SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, hello there, Mr. Craig. Hi. You may be wondering, Mr. Jason, why I'm sitting in the dark over here. I personally am not wondering because I know the answer to this, because I was giving you a hard time. But would you like to tell people? Do you know the answer? Yeah. What? Because you're you can't figure out how to turn your lights on.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Well, yeah. I mean, that's part of it. But if you if you go back a step, you always got to peel back the layers of the onion. Okay. So if you peel the onion the layers of the onion, the thing that precedes that is there's a reason why I didn't try to even turn the light on prior to when it was time to turn the light on. And that's because it's so hot in here. Oh, that's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Often, often I may work with my shirt off. I mean, it gets hot in here. Right. And because we have the clean button on YouTube, you want it, you don't want to do that. Right. Right. Okay. Okay. Because that, yeah. Well, that's funny that you say that. Yeah. I would call that a leaky bucket. Yes. Which part is leaky? All right. Well, today we're going to talk about something of the frustrations, how to solve the frustrations of spending money on marketing.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

No doubt, no lie.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Right. And it's crazy to me that these days, like you have to be growing, right? So we were talking about this the other day. There's there's three different types of people, right? If you're an agent, male, female, and the others. Okay. God bless them. Craig, we gotta, we gotta get back on track here. All right. There's three different types of agents, let's say. There's the agent that is looking to hit the minimum requirements of their carrier, right? I'd say that's number one. Okay. Then there's the agent that wants to hit all of the goals of their carrier to get the bonuses and all that stuff, right? And so, like they want to just maximize the money potential that that the carriers are providing. So that's that's person two. And then there's person three who wants to scale, scale beyond. So, and I would say that person two also, they're they're probably trying to replace what the retention is losing. They just want to stay at the the level that they're at, right? Who, number two or number two? Number two. Number two. Sorry, that I know I went backwards. The worst presentation ever. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

So don't be so hard on yourself.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Guy number one, he just wants to hit the minimums. Guy number two probably wants to replace what he's losing so that his agency doesn't go round down. Or there's guy number three that not only wants to replace the people that are leaving, not only wants to hit the bonuses and the and the extra comp buckets and all that other stuff, but then they also want to scale on top of that. Right. So that's like serious growth. We're gonna invest and grow. So either one of these people, I mean, they all need to grow. And the best way to make sure that that's happening is investing a little bit in marketing, at least a little bit, depending on which dude you are, right? Or do debt. But when you do this, man, how many different ways did we try to market?

SPEAKER_01 3:08

I can't do the uh the the do-it-in-the-hard way slide. Remember that? Oh yeah. With the guy knocking on the door. A lot, right? And and what's fascinating is a lot of the free stuff. Like you, you know, you're I'm over here trying to do all this free stuff, but it's really not free, right? Because it's time. Yeah. And time's, I mean, the old every year I realize even more how valuable time is. Right.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

And I and I love the freeways. Check that out. That's the freeways. Ah way. I love the freeways, but at some point, that's kind of a passive direction to go, which is cool. And I and I think you need to maximize those opportunities. But at some point, those have a ceiling. And so spending money on marketing comes into play. You always want that, like, hey, if I just put in a dollar, I get two dollars out the back end. Right. You know what I mean? That that like money machine monitoring.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

If that's like the guiding force that as the compass, then it's just like, okay, well, I found a thing that does that, and now I want to just like it's just easier, one thing. Right. You know, and you can control it easy. Right.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

I like having levers and throttles and et cetera buttons. But usually when we do this, we start something, we cut it off, then we go to something else, and then we ask all the agents what they're doing, and everybody's doing something a little different, and their way is the best way. Guilty. And then you, I mean, and it's valid too. Why? Because there are agents that dominate with let's say mailers, right? They don't, but they have been doing it for a long time and they spend a lot of money on mailers. Yep. And they're so focused on that. You and I chose the path of leads because I mean, honestly, it's the path path of leads the easiest one.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

I mean, kind of. It's the easiest one for the for the front part of it, right? Like it's like I buy the thing, I get the thing. Yes. Like that part's easy. Right. Usually.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

It's it does become more challenging. So so there are sticks. We'll we'll we'll we'll we'll just start with with the what we've done. And there are six steps. And I think I said shticks. You said sticks, shtick, shtick, shtick, shtick, and six sticks and stones. Sticks and stones. Six steps. And each step has a bunch of of ways the bucket could be leaky in, right? Yeah. And really, when somebody becomes consistent at the process, then this is where you plug those little leaky holes, and then all of a sudden, hey, we're profitable. But usually people don't get to that. Like either people are all in and they get to that point eventually, or they don't get to that point and then it's like, oh, it doesn't work. So we just want to go through the six steps, give you all the areas that we look at, and or at least most of them, unless we forget some. Craig, I've lost you.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

No, I I want to it there's a reason, there's a reason for that. And I would I don't want to say the Dunny Kruger effect. I mean, that's part of it, right? Okay. But but even more than than that. Like it, that's if you stick with it, kind of, right? If you actually stick with it, you get to that's where the magic is. The pit, right? And then you get out of the pit. But even um, I can't remember what it's called that you could do it five.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Well, it's like this. If you go to the gym, what happens?

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Oh, the planning fallacy where where you believe that you can do it, like everybody thinks they could do it faster than it ends up being. And they always think it's that they know more about it. Like this is just humans, right? Right. Like earlier I had to work on that thing. I go, I'll be done in a half hour. Well, two and a half hours later, I'm like, okay, now it's done, right? Right. And it's it it just, I mean, I even caught it, right? I said, Oh, it's probably gonna take longer than I think it is because of the yeah. But yeah, so that's an important thing to be aware of because it's like, I want to quit because this isn't working. Maybe it's not working because there was an underestimation of how long it was gonna take.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Yeah. And I look at it like this it's like going to the gym. You go to the gym and you work out and you get exhausted, right? Because you haven't done it in a long time. You get exhausted next day, you're super sore. So you're actually going backwards. Then you go in there again, you you can barely move, you got to stretch, you you can barely function. And this goes on and on for weeks, right? Like it gets a little bit better, but you're just tired, dude. Like, like all of the going to the gym over three weeks is is tiring. It takes like four or five weeks before you pull out of that and start feeling a little bit better. Maybe you feel a little bit stronger, but it's like four or five weeks before that even happens. And you don't see a difference. You might actually uh go backwards a little bit in like looks if or or weight if that's what your if that's what your metric is, but it takes a while. And most people in those moments of pain and going backwards give up. That's why, that's why gyms make so much money.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Well, yeah, there's so many factors too. It's like you this isn't working, it's costing a lot. I'm getting freaked out. Then I just talked to Jim Bob over here and he said that he's doing this thing and it's really working well, right? So it's like, okay, I'll drop this, I'll go to that and do the other thing. But then the other thing ends up having the same situation because it had you didn't do it before, or if you did, you didn't do it longer. You know, it's all the same stuff, right? It's just like pick a horse and sp and go.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

So if you are gonna do leads, the the these six steps, we're gonna try to like bypass that, you know, that three month period and and condense it down so that you don't have to go through a lot of those pains. So what's what's the first step? Leads, right? Right. Yeah. So we got to make sure we have leads coming in.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Or or you have it set up. Maybe you don't want the leads coming in yet, right? As you build your machine, which I think that's part of the, it's like once the leads are coming, it's scary, right? So you don't necessarily have to have the leads coming in today, but know that you gotta know the place, talk to the people, have it say, hey, I'm in an in two weeks, I'm gonna get this thing going, you know, a did or a week or a day or whatever it is, right? But find the place, find that's go talk to the other agents who who was crushing it with what leads. Great. Now you got some intel.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Yep. And I think it's always good to get leads from multiple sources. If you're in a state that has a ton of zip codes, when you do get the machine running, you could take out some zip codes. You know, you want to make sure that there's no DUIs on them. What are what are some other things about leads?

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Are they co-opt? Are they are they real time? Real time. Yep. You know, crank out, crank out some numbers. It's not that it's not the like I remember I used to look at that the at the cost per lead a lot. I mean, yeah, sure, that's important. If they say it's 50 bucks a lead, I mean, the damn damn thing better close one and three, right? But if it's not, and it I mean, that's it's hard to hard to believe that there could be a lead worth 50 bucks in the PNC space, right? Just because the margins are too thick.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

We haven't seen it, so yeah. Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

So that was the original question, Alex? We're we're talking about leads. We're helping.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

We're helping everyone with the six steps to being successful at leads. No, but but what uh so what are some of the questions for the leads? Uh where I I would say this is that one of the things that we've seen that works the least, which I used to do the most, is turning leads on and off. Oh man. It is so much better to go even a little bit less in leads, if that's what you need to do.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

But not too too much less.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

But leaving it consistent, right? Because that is what like the consistency is where you can see the difference in it being a okay lead, a better lead, which all leads work. But maybe, you know, with one provider, maybe you're getting less of a contact rate, or maybe, you know, something on premium, or maybe it takes a lot more dials, what whatever it may be, like you can see what's going on when you buy leads consistently. Maybe there, and because there's six stages in this, if any one of the stages after this first stage fails, you could blame it on the lead. How many times have we had agents tell us these leads suck? My leads suck, or our team, whether it's the frontline callers or the uh sales agents, these leads suck. Right. Right? Like and a lot.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

That's that everybody says. Yes. And it's not just here, it's everywhere. These leads suck.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

But the consistency will show you. Yeah. Yeah. The consistency will show you what you need to do, right? And it'll and it'll show all the next steps that we're going to talk about. It'll give like all of those metrics as well. It will keep those steady as well.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Yep. And there is a sweet spot, right? Like you could you could buy too many. You could buy too many. And you could buy too few. Right. So what just like maths for the car? Like you can't, if your car fits 10 gallons, you can't put in 20 gallons. Right. And it's not going to go to its maximum distance if you only put in eight. Like you can't make it magically happen, right? It's a little bit easier with a car to figure out because it's right there and there's factors with leads, but you're going to be able to out over time get that baseline and know maybe it's 25 a day, maybe it's 30 a day, maybe whatever that number is. But it's certainly, for me, when I first started doing it, it was a lot more that I felt comfortable with. Right. And like if it if it doesn't feel uncomfortable, it probably isn't enough.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Yeah. So if you have, so that's the first stage, right? Is leads. Second stage would be the caller of those leads. So going from leads to callers, how many leads per caller would you say based on all the data?

SPEAKER_01 12:45

From I mean, here it's like between 25 and 35. If we start getting diminishing returns over to over 35, we're under, we're not giving it enough gas at under 25. And really, probably under 30 for me.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Yeah. And I I I would go as low as 15, but that that's only that is only if you have a full tank of leads in the system. See, so that's that's another thing you you gotta realize is that when you start doing this, if you have the next stages of the caller, right? If you have a a caller that is calling all day on these leads, they should be making at least 600 aisles a day, at least, right? That means there needs to be at 200, at least minimum of 200 leads in there if they're calling them three times a day. Right. Right? If you that's with one caller. Yes, for for one. Yeah. So that's what I'm saying. So like you you could go less leads per day, but not on an empty tank. No. You know, because then you have the fixed cost of the caller and they don't have the the tools to actually give you results.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Yeah, and that's where it's like, okay, well, so then what do I do? Right. Well, I mean, I think you f you front you front load it a little bit, right? And then you could take take if it's kind of duty up front with the stuff that you put in there, then just start, you know, pull it out after a week or two. You can pull those out or just leave them in there. But uh 100%. I think that like I used to be so like so concerned and focused on every single little thing. And it's it's it's more important to holistically get this thing, right? Right. But then look for the little, okay, where can I optimize? Where can I optimize? Where can I optimize? Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Yeah. So definitely so the so then the next stage is callers. We got to make sure they have enough leads, right? And that is a fixed cost, so we want to make sure that they do have enough leads. You also you could pull leads from your past quotes, win backs, whatever. Make sure that that you run it through the DNC. Make sure that definitely make sure that. Yeah. Don't just call people that haven't opted into this lead recently. And each state is a little bit different. So make sure with your state that you're not calling past the the point that you can. But yeah. So you could start with some of those, but start with a lot more newer leads and then slowly back off per day if that's what you need to do. Uh, but then you go into the callers that are making 600 dials. What what the what are some of the problems with making 600 dials? I mean, what aren't some of the problems?

SPEAKER_01 15:16

No, uh well, I mean, now, today, in this in the most recent year, which I won't say so that this is so fresh no matter what year it is. So fresh and so clean. Yeah, so fresh, so clean, so fresh. And uh is well, number one is is how many dials are being made out of that line. How many lines do you have, right? That's not another thing to talk. Yeah, that's part of this. So, I mean, that's important. I remember when we first started, remember you could make 250 dials from one line, no problem. I mean, I mean, 15 years ago, when I had them in my office, that we were making you don't even it didn't even matter. 250 dials like in an hour from one line, three lines dialing at the same time, right? That was well before there was any issues. But but now, I mean, I don't like to go over 25, which is insane.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

So if if a caller is making 600 dials, are you telling me that you need 24 lines for that person?

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Because if you want to keep those lines clean and they still won't stay clean, yeah. What does clean mean? Well, so the carriers and you you have two enemies when you're making these dials. And one is the carrier algorithms, right? They have just, it's just AI automated that it's like a little, it's like a little uh a little pipe that the that the phone call goes through and it checks, you know, there's all kinds of metadata and everything on the on that phone line, and it looks at the patterns. So if it sees that you're dialing, dialing, dial dial, hang up, dial, hang up, dial, hang up, flagged, the carrier flags it, right? Yeah. And then there's grades, like different was that stir-shaking thing that I'm sure everybody's heard of, is that's gonna grade it. And a lot of times your carrier's gonna tell you you got a A rated, and sometimes I feel like that's not the case, Mr. Jason. But be that as it may, if as soon as that gets flagged, that phone line now has is gonna be problematic, like it's gonna drop significantly. You know, like a like a guy with some concrete shoes on at the Hudson River, if you know what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, so you need to register those numbers, right? Like with your business with your business information.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Yep. Okay. Yep. Haya, what's the other one? Uh haven't done it in a while. Jazz has been doing Verizon. Yeah. I mean, you can end and you can go director of Verizon. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

ATT. All of them.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Yeah. Haya Haya says that they register with everybody. I don't know. Orion, you go like we just do all of them. And it's kind of a little pain, you know, but get a VA to do it, and or you know, one of your folks that's not selling as much, say, hey, this is your punishment.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

But the first level is the stir shaken. So whatever phone system you have, you have to make sure that you and you have to put in your business information, even your EIN number to register these numbers, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah. It's like we almost wanted to like I don't want to put my thing in there because I don't. It's like, no, you have to put your thing in there. Like put it in there because you're actually doing it correctly. You're gonna get flagged. That's fine. As long as you're calling real leads that have opted in and you bought it from a reputable company, the then it's you're you're okay. It doesn't mean that somebody couldn't complain and somebody could, you know, that still happens. And there's still lawsuits. Somebody that didn't even do anything wrong still gets it.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

But you know, you ran into this problem with a hundreds of numbers, and you were at what, a two percent contact rate at one point?

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Yeah. And it was just like something happened to the system and we were flagged on everything.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

So what percentage of transfers and quotes, like what percentage of of what you were doing to what happened when that happened? I mean, it well, it just goes in line.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

You know, if we're if we had a 15% contact rate, now we have a 2% contact rate, whatever that, you know, what that now we're one in seven.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

So you had a ton of c I mean, you were doing tons of quotes and tons of sales, and it went down to like barely any.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Yeah. And then it was like, holy crap, I gotta learn how this stuff works. Right. I mean, that's the whole why I made that line shield thing. So I could look up my own stuff. Right. And so uh yeah, a few other things that we look into is Wells, yeah. You're so you're you wanna you have to this is like remember what we used to do is was dump the number, right? Oh, we got a number, it's burned, get rid of it, buy a new one. But that doesn't necessarily help because now everybody's doing that. And so you buy a number and it's dirty already. So there's so there's a lot of challenges around that. You need to you need to go out and you have to invest that time too, right? It's get the numbers, protect the numbers. They are assets. I mean, kind of, you don't own it, you're renting it. But too bad you can't resell them. But it changes the economics. I got a whole bunch of AI attestation. What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 19:54

But it changes the whole economics of whether or not leads work. It's not the leads, it can be the contact rate. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

And I mean, dude, think think about that. If if we're one seventh of what we were doing in contact, what does that mean? Well, your fixed cost doesn't change. Right. You know, I mean, that's all the same. You still buy leads, or you should be. You can't turn the leads off because then the pipeline dies. So it's like figure out why only you know so many few are getting through right now. And that's well, we know the contact rate is low. And if the contact dropped really fast, that means you got flagged. Right. So you said, Oh, Craig, does that mean I need to buy 24 lines? Maybe you need to buy 48 lines, Mr. Jason.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

But you don't have to like parking you can start a lot less than that, but we're just telling you what to look out for. And and you'll know too, because they you won't get anyone on the phone.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Yep. Right. But this is this is what I found though, is is the solution now is no longer flagged dump the phone. Now it's flagged park it and wait. And now they're saying 30 days, which is insane, but that's fine. I mean 30 days is gonna come, right? So I'd rather 30, you know, in 30 days, I'm like, oh, I'm glad I saved it instead of being back in the same situation. And that's kind of what we did. We started parking all the burn numbers and we had to wait. And we're buying more and they're not great, or they'd be good for a couple of days, and then it was, and now we're back into it again, and it's and it's starting to pick back up. And if I haven't, if I hadn't gone through this as many times as I have over the years, I mean, this one was a tough one, then I would have given up because that's just what you do, right? It's not working, but I know that it works. Like that's the thing. Yeah, I mean, I just know, and there's no easier way, even though this part is not easy.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

So, two other nuances to this to make your numbers super clean. One is make sure that your callers are calling for longer than 30 seconds. Yeah. If they're under 30 seconds, the AI will automatically tag that you're spamming, especially if you're if you're dialing over and over again.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

So is that 30 seconds from when it started ringing or 30 seconds from when it picks up?

SPEAKER_00 22:03

No, no, no, from when it started ringing. Right. This is like, yeah. So like a lot of people to get through the calls will dump the call maybe 20 seconds, 25 seconds. Yeah. But that will mark you as a uh telemarker and then spam alerts super quick these days. Like it's just a it's pattern recognition uh recognition. So they recognize that pattern, boom, you're marked.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Like I went so far down the rabbit hole that it was like what's what's really interesting is there's other industries that have similar dialing patterns as like, you know, PNC insurance makes a lot of dials. You have to because it's low margins, high volume, right? But there's no lobby, there's nobody talking to the politicians on behalf of the insurance agency owners. So it doesn't matter, right? Like we just it is what it is. We're gonna get flagged. So, you know, there's an idea for somebody, go out there and start that. Start logging. There you go. Yeah, go start it now.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Yeah, start it. So that's bucket number two. Wow. Or stage number two. Stage one lead, stage two, callers. So then the next step is the callers getting the people over to the salespeople. Do we talk about that on the next episode? The people to the salespeople. Yeah, but we've only done two, but two stages. I know, but we're we're 30 in. Only your mom is listening now. All right, that's true. All right, next one we'll talk about uh stage three, four, maybe five or six, depending on how long it goes.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

But the only way to find out is to listen to tune back in. Huh? Hey, and you know what? Click that subscribe button. Go ahead, click it, or see, that's what you get.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Craig is like 85 years old and he's reverting to 2015 tactics. Subscribe.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

I'm sorry, but I was listening to very large podcasters asking for people to subscribe.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Hey, only subscribe if you want to. And if you don't want to, then don't because that's the kind of people we are.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Yeah, that's that's Mr. Jason in a nutshell right there, whatever that means.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

If you want more resources, go to our school group. There's there's links down here.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Yeah, there's links down below. Emily's doing a great job. Shout out to Emily. And that's a mailbag.