Episode 9 : Double Your ROI

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 promotion. 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, welcome everybody. It's Mike Stromco coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. Welcome to episode number nine of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. And today we're going to be talking about doubling your ROI on what you're already doing. Yes, I said double your return on investment on what you're already doing. Remember, your acre of diamonds is spread all around you. Everything that you'd ever want is sitting right at your feet. If you'll just focus on looking at it and figuring out how you can do more with it. Remember, less is more. Less is more. And you know, I was doing my own study today. I've got some notes. Our director's wildly wondering what the heck I'm looking at because she wants to see it. Too bad. You're going to have to wait and you have to listen to this podcast. You know, we were talking this morning with some of my buddies about it. You know, when you, when you go up, look at somebody and you spend some time with them and you determine shortly after that that they have it. Have you ever said that to somebody? That person has it? Well, what we're talking about when we say it, it's intellectual technology. That's the definition of it. What I also learned this morning, you've got to plan, you've got to prepare, and you've got to expect to win from the one, the only, the late, great Zig Ziglar. And I wrote right next to that, less is more. And today we're going to talking about doing more with less. It's going to be less things that you have to deal with that'll be less things. You have to plan for less. You have to Prepare for. And the good news is it's going to double your roi. How does that sound to you? Let's dig in. So remember we've been talking about in the past few podcasts and I say, I find myself saying this a lot, all the time, okay? It's the experience. What kind of experience are you going to be providing people, right? I mean, how are they going to feel after you get done engaging with them? How are they going to feel after your teammates get done engaging with them? What's that experience going to be like? Are they going to want to say I want more of that or it's the same old same old or whatever. Whatever. Right?

What's the experience like? Because that experience leads to the feeling. How are they going to feel after that experience happens? Because experience plus feeling equals connectedness. And you want to connect with people, you want to engage with people, you want to go deep into that relationship. Okay? Because the depth of the relationship, candidly in a business realm, equals the depth of your penetration into their bank account. I mean, think about it like that for just a second, right? So how are you engaging your clients? I mean, some of the people or your prospects or your communities, a lot of these people are engaged through lots of different ways. One of the things that I have that I wanted to share with you today is online reviews. We have multiple ways that we engage with people via online reviews. We, we earn them first and then we ask for them. It might be behind a docusign agreement where we've just secured a new policy for them and they're like really flipping happy. They're happy to give us a review at that point. Or we might have done a great job via a claim, or we might have gotten a certificate of insurance back to them right away and solved a big issue and gotten them paid, whatever it is. One of the ways that you're engaging with people is through the review and testimonial process. Alright? Secondly, if you have a referral program or a lot of you out there, use a referral system of another type through an outside vendor, which is absolutely fine. Because at the end of the day, what we want you to do is engage with somebody somehow. So whatever your referral landscape looks like, if you have a dedicated program like we do, we have a theme name every year, we have a dedicated drawing every month and we do it on Facebook Video Live, and we have grand prizes throughout the year and et cetera, et cetera. And it's fully dedicated, we have internal accountability or if you don't have time for that and you're just getting started. Maybe somebody like rocket referrals, one of our vendor partner rocket referrals. They do a great job in creating that environment of engagement. And I know that all of you are engaged in 100% of the ways in social media. Remember, if you want to reach 100% of the marketplace, whether it be your client marketplace, your prospect marketplace, or even your team marketplace through your always be recruiting efforts. And as a side note, I promise not to squirrel. I've got my squirrel buddy SOS here and I know you can't see him, but I have a squirrel on my desk. His name is SOS which is shiny object syndrome. I'm not allowed to squirrel. And he's looking at me with the. The eye, you know, the look anyway that I need to stay on task. So if you want to reach 100% of the marketplace. Oh, I was talking about reaching 100% of your team marketplace. And you're always be recruiting Marketplace. By the way, side tip for you. Write this one down. Don't think it, ink it. Always be recruiting. Candidly, I just hung up with a coaching member who is experiencing some first P issues. And our director came in today and she goes, I noticed you were a little delayed. I heard you were talking to somebody. And I said, I was just talking to one of our coaching members. Guess what the subject matter was? And she said, it was the first P. I said, you're right, it is the first P. Always be recruiting. Let's get back to the matter at hand. We're talking about engaging your marketplace, okay? So whether it be reviews online and offline, your referral program, social media, whatever that might be, you've got to be engaged with your marketplace all of the time. So my next question is, picture this. Imagine that you're completely engaged with your marketplace all of the time. You're getting feedback, you're giving them a response, etc, etc, and that's part of it. How are you responding to your marketplace? How are you engaged with your clients, your prospects, your communities, or your future teammates? Okay, do you reply to their comments when they put them out there? Do you give them recommendations? Do you think outside the box?

What are you doing? Are you helpful to them? Are you being proactive or reactive? Proactive or reactive? And if you haven't written that one down yet, I strongly recommend that you write it down. You've got to be proactive. Back to the 8020 rule, right? You've got to be proactive 80% of the time. And you don't want to be reactive whenever you can help it. Right. Because you're reacting to something that's already gone wrong or something that's already happened. You want to be the proactive leader of every situation and the one that takes that to the next level. Okay, so let me ask you another question. When you're responding to the people that you're engaging with, say on social media, what do you do? I mean, think about things in two realms, online and offline, Online and offline. And there anything that you can do offline? Well, my response is, yes, there is. And there's lots of things that you can do. I wanted to share something with you today that came into my inbox. It's actually sitting on my chair in my office. By the way, a little nuance. In our office, nothing goes on the desk. It goes on the chair. Nothing on the desk. On the chair. Why? Because when somebody walks into their workplace, they're going to sit on their chair, and if there's something on their chair, they're going to take it off of their chair. It's going to be in their hand at that point, and they're going to look at it before they sit down. If you put it on the desk with all the other crap on their desk, they may or may not look at it, and it may get lost and it may not. It may never get dealt with. So that's a little nuance in our world. So this particular response from some of our efforts in engaging our marketplace offline was sitting in my chair the other day. Let me read it to you, if I may. It says, dear Mike, to my surprise, I received a wonderful thank you and gift card for my support of SIA online. I was blown away by your gratitude and as always, Sia's professionalism. Gratefully or grateful grat. Grateful for all that you do so and so psycho. And I love the fact that she's learned how to use the PS because, see, that's part of the giving back. Everything that you've learned. Are you now teaching other people and paying it forward? I hope so. Okay. And she's learned how to use the ps. She said, PS thank you for always helping close our visitors. You are awesome. So she asked me a while ago, and if we're ever in a situation and I could help close things for her because she knows I love to close and I know how to close. I said, sure, if I ever have the opportunity, I will. And so every chance I get, I help close deals for her. And.

Here'S Another nugget for you that I know you've heard, but are you doing it all the time? No one cares what you say you've done for other people. It's what other people say you've already done for them. That's where the rubber hits the road. Okay, so that's part of our offline response to people. So when somebody gives you words of praise through a review or just some kind comments online, on Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever, whatever. Are you doing something like that? Are you stopping what you're doing in the middle of your day? Writing them a kind handwritten thank you note? Maybe sending them a gift card? Here's the key. Spontaneous note and gift card, like from Starbucks, or either a branded promo item or whatever you can dream up that might be unique to your local community. Or more importantly, that's local and uniquely you. What is that? Are you doing anything like that at all? We consistently do that. We've got people on our marketing team who consistently comb the Internet and all of our online portal for these opportunities. And every time that opportunity is there, they go get it. They're authorized to do it. Let me share with you a note that goes out that generates the kind of response to the card I just read to you. It says something like this. And of course it's got our unique heading and so forth, depending on whether it's a thank you note or a letter. Okay. Says hi. And of course, we put the first name in there. Hi, Susie. Thank you for sharing kind words about our team. It's because of amazing clients like you that we love what we do. We're so grateful for the opportunity to serve and protect you, your loved ones, and everything that you work so hard for. Make it a great day. Exclamation. Gratefully, Mike and the Stromso Insurance Agency total protection team. P.S. if there's anything more that we can do for you, please let us know.

Boom.

That's our canned note. It's scripted, there's samples in there. Nobody needs authorization to do it. It simply just gets done through our processes and systems that have been set up by excellent people who we've gotten through the always be recruiting process, people, processes and promotion. It's really that simple. It's extremely systematic and it happens every single day. And I don't know that these things happen. I have no idea that these things were going on to the magnitude. I just get these notes back that come in and just blow me away because these other people are blown away. Got it. Fantastic. And the great news about this you can do this right now, starting today in your own business. And that's what makes me so happy. You can do this and you can make it happen for yourself. And you know what's going to happen, what this means for you.

You know, you're just going to have a depth of relationship with people that you've never had before. The loyalty is going to be there. The name of your insurance organization, whatever your business organization is going to be on the tip of their tongues or the time. And every time they hear that word might be insurance or whatever your industry is, they're going to think of you and you only. And that's what you want. Alright, so to add on to that, how are you going to take it to the next level? So you're sending spontaneous responses whether the online or offline. And to give you an online example, we just looked at an offline example online. I mean nowadays you can put in gift card link right into your outlook if you use Outlook and you can boom, send them a virtual gift card. It's really that simple. Alright, because I don't have a computer in front of me to show you. I can't show it, but it's really, really simple and how to do that. So the sky's the limit, my friends. You can do this. So let me take this to the next level, alright? Imagine this. Picture that loved one of yours. No matter who that might be, you're looking to absolutely blow them away. And as I was thinking about this podcast this morning, in my quiet time, I was trying to think back to a moment in my life when I recently did that. And I did it for my bride, for my wife. It was one of those decade birthdays and she's kind of hard to surprise because she's got a great gut and it's hard to get away with things with her. But I did and I was so happy about it. So I planned a surprise party for her at a local venue and I had all kinds of people working it and most importantly, I engaged my neighbors. So I went over my neighbors and said, hey, I'm planning this surprise party. I need you to connect with her and tell her that you're going to meet, you want to take her out to dinner and then we just want to meet for dinner and so forth and so on. And they engaged her and that, and then we were going to connect that night and I said, all right, tomorrow I'm going to call you like at a certain time and you can just tell her that I'm running late I'm just going to meet you guys there. And they said, got it. So they did that. And so they got to the restaurant with her and we had this whole back room pre reserved and all this kind of stuff and we had some of our very best friends, some had traveled far to be there, but it was a crowd of I don't know, 30, 40 people. But it was special. And I know she was blown away because anytime she's blown away in the wow, she starts crying, you know what I'm talking about? So anyway, but it was awesome. It was awesome. So what kind of wow experiences are you providing for people in your world? Whether it be your clients, whether it be your future clients, AKA your prospects, whether it be your team members, whether it be other people in your community, you've got to be looking for these opportunities. Like Zig taught me again this morning. You've got to plan, you've got to prepare and you have to expect to win. You have to plan and prepare for these things to happen. You've got to be ready and plan for the opportunities. Your opportunity to connect. Remember, experience plus feeling equals connectedness. All right, Upcoming marriage is an idea for you. If somebody's having a new baby, I mean, what could be more emotional than those two things, right? Getting married, the biggest commitment of our life. Having a new baby, one of the greatest emotional joys of life. You know, recognizing an active military or veteran who defends our freedom when there's an illness or death in the family. The finishing of the circle of life, whatever that might be. Okay, how are you going to do that? Well, if you've got a newsletter online or offline, you can spotlight your best clients a month like that. We use Harry and David a lot. We have a whole list of other ways that we can touch people and reach people in certain situations. If you want to know more about that, just hit us up@infounstoppableprofitproducer.com that's info@unstoppable profitproducer.com we'll be happy to kick that back to you to give you another little nugget to think of. The more engaged, ingrained and connected. Experience plus feeling equals connectedness. The more connected you are to any marketplace, the more it's personal, the better. Okay, so one of the things that I do when I go out to see people because my mom told me she never show up empty handed. If I have the ability to plan and prepare, I had this little roadside stand on the way to my house where I Stopped by and pick up avocados. Why avocados? My grandparents bought land in 1944. My dad planted the avocado trees with his bare hands in 1952 when he was being taught to work, which he passed on to me. Now this thing I cannot get away from. I cannot get away from working hard and in transparency. It's a joy and it's an honor. Right? But anyway, so when I was in my teens and I would go to my dad and say, dad, hey, you know, I need some money. He goes the picking poles and the ladders are right over there. Go picks up, go pick avocados. That's how I earn. That's one of the ways I earn money. So I mean avocados. I've got these stories that I can tell that are a companion to the avocados. So what do I bring? I bring avocados and I'm able to tell the story. So what's in your story? What's about you that's uniquely like nobody else that you can build into your story? Okay, so figure that out. Alrighty. Amazon fire stick is something that we've recently done. Are you shooting them a quick video and putting it on a thumb drive and sending it to them?

Do you have an opportunity to engage with them? After our claims experience, I mean, ladies and gentlemen, the sky's the limit. You see the three Ps once you have the three Ps in alignment, people, excellent people on your team. Processes, world class processes and systems.

Promotion, the actual doing of all of this. Once you have all of these in place, you're going to see an amazing paradigm shift like you've never experienced before. And the law of reciprocity will always be in effect. What this means for you is you will build rock solid relationships and people will clamor to do business with you. Because people do business with people that they know love and trust. Yeah, like okay, but isn't love better? I mean think about, imagine a relationship, a love relationship you have in your life. There really anything better. So you've got to elevate them. My response is my responsibility and your response is your responsibility. No, love and trust is where it's all about. My friends. The clients will feel more loyal to you. They will refer their friends, their family, their co workers and anybody around them if you will just become an asshole. Alright. Don't forget you got to earn it first and then become an askole. Yes, that's what I said. A S K H O L E I learned that recently in my studies as well. I'm gonna leave you that thought today. This is Mike Stromso live from the Living Agency Laboratory. Thank you for coming to episode number nine. I will see you in the next episode, but until then, get out there and take action. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you for listening. If you would like to listen to more episodes or share this podcast with someone you care about, please share. Visit www.unstoppableprofitpodcast. com. Now go out and make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets.