What's Your Price?

I had a mentor once tell me that if you don't place a high value on yourself, rest assured the world will not raise your price. On today's AgentLeader podcast, I want to ask the question, what price are you placing on yourself? If you want to register for my upcoming training on Stop convincing, start connecting. Go to brentmkelly.com connect brentmkelly.com backslash Connect well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly and I am excited and honored that you're here with me today. Well, in the open, I asked the question, what price are you placing on yourself? What price are you placing on yourself? Now, for those of you who don't know me or my story, I spent 15 years as a property and casualty producer, mainly in commercial lines. And you know, I love my time there. But one of the most common frustrations that I heard from insurance clients in my 15 years of insurance production was that the premium is too high. And if you're a current insurance producer or you have been insurance producer, it doesn't matter. You're involved in that line of business. You probably hear or have heard things like this, you think we can get a better price or can you do any better? Or the frustration, why is it so expensive on renewals? Maybe this. Why did the price go up? Of course, that's just way too much. Now, I've discussed and written about on my blog site@brent mkelley.com, about why salespeople need to focus on selling on real value, right? And quit playing the price game. But let's be real, right? Our society loves to price shop. I certainly do it time to time. And one of the biggest reasons is that we like to price shop is we want to feel like we're getting the best deal. Now, I love my wife to death. She's everything. She's awesome. But one of the things I tease her about, in our 14 years of marriage, she has never bought something that wasn't on sale. She has never gotten a bad deal. She always gets a good deal. What does that mean? It means that although we don't like to be sold, we like to buy things. When you look at the insurance market and selling insurance and marketing insurance, there's nothing sexy, there's nothing exciting about insurance. That's not why people buy it. That's not why people want it. In a nutshell, people buy insurance because they don't want to lose money they've earned. Period. That's it. They want to feel safe Secure, confident that you're going to be there for their time of need, if they should ever have that. They don't want to lose their property. They don't want to lose their investments, they don't want to lose their jewelry, they don't want to lose their income, they don't want to lose their business. They don't want to lose their livelihood. Now, none of that's exciting, right? But it sure is really, really important. So for something that important, it can't be. Insurance can't be just about price, right? It can't be. And of course it's not. It's way more than price. You know that. I know that. So why are insurance sales producers so quick to drop their proverbial pants, right? To find a better deal or lower price, right? You go out and you quote and you hope and you pray. And then it's like, oh, it's a little high. Let me see what I can do. Let me go back to see if I can get some credit, right? Here's one of the big reasons for this, is that most insurance producers don't believe in the real value they are providing. They don't fully believe in their product or service, their company, or the value that they're bringing to the client to fully buy in. Now, those are all really important. But here's the most important thing, and this is what I want to focus on in today's podcast. Most insurance producers do not put a high enough value on themselves. People say, oh, it's a commodity. A lot of people say, well, how do you, how do you give value to commodity? Well, you are the value. You. And as I said on the open, if you don't value yourself, rest assured your clients are not going to raise the price. If you sell your products and service like everyone else, you probably don't have much value to offer anyway. That's why you default back to price. See, insurance products can protect clients for thousands or even millions. As Austin Powers, we would say that millions of dollars. Yet it's often sold, at least on TV and on the Internet, much like a basic item on a shelf. We'll give some credit to Flo on that one and our friend the Gecko. If you were just getting a quote for someone as if in you're just collecting numbers and spitting them back out, you're no different from any other the 15 agents in town or those across the country. You really are a commodity. Here's my stuff. Replicate it. Go to your markets, give me some numbers and shoot it back right you have no differential value. Now, if you're really lucky, and maybe your price is just good enough, you may write that piece of business until they find something cheaper or someone cheaper. So how can you, as an insurance producer, as an insurance agent, provide value? Because value is an overused term, right? And often sold in terms of the seller and not the buyer. Value this. Add value. Value added. The problem with the word value is we think of value in terms of us. Me, here's a fact. If you think something is valuable but your client doesn't care, it's not valuable. I've had experience, I think back to my days. I had days where I remember I would go to like a class on business interruption or even more recently a class on cyber liability. And it was like, this thing is so important, like has to have it. Disaster will strike if they don't get this cyber policy. And I would go to someone, I'm like, I'm just telling them like you gotta get this. But either in the way that I was explaining it or because they didn't find it valuable, it didn't matter. So what kind of things should you offer before you start coming up with hundreds of items that you may think may be valuable to your customer? Like I just said, with cyber liability, this and whatever it is that you sell, why don't you, instead of doing that, instead of pushing stuff, why don't you take a step back for a minute and just analyze the situation. What do your clients really want? Do you know what they really want? My guess is probably not. So here's a. I mean, this is the price you pay for which this podcast is free. Here's my solution to this. Why don't you ask them? Starting today, make it a point to ask your clients what they value. Ask them if you've got a current book of business. What a great way to set, to thank you, to stop in, to check in, to say hi and say listen, what is it that you in your insurance program and our relationship, what is it you value the most? Stop assuming what they want. And again, I've made this mistake many times. I still make it today. I'm learning. It's easy to assume. It's harder to ask questions, talk to them in person, on the phone, via email, hold a luncheon, use social media, don't just send out survey monkey. They're probably not going to answer it. Have a real conversation of some kind, at least a personal conversation, at least a one on one conversation. Find out what they really, really want. Ask how you can best help them listen intently, not with how you want to hear things, but what they're actually saying. Respond then accordingly and then go solve their problems. See, there are going to be people who say they just want a lower price. There is a fragment of the population, that's all they care about. Get it. Understand that, don't worry about it. But I think you're going to be surprised at how many other non price issues are out there and what people truly want. You just have to ask. You have an opportunity to rise above the murky waters of this price game. You just need to ask, listen, respond and then start working your tail off. Hey, thanks for listening to another episode of the Agent Leader podcast Again. My name is Brent Kelly and if this podcast is adding value to you and you enjoy it, show me some love. Could you share it on itunes or Stitcher Radio or leave me a review? I would much appreciate it. Hey, you can check out all my blogs and information and upcoming classes and training and speaking all@brent mt kelly.com. that's brentmkelly.com.