Episode 33 : Staying in Front of Your Marketplace Part 2

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.

Greetings everybody, this is Mike Stromso and welcome to episode number 33 of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. And I'm coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. And today we're going to be talking about.

How to retain the customers you already have. And this is the second part of a three part series titled Staying in front of your marketplace. And ladies and gentlemen, last week we talked about getting more clients. And if you've heard me talk about this before, you have. It's this industry is so simple. Any business industry is so simple. It's as simple as this. You get more clients and keep more of the clients that you get. It is that simple. And last week we gave you lots of ideas on how to acquire new clients. Now we're going to talk about how to retain those clients. And in part three, coming up next week we're going to be talking about how to be the absolute only thing working within Thoma, which is top of mind awareness. So let's get to this week's subject. I can't wait to share with you everything that we've got concerning retaining clients in this particular podcast. The visual that I have for you is this. Imagine this picture this. The probability, the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 to 70%. Friends, 60 to 70% is the probability of selling to somebody who already does business with you. But the probability of selling to a new prospect, it's only 5 to 20%. So which would you rather do sell to an existing customer? Money follows trust. Once you built the trust, they're going to give you more opportunity if you'll just get your ask on. So just be an asshole, as we say. And just ask for more business. Let them know why they should be doing business with you over and above any and all other options. And most importantly, why they should give you all of their business all of the time. Alrighty. So my question for you today is, are you mining your acre of diamonds, your own acre of diamonds, right beneath your feet? I got to interact with multiple agents this week so far as people are joining our coaching program at a faster rate than they have ever. And we're so honored and grateful for that. So when I get to talk to the people as part of our entry to our programs, one of the first things that I ask them about is their numbers. Numbers don't lie and that's the name of the sheet. Numbers don't lie. We find out what's going on within their agency business because they want to grow fast and they want to grow fast out of the gate. So my first question is, tell me how many customers you have, Tell me how many policies you have. Let's get clear on that. And making sure that we are mining their own acre of diamonds. So it's really this simple, my friends. Everything that you'd ever want is right beneath your feet. And I've had this conversation multiple times this week, so it's fresh in my mind. One of my greatest studies to get clear in my mind about this is the book by Bob Berg called Endless Referrals. I learned in that book, among many, many other things, that everybody knows at least 250 people. I like to go conservative on these things. So we're going to cut that down to a half. 125 people. So everybody knows 125 people that will either show up to their wedding or show up to their funeral, I hope. All right, so let's say you've got a thousand clients. One thousand clients times 125 people, friends. That's 125,000 people. You don't need anything more in your marketplace than 125,000 people. Is a lot. And if you ever do business with half of those, you are going to be really flipping happy. I'll guarantee it. So make sure you mine your own acre of diamonds. Everything that's right beneath your feet. And if you want a copy of your own story of mining of your acre of diamonds to share with your team, just shoot us an email infounstoppableprofitproducer.com and say, Sell. Send me the acre of diamonds story and we'll be happy to kick that back to you. Alright. What I also Learned in all of my studies over the years. There's two companies out there, the Bain Company and the McKinsey Company. And they conducted studies on the biggest numbers in our industry with the largest companies in our industry. And it revealed this. Out of a hundred clients over a 10 year period, if you have just one policy for those clients, you're going to lose at least 90% of them. 90%. How does that make you feel? It sucks. I agree. But if you have two policies, you're only going to lose 38% of them. That's much better. Right? And if you have three policies for that customer, you're only going to lose 10% of them. Much, much better. Right? Bottom line is write the whole account. Make sure you're mining all of the diamonds right beneath your feet in your own acre of diamonds. Looking at a year end numbers matrix that we continue to conduct year after year, year after year, and for the last five years running, our existing clients continue to produce. For the year 2017, 41.2% of all new business applications that come into our business are from somebody that already has insurance with us. We continue to mine our own acre of diamonds and it continues to reveal diamonds. If I look back at the last five years, every year is over 40%. But back to 2013, it was 57.4%. There's so many diamonds right at my feet, I don't have to look too far. Referrals last year, in the full year 2017. 44.6%. 44.6%, my friends. So 41% plus 44% is 80, 85% is business right beneath my feet. And then old clients and old leads another 6.8%. That's a total of 92.6% right beneath my feet. Without having to look too far and doing hardly any marketing outside of our own acre of diamonds. Friends, everything you ever want is right there beneath your feet. Don't bother looking at somebody else's grass and start watering their grass. Your grass is going to turn brown. Make sure that you continue to water your own grass first. It'll reveal everything you want. It'll grow your business, you'll create financial security and you will have more freedom to live life on your own terms, my friends. You can do it. You can start it right here, right now, today, in your own agency business. My great reminder for you is also that people do business with people they know love and trust. Not like love. You've got to build that relationship into an absolute love affair to the point where they're never going to want to leave you. So what are you doing today to make sure that everybody that you do business with loves you, loves you, loves you and never wants to leave you? Make sure that you're in that place. The strongest emotion ever is love. Make sure that they have that love relationship with you. In addition to that, who's delivering the love? Okay, You've got to make sure that you first extend that love to your A team. Alright, our A team. I'm looking at our A team picture and every time that we're trying to attract somebody, we're looking to attract people that are A team players. A team players. So when we're trying to attract new people on our team, we need to make sure that they're the kind of people who love other people, who want to put their arms around people because they're the ones that are going to extend the love day in and day out. So you got to make sure they're quote the loving kind of people. So don't forget about that aspect of it as well. Really, really important. So once you get somebody into your organization as a member of your agency, family, how are you continuing to show the love? Well, think about this for a minute. Think about back to your days of dating. And if you're in the dating game right now, think about what you're in right now. Right. So if you're in a dating situation and it's a brand new relationship, how does that make you feel? Awesome. Right. I think back to the days when my wife and I first started dating. Awesome, awesome times. That's all I could think about. And that's of course all I still think about. But at the end of the day that sways a little bit. Right. So same thing with your clients. When they decide to leave their incumbent situation and move over to you, they start thinking immediately about after they write the check. Wow, did I make the right decision? Don't let them ever feel buyer's remorse. Not think about it. Feel buyer's remorse. So that's why it's important to have a rock solid, caring, emotionally driven new client welcome kit. I'm looking at the visual of our new client welcome kit and it goes over two years out. The majority of it's automated. So once it gets going, it just happens time after time after time after time. It's a mix of a lot of different things. A lot of online and a lot of offline marketing is involved in that. But it continues to go on for up to two years. We make sure that we show them the love immediately and often to make sure that they know that we love doing business with them. We want them to experience something like they've never ever experienced before in an insurance agency business relationship. So make sure that that your rock solid new client welcome Kit is in play all of the time welcoming the new people to your agency business that made the decision to join you. After that, what happens after that welcome Kit series starts to wrap up, et cetera. You've got to have a rock solid client nurturing program in place, consistently running time after time after time after time. We week after week, month after month touching people in my humble opinion, both online ways and offline ways. All of our clients in our particular agency sphere that we want to definitely our triple A's and our double A's and a portion of our single as and our circles, centers of influences or our COIs and some other selected people, they all receive a minimum of 29 touches per year. 29 touches per year. In addition to everything else that we do, I've got this matrix in front of me and it lays out exactly how we are going to nurture somebody who's a client of ours or a center of influence within our business or a prospect within our business. 29 times a year they're going to hear from us often. One of the things that just recently happened and a lot of people, I share this little ninja secret with them and they go, you're crazy. You still do that? Yes, we do. So we just got done with the Thanksgiving holiday and one of the things that we do, in addition to sending out an offline mailing and some other cool stuff that we do, we also still do a voice broadcast. So we send out about 4,000 voice broadcast messages on Thanksgiving. I remember standing in our house and our son who's a client got the call and he goes, he comes down walking the hall of our house and he goes, hey, I just got your call. What was it all about? I said, kris, didn't you listen to it? You're breaking my heart. He goes, no, I was actually in the middle of something and I just let it go to voicemail. I said, listen to it, give me feedback. I, you know, for about a week after that holiday, I would run into people out in the community that I interact with and fortunately they're all clients, right? And they all comment on the message. It's amazing to me how many people actually listen to that voicemail message that we send out four times a year. That's just part of our client nurturing in addition to everything else. So if you want to see, look like everybody else, do what everybody else is doing or completely separate yourself and do the exact opposite. So make sure that you have a rock solid client nurturing program in place. You know, in addition to that, to drop you some other ninja tricks. You know, we got the voice broadcast. We've got emails, we've got snail mail newsletters. We've got email newsletters. We've got a blog post, multiple blog posts going on. We got birthday. We have three separate facets of birthday greetings. Anywhere from a live birthday call to a social media post to a real live offline birthday card delivered to their mailbox. I mean, you know, all of these things are in play. Yes, we still send a live snail mail newsletter to over 3,000 people every single month. And a lot of people say, well, you're wasting your time or you're investing the investment of your money. I am happy to Compare P and Ls with anybody. If you like to compare P Ls, please let me know. I'll be happy to set up an online meeting. We can compare. I feel very, very strongly in the fact that it continues to be part of the thrust that keeps people coming back time after time after time. Again. All right, again, I'm looking at the matrix. What other things? We have referral winner touches. We have direct posts to their social media sites. We have lots of other social media things going on. Everybody on our team has their own marketing game planner on their desk that they can uniquely and.

Exclusively make it their own. Created by our own marketing director who provides that to them. And we made it available to everybody within our coaching programs as well nowadays. So the sky is the limit. You just got to do the work. You can't think about it, you can't talk about it. You've got to take action all of the time. And most importantly, have fun. Don't make it dull and boring and all that kind of stuff. Have fun. Team pictures, holiday messages, top of mind awareness is your goal. In addition to that, videos is something we send out a lot of. I'm looking at one of our holiday videos. And so we send out a holiday video and multiple times during the month. Again, our monthly newsletter. Our monthly newsletter is affectionately called the Protection Coach. It's unique, it's exclusive, nobody can ever duplicate it. We do not buy some canned newsletter from within the industry. We create our own newsletter from scratch, from scratch. And it's uniquely got everything in it. However, we do provide the template to anybody in our program. So we're grateful for that blogging and social media picture. This picture. You have a blank sheet of paper, right? Right in the middle. Draw a circle. Draw a circle right in the middle. What you want to write inside that circle is blog. Be like boy Blog and Vlog. V like Victor Log. Vlog obviously, is a video blog, but that's the base center of all of your SEO organic SEO juice. Around that circle, draw 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 other circles around that center circle. And what you're writing in those circles are things like Facebook, things like LinkedIn, things like Twitter, things like Instagram, things like your website, things like your email distribution, things like your own YouTube channel. Yes, I said, do you have your own YouTube channel? Absolutely. So every time that you distribute something via the blog or vlog, make sure that you're distributing it to all seven of those distribution channels online, digitally, all of the time. Are you set up and organized to be able to do so consistently, effectively all the time? If you're not, regardless of your past, you have a spotless future. You have a clean slate in front of you. Get to work on it right now. Here's another ninja tip for you. I'll give you a second to write this down, transcribe your videos, and that becomes your post. It's great for SEO. Let me give that to you again. Transcribe any videos you've got and distribute it as a separate written post. That is killer organic SEO juice, right? Hey, anything is possible. My friends celebrate their birthday. I talked about that earlier. We do it in three different ways. To clients, to spouses, and to kids age 12 and up. Why kids age 12 and up? Because they're going to be driving in about four years. And after that, and about three years after that, they may start making their own insurance decisions. And we want that decision to be with us. All the future business that you would ever want is already in your own existing acre of diamonds, my friends. Do not miss that opportunity. All right, a birthday video, email and a post. Social media. I talked about that. But that's not all. There's more. Again, we make the live call to say Happy Birthday. Let me give you the other very critical psychological mindset of that. So if you're making live birthday calls, our recommendation is make those birthday calls about 4:30 in the afternoon on a given day, not on Monday is my recommendation Tuesday through Friday. And so if you have a teammate that makes those calls for, I don't know, say, roughly 30 minutes at the end of the day, who wins in Those calls. Well, obviously the client wins who receives the message. And make sure they leave a message and make sure you teach them how to leave a message if they don't pick up live. But the person making the call is a winner as well. Because they're going to walk away. They're going to be feeling great, they're going to talk to some people who are, you know, just off the charts happy that you even called them and they're going to walk away feeling great. Then they're going to go home and they're going to impact their family and everything else that goes on after work. They are winning too. And you're impacting people's lives from your profession into the personal realm by making those calls. See it clearly. All right, the other thing that I want to encourage you in today's session about retaining the clients you already have know who the most important clients are. Let's be clear here, my friends. This is a business proposition. Do you have your clients segmented? Alright. And what does it look like in your agency? We have our client segmented. We've been doing it for years. We just re upped our client segmentation again this year. They're triple A's, double A's and single A's. Some people like to call them A, B and C. It does not matter how you do it, just make sure you do it. Because the 80:20 rule, the Pareto principle, is always in effect and always has been in effect since it was created by Vilfredo Pareto back in the 1800s. It's been suggested, and I believe it to be mostly accurate, that 80% of your income is probably coming from your top 20% of clients. So who are they? Do you know who they are and do you treat them as such? Or are you allowing the bottom 20% of your clients to run your day? Take your time, take your time with their questions. And all this While your top 20% of your clients, they're paying their bills on time. They never bother you when you ask them for information. For an underwriting memo as an example, they gave it to you without complaining, without grief. But what else do you do for them? So make sure that you are doing an absolute wow program for your top 20% or your triple A clients because it's critical, my friends, you know, things like annual planning guides and the holiday mailers and we do, you know, specialized gift deliveries on a monthly basis. We do member spotlights. We do lots of very special things for those AAA clients because we never hear from them otherwise. And we want to make sure that we're extending the love to them all of the time. And you know, the number one mistake, the number one mistake that I see with people in their existing books of business and their own acres of diamonds, they're not doing the obvious. They are not doing the obvious, my friends, and that is consistently mining your own acre of diamonds. So another question for you. If you record your calls, I challenge you to go back and record, or, excuse me, listen to at least five to 10 calls and make sure at the very end of the call, is your team asking for the other lines of business on every single call? Are they asking on every single call? And if they're not asking on every single call, you are missing a boatload of opportunity. Every single call is an opportunity for sale. Let me repeat that. Every single call is an opportunity for sale. Do not miss the boat. You want to do something fun and exciting. So if you go to a very high production restaurant business and they're on their game and you order a hamburger, what do you think they're going to say after that? We have one out on the west coast called In N Out and they never ever miss. I love going there for a lot of different reasons, but they never miss. If I order a double double, as an example, with both kinds of onions, they will say, would you like fries with that? Would you like a drink with that? Would you like to this and that? They are so well trained at the upsell. So what you can say with people, you know, if you're talking to somebody about their car insurance, you can say, hey, would you like fries with your car insurance? And it'll catch them off guard for a second. They'll go, what did you just say? I said, exactly. Would you like fries with your car insurance? They go, what do you mean by that? Would you like to package it with your home and an umbrella to maximize your discounts? You see, you've done something that's different than everybody else out there, and that's what you're trying to do. Look at what everybody else is doing and do the exact opposite. Be unique. Be uniquely you. Are you comfortable with doing that? Here's some more closing script ideas for every single phone call in your organization. Do you have one more minute for me? Ask permission. Be respectful. Would you like fries with your auto policy? We just talked about that. Would you like to supersize your policy? Another way to say it, if you feel comfortable doing that, I want to make sure you know that we can help with all types of insurance. Like car insurance, home insurance, business insurance, umbrella insurance, life insurance, and more. Do you have any more questions about any of those?

I wouldn't say all of these in a single setting, but choose one of them that works best for you. Right? Or as marketers, we test, test one phrase one week, test another phrase another week, test another phrase another week, and you know, after six weeks or so, collaborate with your team, get together in a team huddle and find out which one you got the best response from and then run with that one. Okay. Or if you have, you can say, have you heard the latest news about our referral program? Whatever works for your particular situation. But you know, I want to share with you the one that has worked best for me. And I do it in a certain way. I was influenced and impacted in a way that will last for the rest of my life. And this was at the Be Unstoppable Boot Camp about three years ago. And we had the one, the only, the amazing John o' Leary at Be Unstoppable Boot Camp. And John impacted my life and taught me so many things. But the one thing that I learned from John that I immediately implemented once I left boot camp was when I get in a conversation with people or I get in a phone call with people, the last thing that I say, I slightly pause. That's a ninja trick and I strongly recommend that you use it. Slightly pause. Don't say the word pause, just slightly pause. Because when it goes silent, you're capturing their attention, their complete attention. Right? Slightly pause and say, bill, is there anything more that I can do for you today?

And then you've got to do the most important thing in sales and that. Shut up and let them answer. And they're going to say one of two things. No, Mike, I'm good today. You've answered all my questions. Thanks so much. Fantastic. Bill, if you're ever in need of home, umbrella or business insurance, will you make sure you give us a call? That's the way you can counter that as an example.

Pause. Hey Bill, is there anything more that I can do for you today? Actually, Mike, I have been meaning to talk to you about one other thing. See, you're helping them. You're becoming of greater value when you position yourself at the highest value proposition that nobody else can bring. They're not going to want to leave you. They're going to trust you. They're going to trust only you. Make yourself so valuable that they never can leave you. Alright, so headlines. Do you have a claims service program built into your agency? You know, we had a headline that was born years ago. Insurance stinks until you need it. Well, most consumers feel that way until they need it. But if they need it, you better be there and you better be there quickly, efficiently, systematically and all of the time. We make a live follow up call to every claim that we identify in our agency. We proactively go out and find the claims to call on all of the time. It's one of the first things that the new people in our organization, when they start that, when they start getting on the phone, it's one of the first things they do. Why? Because it's the most important reason that we're in business. We send out notifications to claimants and our existing clients. Why claimants? Because maybe they're not getting the love from their current carrier. Okay. On and on and on. We have a complete program. Are you doing handwritten thank you notes? Here's a little mathematical equation for you. Okay? And I love my grandson. He's got this awesome shirt that says check the scoreboard because numbers don't lie. They don't lie. Three cards a day times five days a week, times 52 weeks a year. If you're sending three thank you notes to people that you've influenced and communicated with on a daily basis, that's 780 emotional bank deposit notes that you send out every single year per person. Multiply that times the number of team members on your team. Friends, these are emotional bank deposits that you're making. Trust me, if you're doing this consistently and effectively all the time, you will grow your business on this one simple strategy. Trust me, effectively it works and it will work for you. The potential ROI for all of this investment, potentially hundreds and thousands of thousands and thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions in retention and referrals, especially with the proper follow up. Let me give you one last thought as we wrap this up today. The average lifetime value of a client, let's say it's six years, okay? The annual commission for that client is $500. $500 times six years is $3,000. Got it. What are you willing to Invest to earn $3,000 time and time and time again? My friends, I hope you're investing in your business to continue to grow it, to continue to create the wealth so you can have the freedom that you're looking for. I hope you got lots of notes. I hope you got the ninja secrets that we shared with you today. Tune in next week because next week is part three of our three part series. Staying in Front of youf Marketplace. And next week we're going to talk about interacting, nurturing and completing a complete top of mind awareness with everything within the sphere of your agency business. We will share with you exactly how to put a high solid fence around your herds that you want to do business with. This is Mike Somso coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. Thank you for joining us for this episode of our podcast. Remember, make a difference, be unstoppable and above all, leave no regrets. Don't think about it, don't talk about it. Just go. Take action. Know that there will be wins, there will be lessons. But you got this. We'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.