3 Excuses to Not Leverage Virtual Presenting

Foreign. Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on today's episode. As always, it's great to have you with me and I'm excited to share something today. Some content today that I'm guessing that each and every one of you as an agent leader has had to deal with in one way or another over the past many months here in 2020. And that is the idea, the concept of virtual selling or virtual presenting or just virtual stuff. Now, before you turn this off and you go, oh, I'm so tired of virtual this, and you hear about zoom fatigue and all these kind of things, I think it's really important that you hang with me on this episode because I'm gonna share with you three excuses. And again, these could be broad excuses, but three excuses why you or your agency still is not embracing virtual presenting and more importantly, the short term and long term impact that really could have for your agency. As always, the purpose of the Agent Leader podcast is to help you, an agent leader, whether you're the principal, a sales leader, a producer, service team member, claims member, that you gain clarity, consistency and you make a commitment, a commitment to become your best version possible. And if you're listening to this podcast soon, or at least pretty quickly after it's released, while we are getting into the midst here of the fourth quarter, and I know, as always, 2020, it's like you two choices, I tell people right now in 2020, you can stumble through the finish line, maybe you feel like you've been stumbling for a while, or you can pick your head up and lift your chest up and sprint through that line and make sure that not only you finish this year off with momentum, but you carry that momentum into the next year. And this topic that I'm going to share is a big part of that around virtual presentation. And, you know, this really comes from the idea that, you know, we have the opportunity, first of all to present virtually. We have in 20, many times, in fact, we were just looking at some hours here at Sitkins. We have now spent 222live hours of presentations since basically the end of May when we started to launch our virtual presentation. Obviously with what's going on with COVID this year. And we've learned a lot. We've learned a lot of things that work well and things that maybe don't work as well. And we've also learned a lot from the attendees of our training programs. We've learned a lot from our coaching conversations, from mastermind groups that we've done. We've just learned a lot of different things, and certainly from reading and listening to other podcasts and watching some videos, because again, it's a big part of our craft. But here's the deal. As an agency leader and your agency, it really is a huge part of your craft. And again, I don't know if this is something that you and your team have fully embraced. It's something you're kind of dipping your toe in the water and saying, well, we have to for now and eventually we'll get through it, whatever it may be. I'm going to share three top excuses that I hear from agencies, and these may all apply to you, maybe one applies to you, but I want you, to us, to think about how you can become not only better, but understand the significance and the impact of virtual presentation. So let me go through these three excuses, and the first one is pretty simple. I don't really need to do it. It's not necessary. And the reason behind that typically is like anything else that we hear with new ideas or things, this is what we hear. This too shall pass, right? This too shall pass. This Covid situation, this pandemic, this virtual thing, this too shall pass. Well, ye. I certainly hope that at some point Covid and this pandemic will pass. You know, certainly from the health perspective, but there's no doubt that the way that your clients, your carriers, your colleagues, your community is dealing with things is that, no, the virtual part of it is not going to pass. It was already building prior to this, and now it's just forced people to become accustomed to it. And now that many people are accustomed to this idea of virtual, whether we say we're fatigued or not, it still has many advantages, as we all know, right? The fact that it eliminates in many cases a lot of our travel time, right? I mean, just think about how much time it takes to, you know, go to. You go to your car, head to an appointment, sit in a waiting room, whatever the case may be, then go have your appointment. If it continues and it wasn't rescheduled or something, you've all had those, we've driven somewhere and you didn't even have the appointment, and then you come back and back in your car and go back to your office and get yourself set, and then you get back to work. Well, again, the time that we can ultimately save on that is critical. But here's the thing. Just like many of you listening right now, I love face to face presenting. I love face to face conversations. I'm a relationship person and what I do, and I love being in front of groups and having a live audience and we are going to get back to that. But a term that I learned from Jeb Blunt, and I don't know if it's his term or just out there, but this idea of blending, blending, and if you're not driving, write that down. Blending. Well, what does that mean? It means that we're never going to go back to just face to face. We're never going to stay just virtual. We're going to have a hybrid. It's going to be a blend of that. And so that we have to understand that this is not going to go away. There's going to be times that your clients or colleague or if you're talking to a carrier, whatever it is, they're going to say, hey, let's just hop on a gotomeeting or a zoom or a teams call. I don't care what platform you use, but let's just hop on and do this right. So that's not going to go away. But here's the other thing, too, certainly if you're an insurance producer or you have a production team, is that this is a huge competitive advantage. Now, I already mentioned time. You know, you just think about this. One of the things that we discuss and we coach around at Sitkins is the producer's perfect schedule. And in that producer's perfect schedule, we challenge the producers to have 10 appointments a week with clients, future ideal clients and centers of influence, to be proactive and say, if you can have 10 appointments a week with your clients, your best clients, your future ideal clients, your centers of influence, you're going to have huge success just by doing that. Right? Getting very intentional. And we walk them through a process around that. But right now, a lot of people say, well, you know, it's just hard to get ahold of people. But guess what? When you're very proactive and intentional with those three areas, instead of having 10 appointments, you could have 14. Right? Easy. Why? Because you don't have all that other time. So it's a huge competitive advantage from that aspect, number one. Number two, it's a huge competitive advantage in the terms of a wow. It's a wow. Especially when you begin to do it right. And I'm going to talk more about that a little later in this podcast. But it's a wow in the fact that most producers, most agencies, most agency teams, and we've seen it out there in the marketplace go, just hang on. It'll come back and we can go back to doing the average things that we were doing before and we'll be fine. This too shall pass. And we had a call last week, actually. It's a two day workshop that we did virtually. And this is with our elite group of producers. The average commission, just so you know, the revenue commission in this group is just shy of a million bucks. We're almost there. It's about 984,000 in average books of business. So these are good producers, and I mean very successful producers. In fact, the top producers are over 3 million. So they know their stuff. And it's always interesting to me that the best producers, the one that really don't need much revenue to live. Right. It's not about just the money. It's about the fact that they always strive to, to do things at the highest possible level because that's in their DNA. Why would you ever sell yourself short? But one of the comments made from one of the top producers in this room was, this is the best time in the history of the world to be an insurance producer and I would argue an agency leader of any kind. And he said, because most people are fundamentally distracted. They have been this entire year. We've got, you know, obviously Covid and all the things going on, and there's real fear and angst out there. I understand that. But it does cause distraction. It's a political year, more distraction. So all these things that are out there are distractions. And as he was talking about that and some of the things that he's been doing to leverage where he's at to have a competitive advantage, it hit me and I wrote this down and I said it to him and he kind of nodded. I said, here's something to think about. Let their distractions become your attractions. And this is certainly true with future ideal clients, those that you want to get in front of. But let your current, your competitors, their distractions, become your attraction by positioning yourself in the right way. So the first excuse that we hear is, you know, I don't really need to. This is going to go away. A. That's not true. Number one. And if you look deep in your soul, you know that's not true. And number two is between time and a competitive advantage. A wow. It's a no brainer, right? This blending model of thinking about, hey, when I can't physically be with my clients, when I can't physically be with my clients, whether it's due to Covid or just the fact that we can't get together, for whatever reason, could I do something virtually that says, wow, this agency really gets me, Gets us. It's really desiring to build a relationship. It's really trying to be a risk advocate in all kinds of different ways. Not just another thing to send out, but true substance and value. Again, let their distraction become your attraction. Excuse number two, and this is kind of the underlying of lots of things. Why aren't you using as much video and some of the presentation stuff? And how come when you come on, you don't even turn your camera on and you're still sending basic blah emails versus trying to use some of this stuff? It's this. Here's the bottom line of this. I'm not very good at it. That's the excuse. I'm not very good at it. It's weird. It's different. I don't like looking in the camera. That's unusual for me. Yep, it is different. It is different. I mean, even for me doing all these hours of virtual presentations right now, it's still different to look in the eye of a camera than it is the eyes of a human being. Get that? I 100% agree. And it's much easier. And you got body language, you know, your actual senses right there in the room. But guess what? When you look at the eye of a camera, understanding that is in the eyes of a human being and you just understand that it creates great opportunity for you. And guess what? It's uncomfortable. But you've heard this before in my podcast. You've got to get comfortable being uncomfortable. The average are going to say, you know what, that's weird. I don't really like it. That's not who I am. That's a big one, too. I'm just not a virtual guy or gal. I hear that. I'm just not a virtual guy or gal. I say, well, are you a relationship guy or gal? Well, yeah, of course I am. Then guess what? Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Because if you believe in relationships, if you believe in providing value to those around you in today's world, you better start getting more comfortable being uncomfortable and looking at a camera. Right? That's just part of it. And, you know, being direct here. But it's important to understand that one of the. And I've done a podcast on this in different ways before. Actually, I did part of this with the group last week. This idea of moving from comfort to growth that we all for the most, you know, this isn't just video. This is just all aspects of life and business. We spend over 90% of our time in a comfort zone. What does that mean? The things that we know, the things that we've done before, the things that we, you know, we know aren't going to be overly scary. We live there. And by the way, it's okay. You need to have some comfort in your life. But you can get stuck there for a very long period of time if you don't push yourself. And by doing virtual presentations and not just doing them average, but doing them well, is very uncomfortable because you have to go through fear. I'm not good at it. I don't understand what to do. I'm confused of how to use the technology. Lots of things, right, Lots of different things there. But that requires you to bust through that fear. And I always say this, something I've shared in different stories. You have two choices. You can either embrace your fear, face your fear, or it will become your traveling companion, right? You can face it and go, okay, I'm not good at this right now. It is uncomfortable. Guess what? I'm going to face it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to figure this thing out because I know it's important for my business long term. I know as a communicator, as a connector, as a leader, I've got to be able to do virtual better because that's how I communicate. And that's a big aspect. That's one aspect maybe. And back to the blending, it may be part of it, but it's a big part of how you're going to get your message across. And many of you are already doing a great job with this. I know, listening to me right now, but you've got to build those skills. And one of the things that I would say too, that I think video has done, and we've seen this in our training, certainly with production teams, and this is true of service teams as well, and agency leaders, is that I think it's exposed people, right? Because let's face it, if you were not a very good communicator, one on one or in different areas, you could say, yeah, you know, it was an okay meeting. You know, you go off, you can go to an appointment, it's one on one, or maybe you to a small group. And we've all blown meetings, okay, We've all made mistakes. I'm raising my hand here, but you can come back and say, you know, it wasn't very good, or they didn't really respond, or, you know, one of the things that I said, you know, I've said before, is they're not very interested or they weren't compelled, whatever the case may be. And as a mentor said to me years ago, he says, are they not interested or are you not interesting? So we never want to take responsibility in many cases that maybe it was our fault, maybe we didn't present how we should, maybe we didn't ask the question. So I say all this, that video all of a sudden accelerates or at least exposes the fact that maybe I'm not prepared, maybe I'm not practiced like I should be, and asking great questions and communicating with emphasis of listening, right? Of all those things that are part of communication. So maybe that is one of those skills that's being exposed. So again, virtual allows you to be able to work on those skills, which ultimately leads you to growth. Because as I already said, it's about practice and preparation. And, you know, we've asked producers, for example, to record themselves audio or video for years just to get better. You know, heck, we used to have a closed circuit TV at Sitkins where it would be, you know, actually, and that's scary. But guess what? You get better at it. And when we do, even when we're in the same room and we do training and now we do it virtually, we go in and do role plays. It's amazing but not shocking that even in five minutes, whether you're asking for referrals, whether you're understanding how to have an executive briefing or a positioning statement that within five minutes of just practice, people go, you know, I got a lot better at that. I go, imagine if you did that every day, right? So the same thing is true with virtual presenting. Just do a little bit every single day. Get your reps, you know, get your reps. I said, you know, again, I know we're in a different situation. Part of our job as a training company, a coaching company, a consulting company, is to deliver content and share these trainings. So obviously we're doing it more than most, but there's no doubt just in the last five months or so of doing 200 plus hours, I mean, really 500 hours, we're looking at it in prep and review, but 222 hours live on the air with clients, guess what? You get better, you get better at it. And again, if this is your craft, which it is, whether you're an agency leader, communicating with your team, with your, you know, you're obviously got your colleagues, you have your clients, your future ideal clients, your centers of influence, use virtual to get better. And also as your competitive advantage so the first thing that I hear, first excuse to go back is, I don't really need to. It's not necessary. I'll be fine without it. And by the way, you probably will be fine without it if you did none of it and you just, okay, I have to attend a meeting. So I'll attend a meeting on Zoom or go to meeting, okay? But I don't really want to be good at it, and I'm gonna, you know, I'm not. That's who I am. That's not who I am. So it'll all come back to normal. You'll still be okay. You'll still be okay. Excuse two is that I'm not good at it. You know, you don't have to get better at it, I guess, and you'll still probably be okay. This leads to the third excuse that we hear is this. I don't really know what and how to do it or maybe how to do it better at a higher level. I don't know. This is new. What do I do? And I mean, you know, we see this with our coaching clients in many cases. And, you know, this isn't to pick on people. It's just what we see. The fact that, you know, we do a monthly sales meeting with our clients, and we have producers all over the country that hop on here and they're getting better at it. But certainly the first few months of this, you know, no one had their camera on. If they had their camera on, their head was in the corner of the screen or they had a window behind their head, so it looked like the witness protection agency. You couldn't see their face. Right? It's like, whatever. It's like, no, if you're going to be on camera and we're going to do interaction, get better at it. Get better at it. So the question is, well, how? How do I get better at it? Well, here's the first thing, and this seems pretty obvious, but read books about it, listen to podcasts. I mean, this is an example right here. Watch videos. You know, I just. I watched a presentation, and I've read the book by Jeb Blunt. Some of you have read this book, I'm sure, called Virtual Selling. He's also written other books on sales. There's another Virtual Selling book from the Rain Group that's very good. There's a lot of things out there. We're always looking to grow and learn as well, not just from our own experiences, but other people who are out there doing it. So, again, if this is your craft, if this is your profession, to communicate as a leader of any kind, would you not read books and watch videos and listen to podcasts that may help you accelerate your learning? And. Oh, you know, I never thought about that. Let me give you one example of something that I heard that seems pretty obvious, but I wasn't doing it. And here's the example. We use Zoom primarily for our platform. And one of the things I noticed with virtual presenting, or if I'm doing just a group and we have a gallery view, right? You know, all the boxes up there, people's faces, is that human instinct is to look at yourself in the box. Okay? I mean, I try not to. I'm like, okay, this person's talking, but I don't know, I can't help it. It's human instinct. You look and go, okay, you know, am I doing something weird? Is my hair messed up? I don't know what it is. People look. I look at myself and there in Zoom and I'm sure other platforms as well. Just a spot there where you can hide self view. Now think about this for a second. When you're at a physical appointment with a. Whether it's a future ideal client, I don't care who it is, and you're sitting in the room with them, do you have a mirror in front of you where you're watching your own self move and talk? No, of course not, silly. It's ridiculous. But yet we kind of do that on these video calls, right? We're spending half the time looking at them and half the time looking at other people and half the the time looking at ourselves. Actually, that's three halves. That doesn't work. You know what I mean, right? We spend a big part of our time looking at ourselves, and that's not how real communication and conversations work. So here's my tip. If you're using Zoom, there's a little ellipsis there on your box. It says hide self view. Now, you have to be comfortable in how you're looking, right? Just like you would in a real appointment. You'd be dressed properly and you'd make sure you're sitting properly. And all those things that you just do in a normal conversation, you just do it on video. And when you hide your self View, I noticed this immediately. I was way more engaged with someone that's on the screen. Especially one to one, I'm looking at them, I'm understanding, watching their physical movements and all those kind of things versus worrying about me. So that's just a quick little tip for you hide self view and just talk to people like you would as you were in person. So number one, I don't know how to do it. Well, listen, learn, read. Number two is this authenticity beats perfection. Authenticity beats perfection. I think one thing that happens on video is that again, it's all about getting better, right? It's all about trying to have a better background and present yourself on things that I've talked about. But I'll tell you, people respect and understand authenticity. And we've all seen videos, certainly on, you know, video calls where a kid walks in the room. I've got five kids at home, you know, a kid walks in the room or there's, you know, something funny that happens or a fire alarm goes off. I mean that's real. And by the way, those things happen. Maybe not kids walk in the room, but that happens in the real world. Just weird things happen, right? And you just kind of laugh when you deal with it. So don't worry about everything being perfect because guess what? It's not just be authentic, be a human being and use video just as a tool to be a human being. It's just a tool or resource that can show your human element that you're authentic, that you're prepared, that you care about them. You know, all those kind of things that you do in a normal meeting. So authenticity beats perfection. Now, as far as specific tips, here's all I'm going to ask you because again, there's books, I could do a whole podcast. In fact, we're doing a our next monthly sales meeting which is part of our private client group. So if you're interested in the private client group, go to sitkins.comtsn or just go to sitkins.com to look at our programs. But for our private client group, all of our members, their producers, we do a monthly sales meeting for their entire team and we're going to do it on virtual presentations, virtual selling, and so we're going to talk about some of these things. But here's just the basic thing I want you to think about when you present, right? Ask yourself the flip side. What do you like to see and hear when you think so far? And just think back at the last three, four, five months and when you've done virtual trainings of any kind or virtual calls or virtual meetings, which ones have stood out to you that were been enjoyable that you go, you know, I enjoyed this one. Why? What was it about it that you enjoyed? And that's, that's a great question to ask, right? Because sometimes Success leaves clues. How about all the time success leaves clues. And so just think about that. What would you like to see or hear? So when you think of your camera, was the person positioned in the middle, you know, did they have lighting where you could see their face? Did they have audio where it was clear? Not. What did you say again? Of course, you know, the phrase for 2020 is going to be you're muted or you're on mute, but do you have audio that's clear and compelling? I use a blue yeti mic. So when you hear me talk on this podcast, it's the same thing I use in my virtual presentations. I talk close to a camera that's a high quality camera. Is it worth it? Yeah, I think it's worth it for everybody. It's our craft, right? And then of course, the lighting. You have good lighting I mentioned in the camera. So just look at those kind of things without getting into every detail. And again, I'm reading through books and we're working on things. I know a lot of people have fun with virtual backgrounds and different things that you can do, but just find a way to be compelling, a way to stand out a little bit, to be very professional. And, you know, certainly if you're an insurance producer, but this is true of anybody, is why would you not use every competitive advantage possible? Think about how hard it is to get with a future ideal client, someone you really want to see and work on and write their account. Why would you sell yourself short and go, ah, we'll just get through this virtual stuff, it'll be fine? No, find ways to be excellent, to be excellent in those areas. So those are three excuses, hopefully. I'm sure this, for many of you, hit home and I know that depending on the listener, you might be doing some of these things already. Kudos to you. I would love to hear what's worked well for you. You can always email me Brentitkins.com what's working well for you in the virtual world. Again, this is going to continue to evolve and adapt, but it's not going away. It's just not going to go away. I think there's going to be a blending model which is going to be fantastic. I can tell you, me personally, that I cannot wait. And I've already done one presentation. I can't wait to get out and, you know, bump fists or elbows or whatever. It's going to be in the future in a real room with real people. But I also know this is such a great way to leverage time and energy and effort. Get comfortable being uncomfortable, right? You're going to have things uncomfortable. I don't like the way I look on camera. I don't like the way I sound. Guess what? Get better at it, right? Get comfortable being uncomfortable. And the last part, if you don't know how to do it or how to do it better, this is your chance. Listen to podcasts, read a book, watch videos. There's a lot of stuff out there. Say, this is who I am. I'm a professional. Professionals go deeper and do everything in excellence. So with that, I want to thank you for listening to this podcast. If this podcast, this episode, or others have added value to you, I would love a review on itunes or Stitcher or whatever your platform is so that we can reach more agency leaders like yourself. Appreciated review. And again, if you're interested in anything that we're doing at Sitkins, we have a really big announcement coming up in just a few weeks. Again, depending on when you're listening to this, but some new ways that we can really help agencies in a different way. We're excited to share that. Just go to sitkins.com to learn more about us. And with that, wish you all the best in your success.