to win. Okay? And the failure is going to come. So the winning on our organization begins with our leadership team. Our leadership team is awesome. We're very different in very many ways. And we all have certain.

Personal gifts, talents, vital functions, superpowers, whatever you want to call them that we bring to the leadership team. But it's the balance within a team, which is where the big wins are in business nowadays. So we meet, we meet almost every single week at a specific, on a specific day at a specific time with a specific agenda to make sure we get down to the nitty gritty and then we're staying on task. We have a scorecard. And I'm looking at the scorecard. That's where I got those numbers from because that gets reported to during every team meeting and it's fantastic. Ok, so according to Ryan Blair, who I've also picked up in my studies as well, you see, if it's important to you, you will find a way. And if it's not, you'll find an excuse. Please don't ever make any excuses. We don't want anybody to make any excuses. We want you to win. And you know, according to Les Brown, I learned from Les Brown, the motivational speaker, you see, if you do what is easy, your life's going to be hard. But if you do what's hard, your life is going to be easy. And that's what we want for everybody here. We want you to sooner or later be able to be more in control of what you're doing in your time, grow your business, create wealth, have more freedom to live life on your own terms. So ultimately, at the end of the day, we have a strategic way to measure people's retention and to show them, show them the numbers that don't lie, that if you do the work to increase your retention over a period, say up to 10 years, it's going to mean X amount of money to you. And, you know, to take it up if you're a half million Dollar business and you increase your retention, you know, say as many as 7, 8 points, it could mean over $1 million in additional revenue for you in just 10 years. So we can lay that out for you. We can show you exactly how it works. Now, there's a couple of companies out there that I've studied over the years called the Bain and McKinsey companies. And they revealed that over one out of 100 clients over a 10 year period, if you have just one policy for those clients, you're going to lose up to 90% of them, 90% of them over a 10 year period. Can you believe that? But if you have two policies, you're only going to lose 38% of them. A lot better. Right? And if you have three or more policies, you're only going to lose 10% of them. So do the work to make sure that you add that on. And one of my first questions out of the gate, after we have people create a numbers don't lie sheet, which is KPIs in their business, once they join our coaching programs, I want to quickly identify how close to 3.0 or better are they. It's very rare that I run across an agency that is 3.0 or better. 3.0 meaning if they have a thousand clients, that means they have over 3,000 policies for, for those thousand clients, it's rare. So that's a goal always is, to get to 3.0 or better. Okay, so we have the scorecard that measures multiple things. Now this is just our agency business. We strongly recommend that people should design the scorecard for their agency business based on the culture, the characteristics, the traits, and the makeup of their own agency business. So our scorecard measures things like premium production, close ratio, policies per year, policy count per client, retention by client, retention by policy count, personalized policies loss, personalized policy, premium loss, commercial lines, policies loss, commercial lines, policy, premium loss, number of referrals, online leads, agency growth on net income, and other things. So those are all things that the scorecard measures within our leadership team. And then we take those based on the seat and on the bus or in the agency, if you will, and then we create a separate scorecard for the team members. Okay. And I'll give you an example of that in just a minute. Okay. And so we spend time on the scorecard every week in the leadership team meeting to make sure that we're paying attention to those scorecard items that I just mentioned. Then we bring it out to the team and the team has a scorecard. The service team not sales team, just the service team has a scorecard that they are measured upon every single month. Far as their incentives are concerned, we show them the policies you renew. We show them exactly what their results were because their scorecard criteria are premium to renew policies to renew, clients to renew sourced cross sales that they either cross sell themselves or give to a sales team member. We have a mystery shopping program in place, we have file integrity in place and we have a policy count per client because we have a goal to get to that 3.0 and it gives them detail on the premium to renew, policies to renew, clients to renew, source cross sales and the mystery shop feature as well as the file integrity and the policy count per client. It's absolutely. They love it. They love to know where they're at, they love to know what their scorecard says and they love to know the rent. And they love to win by getting to the point system that has been set up for them so they can win monetarily and earn that incentive. It's absolutely fantastic. So this is the kind of stuff that we teach. We've got other platinum coaching members who have taken this and other coaching members, period. Not only platinum but other coaching members gold plus as well, who have taken this information and implemented in their own agency business. And they are winning big as well. In fact, I just got an email from a platinum coaching member last week who told me it's made all the difference. They're on fire. They've had their biggest months in new business sales as well as retention in the history of the agency. So that's the kind of stuff that makes my heart warm and happy. That's why I do this. I just want everybody out there to win like that. So it's just absolutely fantastic. We have call check ins, we have called check ins scripts. We have a checklist that we ask our team members to complete before they make check in calls. By the way, a lot of people talk about they're going to make the calls on renewal to have conversations with the clients. We, we don't advocate that at all. We have a very special formula that we've developed that we recommend for people to call on a check in but it's not on renewal. So stay tuned for that and let us know. Okay. We've created call check in scripts. If you get a live person on the phone, we've created call check in scripts if they get a voicemail. So if they make the call out and they get them live on the phone, we have a script for that. If they Get a voicemail. We have a script for that. And we also ask that every team member, whether they get a live person or a voicemail, they also follow up with an email and also follow up with the text. So that communication results in actually three touches in one, a three in one touch. And that's part of how these numbers are happening because we're making the massive effort to touch people in multiple ways. Because at the end of the day, my friends, you never know where people are going to be at any particular given time. So you've got to touch them in every way possible and make it happen for yourselves. Okay, so we have also email communications that is sent out to everybody for the check in purpose as it leads up to renewal. After that call is made after a specific period of time, normally within 30 days, we've recorded a video in front of that. And then we have a digital digitally formatted form both for personal lines and commercial lines to update the account. And frankly all people do is fill it in and they send it in. A couple of weeks ago we had people that were returning these like at 4:30 in the morning for business insurance. That's what entrepreneurs do. They're getting out of bed that early in the morning to start their day and they open up their email and there's the check in form. We only ask eight questions to get started. Only eight? Okay. That tells us where they're at. We compare it to what we've got and then we go from there. But they're responding to the video and then they're responding to the digital information below because they've watched the video.

Super strategic, super simple. Anybody can do it. You can do it starting today when you know how to do it. And that's how we help people. Okay, Then we have an email follow up to that as well for that check in after 30 days. There's some very savvy platinum coaching members who have also taken our strategies and they've put desk placards on their team that are in the office. And even if they're working remotely, they have a desk placard when they're remote. So they have it sitting right there all the time. So they don't forget. Protocol, protocol, protocol, protocol, protocol, protocol. It's the SIA way. This is the way we do things and we help people brand themselves, create, create the culture that's just right for maximum profitability. And so it becomes the way of their particular agency business. So a lot of people ask us, you know, what do we do about cancellations? Non Payments, et cetera, et cetera. Do you even bother? Well, at the end of the day, we do pay attention to that, but we've strategically started doing that in a different way. We have three awesome team members that are at the lower level position, if you will, a processor. And that was their choice for the position they wanted to be in. And so we put them to great work and making sure our retention is just right at those high numbers. And when somebody cancels for non pay, we don't call them and say, hey, you forgot to pay your bill. We have a strategic online and offline strategy that we've implemented, and it's simply in the form of a letter that tells them, hey, we're starting to lose your business, et cetera, et cetera. Good luck. If there's ever anything we can do for in the future, let us know. And they call me, say, hey, I got your letter. What do you mean, I didn't go anywhere. What happened to my policy? Aha. So we help them get it back in shape. So it just turns the paradigm onto them off of us, and it's absolutely fantastic. In addition to that, we have handwritten note series that we've put into place to help our retention. We do it in a very specific way. And I've got visual examples that I share with people. You know, here's a thought process for you. Write this down, please. Okay? Three cards a day, times five days a week, times 52 weeks a year equals 780 notes per year. And I don't call them notes. I call them emotional bank deposits. When it's done in the way that we teach it, makes an emotional bank deposit every single time. So take those 780 notes a year, multiply it by the number of team members you've got, that's the number of emotional bank deposits that are going out every single year to the people on our list. Now, it could be our existing clients, it could be prospects, it could be COIs which are center of influences in our world. It's absolutely phenomenal. So let's just do a quick recap here as we bring this home for all of you. One, it starts with blocking and tackling. You've got to do the foundational work. You've got to do the foundational work, the blocking and tackling, consistently, every, every day, in every way. Number two, who owns the whole process? Which leadership, team member, or person within your organization, quote, owns the process? You've got to know who that is, and you've got to make sure that they are doing what needs to be done. We have a leadership team member who owns that process, who does a great job. Okay, number three, how are you keeping score? Like I said, numbers don't lie. And ultimately, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, that ultimate result is in our operating account. So the numbers don't lie. Okay, Number four, inspect what you expect with accountability. It's business, my friends. It's not personal. It's business. All right, so inspect what you expect with accountability. Number five, execute ongoing relationship building, communication with your clients, your prospects, your centers of influence. No one cares how much you know until they know you care. Number six, quick recap before we go raw. And this came from the acre of diamonds, which is a piece that I've shared and shared and shared again, but I've got a couple sentences from the end of it. Okay. Keep in touch with your clients. Is number six or someone else will? Number six is keep in touch with your clients or somebody else will. You see, before you go running off into what you think are greener pastures, let's make sure that our own is not just as green, perhaps even greener, because it's been said that if the other guy's pasture appears to be greener than ours, it's possible that it's getting better care. Besides, while we're looking at other pastures, other people are looking at ours. And I'm going to be honest with you here, my friends. Other people are looking at your clients. And because you're not paying attention to your clients, other, they're looking elsewhere for gratification because you're not paying attention to them. And I don't want that to happen to anybody. Number seven on the recap. Right people, Right seats and darn it, let them do their job. Let them do their job. You brought them on for a reason. Attract, recruit, interview, hire, hire. Slower fire. Fast train. Incentivize, motivate. We teach all of that, okay? Because at the end of the day, my friends, you. You should only be doing the things that only you can do. I hope this has helped you today. Please go back and listen to this or watch it again if you're watching online on YouTube. YouTube@unstoppableprofitproducer.com and please, if you got great value out of this podcast, share it with anybody you know in our industry or outside of our industry. Because all we want is people's success. We want to help them grow their business, create wealth so they too can live, have more freedom to live life on their own terms. I am grateful, blessed and fortunate to be a leader in an independent insurance agency. You can find me@unstoppableprofitproducer.com and if you're interested in attending a virtual or live event, please visit upfaststart.com that's uppfaststart.com or beunstoppablebootcamp.com that's beunstoppablebootcamp.Com I want to share with you some of my best money making strategies proven over 35 years of research in our industry to help you grow your business, create wealth so you too will have freedom to live life on your own terms. And as we talk about in the inner circles of upp, it starts with two things, my friends. It starts with a decision and taking action. Make a decision, take action and you too will be unstoppable. Until the next episode. This is Mike Stompso coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. To your success, my friends. Take care and I'll see you on the next episode. Thank you for listening. If you would like to listen to more episodes or share this podcast with someone you care about, please visit www.unstoppableprofit. podcast.com now go out and make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets.