Episode 70: Insider Secrets from the Living Agency Laboratory

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or are well on your way to the success you desire, with the right people, processes and promotions in place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromso.

As I learned in my own journey so far, when we hear things, we learn. But when we hear things and see things, we understand. And that's what I want for you. I want complete understanding so that you have mastery of everything that we're sharing with you. Because ultimately, my friends, all we want for you is your success. We want you to be able to grow your business, create wealth, and have more freedom to live life on your own terms. But I want to share something very special with you today, because if you've been here before, you know exactly where I'm standing. But if you haven't been here yet, you don't know. You don't know what you don't know. So I wanted to share with you some ninja insider secrets from a recent one day right here. So where we left off, some key points for the entire day, this particular agency principle, we were talking about meeting people where they are really, really important. One of the greatest learning opportunities that I've had in my personal life that I've translated to my business life. Lost souls. I mean, what a great opportunity for business. If you're not calling your lost souls right now, just checking in with them and saying, how are you? You're missing opportunity. Friends, welcome. Kit. There's that first 21 days of a new relationship when people want to feel it, feel it, feel it. Yeah, that's what we want. Okay, claims. Are you taking a full opportunity of supporting people when you need them the most? I had the opportunity to connect with some AAA's this week and at a time when they needed us the most. And it was a phenomenal experience because they told me that. They said, you know, we've had insurance with you for what, 25 years and we've never had a claim, but you were right there when we needed you the most. Huge stuff, my friends. Please take advantage of that. Commercial lines and niches. We have a podcast coming up this week, by the way, if you listen to the Unstoppable Profit podcast, stay tuned. We've got new revolutionary podcast delivery methods and podcast series that are coming up. One of them is going to be on commercial lines, niches, and we may have a bigger opportunity for that as well. So stay tuned. Balance Wheel. What does the balance wheel of your life look like? Is it completely a nice round circle or does it go boop boop boop boop boop? Hey my friends, regardless of your past, you have a spotless future today. Start your new journey with a complete nice circle of your balance wheel. Facts tell, stories tell. Become a great storyteller. If you're not a great storyteller, blending in case studies from your own journey in the insurance agency business today, you can start becoming a great storyteller. Always be recruiting. We'll leave that one alone. We all unfortunately have experienced that. And 100% of the marketplace. 100% of the ways, my friends, you know, if you want to reach 100% of the marketplace, you've got to use 100% of the ways and, and your whatever it is, your connections, both that nice gentle mix of online and offline strategies in your marketing and every other contact sphere that you use and the people, the processes and the promotions within your insurance agency business. So let's get started today as we wrap up our five part series on creating a ten point plan for your unstoppable referral program. I love, love, love referrals. It was a strategy that I started in 1999. It's become the absolute number one source of new business for our agency. And I want to share with you the latest of what I've learned. Because the day we stop learning is the day we stop growing, my friends. I never stop learning. I am a student of education and business and otherwise and I try to learn something new every single day to make it even better and search. I mean my wife, my wife is awesome. She's constantly looking for things to feed my mind. She turned me on last night to something she recorded for me in search of greatness. I love that stuff. I like to find out what little tweaks did they make that shifted everything for them. So be looking for that opportunity. My friends, there's nothing better than the day we stop learning is the day we stop growing. We want to continue to learn, we want to continue to get better, we want to continue to refine. Because if you just sit there, you're going to get left behind and I don't want that for any of you. So let's get started and I'm going to do a quick recap of all 10 points of our unstoppable referral program very quickly. And of course you could stop this and pause this and write them down, which I strongly recommend. I hope you have your analog data recorder and your analog data Recording device. Yes. That's pen and paper as an example, by the way, I said that I used to do trade shows a lot and I would always have a way to get people to the booth. That's strategy number one. Number two, what you do with them when you get them over there, that's a completely different training. So only that alone. So, number one, in our 10 point plan for your unstoppable referral program, deliver on baseline expectations. That's point number one. Point number two, over deliver by adding the wow. Leave them without words. Number three, create a wow culture. Your entire organization has to be that wow culture. Okay, number four, make the referrer the hero. Make them a hero in the eyes of everybody. They will send you more referrals, my friends. It's really that simple. Number five, make it easy. Make it so simple. The Katie strategy we talked about when we taught on number five. Katie's the daughter of one of our teammates. She's in kindergarten. You want to make it so easy, even Katie understands it. Okay, number six, make it part of your overall marketing strategy and promotion strategy within your agency business. Number seven, package it with your positioning. What is your position in the marketplace? What have you strategized to be your position in the marketplace to further penetrate the marketplace that you want to dominate? Okay, number eight, add wifm. Wifm, wiifm. Everybody's playing their favorite radio station. That's going on in the back of their mind all the time. You want to blend your message into wifm. Okay, add WIFM through incentives and recognition. People want two things more than sex and money. They want praise and recognition. Build that into the WIFM going on in their mind. Okay? And today we're going to talk about point number nine and point number 10 in our 10 point plan for your unstoppable referral program. Focus on high value referrers. And then number 10, use others to inform behavior. Use others to inform behavior. And I'm going to dive into that a little bit today. And I've got a complete referral strategy sheet dialed in for y'.

All.

So once I get done with this, I'm going to send that to you.

And.

And I strongly recommend that you take our referral strategy sheet, garnering enthusiastic, repeated and consistent referrals. I'm going to give you strategies that you can brainstorm with your team so that you can have that rock solid plan to earn more referrals through your delivery of the 10 point plan for your unstoppable referral program. So let's get into high Value referrals. Okay, what does a high value referral look like? Well, here's the strategy that we need to understand for growth. Not all referrers are equal, my friends. Not all referrers are equal. Everybody's different. So back to the 8020 rule. The Pareto principle. Vilfredo Pareto, back in the 1800s, developed the thought process, the mindset, the strategy of the 8020 rule. And I found that to be true and in so much of my life, in so many ways, personally and professionally. So it's the applying the law. They're not all equal, number one, the high value referrals. Number two, you've got to understand and apply the law of leverage, the law of leverage. So back to the 8020 rule. Okay, if you look back at your referrals that you've got in the past one, two and three years, and I hope you've been keeping track of because you have to inspect what you expect and you've got to be knowing your numbers all the time. 80% of those referrals I will suggest probably come from 2% of your customers. 80% of your referrals likely come from about 2% of your customers. If you look at your overall customer base, we have found through inspection of what we inspect, that, that that's accurate. Okay, so what is the value of the 2% of your customers that are referring? Okay. I've found through observation and talking with many agencies all over North America that they are 16% more valuable from a leverage standpoint than any other referrers out there. That 2% of your customers who are referring you business are 16% more valuable. So what does that look like, numbers wise? Okay, if they're 16% more value and the average commission first year only, that's the greatest thing about our industry, friends. That's first year only. Okay, if it's $500 in commission first year only times 16%, that's $8,000 first year only commission. That's what a great referrer is worth to your business. And if you look at it on a life time value basis, say seven years, that's a $56,000 relationship, my friends. And so what are you doing to identify that? How do you identify that within your agency business? Do you have a picture collage with all your Referral, your top 2% referral partners throughout your organization? Do you have it offline and online? If you have an Internet, do you have pictures and the makeup, the value makeup of what that person looks like? If not, yes, do that. Absolutely. Do you post the referrer and their favorite charity on social media. Every form of social media. Remember, we're talking about if you want to reach 100% of the marketplace, you've got to use 100% of the ways. Have you put that all over social media promoting them, making them the hero and their favorite charity? If you do that particular strategy, which I strongly recommend, okay, so do you have a hall of fame or a wall of fame of all your referrals? Okay. Galvanize your tribe, put that herd around your tribe like nobody else. That's what a high leverage referral is like. Those are the ones that we should be calling right now. Those are the ones that we want to make the care calls to. Those are the ones that we just want to reach out to. Those are the ones we want to identify who they are, their client profile, makeup in every single way. My friends, it's vitally, vitally important. Those are the ones that should be on our mind all the time and we should be thinking about what more can we do for them to consistently build that relationship. Those 2% big door swing on little hinges. Alright, let's get to strategy number 10. Use others to inform behavior. What does that mean? Well, first of all, just mimic others. Just mimic others because at the end of the day, it's all about that relationship. Okay. Showcase others. We want to inform their behavior. Okay. So how can we better use our testimonials, our ratings, our feedback, our advertising, our marketing and communications to help that mimicking others thought process? And my friends, one of the greatest strategies in informing others of behavior, the right kind of behavior that we want to train is when we get to the point where we have earned better than that, delivered under, promised and over delivered on everything that we do. At the end of the day we're going to be in a position to ask. The mindset shift that I wanted to share with you today in this strategy of using others to inform behavior is ask the referral partners for an introduction, not for a referral. And when I learned this strategy, I started thinking about am I going to change the name of my referral program? Am I going to call it an introduction program? I seriously thought about shifting that for this year. I didn't do it, but I seriously thought about it. So ask for introductions, not for referrals. Ask for introductions, not for referrals. What does that look like? So here's a quick writer downer for you. I was wondering if you could introduce me to. I'm wondering if you could help me with Something I'm looking for an introduction to. Okay, can you introduce me to. All right, first of all, can you help me out? I'm wondering if you can help me with something, number one. Number two, can you introduce me to. Now here's the other thing that you need to be aware of, all right? You gotta be very specific to be terrific. You've got to be specific, all right? You got to be specific on who you want to get introduced to. So maybe you want to know things like the industry that you want to penetrate the job title of the person in commercial insurance. One of our people that we love to put our arm around a lot is the cfo because they hold the purse strings and they make a lot of the decisions on behalf of the CEO. As an example, you want a specific company, you want a specific revenue size, possibly of your ideal client, a particular interest, the age of the person, where they know them from, and anything else. Any other commonalities that you can come up with. You want to be able to have that when you say, hey, can you help me out with something? Number one? Number two, would you mind introducing me to and my friends? LinkedIn, Facebook, you know that area that is mutual friends or mutual people that you know, that's your starting point. My friends, it's not super complicated. It's out there for free. But you got to do the work. The only time success comes before work is in the dictionary. So you've got to do the work, okay? But when you do ask for the introduction, do it one at a time, not all at once. You can't fire hose this particular strategy. You've got to do it strategically. All right? So you want to ask one at a time and. And what's the best time to ask? The best time to ask for anything, whether it be a testimonial, a review, an introduction to somebody is right after something phenomenal has happened. Like the AAA client the other day where we really went to bat for them on their claim situation. After 25 years, they never had one. They had a claim. They needed us the most. That would have been the perfect time to ask for that introduction. And I can still go back and do that without question. So at the end of the day, you want to continually to reinforce. And my friends, there is so much opportunity for those commonalities. Introductions from your vendors, from your suppliers. You know, it's like what I learned in my own personal training and development. It's the campfire effect. You see, you want to keep it warm around those relationships all the time. I mean, envision, picture this picture being around a campfire. Why are we around a campfire at night when we're out there camping? Because it's warm. Everybody wants to be around the campfire, right? Because it's warm and there's other people and it's friendly and everybody's huddling there. So what happens when you turn and walk away from the campfire? Well, it gets cold. You don't ever want that to happen in those referral relationships, those top two referral relationships. My friends, I hope this has helped you. And bigger than that, I hope if it's part of your strategy Share this with your team Share the prior four episodes and this episode to build your referral program so you have a a 10 point plan for your unstoppable referral program. I'm going to send you the referral strategies that you can use to huddle with your team so you can create the pre planned strategy to dominate your marketplace with high quality warm inbound leads through referrals and you can supplement it with things like videos and all the other strategies that you would teach you in the promotional realm. My friends, you got this. There's nothing stopping you except making a decision. And this thing right here. Remember, your mindset is your skill set. My friends, if there's anything more that we can do for you, please reach out to us. We are here to support you growing your business, creating wealth and having more freedom to live life on your own terms. We have your back.

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