SPEAKER_01 0:00

Alright, Mr. Craig, part two.

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey, no fat, no light, some finds a cat thing door and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Part duh, part dih. Hot shots, part dih. Part duh, part one. I think the last time, to the best of my knowledge. Yeah. We were talking about three things that good agencies miss that the great ones get ripe. The missing pieces, if you will. Yeah, the missing piece sitting behind almost every great producer.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

That'd be the first of the missing pieces.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Yep. And then we'll get into the other two. Uh yeah.

unknown 0:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Well, I mean, we've we've been elbows deep in this stuff for a while now, right? Yep. 2019-ish, 2018-ish, I guess. I was trying I had my I was elbows deep trying to figure out what the stuff was, and then we really got in I need to move you over to the middle.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

I think what we were talking about last time is this is the the backbone of the book, right? The spine? This is the yeah, this is the bones, if you will. Yeah. And honestly, dude, it's never been more true.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

It's true. Even talking with Nima from the same type of things that we were we were talking about to a certain extent.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

So let me dive into this. Why do you think why do you think that agents miss these pieces before we even get into the pieces?

SPEAKER_01 1:30

I don't think the whole process is thought about that hard. I think people are looking for, like we said before, a silver bullet. I know I did. Like I can only speak from my own experience or conversations that I've had. But dude, I I would try always try the new thing or the, you know, hoping that there was like this one thing that this was it. If I just did this, it would solve all the problems. Yeah. You know, and it and I think that when we were doing the book and we were working with other agencies and stuff, I think what we realized is that it's not the tactics, it's the principles, right? Because the principles can be applied to anything as trends change and everything else. And so when we're talking about the principles, then it helps you to look at the funnel, look at the process totally differently, right? Because then things, you don't get married to these little things, you know, like in which kind of handcuff you, kind of like that. What was that program that you're saying all the agents liked when I first met you? It was like a magic CPR. Oh, magic CPR. Yeah. So like that's a great idea of like there's a principle behind that, what why that worked, right? But but the tactic of it was what people latched on to. So as soon as that wasn't around anymore, it was done. Right. You know? So I think that's why it's really important to look at the principles behind what's working, like or or or the principles of what makes success.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Yeah, it is interesting that you say it like that because it it all it is, all that thing was, was taking the spreadsheet of all your stuff and playing Mad Libs into a thing that looked like a quote for whatever.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Interesting. Because that would be very easy to replicate if you had it and then it was gone. Oh you could what? I see the hamster up there. No, no, no. I don't want to. I'm tired of building something. I can't, I can't. I just can't. I can't. Too many buildings. Yeah. So the first thing is is what's the missing piece behind every uh almost every great producer, right? Yeah. Um, AI or not. Right. You know? It comes down to the fundies. And when I say fundies, I don't mean undies, I mean the fundamentals. Right. So what we did was we said, let's work backwards. Let's work backwards from a policy being sold, right? Like if a policy is sold, well, what must be true for a policy to be sold? Right? Yeah. So there's all kinds of things. I mean, you need a lead, right? You need a lead. Let's call it what it is. You need a you need some sort of lead. That could be a referral, that could be walk-ins, that could be internet lead, it could be a cross-sell, it could be center of influence, it could be sitting at the home and garden show with a wheel of fortune thing and you know, taking names that way. It doesn't matter. At some point, I think we need to agree that there has to be some input, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

And and really where it comes from doesn't matter necessarily. This is the conversation I hate. So when you start talking to an agent, they start worrying about the type of lead, right? I hate internet leads. Okay, I I don't care. Or I I I I don't do centers of influence. You know, who who cares? It doesn't even matter because it every successful agency has leads coming into it, right? And so it becomes a math game. You just have to have enough. Right.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

So 100%. One lead's not enough, right? Like I can't when I first started at sales, I used to get really upset that I talked to somebody and I didn't close them. And I felt like I did all that work and I didn't get the payoff. And what I didn't understand is it's like baseball, or maybe a little, you know, worse than baseball, where you're batting a you're batting 150, you're batting 200, right? You're only one in one in five. So it was hard to go after those other ones because of that, right? Now, older Craig, maybe oldest Craig, now understands that that's part of it. Like that's just the game. Right. You you have to have an abundance of leads.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

That that's the bottom line, and that's the difference between successful agents and not so successful agents. Is successful agents understand that they need a lot of leads. They're not looking for that great lead. I I was a victim of this. I would get so bummed out. Oh, I'm talking to this. And this is what salespeople do too, right? They talk to that person, they get so bummed out when the sale doesn't happen. And it's like, dude, don't care about the sale from the one guy. Make sure that you quote enough guys that you're you are gonna get the one sale because there's always a number. There's always a number of quotes that leads to a sale.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

You have to. It's like having a bucket that has a hole in it. Yeah. And you got to keep filling it up with water. And it doesn't matter because this is the only bucket that exists in the world and it's gonna leak. And that's just the way it is.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

My my grandpa used to love Hank Williams Sr.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

There's a there's a and he'd listen to eight tracks that he would sit in his eight chair. And and the lyrics were crazy. Not sad, but he'd sit there and cry. So there's a lot of pain behind. I I don't know. He lived during the pr depression. I don't know what was going on there. But there was a song that depressed My Buck, it's got a hole in it. My buck, it's got a hole in it.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

And that was the chorus. So if there's one thing you take away from this, is that no matter what your leads are, wherever they come from, whatever kind they are, whether it's centers of influence, whether it's going to B I or whatever it is, it still has a leaky bucket.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Yeah. And remember my singing.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Unless somehow you're 100% closer.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Yeah. And dude, they're all leads, right? We're always arguing over the type of lead, kind of like kind of like Christians with the all of their different denominations, and they're all arguing about which to dude, it's which one's the best. I think it's like, dude, we're already why are we arguing about this? This is stupid. But anyways, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

I mean, at the end of the day, when you're sitting in your office, all leads are the same. It's a name with a phone number and some type of cars.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

And you have to have leads to get to a sale. And that's the most most important. And the most important part of this conversation is you just have to have enough so that your salespeople that are expensive aren't just sitting there doing nothing, so that they have enough people to talk to so that they can get to the sale. Right. Because there's they're never ever, yes, centers of influence close faster. Certain ones close better. It doesn't matter. They just need enough. Right. So if there's not enough, you you might have to go into a different bucket or a different source. You got, but they have to have enough leads to lead to the sale. Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

If you're closing at 20% or 10%, well, I'm going to do 10% because it's easier for my brain to do on the fly here. But if you're if if you're closing 10% of those leads and you're doing your centers of influence, you're still with a hundred centers of influence, you're only getting 10 of them, right? Or maybe, okay, let's say you close a third. So you get 30 of them. Well, you know what I find easier? I find it easier to buy 10,000 leads over some period of time and close 2% of them because I'm going to get more. And it pencils, right? Like for me, that's fine. Somebody else might not want to do that. That's fine. But at the end of the day, I like having as much as I want, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Yeah. Like and I think the ratio you might be getting from all those sources. So the ratios might split because at some point, maybe you, maybe somebody else is getting a ton of centers of influence, but at some point they're going to need to get leads from a different source also to supplement so that each salesperson has the right number of leads to get to the right number of sales that you want. Again, we're trying we're talking about predictability here. We're trying to reach an end goal, and we don't want to just cross our fingers because that's what you and I used to do. It's cross our is hope. Hoping is stupid.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

That's not how you run a business. No. Well, I sure hope these work. Yeah. And then I'll try them for a day, call them once and say that they suck. Like that, that's that's what I used to do, right? 100%. It's like you almost wanted them not to work. If I look back at how I operated with leads, with internet leads, I really, at the end of the day, just didn't want them to work because I didn't want that to be the path that actually led to the results. At least the behavior didn't indicate that. So that brings us to our first job. The first job of of doing this is lead acquisition, right? Yeah. Lead acquisition. You can't sell, you can't consistently sell without consistently having people to sell to. So that's number one in here. Yeah. And that's what we've been going on and on about is the lead acquisition, right? Do you do you have a consistent source of acquiring new leads? Right. Be whatever it is, whatever it is. The most important thing is understanding the economics behind that. Like how many do I close? Well, okay. Then if I close this video, everybody gets a bit blah blah blah going through the whole fuddle. It's like, no, if you close this many, then you need this many, right? Right. I mean, that's let's let's just make it easy there. But that, but then here's the thing the lead itself isn't a conversation, right? We're not actually talking to somebody. And this is also where I did where when I was phone scared back in the olden days, like I'd get the leads and be like, oh now I got the leads. But then we wouldn't call like we wouldn't call them or we wouldn't call them enough. And and who cares if you have the leads? Right. You have to turn them into a conversation because the lead doesn't answer the the lead doesn't talk to you. The lead doesn't like say, Oh, yes, sir. Right? Like, no. You actually have to, and lead and most importantly, most I'm doing the finger thing here, not this one, the this one. The the most important thing is leads don't show up ready to buy. And this is the biggest misnomer that I think that everybody has is oh, these leads suck. I called them, but they said they didn't want to talk to me. Yeah. Well, yeah, there's a lot of different reasons why this person may not want to talk to you. Maybe they're going to the bathroom right now. Maybe their wife just got in a car accident and you just interrupted on the call waiting. Maybe a million different things.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Maybe five other agents just called because you were too slow. Dude, we see it all the time. Somebody's pissed off on the phone, and it's like, no, no, no, don't, I should just throw this lead away. It's like, no, no, no. Call them tomorrow. You just reach them at a bad time. Like, and then you call them the next day, and then all of a sudden, it's a different person. It's because they're going through a different, a different thing. Yeah. I think what yeah, I think what you're getting at is like the lead is an opportunity. You can buy a ton of, you can have a ton of leads, you can have a ton of opportunities, but that doesn't mean you're taking the opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

No, you have to activate those opportunities. Yeah. Turn them on. You got to turn them on. Otherwise, they can't become sales.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

And if it's if if it's anything that we've learned, it's like, yeah, there might be one here and there that is that's ready to go at the beginning, but the majority are not. So there is a series of conversations to activate that lead to get them to in state for a sale.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Yep. You know, my my first sales job was selling cars. And it was not the most fun job, but I learned a lot, right? I learned a I learned a ton in the five months that I did it. And I said, I can't do this anymore. Six days a week. I mean, it was it was a lot. Um, but they call them ups. So a lead is an up. You call them an up. So when they when somebody walks on the on the lot, the older, like I was shoot, I don't know, it was 25, 26. Like the lead walks on the lot, the the up, and the older guys would all would all already pre-qualified. They go, you take them, you know, and I took everybody. I mean, I took everybody, and I was terrible at it at first. I was scared. I didn't want to talk to them. All I wanted was them just to say, Yes, I'm here to look for a car. Help me buy one. And guess how many times that happened? One out of it happened one time. Yeah. And she had the worst credit ever. And actually, we did end up getting the that deal done. We got her this in a gold metro. It was gold. It was like, it was a very disgusting looking car. It was so bad. It was a three-cylinder Geo Metro.

unknown 14:09

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

I mean, it was so bad. And I got a $500 spiff on it because they wanted to, they wanted to get rid of it. So it actually was kind of a good thing. But I the amount of work I had to do to get that deal done was insane because they were like, no, no. We didn't even know a credit score go this low. Anyway, it shows you that like you have to go in and take as many as possible, take all those swings and all those attempts, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

So, and going back, not very successful agents don't acquire enough leads, and not very successful agents don't have a and this is the key, consistent process in which all of their leads get reached out to enough. But the most successful agents, it they are a machine. Every single lead that comes into that agency, doesn't matter what it is, has a consistent follow-up process process in which they will be followed up with until that lead wants nothing to do with them. Or buy that's right. Or they buy, right? Or they buy.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

We did lead activation.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

This is that's exactly what you call it. Lead activation. So we have lead acquisition. So this is the this is the four-part process. Lead acquisition. Everybody has acquired enough leads in the most successful agencies, and lead activation. They all those leads are getting activated.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Right. You said Mr. Jason said machine, almost, and I want to be clear like it's not like this person is a machine and they're impossible to replicate. Quite the opposite. They're running a machine which is mechanical in that there's there's a you know, there's a system, there's a cadence to the whole thing, which makes it infinitely possible to model, right? Anybody could do it if they put the time and the effort in that instead of looking for the the golden lead, right? 100%. All right, so let's keep going. Right. And then I was talking about the conversation, right? So so you have those conversations, and what does that take us to?

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Well, an engaged prospect still isn't a customer, right? That's right. We need to convert them. We and we gotta we gotta get them a quote, which is the most transactional thing you can say. I even hate saying that because they can get a quote anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

But you you have to turn them into a customer, and which I don't even like that word. I'd rather have client.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Sounds like you can't say trusted client or trusted advisor something.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

A conversation isn't a sale. That's right. You gotta you you gotta get them through a quoting process that starts to build that trust, that connection. And that's the only way that you're gonna turn them into a client.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Right, right. And it's not having a you don't have a script. You don't like we we say script, but we what we I think mead what we're talking about that is having just kind of a methodology on how like some key points, some structure on the conversation that's gonna maximize the effects of of that conversation. And yeah, if if you're not using AI, this is a perfect opportunity to dive into that because not only could you build it, you could also use it to grade, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Yeah. We'll get into that later. We'll get into that. We are doing some phenomenally cool stuff in our agencies.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Yeah. Yeah. If you heard that uh cut the episode with the guy with uh Nima from Covoso, we got into a little bit of it. But the so now we're talking the conversion, sales conversion. So we have to have that conversation to get to the conversion. But just because we're selling doesn't necessarily mean we have a model. We used to, I remember before we got real consistent, we used to we'd have a great month. And I mean, you know, back then a great month seemed a lot better than what I would think now. But we could have a great month, and then the next month, I think there's a term about something in the bed, something the bed. We would do that. Like it would just not work out, right? The next month would just be a dud. And it was like, what? What's going on here? Well, we didn't have any system, we didn't have a model that we were following that just kept it going. You've got to the and it goes back to the first two things, the first two steps. You have to keep having those leads come in. I remember we had a great month. Oh, I could, but we could, we could, we don't have to work as hard on none as many quotes. We don't have to you start you start cutting the corners up front, and that's gonna come downstream. And then it's gonna hit this point where all of a sudden, well, we're not really close to anybody because now there's nobody in the pipeline anymore. Because we let it slide. And that's one thing that we that like I mean, no matter what, there has to be leads coming in every day. There has to be however many it takes for that funnel to run to get to the result that you need, those have to be coming in. Because the second you stop it, you don't see it, you don't see the pain right then. You see it in a few weeks, and every but every person that we tell it to, when it happens, they go, You were right. And it's just, well, yeah, because we did it a enough times, we've we've learned from it. Yeah. So yeah. So that's the that's uh sales conversion, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

And then Mr. Jason, you want to take a stab at what the what the fourth thing is?

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Yeah. And and kind of to your point, what you're saying, is you don't really have a model, even if you're doing all the steps right so far, we we don't have a model. We we need to have that system or that process. Like we we need to have it repeatable and we need to have it mapped out enough, what the pieces of it that we can inspect it, right? So that we can see during it's almost like a conveyor belt, right? As you put something on the conveyor belt, you want to make sure that it's going through the conveyor belt, right? Because remember, we're spending a lot of money, leads, telemarketers, agents, I mean, time, right? We want to make sure that as it's going through, that we can fix it before the outcome, which is sales at the end of the month and not hitting the goals, not hitting variable comp, not hitting bonus at the end of the year, all those things that come with it. Very expensive to lose when you're dumping all this money in the front. So you got to have that conveyor belt. Um and that's what we call sales optimization, right? So once we have that system, we can start improving that system in all those areas. And that's really where the magic happens. I like it reminds me of Michael Jordan, right? Yeah, he played three seasons without any championship when he first started. And he was good, but not the legend that we know him today because he he didn't have the right system when he started. I mean, he was a phenomenal phenomenal player. He didn't have the shoes either at the time, right? He didn't have the Nike endorsement. But uh, after three years, he he uh Phil Jackson became his coach. And Phil Jackson was Phil phenomenal. We'll we'll call him Phil Nomen. But he had a rock solid system, he had a track record with being able to coach teams. And so once Phil Jackson earned the trust of Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan started trusting in his systems, everything began to change for him and the organization. And Michael, from that point on, once he had the system, he went on to win six championships with the Bulls. He had five NBA MVPs. He was a 14-time All-Star and a three-time NBA All-Star MVP. All because the system. The coach brought the right system to him. Yep. And so, like, you can have the pieces, but without the system, you're not going to win. Because there's too many moving parts, right? Everything that we mentioned sounds simple because we tried to make it simple, right? When we were, we were like boiling it down when we were, when we were doing all of our research and everything for the book. And we were boiling down. Like, how do we make this simple? But there's a lot of pieces involved to each part of the system. And things can fall apart. It's almost like when you're when you're talking about it, it reminded me of those spinning plates. Yeah. It's like you could have pen spinning plates. Have you ever seen somebody do that with hen spinning plates? Yeah, Letterman. Yeah. And they're spinning. And the guy, you know, you you you keep seeing there, they start, you know, wobbling, and he's like running to all the different spinning plates. And that dude is barely keeping those things going. And that's a terrible place to be in because at some point you start dropping them. As soon as you drop one, dude, it all starts going.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Right. That's not a good system.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

No.

SPEAKER_00 23:08

A better system also seen on Letterman would be the speed grocery bagging. Like those guys had a system, right? They're putting the groceries in the bag as fast as possible, but they're putting them so the eggs don't break and all that. And it works out because they had a system, much like Michael Jordan. Right. But that final piece, this is the thing, is you could have you could have great lead acquisition, but not great lead activation. What happens? These leads suck, right? Or you could have great lead activation, great lead or great lead acquisition, great lead activation, but terrible sales conversion. Well, okay, there's something wrong on those conversations. What's going on there? Or you could have the first three and it works for a while, then it stops working. Well, are we tracking and measuring, right? If you're not tracking stuff, then you can't measure it. And I mean, we were just talking about this earlier. I mean, you don't even have like all you got to do is do the stuff now. And you can export what happened and dump the whole thing to to Claud or Chat GPT, and it's gonna tell you this is what's happening. Yeah. I mean, if you told me three years ago, I mean, if you told me three years ago that that would be the case, I'd say that's that's that is Looney Tunes, Mr. Jason, but it's true.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Yeah. AI has made the fundamentals so easy now. Right. There's no excuse now. Yeah. And so that's why when we wrote the book and the way we look at everything now is through the through the eyes of lead acquisition, lead activation, sales conversion, and sales optimization. And every single agency that crushes it in the business, have those four things dialed in. No pun intended.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Right. It's so it's almost you don't get to choose whether or not you can have those things. You can't say, I want to do that and I want to do that, but I don't want to waste my time with this. You can't. Won't work. It is then it's like the plates. Yeah. But what we do, what we do have the ability to do is choose who and what runs those things. Yep.

unknown 25:13

100%.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

That's the magic, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Yeah. So the missing piece, definitely the process. It's the multiplier. And it goes back to the old adage of what we truly believe is that great agencies don't find great salespeople. They build them. How do they build them? With that process. You can dump in any, you can dump in, you can place a human that doesn't, that that isn't that, like doesn't have that much idea of what even insurance is. You can place them in there and they can have success. Are you saying they're not the brightest bulb in the bunch? Well, I'm just saying that we used to try to find the Michael Jordan. I know. Yeah. You know what I mean? But instead of trying to find the Michael Jordan, why don't we become the Phil Jackson? Mmm. Where we can just take somebody that's willing to learn, place them in, and make make them awesome.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Because he did the same thing with Shaq and Kobe. Truth. I think he has 11 rings. I think Phil Jackson has 11 rings, one for each finger, one for all 11 fingers. So I like how you pivoted on that one. Well, you know, it's just always thinking. So um I think this is what we should do. Yeah. Because I have to go to the doctor. Um, I think that we should we should wrap it. And then what I'd like to do is come back and go deep into each one of these. Yeah. Are you feeling how do you feel about that?

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Yeah, we'll go, we'll come back and we'll talk about why building this actually got easier when everything else got harder. Because I'll tell you what it's gotten harder in a lot of ways. It has. But there's always an easy way through the hard. Don't you dare, Mr. Craig. Don't you dare. We're rotating. Oh no, I didn't.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

All right. You go to the doctor. I hope you're okay. Everything's fine. It's it's uh I don't know about that. It's uh rudimentary or routine. Okay. That's good. Let's leave it at that. Yeah. Routine for these bumps. Anyway. Anyway. There's no bumps. No bumps. All right.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Until we get back. Until we come back.