Episode 149: Attracting Your Dream Clients

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. Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. I am pumped and I'm excited to bring this to you today because it is all about everything that you've been dreaming about, your dream clients. And we talk about this a lot in the Unstoppable Nation circles, but it's so vitally important. You know, there are millions upon millions of prospects out there in the world today. You don't need to write every one of them. You only need to write the ones that are the best fit for your plan, for your culture, for the future of your organization, the design that you've created within your insurance agency business. Your ideal client, your ideal personal insurance client, your ideal business insurance client. Maybe your ideal life and health insurance client. Who are they? And today, we're going to help you get super clear on who they are. Man, I wish I had known this for my the first 15 years of my career. Because back then, if you were breathing, if you were alive and you were breathing and you had money and you needed insurance, baby, you are mine. And I love to close, I love to sell, but I didn't know how to write an ideal client. I didn't even know what an ideal client was. But I figured it out because I got into.

Learning and growing and coaching and helping get clear on these things. The important stuff that is necessary to properly grow a business, create wealth, and to have more freedom to live life on your own terms. On my own terms. So once I finally figured this out, I fit. And then I started learning about the art of disqualification. I was in a session many, many years ago with this incredible individual. His name is Jacques Wirth. He said, american males can call me Jack. It was all about the art of disqualification. It was awesome. Because you know Warren Buffett. I just wrote this to somebody yesterday. In our industry, he says no to 99 out of 100 deals. Yes. Not every deal is the deal that you want. So get clear on the target that you want. You can't hit unidentified targets, bottom line. So make sure that you're clear on who your ideal client is, who your ideal client is. For personal insurance, for business insurance. Make sure that you then post it everywhere. Train your team and remind your team and continue to train Your team on who the ideal client is. Your production log, your monthly production log should reveal how well that training has gone. And if it doesn't work, not a big deal, nobody died, we can move on. Inspect what you expect and re up and retrain. It is your duty and your responsibility to find more. Find more from within your organization. Find more from within your own capacity. Yes, you're going to be hearing that a lot lately because I just got done finding more. I found capacity I didn't know I had when I got done with the 4 by 4 by 48 with David Goggins this past weekend. And we got some exciting stuff coming up for you on that, so stay tuned to this podcast channel. So let's get back to the ideal client. Who is that? Because, you know, out of the millions of prospects out there, you don't need all of them. You only need, what, two, three, 4,000 of them. But get clear on who they are, because the other thing is, if you can get to a thousand of them, they probably hang around a thousand others just like you. And that's what excites me so much about this year's bootcamp. I am pumped. I'm excited. I. I'm ready to jump off the moon because we have somebody coming in this year to help us learn and grow more that is one of the masters of referrals, of networking within groups of people. The unstoppable Bob Berg is going to be in the house of Paradise Point later this year. Let's get back to the matter at hand. So, ideal clients, who are they? Your dream clients. How do you attract your dream clients? Well, you can't attract anything. You don't know what it is and what it looks like and maybe the conversations that are going on in their mind. So let's talk about that. I like to start this philosophy with the three M's. The three M's of marketing. Yes. Identifying your ideal client, going after them. Remember, the definition of marketing is the attraction and conversion of your ideal client. The attraction and conversion of your ideal prospect and client is the definition of marketing. So the three M's of marketing are. Well, let me share with you the first M. Okay. The first M is marketplace. Who is the marketplace? Who are the ideal clients and prospects that you want to get next to that you want to attract? Who are they? Think about it in three simple terms. Demographics, psychographics, and geographics. Know those, understand those. Because once you understand all of those as it relates to your ideal prospects and your ideal clients, you're going to be able to get much further down the path. And ultimately you're going to be happier, your team's going to be happier because you're going to decide to do business with people that are the right culture fit for you. The kind of people that you're happy when you pick up the phone and you're talking to them because they want to do business for you. You build that depth of relationship. Remember, money follows trust. Money follows trust. So we got, we need to understand that it's so vitally important. So what are demographics? Well, it could be male, female, married, single, do they own a home, do they have kids? What is their combined household income? All of that kind of stuff equates to demographics. If you want to get clear on demographics, just Google it. It'll tell you everything you want to know. You can find out the demographics of the town or the 50 mile radius around your office or offices and get super, super clear on exactly what the demographics are in the particular marketplaces that you want to and are doing business. Psychographics, that's the things going on in here, the psychographics you need to penetrate the conversations that are going on in their mind wherever possible. What are they thinking about, what do they hang out, who do they hang out with, what do they read? All of that kind of stuff. Super, super important. You've got to understand that. And the more you know about your ideal prospect and your ideal client, the more you're going to be able to have a depth of relationship with them. Super, super important stuff. Geographics as it relates to the first M of marketing, which is marketplace. Who is the marketplace that you want to attract? Geographics. Where are they located? Where should you target? Should it be just within 5,800 miles of your office or should it be statewide? I know one of our highest performing platinum coaching members, the unstoppable Russ Castle. Once he got clear on this, many, many years ago, he said my, my insurance license encompasses the entire state. So he got the list for what the entire state. Now he invests a lot of multiple five figures in his list because that's what he needs to do to effectively grow his business. He knows his industry better than anybody else. So what are the geographics of your ideal prospect? Client. Okay, so get clear on who the marketplace is. Now we have tools within our programs that help people think about the right questions, know the right things to ask and to research to get really, really clear on the ideal clients. So like, what are their existing client demographics? Okay, so.

What are the questions? What are the demographics, what are the psychographics? Who are the desired clients? Who are they? Do you know? What is the potential right client? What is the roi? The return on investment, what is the roe? The return on equity. Now, in our world, in the insurance industry world, I like to think of that as lifetime value of a client. Remember, lifetime value of a client is, let's say the commission income for an account is $500 per year. Let's say you're going to keep them six years and if you're using what we're teaching, it should be much longer than that. So we'll go conservative and say six years, that's $3,000. That is the lifetime value of a customer. You should be using every potential resource that you've got to get to the lifetime value of that particular customer. You know, what are their biggest fears in making this purchase? One of my favorite questions is what frustrates them about working with our industry? Have you ever asked somebody that what frustrates you about working with our industry? If you have the answer to that, you're going to know how to effectively communicate with your ideal client and prospect. Let me give you again a short list that you can work from right now, today. Okay? So ideal client for personal insurance as an example, short bullet point list for you to start with. And I strongly recommend that you write this down. You can get started with this right now, starting today, right here, and then go leverage it against your existing book of business and see what you've got. I'm not suggesting that you get rid of everybody who's not your ideal client. It's just they may not be the ones that you want to invest more resources, more money in building relationship. In fact, I was doing a coaching session with a platinum coaching client who's doing phenomenal stuff yesterday. And this gal has her client segmented. She doesn't call them triple A, double A and single A. She calls them vip, Gold and silver. And that's fine. But she is paying extra attention to the VIPs and to the golds. And the silver's not so much because she knows those are her ideal clients. The 8020 rule is always in effect here, the Pareto principle. It's likely that 80% of your income is driven by about 20% of your clients, sometimes 30. But you get the gist. All right, so that's who you want to be paying attention to. And from a referral source standpoint, they hang around the same kind of people. So know that it's super, super important. So let's get back to your ideal client for personal insurance. Are they married? So it might be married. They own a home. Their combined household income, $100,000. Let's say they have 250,000 in assets. They have two or more vehicles. They have toys like boats, ATVs, motorcycles, and more. That could be a quick starting short list for your ideal client.

So what about your ideal business insurance client? What do they look like? Okay, here's a short list for you. Now. In the greatest growth years in our insurance agency business, work comp was a target market. So we identified who our ideal client was. For work Comp, it was 10 to 100 employees. Experience modifications from 1 to 1.75 within three specific employer classifications. That was our ideal client. Does it mean that we didn't write something outside of that? Heck no, we wrote it. But still, we were clear on the mentality, the demographic psychographics and geographics of our ideal client. We knew who they were and we went out to get them. They want, we want our business clients to have a triple A mentality. What that means is we want them to always be open to giving us their entire account, the whole thing. And it's. I identify this consistently within our industry. Agents are not pursuing the entire account. They're doing a lot of onesies and twosies, not even thinking about pro actively. Always be proactive, never reactive. Always be proactive, never reactive. They never are thinking about pursuing the entire account. You're missing a ton of business. You're leaving a ton of business on the table. Nonprofits were one of our ideal business clients, and we knew everything about them. 501c3 was one of the criteria and breweries, and we were clear on who we were after within the brewery business, not every one of them. So that was just a little bit about our ideal clients. Now, decision makers, you've got to be clear within the marketplace on who the decision makers are. Who are the decision makers? And you've got to be clear on who they are. And I've got a sheet called a client avatar that gets crystal, crystal clear on who these decision makers are. Like the number of years are they married or single? Do they have children, do they have a pet, what kind of house do they live in, how many bedrooms does it have as a profession? What do they do from their spirituality to where they like to travel, their hobbies, what they like to read, what they like to listen to, what they like to watch, what their greatest fears or worries are, what their three greatest hopes and dreams are. Again, what Frustrates them about dealing with our industry. So vitally important. Remember, client avatars are super, super important because it begins to get great clarity, visual clarity as well on who your ideal client and your who your ideal prospect is. Here's some tips for your agency. You might want to name your avatar. You may want to name your avatar and think about your brand. Think about, think about your brand. All right. Use a picture of your avatar. There are some people out there that do great stuff with naming their client avatars and who they are. One of our avatars was patients of the insurance stock. Yeah, I had a marketing Persona called the. I was the insurance stock. Yes. I wore around a white coat. Yes. I had scrubs. Yes. I drove a vehicle that we affectionately called the ambulance, etc. Etc. So these were patients of the insurance stock and it was phenomenal as a complete pattern interrupt. A separator in our business got us tons of opportunity for business over the years. That was part of our avatar. So name your avatar. Think about it. Think about your brand. If you've got a brand guide, you should have that. Build that into your avatar. Use a picture for your avatar. Tell the story of your avatar. Now, I was teaching this recently and I encourage people once they created the avatar and they had the visual to put it onto their intranet for their entire team to see. Yes, good idea, because it's there all the time. You can go back and help them continue to learn and train and grow on who your ideal prospect and client is. Now, one of the things you can do as far as telling the story, if you get to that point, you can tell the story by creating a quick video and having a link below the avatar within your ideal client, your ideal prospect section of your intranet. Just an idea for you, and it's an opportunity. And most importantly, share who your client is, your ideal client, prospect and their avatar, anywhere and everywhere, wherever possible. So vitally important. So the second message, the second M of the three M's of marketing is the message. So you've identified who your ideal client is, who your ideal prospect is, what they look like. You've created their avatar. You've done your marketplace research. Now, what is the message that you're going to send to that particular marketplace? You want to be able to join the conversation that's already going on in their minds. Now, you don't know what that conversation is unless you've done the homework on the first step. Okay, people, remember this with regard to your message. People will buy to avoid pain before they will to gain pleasure. Let me repeat that again. People will buy to avoid pain before they will to gain pleasure. And don't forget the five trigger words when you're crafting your excellent message. The five trigger words of copy, which are you guarantee free new sex. Those are the five proven words within the copywriting industry of marketing that will cause people to pat, to stop and react, and more than likely take action to your message as long as the raw rest of the message is sound and has the right call to action. Now, as far as identifying the conversation that's already going on in their minds, we have multiple tools and strategies to help people with that, including Marketplace, Research forums and more. And some of the samples are, you know, what keeps people up, what gets people up at 3 o' clock in the morning in a cold sweat. I remember asking our absolute number one client that at one point, a company that grew to be $1.3 billion in revenue. And I was with the CFO face to face. It was my main contact. And I said that to him. And he goes without question. A cyber breach. Bam. How? You won't know until you ask, right? What are they mad at? What makes them angry again? What frustrates them about doing business with our industry? What do they wish they had more of? What do they dream about? What do they get excited about? Who markets anything to these people? Okay, what do they know about insurance? As an example? Ask them that. How much do you know about insurance on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being knowing the most, how do much do you know? Ask somebody that. I will suggest that insurance is a mystery and most people don't know much. What do they read? How do they learn about your industry, our industry, if at all, what's unique about their language? Do you have any affinity in that group? Okay. I grew up in the restaurant business. Started working for my dad when I was 12 in his restaurant. I had affinity. I ran a restaurant for three years. So I went to pursue restaurant insurance. In the insurance industry, who are the VIPs in that group? Do you have access to them? How can you connect with them? Who are the mavens, the cois, the centers of influence? The mavens, the VIPs in any group, you want to connect with them. A maven is somebody who everybody knows. And they seem to know everybody. Every group of people, every segment of business has somebody like that. Okay, so marketplace, get to know your marketplace super, super well. Learn the message that is going on in the minds of the marketplace. And remember, people will buy first to avoid pain before they will to gain pleasure. And the five trigger words you guarantee free new sex. Pepper those throughout your marketing message and copy and you will get more traction and reaction if you put in a strong call to action. The third M and the three M's of marketing is Media Marketplace, message and media. What kind of media are you going to use to get your crafted message to the marketplace that you've researched? Who is your ideal client and your ideal prospect? Okay, what is the media going to be now? A visual on a teaching that I recently did was a watermelon and it had somebody's address on the watermelon. Picture a watermelon and it's got somebody's address on it. Well, I learned in my growth and training in the marketing industry that you can ship anything to anybody anytime. And yes, you can send them a watermelon via the mail and it will get delivered with proper postage. Now I'm not sure your ideal marketplace will be sending them a watermelon, but you don't know what you don't know. And as marketers we test what media are you going to use to reach your particular marketplace. And if you want to reach a hundred percent of the marketplace, you should use a hundred percent of the ways. I'll throw out the examples. Phone phone calls or slide messages or voice broadcast. All a facet of phone messages and phone calls, right? Snail mail. It still works. It still works for many, many people who are making a solid significant ROI return on investment via snail mail. Email.

Email is email not. It does not all get open. Let me be clear about it. More than half of it doesn't get open. So don't hang your hat on an email. But it might be one of the three, the power of three to use. I'll get to that in a second. Text Messaging, video, your YouTube channel, social media, all the forms of social media. Wow. Lumpy mail, packages, etc. Aka the watermelon or the USPS flat rate postal boxes. Listen, that's why it's so vitally important to know the ROI and the ROE or the lifetime value of a customer. Because it's an investment, friends. And I will strongly suggest, you know, for the right ideal prospect and client, you should be investing maybe 20, 30, 40 bucks or more to go get them. Think about the lifetime value. If it's $3,000, how many times are you going to invest 20 bucks to get $3,000? Think about that for a minute and more. The sky is the limit. Only your imagination limits you. Now a lot of These are just brand builders, not so much true marketing ways to reach people. All right. AKA social media. Okay, that's in my mind, that's more of a brand builder. Yeah, you're connected to people, which gives you an opportunity for follow up. But then it takes skilled people to convert. Okay, so what should you use to get your message out? My greatest encouragement, as much As I say 100% of the ways, that's a lot. And very rarely can anybody do all of them. So now with proper automation, you can get close. With proper automation, you get close. But keep this in mind, the power of three. If you can use three of them simultaneously, you're doing good. So that should be your goal. That should be your goal. Okay, I'm going to share some data from my great friend Jeb Blunt of sales Gravy. Spoke at a boot camp recently and.

This man has got his finger on the pulse of the sales industry and he published these statistics. These are the number of touches, the number of touches that one must do in order to penetrate and convert business from a marketplace. Now, it takes one to three touches to re engage an inactive customer. One to three, one to five to engage a prospect who's in the buying window and is familiar with you and your brand. You might be already quoting them and it's still going to take 1 to 5 touches to convert them. 3 to 10 touches to engage a prospect who has a high degree of familiarity with you and your brand but is not in the buying window. 3 to 10 touches, 5 to 12 touches to engage a warm inbound lead. 5 to 12, a warm inbound lead. 5to 20 to engage a prospect who has some degree of familiarity with you and your brand and is in the buying window. Still. Five to 20 touches. And it takes 20 to 50 touches to engage and get to the point of conversion with the cold prospect. So, friends, it takes a lot of effort, a lot of organization. And that is why it is so, so vitally important to be crystal clear on who your ideal client, who your ideal prospect is vitally vital, important. And back to the old sales statistics as well. 48% of salespeople never follow up with a prospect. And back then they still said it takes 5. 80% of sales are closed on 5 to 12 after the 5th to the 12th contact. 80% of sales are closed on the 5th to the 12th Contact. It's going to take some effort, but how bad do you want it? And like I said, and what I learned was drilled into my head, my heart, my soul last weekend, you have a duty and a responsibility to yourself, to your family, to your business, to your teammates to find more. It is your duty and your responsibility to find more. Most of us are leaving a ton of capacity on the table. Don't let it happen to you. That is why I am here. That is why I continue to bring you these messages of training, of learning, of growth in hopes that you will take them and take action. Only two things, a decision in action will get you to your next win or your next lesson. My name is Mike Stromcel and if this is your first time on the podcast, I want to welcome you. I am widely recognized as the leading as a leading author, speaker and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can find me @unstoppable profit producer.com if you're interested in attending a virtual or a live event to grow your business, create wealth and have more freedom to live life on your own terms, please visit our portals. Our virtual portal is upfaststart.com that's upfaststart.com or if you want to attend one of our live events, please Visit us at beunstoppablebootcamp.com that's beunstoppablebootcamp.Com Both events are designed to share some of our best money making strategies developed over 36 years of research in our industry. Again, to help you grow your business, create wealth so you can have more freedom to live life on your own terms. And if you enjoyed the podcast today today, please go to unstoppable profit podcast.com, subscribe so you don't miss one of the future episodes because we do our best to bring epic content for you every single time. And the podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and on our YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube search Unstoppable Profit Producer, click on the videos and all of the podcasts. At least the last 60 or 70 of them are there for your learning and growth opportunities. Thank you for joining us today. Until next time, get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable and leave no regrets. And like I said, a decision and action will lead to your next win. I'll talk to you next time. 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.unstoppableprofitpodcast.com now go out and make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets.