Episode 173: Your Unique Voice

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 and welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. I am excited to bring this to you because I'm passionate. I am super, super passionate about helping you grow your agency, create wealth and have more freedom so you can live life on your own terms. And in my journey over 35 plus years as a proud 100% of the time independent insurance agent, we built a systematic way to deliver the people, the processes and the promotion to the marketplaces that we served. And in thinking about how to help you today, I was thinking, how did we put that fence around the herd? How was it iron clock, ironclad and locked all of the time? So when something did happen with their insurance program, when something did change, like rates from time to time or anything of the such, instead of thinking about going somewhere else or thinking about getting a quote online, the only thing that they thought about was contacting us to say, hey, this happened. What are. Now think about this for just a minute. What are we going to do about this? You see, it was a partnership. It was a true partnership. And they knew one thing all of the time because this is the most important thing that they feel. You know, Maya Angelou said, they'll forget what you said, they'll forget what you did, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. And the other piggyback cousin onto that is no one cares how much you know until they know you care. And that's the bottom line. They knew we cared. And I want to share with you a strategy today that we used for over a decade, if not two decades consistently. It was part of our promotional automatic nurturing system that was an absolute game changer. And in the beginning, when there was some grumblings, when we started to implement this in the agency business, when, oh my gosh, somebody raised their hand and said they didn't like it, my first question was, how many of these messages went out? And when the answer was probably more than 3,000, and I asked the question, all right, 3,000 of these messages went out and we've got one or two people grumbling, I will say, what about the other 2,998 people. Did we have grumblings from them? No, they liked it. They adored it, and they told me so all of the time. And what's that one strategy that you've got that you can start right now, starting today, right here? And I'm going to take you how to take you through how that evolved into the future and how you can install that in your agency business. Today was simply two things. A decision and action. That's the beginning of anything that happens in your business. A decision and action. And most importantly, you will either win or you will learn. But it's those lessons that make you who you become. And I would strongly encourage you to consider making this part of your nurturing, systematic process in the promotional realm for not only your clients, but. But for your prospects, for your centers of influences or anybody else that you want to keep in constant contact with. Because at the. At the end of the day, you've got one thing that nobody else can duplicate. One thing. That's your voice. Your voice. And you've got to use your voice. Most of the time there's no charge except for your time. And if it goes south and it's not working, you'll get over in a couple of days. So no big deal. But your true, caring, real voice changes everything. And you've got to understand tonality and the emotion that goes through it and everything else. I'm going to give you a couple secrets today that you can instantly use in using your voice in the insurance agency business to put that fence around your herd, lock the gate, bring them over to your side over and above any other options available to them, which is exactly what you want to do. First, strategy I want to share with you. How do you really get in the mood when you're not in the mood? Okay. So you've got to position yourself. Let's say it comes up on your calendar that you need to deliver a voice broadcast message or a sly broadcast message. Now, the slide broad. Slide broadcasting. Let me slow down. Slide broadcasting is a strategy that's very similar to voice broadcast. But the unique thing about slide broadcasting is the fact that it slides right into people's voicemail and the phone doesn't ring. Or a ringless voicemail. It's also known as that, right? Have you ever looked at your phone and you say, wait a minute, I got a message. My phone didn't even ring. That's because it was a slide broadcast message or a ringless voicemail message that got into your inbox for years prior. To that, we use voice broadcast systems, and we still consistently use them in today's marketplace, as well as slide broadcasting messages, because they work. And there's two sides to voice broadcasting. Okay? One, you can have it live. So when somebody picks up the phone, like my mom used to pick up the phone and she goes, oh, it's Michael. And so you listen to the message, she'd hang up and she'd immediately call me and say, hey, I got your message. Thank you so much. You sounded really, really good. Or is everything okay? You know, you sounded a little bit off today. Is everything all right? You know how moms are sometimes. Thank you, mom, for caring. Right? But it's the tonality, and that's the key. However, you're. Whatever the message is, you're going to deliver. And this is you or anybody else on your team that might use this strategy as well, right? You want to make sure that you're in the mood. So the strategy that I've learned from one of my coaches and I'm going to share it with you here today, and I strongly encourage you to actually use this is if you're not in the mood because you got a bad piece of message, let's say something's up with one of your kids and you're a little bit down emotionally, it happens, right? Or something else happened or whatever. Whatever, Whatever. First P issue came to the table this morning. But you've got to get this done today. You've got to find a way to bring yourself back into that emotional state, to have the right tonality right now. Some people are very, very fortunate. They can bring themselves out of it just like that. I was fortunate enough like that. But one of the things that I've also learned to do, even if I can bring myself out of it, I still want to raise my level to a different level and make sure that my voice tone and the emotion that's coming from within me for that particular delivery is at its very best. So one of the things that I just did before I started this podcast, honestly, is I have two or three videos that are my go to videos that I simply watch. So I sat here right before I jumped on to deliver this podcast for you. I watch one of my videos, and when I watch that video, it brings me emotionally and brings my mind into a state that I am ready. I am pumped and fired up and excited to deliver. And in my world, one of the videos that I watch is really all about legacy and how I can deliver at the highest level for all of you. Because that's my goal. I just want to give you everything that I've ever learned in 47 years in business that's in my head, that's in my heart, that's in my soul to help you. All I want, I want, I badly want your business achievement and success and to you and for you to have everything that I've got. And I want to help take you there. So let's get back to voice broadcast slide broadcast messaging, ringless voicemails and the such. So the key is to make sure your mind is right, get your mind in the right place and make sure you're ready to deliver it. Okay? Then you've got to figure out what's your medium. Okay? There's lots of companies out there that can do this. So you got to figure out the right company. We had a couple of different companies that we used over the years for voice broadcast messages. And again, voice broadcast, it could be live. In other words, when somebody picked up the phone, like mom, and she'll say, what did she say? Hello. That was, I mean, also back in the day, it was kind of part back when they didn't have a caller ID and all that kind of stuff. Then they did, right. So that kind of changed things a lot as well. I believe that's why slide messaging and voice and ringless voicemails become so powerful, because everybody's got caller ID nowadays and they go, oh, I don't want to take that call from Joe today. Okay. By the way, if I'm, I'm not speaking to anybody, I just grabbed a name out of the air anyway. So with that being said, they'll say, I don't want to take it. I'm just going to let it go to voicemail and then they leave the message and then they'll listen to it later. Right? But when they picked up the phone, they would pick it up live and it would say the message, okay? Then we also learned that sometimes we don't want to interrupt, so we'll just deliver that voice broadcast message so it will automatically go to voicemail. The bottom line is this. If you're in somebody's phone system and they identify it's you and they want to talk to you because you built that nurturing, caring relationship, they're going to pick up the phone. And we built that because of the number of touches that we delivered to people. It was our goal to touch our clients, our prospects, our centers of influences and others a minimum of 29 times per year with a caring, nurturing, consistent message that made our relationship dynamic and made our relationship something that they wanted to engage with, they wanted to interact with. And that's what I'm so dying to teach all of you. Okay, so our voice broadcast messages for years, went out four times a year. And when did they go out? Pretty simple. Okay, Valentine's Day. And I'm going to give you a couple of samples that you can use. Okay? Valentine's Day, Why? Because Valentine's Day is the month of love. Love is the absolute strongest emotion that there is out there, as I learned from Bob Berg, who's going to be talking at boot camp coming up, which is going to change, be an absolute game changer. Bob said in his book Endless Referrals, he said people refer and do business with people they know, like and trust. He was the originator of that statement. However, we took that and we elevated it to another level. People refer and do business with people they know love and trust. And I believe that love is even better. It's a stronger emotion. With that being said, elevate it to the next level. Okay, so Valentine's Day is the month of love. By the way, one of the greatest promotional marketing opportunities in business is Valentine's Day. Who doesn't like love, right? Unless somebody's recently been in a relationship, hopefully this too shall pass. Right? With that being said, it's a great opportunity to connect with people and quote, share the love. So we had a Valentine's Day message, then we did Mother's Day, we did Father's Day and we did Thanksgiving. Why? Because the attitude of gratitude always wins. And so we had specific wording for each one of those. I'm going to take you through some of that and just give you the thought processes and how we stopped and how we went and all that kind of stuff. Whether it be live, live voice broadcast or straight to voicemail broadcast or nowadays slide messaging or ringless voicemails. And I strongly encourage you to add to your follow up process.

For your pipelines in the sales or even in the cross selling strategies and efforts to make sure you add a slide message or a ringless voicemail to that. Because if you want to reach 100% of the marketplace, you've got to use 100% of the ways. And this is just one of the ways that you're going to reach the marketplace. You got to know that. And the thing is, it's super, super cost effective, very painless on the pocketbook, super effective. And the one thing is it's your voice, it's your voice they're hearing from you pick up the phone, make a phone call, record the message, direct your team to put it out at a certain time on a certain day, Bam. It's out to thousands of people and they all hear the same message. It's awesome. I love it. Okay, so let me share with you a scripting, if you will. And by the way, so when I was getting ready to deliver a message, I always scripted it out. Did I say it word for word all the time? No, but I wrote it out and I knew pretty much what I wanted to say because I wanted them to hear this exact wording. And there's a couple of things that are absolutely critical that are in the wording, okay? So I want them to hear this specific wording again. Really, really important. Okay? So I'm looking at the script right now and let's say I'm getting ready to record a voice broadcast, a slide message, whatever it might be for Valentine's Day, okay? And it says at the very top of the sheet, wait one second. I wait. So I'll pick up the phone, I'll dial the number, I'll wait, I'll pause for one second. Because remember, you have to out think and out anticipate everybody every day, in every way. The person on the other end is going to pick up the phone. That's why you want to wait one second. Not too long, but just one second. Okay? And sometimes there's phone system prompts and dial throughs and all this kind of stuff. So you just want to pause slightly to make sure you've got the connection. Okay? So it says wait one second. And so I pick up the phone and it goes through the recording prompts and where I'm directing the voice broad the voice message to go to within the, the system of the service we're using. Okay? And then I'll wait one second, I'll say, hi. Now let's pause for just a minute. Yes, I intentionally change my tonality super, super important because it's like any face to face relationship nowadays. They used to say it's four seconds, they size you up. Now it's, I've heard recently it's down to like two seconds. I mean, they size you up by the tone of your voice in a heartbeat and they know it's your tone or they don't know it's your tone. Okay? And the other great thing about this strategy, by the way, I'm going to squirrel right back to you is even if you're sending this out to 3,000 people, even if you're the authority of the agency and you're not the one talking with them all the time, they know who you are. And I've got wording that reminds them who I am. So they're feeling like, wow, the authority of the agency business took a minute to call me. Yes, they know. It's not, you know, it's going out to other people, but it's just that. That psychological benefit, it's absolutely awesome. Okay, so start again. Wait one second. Hi, this is Mike of the Stromso Insurance Agency Total Protection Team. This is a quick recorded message to. To say thank you for your business and to wish you and your loved ones a happy Valentine's Day. I also want to know. I also want to let you know that we love the opportunity to serve and protect you and everything you work so hard for. Take care.

One, two, three. Now, by the way, I'm not saying that I'm counting in my mind. And by the way, for any reason you prefer not to receive any of the messages in the future, press 3 now. Or you can call the phone number to.

Be removed from the list. Now, that's your call. It's up to you how you do that. I'm simply sharing with you what I did to stay in full compliance with all the rules that are out there. Okay, now, at the end of the day, let's run back through what I did. Okay? This is Mike of the Stromso Insurance Agency Total Protection Team. I can tell you in the past, if I look at some of the other messages that I've said. Hi, this is Mike, president of the Stromso Insurance Agency Total Protection Team. If you wanted to show your authority in the particular situation, it's completely up to you. Okay? Now, the second sentence is, this is a quick recorded message to say thank you, letting them know it's a recorded message. So again, you're in full compliance. And to say thank you for your business and to wish you and your loved ones a happy Valentine's Day. I also want to let you know, and by the way, when I was just sharing with you that example, honestly, I stumbled just a tad. If you do, you have two options. You can rerecord it or you can let it go. And I'm here to tell you this, it's never the wrong move to be authentic. It's never the wrong move to be imperfect. Because people don't want to deal with perfect people. They want to deal with authentic people. So it's really your call if you're Going to rerecord or not. And the cool, the cool thing is about these systems. It's completely up to you. If you want to accept the recording or re record it, it's up to you. Okay? I also want to let you know that we love the opportunity to serve and protect you. So I intentionally increase my tonality on the love and to serve and protect you. That's what we say all the time. Serve and protect, serve and protect. And everything you work so hard for, that's what we're protecting. Take care of. And we leave it with something positive. Okay? And we've done various things over time. The reason I shortened it a little bit over time is because people don't have time for these long, extended messages. I will suggest the ones in the prior years used to be a little bit longer. But I got feedback that said shorten it. Shorten and keep it short to the point. So we did we deliver something that people are going to listen to the whole message. And keep in mind, I'm not selling anything. It's simply a nurturing, caring message. Let me give you another example, okay? And this is for Mother's Day. Now listen closely. This one is a little bit longer and you might be thinking mother's Day, Father's Day. What if somebody doesn't have a mother or somebody doesn't have a father? We respect that. We understand that maybe they've lost them. So we addressed it to the best of our ability with the wording. So play close attention here. Now the good news is that.

With that with the loss of a parent or a loved one, or maybe there's somebody who never had one in their lives over the years when we're delivering this, still nobody's coming back and say, didn't you ever consider the fact that I don't have a father, don't have another mother? They, the wording was good enough, so they felt loved anyway. Okay? So again, it's tonality and everything else. All right, so we're going to go again with a Mother's Day message as an example. Okay. Again, wait one second.

Hi, this is Mike of the Stromso Insurance Agency Total Protection Team. This is a quick recorded message from our team for Mother's Day. We decided that even though moms will be missing some or all of their hugs this year, that it's super important to call and wish all of the mothers and your family a happy Mother's Day and a wonderful Mother's Day weekend. We recognize that without our mothers that none of us would Be here. And we want all the mothers to know that, that we appreciate them. To our moms and everyone, we wish you safety, wellness and health now and in the future. Thanks and hope to talk to you soon. Take care.

1, 2, 3. Again, I'm not leaving the 1, 2, 3 in the messaging, but you know what happens after that. Okay, so again, that was the wording in all transparency, that was the wording that we converted a little bit because of the pandemic, but we'll shift it again in the future because we're past that. So that's to give you an example, we shifted to meet what's going on in the marketplace. Okay, I'm going to give you one more example and then I'm going to give you an example of something that I might use as part of a systematic follow up in the quoting process for a prospect. Okay, so now this is the Thanksgiving holiday message. Now keep in mind that these messages are being delivered four times a year. So these specific reasons for launching the calls are throughout the year. So we're in touch with them throughout the year along with everything else that we're delivering to put that fence around the herd, which is our clients and our prospects and our centers of influence within our communities. And, and it just kept us in the right place. We were always a welcome guest, never an annoying pest. And that's what you want to be. Okay, so we're going to go now with the script for the Thanksgiving holiday message and again we'll dial up the system. We'll wait one second and.

Hi, this is Mike from the Stromso Insurance Agency Total Protection Team. This is a quick recorded message of gratitude from our Total Protection Team to you and your loved ones. On behalf of our families, we would like to wish you and yours a safe and happy Thanksgiving holiday weekend. We could not be more thankful for each of you. We appreciate each continued opportunity to serve and protect you in every way possible through all of the times in front of us, including those of adversity. Take care and we look forward to speaking with you soon.

Counting to three again so you know, update the wording based on what's going on. Again, that was a sample through maybe some tougher times like the pandemic. So we would remove that going forward. We look we couldn't be more thankful for each of you. We appreciate each continued opportunity to serve and to protect you in every way possible, every day, in every way. Take care. We look forward to speaking with you soon. So the other thought process in speaking with you soon, it's the COVID way of saying, we can't wait to connect with you and see. Remember this, all of these touches, the 29 plus touches throughout the year. Every touch is an opportunity for sale. Every touch is a reason to follow up with somebody. Every touch is a reason to reach out if they didn't come back and say, hey, by the way, we left you a message. I just wanted to follow up on that message to make sure you got the message. And I wanted to make sure we learn if there's any way that we can be doing a better job to serve you, to protect you, and provide you a preeminent client experience. You see, every time you do this, every time is an opportunity to help somebody at a higher level, to follow up, to reach them, to serve them. Okay? And you want to do it proactively without them having to ask for anything. That's another powerful benefit of delivering these kinds of messages. So let me go back to one other item that you can use within your follow up system in making sure that you close more deals. You know, I learned for years that 48% of salespeople never follow up more than once with a prospect. 48%. The only competition that you have is that you make for yourselves. In addition to that, 80% of deals are closed on the 5th to the 12th follow up. And in today's marketplace, it may be more than that. That's why it's so vitally important that you make sure that you add something such as slide broadcast messaging or ringless voicemail as an integral part of, of your systematic follow up with prospects every single time. So let's think about this for just a minute. And you want to have a generic, singular message that you can send out every single time to your marketplace, okay? And you want to word it as such so that it can be used over and over and over again. Now, obviously, the best case scenario is to have it personalized like hi, John or hi, Julie. If you can get to that point, it can be in the voice of the, of the team member who's working with them. That's the best case scenario. But worst case scenario, send out. Sending out something is better than nothing at all, right? So with that being said, here's the thought process, all right? And I'm going to take you through an example. All right? Now, I'm doing this without any script. I'm going to do it based on experience and experience alone. All right, Here we go. So let's set the table with this scenario. The proposal has been done. Let's say it's been delivered to the prospect. Let's say it's a video proposal. So they're hearing a voice, they have visuals, they have information in front of them. You know, they've looked at it because you have automation in place that notifies you. They've looked at it, but they have not responded to buy yet. Okay, so you send a follow up email as part of your system. No response. You make a phone call, leave a voicemail. No response. Okay, maybe you send a letter or other text message as an example. No response. Now is the perfect time to send a slide broadcast message or a ringless voicemail and followup. And here we go. And I just like the word high. Nothing else, no name. Because that can be generic and can become part of your system. You don't have to worry about changing it all the time. Okay.

Here we go. Getting the tonality in place, getting our mind right to deliver the message. Take a deep breath. And here we go. Hi, this is Mike. I'm one of the team leaders at Stromso Insurance Agency. I wanted to take a quick moment today and thank you. Thank you so much for allowing us to review your insurance protection program and allowing us to serve you and providing you a comparison quote for all of your insurance policies. And, and I just wanted to follow up today to make sure that our team continues to deliver service of unequaled excellence. It's very important to myself and to our team that we take excellent care of you. If there's anything more that we can be doing to help you make a decision on your insurance program and to serve you at the highest level, please get back to us. Our Telephone number is 951-555-1212 or email us 247365 and insure at.

We look forward to protecting you and we look forward to serving you in the future. Take care, have a great day.

And simply. That's it. That's similar wording for you. And again, you know, I pulled that from my years of experience as a sample. Now each word I intentionally delivered in a way to engage them and to let them know what our agency standards are, what they can expect from our agency. And we hope each touch catches them at the right moment to bring them to the place in the relationship that we want them to be friends. Your voice. Your voice is the voice that nobody else has. And we strongly encourage you to use it. Use it like nobody else's business. Use it in only the way that you know how to earn more opportunity to become more to engage more people, to build more deep, significant, meaningful relationships. And speaking of voices, I just had another thought. I remember many, many times over the years if you're earning video testimonials as an example, I'm a squirrel here for just a minute. But it has to do with your voice, right? Or people's voices. So if you're earning and delivering at the highest level and therefore receiving video testimonial messages, one of the things that we did with people's voices is we took the audio only out of those video testimonial messages and we clipped them together so that we had a string of three or four of them and we simply delivered them as another audio voice. Only reason why people should do business with our insurance agency over and above any and all other options available to them. Because, let's face it, at the end of the day, you've got to be answering that question every single day in every single way. And here it is again. I'll pause and in case you want to get something to write with and write on.

Why? Why should people do business with your agency over and above any and all other options available to them? Why should somebody continue to renew with your agency over and above any and all other options available to them? Why? Why should a team member join your agency over and above any and other options available to them? Friends, it's not too complicated. These are the questions, the thoughts that you need to provide the answers to every single day in every single way. And if you do, and that's what I'm trying to share with you on the podcast consistently, is the strategies that you need to implement all of the time. Because if you do, you will grow, you will create wealth, and you will have more freedom to live life on your own terms. That is all we want for you. I hope this has helped you. If you have any questions, thoughts, comments, feedback, please drop it in the comments somewhere around this podcast link. And we can't wait to help you. And we can't wait to serve you. And if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromso. I'm widely recognized 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 live event to learn to grow your business, create wealth so you too can have more freedom to live life on your own terms, you can visit our virtual live training event portal at up fast start.com or to join one of our attend one of our live events Simply go to be unstoppable boot camp.com both our events are designed to share with you the great money making strategies that have been developed over 35 years of research in your industry 100% of the time as a proud independent insurance agent to help you grow your business, create wealth so you too can have more freedom to live life on your own terms. And if you enjoyed the content on today's podcast, please go up to the top. Make sure you subscribe to this podcast or if you're in the car please 10 and 2. 10 and 2. Like I was telling my granddaughter the other day, keep your hands at 10 and 2. She just got her license. I want you safe. And so when you get a chance, just go to unstoppable profit podcast.com go up to the top. Subscribe so you don't miss one episode that is designed with one sole goal and mission in mind that's to help you grow your agency business. So the podcast is also available on all the channels. Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, our YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube, search Unstoppable Profit Producer. Click on the link, go to videos. They're all there for you. And it's also now available on Amazon and from our team to yours or to you. Thank you, thank you for joining us. And until next time, get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable and most importantly, leave no regrets. We believe in you. You got this.

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