Episode 162: 45 Days That Will Change an Agent’s Life

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. This podcast will give independent insurance agents all of the tools to grow your business and live life on your terms. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or 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 Stromsol.

Greetings, everybody. Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. I am pumped and excited to bring this to you because what I'm going to share with you today are 45 days that will change the life of an agent, personally and professionally forever. And so I want to share with you every detail that was shared with him in one of our group coaching sessions. This question came up and we went around the horn and today, get something to write with. Get something to write on right now. If you don't have something to write with and write on, pause this right now, go get it and come back. You are not going to want to miss one of the items that I am going to share with you that will change the life, personally and professionally of this agent. Because he showed up. That's all it is. Woody Allen said 86% of all success is showing up. Agents that show up and do the work will not only reach their goals, they will exceed their goals. And I want to share with you an encouragement as well. It's on my calendar today. It says giving up on your goal because of one setback is like slashing your other three tires because you got a flat. Don't let it happen to you. Don't give up. Keep showing up every single day and doing the work that you need to be doing so that we can help you reach the destination that you are destined to reach. And we want to help you get there in every way possible. I want to share with you today what we told this agent. This agent has had a setback, but you either win or you learn. He's learning a lesson. We helped him through that. We helped him put an end to the pain so he can now grow. But he's got this interim period where he can't Write business for 45 days because of a business change. And it's about relationship. Not that he did anything wrong. It's just a change in relationship of the people that he does business with and he's got this interim period. So the question was knowing what you all know now. And this is asked of a wealth of wisdom and experience and information in our industry, what would you do based on what you know now? If you had 45 days to work 100% of the time on your business, what would you be doing for those 45 days? What a great opportunity. What a great question. I'm going to share with you the answers that came right now. Get ready. I'm going to go kind of fast paced on this. You need to stop and go, stop and go, completely get it and completely respect and understand. So the first thing out of the gate was about marketing. It's about the three Ps, right? People, processes and promotion, in that order. When done as we teach, you will grow your business, create wealth to have more freedom to live life on your own terms. And out of the gate was marketing and promotion, of course. However, prospect list, prospect list was the first thing that I wrote down. But I'm going to dial it back and I took a couple of minutes reorganize this whole thing for you to line it up with the three P's. The next thing that came up was build out your recruiting system for your future organization now. Well, you've got the 45 days. Build out your entire recruiting system from how you're going to recruit your prospecting ads, from everything that you will be interviewing with, from everything you're going to be hiring with, from everything that you are going to be training with, from everything you are going to use to motivate your gifted team, from everything you are going to use to continue to lead your team and to ultimately build leaders around you. So build all of that out. In addition to that, some of the things that came up, in addition to that, subsets concerning the interviewing, the offer, the compensation, the onboarding process, the love bombing that goes on, the ongoing motivation, all the subsets of that, the ongoing leadership and development, the team meetings, everything about the team meetings and building a culture, a world class culture that supports the entire organization. Those are just a few things that were suggested. As far as the people portion is concerned. You want to build out a long term career journey for your team members. They don't want just a job, they want a long term career. Lead them into it. Show them the pathway into the future of their career. Because that's what they want. They're silently waiting to be led. Show them the path. That's why we developed a one year goals and expectations program for both sales and for service. In addition to a longer term apprentice program. If they want a longer term position, say doing service to grow into becoming a world class sales professional. We also have designed that, so get all of that on paper, documented, written down, and get clear on it so that you can sell that person. Because let's face it, we are all in sales all of the time. So you can help that person understand and sell them on the fact that they can do this within your organization. They have landed in the place they need to be. So our great encouragement was get all of that together. And the great thing is we were able to say to him, the good news is we've developed all of this for you. All you need to do is make one call and we will help you implement it. We will provide you all the tools in plug and play format so you can install this in your agency business right now. So you will have it ready at the end of your 45 day interim period. So, so you can hit the ground running, which is what we want for all of you. That is why we do our be unstoppable boot camps towards the end of the year. Because we never want any of our members left behind. Going into a new year. We want you to have a complete, rock solid game plan before you go home for the holidays. And so you can go home for the holidays with peace of mind and enjoy the time of year with your family and your friends and everybody else. And then when you get up after that, you are ready to hit the ground running because you have a rock solid plan. Let's get back to how we are changing the game for this particular agent. So the next thing that we recommended is build out your entire agency processes roadmap for the future agency operations. And I want to share something with you that I recently learned that is super, super important with regard to the processes. Okay. You want to build out all of your processes to the point where you are creating a deep dive, a deep dive on every single process. Because your goal in developing that deep dive is to deliver excellence with every process. Deliver excellence with every process. Take that deep dive and develop it within your own organization so that every experience, every client prospect, center of influence or community person has an experience that's like no other. You want to develop that and design it for your business. You want to roadmap it, if you will. So we encourage this agent to build out the entire agency process roadmap for their future agency operations. What does that look like? Well, one of the most important things that need to be built in is the accountability. So you've got to have a process of accountability within your own organization, not only for yourself, but for your teammates. And we have designed that as well, for every agency things from scorecards to production logs to our PX3 program, you want to help them and develop their goal setting strategies and we've developed all of that. You want to help them create the vision within their place within the organization. We talked about their one year goals and expectations, we talked about their longer term plans. I'll get back to more on that in just a moment. Okay. We want to help them understand that they have choices as to what they do with their time. So we teach them all about time choices, we teach them all about our way of doing business. And our goal is to customize and help an agency develop their way of doing business. So we're talking about the IBC way of doing business or the Butler way of doing business or, or the Via way of doing business. We want to help them develop their way of doing business because that's a proprietary method, a proprietary way of thinking, of acting, of taking care of customers and community people at a minimum. Okay. So we help them develop that. Develop and expand on your written agency processes as far as your digital agency processes, including your intranet and your video trainings and everything that you're building out on a proprietary basis to continue to lead and to train your agency people. Like the late, great Zig Ziglar said motivation is like bathing. It's recommended daily. And I added on, training is like bathing, it's recommended daily. The only thing worse than training up a great team member and losing them is, is keeping a team member and not training them. Also borrowed that from Zig. So make sure you're training your team consistently and practicing and repetition and repetition. Make sure, and this was a big one that multiple people commented on. Make sure you're clear on who your ideal prospect and ideal client is for personal, for commercial, for life and health, if that's what you want to do. But get super clear on who your ideal client is. Make sure you're super clear on who your ideal prospect and client is and then match it to your carriers as well. Make sure you know from the carrier standpoint who their ideal client is so you can quickly match that as it comes along. Make sure you get your client segmentation game plan fully built out how you're going to segment your clients when you bring them on so that you can make the right resource investment or monetary investment or both are all when you're going to start executing your nurturing and everything else that you do to put that fence around your herd. Make sure you're clear if you're going to do acquisitions on the future. Make sure that you have the beginning of a game plan for that. Make sure that your entire sales and service processes specifically for those two segments are developed and documented and written out. Make sure that your ongoing training platform, whether it be the first four months, which we've done for you and we deliver it to you and give it to you and teach you how to use it, but beyond that, because school is never out for the pros. And so you want that ongoing training and development in place consistently, all of the time. And not that this team never needs it, but another thing that comes to my mind when I'm thinking about that is succession planning. Is that necessary? And what does the roadmap for a team member journey look like within your agency business? So that's just a part of some of the things that were brought up in these sessions to help this agent who has this 45 day unique window to 100% of the time work on his business. So the next thing that we shared with him, you need to develop next your entire marketing, promotion and marketing program for your agency business. The good news is we have a completely mapped out 12 month promotions and marketing program done for him. So we're not only are we going to hand that to him, but but it's going to include a number of items to help him grow his agency business. So it begins with the understanding of the three M's of marketing, understanding, marketplace, message and media. It's understanding who is your acre of diamonds and who is all of these potential prospects and centers of influences and mavens and connectors and everything else all around you that will be your funnels of new leads and connections to fill your pipe. Remember, your pipe is your life. Your pipe must be full 90 days out or you are going to go hungry in any given month period. Your pipe is your life. So we are starting to work on teaching on how to keep that full all the time. And your existing acre of diamonds is absolutely the best place to start. And what do I mean by that? Even if you don't have a large client list, remember this. Everybody knows 250 people that will either come to their wedding or come to their funeral. Okay? And I just say go conservative online on that. Let's make it 100. It's easier math. So let's say that you have a list of 100 people. There's a process that you go through to, to develop the other a hundred people they're connected to. So all of a sudden you have 10,000 prospects. What more Is it that you want? Then you begin to build out the promotions and marketing funnel. And then you begin to develop things like your welcome kit and your newsletter and your email drip. Nurturing marketing, which by the way will not be all about insurance. It's about building deep, significant, meaningful relationships. Money follows trust. Remember that you know specific touches for every month of the year. Every month of the year has an opportunity to reach out and touch somebody. Birthday campaigns, cross sell campaigns. If for some reason you get a lender referral and you don't close the rest of the business. Planned proactivity. Planned proactivity is something that we are very big on. Designing and developing your referral program. We have developed referral programs for over two decades to help that that we deliver to agents to immediately implement in their agency business. All they need to do is take action. Creating your entire social proof platform. It's one of the most important things you will ever do in the promotions and marketing platform campaigns for your business, period. Whether it be your agency business or any business you you choose to participate in. Your social proof platform is absolutely key. It is the beginning of the answer to the question why should people do business with you over and above any and all other options available to them? It's what other people say you've already done for them. They don't give a rip about what you say you've done for other people. It's what other people say you've already done for them. The results that you produced that will shift everything into your favor. So you've got to systematically, from a process driven standpoint, continually develop your social proof campaign. Everything from online reviews, to testimonials, to case studies, to video testimonials, to written reviews.

And then your lost souls in your win back program develop that. And how do you collect and use videos? What do you do with those? Are you developing your channels and all of your channels? What about your commercial campaigns or your personal campaigns for that fact in your niches to riches endeavor all the things from marketplace research, the key to building your list, your client profile maps, third party endorsement programs, live case studies and so much more. What about your opportunities for networking to continue to build those deep, significant, meaningful relationships that can change everything for you. From blue circle partnerships to presentations to your presentation platforms to present to people why and how they can partner with your business to better protect themselves. What about your ideal client flyer? What about your comparison matrix? And these are all things we're all suggesting to this agent because we've all developed it all and they all have used it and installed it in the their agency business. What about their WOW Experience program? What about identifying their client of the month? What about their voice broadcasting and their slide messaging strategies? What about their blog? What about anything and everything else that they could and should be doing in the promotional realm? I will not soon forget the look on this agent's face after he was delivered this arsenal, this truckload of gold dumped right there in front of him. And for the next 45 days he got to will get to take all of this information and implement it in his agency business. He will work on his agency business for the next 45 days. But bigger than that, what excites me so, and this is why we do what we do at upp.

He will begin to become impacted personally and professionally for this massive, high achieving, successful agency journey that he is going to be on because we have given him all the tools. All he needs to do is execute a couple of other things that I added on for him. He needs to also begin to design his own personal development roadmap based on what his needs are, things he needs to learn about, get better at consistently for the next 18 months. That was part of my encouragement. And then the next thing that he needs to do is he needs to make sure that he develops from a 15 to 20,000 foot level, okay, what his Vision Organizer looks like. And if you listen to one of my most recent podcasts, as far as accountability breeds responsibility, and if you did not have not watched that or listened to it, please go back and study that one because I feel that it had very good content for you. I talked a little bit about this and how I am held accountable on this Vision Organizer. Okay, I've got everything tracked right here and I'm positioned to look at it four times a week by my weekly Rhythm Register. And I encouraged this agent to do the same thing. It's got everything on there from the things that I need to be working on now, to the quarterly goals for our organization, to the one year plan for our organization, to our three year picture. What does it look like into the future for our organization? All the way out as far as 10 years for our organization. Where do we want to be? What do we want to be accomplishing? You know, I think back more than 20 years ago when I started on my own from scratch. I started doing some of this stuff. Not this exact format, but I was doing something very similar. Like the fact that I wanted to move an office up to a certain size, have a certain number of team members, buy an office building, be able to spend X amount of time with my kids, being able to do certain things from an exercise standpoint, being able to do certain things with my family, spend time with my spouse and everything else. You know what happened.

It all happened. It all came true. And because I had a plan, because I set some goals, it all came true. And it all came true so much further and well beyond what I had originally planned. Stay tuned. At the beginning of next year, I'm going to launch a brand new series outlining how you too can create an agency business like no other that will grow so massively quick you won't be able to keep up. I am super pumped and excited and I'm going to share with you exactly why this is so easy for you to do. Back to the Vision Organizer. So we've got the issues, the quarterly goals, the one year, three year tenure. In addition to that, it's got our core values, who we are, the things that we're focused on and why we're focused on it. And it's got our complete marketing strategy. And I'm looking at this consistently four times a week. I encourage that agent to do the same thing we provided for this agent to develop within 45 days of working 100% on his business a complete game plan that will change the future not only of his business, but he will have a business that that will support he and his family in a way that they could have never imagined. And that's why we exist. I hope this helped you. I hope you got lots of gold nuggets from today's podcast and if you didn't go back and re listen to it or rewatch it and make sure you got all the notes. We are super privileged and thankful that you are here with us on this amazing journey. And if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromceau. I am widely recognized as an author, speaker and a coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can find out more about me and our organization@undoppableprofitproducer.com and if you're interested in attending a virtual or live training to continue to grow your business, create wealth so you too can have more freedom to live life on your own terms. Our virtual event portal is upfaststart.com that's upfaststart.com or to learn more about our live events, just simply go to be unstoppablebootcamp.com that's be unstoppable bootcamp.com both of these events are designed with some of my best money making strategies developed over 35 years of research in your industry, in the trenches as a proud 100% of the time independent insurance agent and these strategies will help you grow your business, create wealth so you too can have more freedom to live life on your own terms. That's all we want for you. And if this is your first time here, please go to Unstoppable ProfitPodcast.com, go up to the top. Subscribe to our podcast so you don't miss one money making and life changing episode of our podcast. And you can find the podcast out there on all the channels including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, our YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube, search Unstoppable Profit Producer, click on the videos. All of our podcasts are there and now on Amazon as well. So thank you for joining us. We we hope this has helped you and until next time, get out there and make a difference. Be unstoppable and most importantly, leave no regrets. You got this. We believe in you. See you on the next podcast.

You love the podcast but don't know where or how to get started. Come join our next virtual training while seats are still available. Register now at UPP Fast start. Com. That's upfaststart.

Com.