Episode 32 : Staying in Front of Your Marketplace Part 1

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. This podcast will give you all the tools to grow your business and live life on your terms. Millionaire agents and entrepreneurs think and act differently than others. This podcast will give you a simple, proven three step blueprint to grow your business. Over the past 31 years of research in your industry, Mike Stromso has created a unique philosophy called the three people Process and production Motion. This outside the box thinking and guidance provides agency entrepreneurs just like you the knowledge and tools you can quickly implement to explode your agency business. He has been there, done that, and he's still doing it. 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.

Hey everybody, this is Mike Stromco and welcome to podcast number 32 of the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. Again, this is Mike Trompso coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. And today we're going to be talking about staying front of your marketplace. Nobody else's marketplace, your marketplace. It is your future growth opportunity. And this is the first of a three part series. Because what we have to teach over the next three podcasts will completely change the game. If you will stop thinking about it, if you will stop talking about it, if you will take action, there will be wins. I have to let you know truthfully, there will be actions, but you've got to take action because that's where all the growth will come from. So the first part of our three part series is that we're going to be talking about is acquiring new prospects and customers. Okay, it's the acquisition part. The three parts are the acquisition, the retention and the interaction or building relationships with your marketplace acquisition. It's all about so many different things. You've heard me say before. If you want to reach 100% of the marketplace, you've got to use 100% of the ways. So how do you reach 100% of the marketplace? I'm just going to give you some tips on the list that I have. It is not all encompassing. It's just intended to spurn some ideas for you. Okay, it could be SEO marketing, search marketing. You could be proactively searching PPC, which is pay per click, social media, Search Engine optimization. We talked about pay per click, affiliate marketing, direct mail, your website and all facets of your website, your blog. Do you know what your CRO is? Your Conversion rate optimization. How are you managing your campaigns? Does it involve video? Does it involve texting? Does it involve emailing? There are so many particular opportunities for you out there to acquire clients. That's just some of the ideas. So you've got to have a plan. The great news is in the unstoppable Profit Producer program, we have a brand new, completely revamped 2019 marketing campaign, specific game plan so you can use it. It's available to you. If you have any questions about it, let Andrea Wyatt or our team know. We'll be happy to have a conversation with you about that. So my next question for you today is what business are you in? What business are you in? And every time I say that to people and then I go, you know, just like hiring, ask great pointed questions and shut up. I shut up and they look at me like, oh my gosh, I don't know what to say. Ladies and gentlemen, you've got to know what to say when we're talking about the promotional side, the acquisition side of it, the business that you are in, you're in the sales business. The great thing about the insurance agency business is so stinking simple. It's getting more clients and keeping more of the clients you get. It is that simple. So you're in the sales business, alright? When you are acquiring, you're in the sales business, you've got to be knowing that you're in the sales business and you have to be implementing and employing the right types of strategies, tactics and everything else that go along with being a phenomenal sales organization. So my first question in that realm is how are you attracting new prospects? How are new prospects magnetically becoming attracted to you sometimes without your intervention? Do you have that much of a magnet presence out there in the marketplace? If you don't, you should. And there's a way to do that. The 10,000 foot level on that again is if you want to reach 100% of the marketplace, you must be employing 100% of the ways. And if that's not possible, you've got to do as many as possible. Because everybody learns differently, everybody's looking differently. You don't know what time of the day they're looking. They could be looking at 6 o' clock in the morning, they could be, they could be looking at noon, they could be looking at 11 o' clock at night. You just don't know. How are you magnetically attracting those new prospects? You've got to be clear. How do you find out? You've got to do your marketplace Research. We have a specific forum within our unstoppable profit producer program that helps people research their marketplace so they can enter the conversation that is going on in the minds of their marketplace. Once you can enter that conversation through the experience, through the feeling, through the connectedness, through the relationship to build the trust, money will follow trust. And I know that was a mouthful. We'll be having that on an upcoming podcast as well. So how are you magnetically attracting these new prospects? You see, your presence in any marketplace is everything. How much of a presence do you have? If I were to walk up to 10 people in your marketplace and I walked up to them and said, have you ever heard of ABC Insurance Agency? What would they say? And if they say, I have no flipping clue who you're talking about, then we need to build our presence. And it's again, not an easy thing to do. But the only time success comes before work is in the dictionary. So we've got to do the work, we've got to build a presence within a marketplace. Because your presence, your reputation and what you're building within the marketplace is absolutely everything. But you know, it's also who is your ideal client, what you're trying to build. Okay, so your presence is everything. You got to be able to introduce your teammates as well. It's not all about you, it is all about them. Because if you like to work 18 to 24 hours a day, good for you. It's not something that we like to do, it's not good for our health. All right, so make sure that you have your team introduced to your marketplace as well, so that people are also attracted magnetically to them as well. Your first place that you want to start in that particular realm is your website. You know, I'm looking at the team people on our website. People love, love, love pictures, people love, love, love bios. They want to be engaged. Make sure that you invest the money that's needed on some high quality professional pictures for your website and everything else that you're using because you want your people looking their best, alright? Have them write a bio, have them write something fun, have them be interesting and have them, you know, think about it like this. If somebody visits a team bio page on your website, are they going to want to go anywhere else or are they going to be so engaged they're thinking to themselves in their mind, I don't need to go anywhere else. I've already found. What I wanted to find is your digital presence out there in the world sending that message. All, all of the time. If it's not, there's work to do. And that's okay. Regardless of your past, you have a spotless future. You know, build relationships. Build relationships. And have fun with your bios. You know, I'm looking at one of the bios. She's a shoe connoisseur. She has the middle child syndrome. If she goes missing, you know, maybe you can find her at the nearest wine outlet. I mean, things like that. I mean, something that people will engage with. And it's a wonderful professional picture. She talks about where she grew up, there's an about section, her role within the organization. I mean, and then she just has fun with people. And that's what people want. People want to laugh. People would rather laugh than cry. And don't forget to use video in all facets of every presence that we have out there in the marketplace, especially the digital presence. We have video, we have all kinds of videos out there in the marketplace. Some are personalized, some are educational, but they're out there all the time, every way, every single day. Ninja tip for you today. If you get videos out there, quickly transcribe them and you instantly have written form of anything. So, hey, that's just another way to shift into reaching a different facet of the marketplace. Remember, mobile friendly website is critical. Go onto your mobile device right now, or better yet, one of your kids mobile devices or your spouse's mobile device since you might be on yours looking at your own website more often and make sure that your website pulls up quickly, easily, efficiently on their device. You need to make sure that your website is always mobile friendly. And we're not talking about a mobile app here. We're about talking. We're talking about the fact that your URL, okay, your www.yourwebsite.com is mobile friendly and loads quickly and easily and looks good on people's mobile devices because, hey, the latest research, more than 60% of people are using their mobile devices to execute business a lot nowadays. You've got to be mobile friendly. So what is your SEO plan? Do you know? Do you have something in place that analyzes your SEO optimization plans? What about your content? Is your content specifically worded? Is it engaging certain people? Okay, have you done your keyword research.

Again? What is your web presence and everything that we just said? Do you have specific links embedded within your website and other outreaching efforts to specifically attract a certain kind of prospect and clientele? What is your ranking? What is your generic organic ranking? On Google as an example, we are privileged and fortunate to find that in our local markets, when people look for insurance in our particular market, the majority of the time we're number one, right below all the paid ads. We're never going to trump Geico. We're never going to trump, say, the state farms of the world, they got more money than, well, I shouldn't say never. Never is a long time. It's highly unlikely that we're going to be able to trump them. But we are always investing in our SEO efforts. Part of your SEO efforts is your blog, your social media and everything else. We have a visual that we use in our live teachings and anything we do on.

You know, webinar training and that kind of thing, where the blog is the central focus of our outreach. So what about social media? Do you have your own Facebook page for your business? Do you have your own business page for LinkedIn? Do you have engaging pictures of your entire team? Is that posted on your Twitter presence? What about your Pinterest presence? What about Google? I mean, all of it, all of it is engaging. Everybody's on something different. You've got to make sure that your presence is out there all of the time in all of those places. Do you automate as much as possible scheduled posts? And if you are, are you making sure that they're reaching all of the outlets that you intentionally want them to reach? Case in point, I will tell you that my personal Facebook page, I used to be able to automated post to that. We can no longer do it because of some algorithm and other changes that Facebook has made. So now we have to do it manually. Okay, it is what it is, but that's the way it is. So you've got to shift. If we want things to change, we have to change. We have to be aware that things are changing. I have a new philosophy. It used to be said that two things are certain in life, death and taxes. Wrong. Three things are certain in life, death, taxes and change. Right. Things are going to change. All right, so how else are you attracting new clients? Do you have people out there on the ground all of the time connecting with people, creating the experience that you want? Are they trained in that? Do you go to events outside of your office, you know, pounding the pavement, so to speak, and show up at live events with a plan? Have you identified the five people that might be at that event that you want to connect with to build relationships? It only takes five or less relationships. Sometimes it only takes one or two relationship to completely change the game. I personally attended an event this last week. I went there intentionally with the mindset of I was just going to connect with two people. It's amazing to me. One of the people that I wanted to connect with sat right down next to me at lunch. And the other person was actually leading the class. And because of our social media presence, he actually called me out in the room in a good way. And he said, if you aren't following Mike Strompso in his daily positive quotes, you're missing the opportunity out of a room full of people. That was awesome. And I connected with him afterwards. Now we've got about a $350,000 account that we get to be working on for that particular realm. It's absolutely awesome stuff. So how are you attracting new clients out there in the marketplace? Sometimes it's through networking, sometimes it's strategically attending certain events. You know, it could be a chamber event, could be a networking group, Rotary, whatever it is, you know, figure out what works best for you as supported by your PX3s, your passion, your purpose, which will result in the profit, the profit not always being monetary. What about associations within your niche? If you're a niche player, executing niches for riches? You know, as an example, what we did, one of our niches is beer. We went up to one of the largest beer conferences. We took our videographer, we took our marketing team. We were doing interview with some of the most influential people in that particular niche. And what we did with those videos, we turned around and we sent them to them so they could use them in their own marketing efforts. We wanted nothing for it. We gave it to them for free. They that's how we give first in our marketing efforts. In working with an association, are you working with nonprofits? A lot of our members and other people that we know, they have a reading and bike giveaway. In other words, kids that elevate their reading abilities get the opportunity to earn a new bike. As an example. What about giving back to your local schools? We what about your community events? I mean, raise your level out there because that's how people know your presence within a community. I was at an event last Saturday night.

Something I'm participating in through Root Rotary called the field of honor in our local market. And I ran into somebody from our local chamber who's actually the membership person who I've wanted to connect with because I'm actually, he's formerly in the car dealer business. And he told me at one point, I did not forget this. He said, hey, there's lots of cars, there's lots of salespeople out there. In that industry that want to get out. Are you looking for salespeople? He said that to me recently and I go, oh yeah. So anyway, so I made sure I connected with him last Saturday. We're going to have another meeting coming up. But I made sure that I connected with him. And he was telling me that meeting. He says, mike, your guys presence in our community is unmatched. That was good to hear. Okay, so make sure that that's what you're doing out there. Right? And just if you open your mind and think about imagine with what I just said. All right. This guy's the membership person for one of our local chambers. He said, you guys presence is unmatched. Are you looking for new salespeople? And if you are, I'm going to recommend that they all contact you. Think about that far reaching opportunity that just happened because of our marketing efforts that that's where you want to be. You know, lead with kindness is an opportunity. We are the local representative for the kindness revolution. We are out there in the schools because of the amazing experience that we recently had at the unstoppable Boot Camp 2018. We had Mr. Alex Sheen there. He changed the game for everybody in the crowd, including the photographer who was very unemotional. I turned to my left when Alex was speaking and and even the photographer had a tear running down his cheek. It was awesome. Now we have a number of people that were at the boot camp that are working in an effort to try to attract Mr. Sheen back to their local area. So we get him into the schools and make a difference. So lead with kindness. Just give to other people. Keep giving, keep giving, keep giving. The law reciprocity is always in effect. I mean just from some of the efforts that we made, over 32 solid connections, over 200 bracelets and 12 schools off of just one post, one campaign. It's an absolute win, win. And you know what? All of those connections are all opportunities for sale. I mean, all we have to do is drill down, follow up, build relationship. Experience plus feeling equals connectedness. Relationship plus trust equals money follows trust. Ladies and gentlemen. It really is that simple. All you have to do is take the action. I'm looking at one of my favorite favorite all time slides. It's the sales statistics as we talked about in this mindset realm. By the way, your mindset is your skill set. Do not forget that your mindset is your skill set. You've got to keep improving your mind because it's the greatest skill set you've ever got. So don't Forget to invest in yourself through training. Thank you for listening to this podcast. I'm going to continue to bring everything I can, all of the time, every way, every single day, so you can continue to learn more. So I'm learning. And this one's all about the attraction, which is sales. You're in the sales business in the realm of this particular podcast, sales statistics. All right, top line says 40, 48% of salespeople never follow up with a prospect. 48%, my friends. And at the bottom, it says 80% of sales are made on the fifth to the 12th contact, the fifth to the 12th contact. Friends, you have no competition. And if you're not following up as long as it takes, you're missing the boat. If you've already talked to them once, they're interested, if they're not interested, they're going to tell you to get the F off the planet and then you know you're done and move on to the next one. But friends, so many people, they'll make one or two follow ups and say, oh, they're not interested. I didn't back from horse crap. They're interested, they just don't have time. Make it easy for them. Oh, my gosh, there's so much business out there for y'. All. We have in front of me our Smail proposal. Yes. We still have a snail mail proposal that is built off of our complete rebranding process that we went through a couple years ago. This rebranding process, nobody else looks like us because it's our unique brand that we bring to the world. And we've brought it. You know, it's all based on inspiring happiness. It's got specific pictures and visuals and all that kind of stuff. It's just awesome. And it's a pleasure to present it. What about your custom online proposal? Do you have one? Do you have one that's unique and unlike anybody else's? If you do, let them keep bringing it, keep bringing it, keep bringing it all the time. My recommendation, snail, if you don't close the deal, snail mail a proposal, bring them the video proposal, and you keep following up in every way. Email, text, whatever it takes, phone call, until you get the deal, do not give up. I'm thinking of my friend Rudy Rudiger from the movie Rudy, who spoke at Be Unstoppable Boot Camp 2017. What an amazing story Rudy has. Took him 13 years to get the movie made, but the number one thing I learned from Rudy, it's right here on my computer monitor. He said, giving up Lasts for the. Never giving up lasts for the rest of your life. Let me repeat that. Never giving up lasts for the rest of your life. Never give up. But in our humble opinion, based on our research and experience in our own Living agency laboratory, the number one sales tool. Let me repeat that. The number one sales tool is the phone. It's the number one way to connect with people other than maybe face to face. But if you don't have the opportunity to be face to face, you've got to pick up the phone and call them. You've got to pick up the phone and call them. Yes, you might think, well, they said they like to be emailed. Of course they want to be emailed because they don't want to talk to you. Pick up the phone and call them anyway and show up like nobody else. Alright, I'm also looking at a visual from my great friend Jeb Blunt, the author of eight books, including Fanatical Prospecting, who also spoke at be Unstoppable Bootcamp 2017. The two big takeaways from meeting Jeb, among many, many, many other things, is how bad do you want it? How bad do you want it? If you want it bad enough, you're gonna go get it. And secondly, his philosophy is when you're done, at the end of the day, when, when all else is done, you're getting ready to walk out the door. Make one more call. Make one more call. One more call. And how bad do you want it? From one of the greatest sales geniuses on the planet. All right, here's a tip for a successful follow up call for you. Be prepared. Ben Franklin said, if you're failing to prepare, you're preparing to fail. You've got to be prepared. Keep a schedule. Call on time. When do they like to take the call? Do you know? Some people like a call at 9:30am Some people like to call at 4:30pm Some people like to call at 8pm do you know when they want to be called? It's not about you, it's all about them. It's not about you, it's all about them. Reiterate your appreciation. It's a silent human desire to be appreciated. People don't say it, but every the human nature wants to be appreciated. Show it. Ask a great pointed question and shut up. If you'll just shut up long enough to listen. Listen with two ears and one mouth. Listen twice as much as you talk, you're going to win more. And ask for the commitment. We have a designation within our UPP program. It's called an ask whole designation. Yes, an askhole designation. You've got to ask for the commitment and if you did not close Schedule the next contact. Schedule the next contact, let them know it's coming. Schedule the next appointment to follow up and have a conversation. Those are just some of the tips for a successful follow up call. Meet them face to face. Like I said, it will trump the phone. But if you can't get out face to face, the phone's number one. Meet them face to face. It doesn't get more personal than that. If you did your research, find out what their interests are. Gts it. Google that stuff. LinkedIn, their company website, other people that might know them. Pick up the phone and call and find out more about them. And most importantly, never show up empty handed. I learned that from my mom years ago. Never show up empty handed. It doesn't have to be anything phenomenal. We have a blue bag with just some cool agency stuff in it. At a minimum, that's what I show up with. Alright. Never show up empty handed. Follow up via email. First thing you could say. If you don't know what to say, the attitude of gratitude always wins. Thank you. Show up like nobody else. Add a guarantee with testimonials. Credibility, credibility, credibility. Let them know about your guarantee. Your unconditional complete satisfaction guarantee. Bring value like nobody else. What is your value proposition? What is your USP or unique selling proposition? Explain that in every way possible. And above all else, don't forget to continue to educate, educate, educate. How are you separating yourself from everybody else out there in the marketplace? Answer this question all of the time, every way, every day. Why should people do business with you over and above any and all other options? Are you answering that question all of the time? Why should people do business with you over and above any and all other options? And I've got a visual in front of me from one of my greatest marketing mentors ever said, take a look at what everybody else is doing in the industry and then do the exact opposite. Take a look what everybody else is doing in the industry and do the exact opposite and you will win more. You will get recognized. I had an agent who is an agent that attended Be Unstoppable Boot Camp 2018 recently. A very definite high power player in our industry in the Midwest and he reached out to me and said hey, what's happening with the insurance doc? I noticed it's not quite as active as it used to be. His comment was I thought it was a phenomenal marketing idea. You should re up your game there. I'm grateful that he said that. Why haven't we been doing it candidly, transparently? Friends first, P issues. More on that later. So back to what I said earlier. Your mindset is your skill set. Your mindset is your skill set. What? What is your mindset? Be personalized. Make it personalized. Make it you. You see, the thing is, friends, nobody can trump you. Nobody can improve you more. Nobody can continue to improve you more. Nobody can ever know what you know. And this is never intended as an ego statement, but nobody knows what you know. Unleash it upon the world. Don't withhold from them. Believe in yourself and be you. Believe in yourself and be you. And back to the mindset. Give them options. People love options. That's part of our custom proposal. We show their current plan, we give them option number one. We give them option number two. We give them choices because that's who we are as an independent insurance agent. We provide options and we make it personalized through options. We interact via the follow up in multiple ways. Email, text, video, phone calls, sometimes face to face if it's a big enough deal. Because friends, we are in the relationship business. E +F equals C R, which is the relationship piece plus the trust you build. Money follows trust, friends. That gives you a start on how to interact with in the initial phase with your marketplace. Why should they be doing business with you over and above any and all other options? You've got to be answering that question every day in every way. This is part one of a three part series and the next episode on part two. We're going to share how you can be staying in front of your marketplace to retain the clients that you get through attracting more new clients. I can't wait to share that with you. Until then, this is Mike Stromso coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. Go knock it out of the park today and we've got some amazing things coming up in this year and in the future years. Don't miss is going to be special. It's going to be phenomenal. We could not be more fired up. One of the things that I've recently created that I delivered at our recent boot camp is the 77 point.

Checklist to the Unstoppable Mindset. And the title is simply the Unstoppable Mindset Checklist that we are going to be bringing that in upcoming podcasts. So make sure that you stay tuned. Unstoppable Profit podcast.com Unstoppable Profit podcast.com I personally guarantee that that if you will continually implement, execute and take action, you will win more. There will be lessons, but you are going to have something phenomenal right in the palm of your hands. It's going to grow your business, create financial wealth, and you will have more freedom to live life on your own terms. Terms. Until next time, friends. Love you all. Take care and go Make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets. 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.