SPEAKER_02 0:00

Ooh, ooh.

SPEAKER_01 0:01

You didn't even change. You're wearing the same clothes, Mr. Jason. Last one was part dih. Today is part tre. So why building this whole thing that we've been talking about actually got easier when it just seems like everything in the agency got harder, right? I mean, we were just talking to somebody about the phone and how much more complicated it is these days. You know, 30 years ago, you could pick up uh a white pages, start dialing away on your rotary phone, and there was no barrier. You would get through to the person. You know what I mean? A rotary phone? Sure.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

You know, the old Remember that phone that was like a push button, but it still made the Yeah. Those were the worst. Yeah. Anyway, I knew I'd throw you off.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

You did. Well, I actually wanted to throw you under the bus, but I was like, is that appropriate for the podcast? Sure. Well, I was gonna say, remember remember that one time that you you just started dumping on one of our guests all this stuff that you don't like?

SPEAKER_02 1:05

Well, sometimes you need a you need a uh an ear. Too soon. You won't listen anymore. That's true. Okay, that's not even true.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

No sad, no lack. Sometimes I got fan storms to trail back.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

You will, you always are so so patient that you say, that sounds real hard, Mr. Craig.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

It that's what I do now because I've learned how to communicate with women. Well said. And the one woman listener just tuned up. That's it. Last one. All right. So I think after the last time that we spoke, we talked about the four-part system. And I know what a lot of people are probably thinking that to build this out with all the parts to manage and keep running, it's a lot, right? Because all four of those things have to work together.

SPEAKER_03 2:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

All four of those categories: lead acquisition, lead activation, sales conversion, sales optimization. And then there's a lot of stuff under there that that's a blanket. You know, those are blanket categories that covers a lot. So I mean, it's just don't bring Michael Jackson's kid into this. Oh, that's right. And they all have to work together. But with more leads, you got more people, more tech, more training, more management. More leads, more people. What? What are you talking about? But when you separate those categories out, it actually gets a little bit more simple, don't you think? So let's talk about how more of all this stuff, how to make less, less of it. How about that? More for less. Mo for less. Okay. So let's dive into the first one lead acquisition. One of the hurdles that we run into. Um, and and I I remember, I remembered asking this question so many times. What is the cost per lead? Right? That was the that was what we look for. How do we get the lowest cost lead? Yep. Right? You certainly want to be discerning.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Right. You don't want a $50 lead. Sure. But three bucks, four bucks, five bucks, seven bucks, ten bucks, somewhere in that thing, it's gonna, it may not matter.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

And I think it's a natural question because when you when you talk about lead acquisition and what we talked about last time is they have to have enough leads, right? And so if somebody's sitting in a seat, you don't get a hold of five leads, it's like, well, how many freaking leads do we need to buy or get? And if it and if we do, what is this gonna cost me? But that's that is definitely after doing this so many times, that is the wrong question, and that's not what you and I ask anymore. And so, I mean, I guess to your point, you do have to use discernment. We're not gonna buy $50 leads unless we know what. But you're gonna close one out of every two. Or yeah, I would take one out of four. Yeah. Definitely one out of three. Right. But that's not the the reality. We started diving into some of your leads from last year and the economics and your system, and we ran through the numbers. But here's the deal. And I think this is the question that you and I asked at the beginning, because we started buying with the question of what's the cheapest lead? Well, what are they? Age leads, right? Yeah. So we were getting sub-1 leads. So let's say I mean that was also at the wild, wild west of calling leads too.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

It was. It was early on. There it didn't matter who you called and how many times.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

And TCPA was not where it's at today.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

No, wasn't really yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

So let's take let's take a scenario here where we have a seven dollar live lead. What does that mean? They're opting in, they have a digital certificate. I think $7 would be pretty that might be low for what it costs, but let's just say $7. And then you might have like a dollar age lead. Well, if you have the systems in place to call them, you would think that you could most likely get a client at a lower rate. Wouldn't you think that? Yeah. You would think. Makes sense. Yeah. Can't you? Well, until we started looking into it. So yeah, you're right. According to your sales last year, you were closing about one out of 33 leads. So if you were buying a $7 lead, that's about a $230 what? CPS. Cost per sale. Ooh, cost per sale isn't the cost per lead. No, it's not. No, it's and the cost per sale is the cost per result, really, right? Uh-huh. And a lot goes into that. So you have a you have callers or you have your agents. Let's hope you don't have your agents calling on those leads because they're gonna burn out, but we'll get to that later. So if you have it, it takes you around 33 leads. So that's a $231 cost per sale. If you have the dollar leads, that could take up to 575 leads to make one sale because they're bad numbers. You start burning out. I don't know if that podcast has come up yet when we talked to the to the phone, to the phone guy, Mr. Kinboso, Nima. But I mean, he even we even talked about on there, like you can burn out phone numbers and stuff, right? Like, so if you're calling all these really bad non-optated leads, plus let's be honest, they're not TCPA compliant. You're gonna have to run them through a do not call spreadsheet. You're still running, you're still gambling at that point, too. But that's another conversation. But it could take you like 575 leads. That means that's a $575 cost per sale, which is roughly 2.5 times the cost per sale. If we're only looking at the lead cost, this is just the lead cost. Could you think about it? What about calling the leads and the time? There's costs that incur, more costs incur than just the costs of the lead, right? Preach. Yeah. So that's that's that's 2.5 times just on that scenario. And that's a real scenario. And the and the whole idea here is don't judge the lead, but you got to judge the economics of it. Not the price of the lead, but the price of the sale, right? You're so quiet. You're just you're like in learning. You are. You're like a sponge.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

Like a sponge, like sponge, like you know, SpongeBob.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Yeah. So what's the other problem with buying leads? What with buying leads based on price? No, just like that. Was one of the big epiphanies that we had. No, like when you're buying a lead, you're you're buying for cost per sale, not cost per lead. Yeah. But there's another, there's something else that is consistent.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

Being consistent with your buying of the leads.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Right. So jumping on that roller coaster. Has anyone ever heard of the lead roller coaster? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

It's not fun like that.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

No, I think you were talking about it in the other, one of the other uh episodes where it was very inconsistent, right? Because you didn't have that system. So you'd have one great month, one bad month, a good month, bad month, maybe a couple bad months, maybe a couple good months. But it was up and down. Sales would slow down, so you turn the leads on. Then what happens? You barely get any sales from the leads. Right. These leads suck. Yeah. And then you you say, these leads suck. And so what you what do you do? You turn them off. And then and then a few weeks later, your agents start closing some of them. Oh my gosh, you know what? Those leads weren't so bad. Maybe I'll turn them back on. So then you turn them back on. Crickets, crickets again. You know what? Maybe it was a fluke. And then you turn them off. A few weeks later, they start closing them again. And so the reality is that there is a four to 12 week la lag on leads to close rate, right? Yep. There sure is. We've called it things in the past, like you gotta bake the leads. Uh we've said things like you gotta fill the pipeline. Marinate. You gotta marinate them. Yeah, I like that one. That one's good. I like the cooking.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

I love a good marinade.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

I love I love a good cooking analogy.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

You need to baste them. We could baste them, we could massage them. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

You could you could split-cock them. And it's crazy because it'll like talk about the system. Don't fillet the leads though. From when you buy it, the lead, they have to go through the process of all the dials. Yep. Right? So they go through the dials for the frontline callers. If you have people on the frontline making those calls, they got to go through the calls of all your salespeople. And so each person has a pipeline. You got to fill the pipeline and then they start closing. This is not like it used to be. There's more activity needed. So you got to realize a lead source, you're not going to know exactly if it's terrible for three months. I would say the leading indicators are if they're just the wrong number. You know, or like, yeah, totally wrong information.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Or just consistently, it's just crappy contact rate. Right. But but then again, yeah, it could be the numbers.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

It could be your phone numbers, yeah. But that's where we need to inspect, right? And it that becomes really easy to do if it's consistent. So if we're buying, let's say, just for this conversation, 10 leads a day, and you're starting to see spikes or dips, but you're buying the same amount of leads every day. Now we have data to tell us what's going on. Instead of we're buying, not buying, now we don't even know. Now we have nothing to look at because nothing's consistent. You got to have the consistent lead flow. And so today's decision is next month's pipeline and consistent leads equal consistent sales. So if you want consistent sales, make sure you have consistent leads. It's the front of the pipeline, it's the front of the funnel that you and I call the telefunnel, right? I don't know if you're tuning out or you're soaking in. I'm soaking in. I'm like, hmm. I don't know if it's under this podcast episode, but it should be. You build an AI skill called the lead analyzer. Lead source autopsy.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

And uh, it could be called the lead analyzer. It could, but it's called the lead source autopsy.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Okay, it's called the lead source autopsy.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

That's a little picture of you and I at Doctor Suits.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

You can put this skill, I believe, in Claude or ChatGPT. You can put it either. Either one. You export 30 to 90 days of leads by source, spend contacts, quotes, and sales, and it calculates your acquisition by source. And it just gives you some good insight. Now we're now we're making decisions by data. Data. And we're using AI. I don't like AI, Mr. Jason. You don't have to like it. It it neither likes you or doesn't like you. It don't care. It doesn't care. But I'll tell you one thing: it's a it's a nifty little tool to give you a good direction of where you're going. I might say it's the best tool I've come across. It's a good one. We use it all the time. I mean, why do we why do we need to to to have data? Not for not data from uh Star Trek the new generation, but can you imagine? That might be better than AI. Yeah, that would be.

SPEAKER_02 12:10

Did he have those he had those weird sunglasses things on? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

But honestly, if you were driving somewhere for the first time and you didn't know how to get there because you'd never been there before, you'd probably whip out your phone, right? Yep. Go to the Google Maps or Apple Maps, depending on, you know, I would use Apple Maps. I prefer Waze. Okay. That's Apple. Or that's Google. Google owns Waze. Yeah. Oh, they bought it. Yeah. And then you'd put in the destination. And it would reroute you if there was an accident or something like that, it would reroute you to the quickest way to get to the destination. Because it has what? Huh? Because it has what? GPS. Data. And the data tell the data tells you, hey, there's an accident. Go around it, and then this is the quickest way.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

So that's what we're trying to do here.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

You could also not use it and just guess. Yeah. Or sound happy. Or you could say, you know what? I don't trust these cars.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

I gotta ride my horse. Right. Very true. So that's the leads. That's a lead acquisition. Uh-huh. Yeah. So we gotta keep those leads, leads rocking. But next stage, maybe, maybe the leads don't suck. Okay. Maybe you're actually getting good leads, but you're you're saying the leads suck. We've already checked the roller coaster and stuff. So what else do we need to check here? Well, here's something that you that you don't think about going into all the all the dials, is leads don't answer right around 80% of the time, right? So if we have sales producers dialing these leads, and we know, we know that 80% of the time no one's gonna pick up the phone, they are sitting there at their desk, staring at a screen, thinking, this sucks. I'm a glorified, I'm a glorified telemarketer, right? Right. And that licensed producer is probably pretty expensive, at least out here in California, very expensive. Yeah, here too. And they're just sitting there listening to dials, ringing, voicemails, repeat. They they start, they have a computer, so what do they start looking for? Indeed, to get the hell out of the agency. Indeed, they do. So they don't have to sit there and do nothing. Licensed salespeople are expensive. The turnover is expensive. Like the last thing you want to do is create a situation in which they all leave, right? Yeah, dude.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

The cost of that is a lot. You and I argue about the difference in that, but it's astronomical. It is according to the data. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

From Star Trek. No, not that data. So we took we we did an amazing deep dive in your agency, which took us a long time years ago to do. And using the the AIs really didn't take a long time this time. But we we analyzed, it's hard for me to say that after saying it the wrong way. We analyzed all of your sales last year, right? Yep. And we were we ran a scenario. And we said, if we take all those sales, what is the probability of selling based on how many dials that we made? So, like if we made three dials, how many dials would it take till we got to a sale? And if we only made three dials, it would take 791 dials. That's insane in the membrane.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

I still think I think it's more, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Yeah, maybe. If you made six dials, it 2.5x the return. So now it would only take 319 dials, right? And then this is where it got funky, funky cold Medina, if you will.

SPEAKER_03 15:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Is that if it if you made 21 dials on the leads, you would close one out of 59, which is a 13x difference. And then we just ran the number just for fun. Uh, if you made 100 dials, which is one out of 15, 53x, but it directly shows more attempts created more sales.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

And and having salespeople do this, well, they're probably gonna hit three dials to six dials. Let's be totally honest. They're never gonna hit 21 dials because the sheer volume. Yeah, the sheer volume that they need to hit plus the sale, plus talking to the people after the sale, getting the paperwork, whatever. You know what I mean? Like there's just not enough time in the day. It's ludicrous.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

But you don't even with even with a a lot of Tibs, you could end up not hitting all your leads. Right. By by day 30. Think of if you're buying 200 leads a day, boom, 200, 200, 200, 200. It starts to stack and you can't turn it off. You can't say, nope, I'm not gonna get leads today because that affects downstream. So it's part of the it's like there's breakage.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

And I know the there's two different kinds of agents, I think, that listen. It's the agents that just want to get by and coast. They just don't want to go below those numbers that the carrier are requiring you to do, or maybe they just want to hit that variable comp number, or maybe they just want to max their bonus, right? Maybe you don't want to grow to this crazy scale that we've seen some agencies do, right? So either you're an agent that wants to scale, you want to grow big, or you just want to hit specific numbers to reach bonuses. I think those are two, regardless of each one, either one, knowing this gets you to your end result. Without knowing this, dude, you're flying blind. So in this scenario, I would say maybe the leads don't suck, right? Maybe they just don't have the dials. So leads without activation is just a bigger pile of waste sales.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

And if you're like scratch your head on those dubbers that he went over, you got to think of it this way, where as you get, as you move through the leads and you get you put six dials on it, well, there's time that elapses over that period and leads either fall off, DNC'd, whatever, right? So your your pool of leads has a decay aspect to it, right? Like it starts like it gets smaller even though it's in it's like it's the leaky bucket. The leaky bucket is the best analogy. And the older they are, the more they're leaking.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

My book has got a hole in it.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

That's right. The sig the signal's blues.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Yeah. So which we've had that that scenario too, where we bought too many leads and there's just not enough, there's not enough follow-up to make to turn those leads into sales, you know. That's where this this really is. There's like an art and a science to it. An art and a science. You're right. An art vandalay. All right. So here's another number for export. Yeah. Importer, exporter. From your sales last year. It was roughly 430 dialing attempts across the teams per sale. So roughly 13 dials per lead, about a 3% lead-to-sale ratio. So it took about 33 leads to sale. I think we already said that. But it made me think when we looked at those numbers, it's like, how many agents are making 430 leads? I'll never forget when my there was a point with my agency when I hired all those people at the first year after we get hit that bonus. And I the metric was every sales agent had to make 400 dials. And dude, that's when, you know, three months later they all quit. And it was like, it's just not sustainable. Put it this way. If you wouldn't do it, why, why would you like if you think it sucks, why would you have somebody else? Yeah. At least for a sales agent. Well, yeah. So who who what sales agent's making 400 dials? Nobody. Well, if you did have a sales agent that was that big of a stud doing 400 dials, or stud at, wouldn't you want to take that off the plate for them so that they could be more of a stud of closing?

SPEAKER_02 20:06

Well, my thinking, my thinking is even if it took even if they did it and they loved it, right? Okay. How how many hours of the day does 400 and really at the it's more like 600 you need to bake, right? To be a full, like to really crush it. Okay, let's just say 400. How how many hours does 400 dials take? Five, six? So then how are they gonna do 10 quotes?

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Right. Yeah, and if they if they get the one sale from those dials, it at some point they're gonna be like, I want two sales. So what is that? 800 860? Yeah, have fun. Yeah, it's crazy. At that point, you have a capacity problem. Right. And I think a lot of times in the past, I've pushed my agent before we had callers, I would push my agents past the capacity. I thought there was a motivation problem, but there's a capacity problem. Right. And if a great producer can make, to your point, one sale a day doing that, dude. He could easily make three sales a day not doing that.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

If he could do it pushing that size boulder up a mountain, take it, take the boulder away. They could definitely do three, three times.

SPEAKER_02 21:15

Yeah. It's kind of like McDonald's, right? You think you have they have one person, let's say in and out. I think it's better. They have the fry person, they have the burger person, they have the buns person. They they have it all mapped out in departments so they can have a line out the door.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

100%. Yeah. There's always a line out the door. The constraint is the conversations, not the selling ability. And dude, there's no way you're gonna hire an or B player, even a B player, that's gonna want to stay in a situation where they're doing grunt work, right? You're never gonna have C players that won't do the grunt. Yeah. It's like it'd be like hiring somebody for a vice president position in a company and then having them. Mop the floors every single day and washing the the the toilets. Eventually they're gonna be like, I didn't sign up for this. This isn't what I'm good at. Do you wash the toilets that scrub? I guess scrubbing the toilets, right?

SPEAKER_02 22:12

I wonder why. Why don't you wash the toilets?

SPEAKER_01 22:14

I don't know. Or worse. Yeah, so that's why we always have callers activating the leads. Pro producers convert the leads, right? So you have a caller's talk about capacity. A caller can make 600 dials a day, 600 plus. And and let's say you break that up into two people, right? You're never gonna get 600 dials out of two sales producers. Not consistently and not to a point where you're gonna, they're gonna be with you very long, right? But if you break it up into two positions, you gotta have a caller doing 600 dials, and you could have a producer doing eight to ten households a day quoting.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

You don't have the quarterback throwing the ball down the field and then running down there to catch it for the touchdown. He doesn't have the capacity. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

And I used to think the long talk time was a myth. Like there's no way to get somebody on the phone for four, four hours a day, over half their day on the phone just talking to people.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

Which is crazy. It's only half the day. Yeah. But you know how long they're on the phone at Geico? Eight hours.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

They don't have one minute of downtime?

SPEAKER_02 23:15

Well, okay. Let's call it seven. Just for fun.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

That is fun.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

But I I literally, the way I understand it from ex-employees is the phone hangs up, then it rings. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

So you know, you break up the two jobs. Could you have each individual sales agent doing four quotes a day, 300 dials, and three hours, two to three hours of talk time? Dude, I have not seen two sales agents doing that much on their own. Just like, right? But you could get a caller on the front line and a producer, and you're equaling the same amount of two sales producers doing that. Right. You know what I mean? So it's like, dude, make it easy. It doesn't have to be difficult.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

I used to, my my tool for, well, we're not getting enough sales. I better get another producer. So I'd take that money and I'd bring in another producer, and it would just cut the pie, the same size pie, into more slices, more people doing less because there just isn't the inputs, right? There's no lead acquisition or activation.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

Right. Acquisition creates the opportunities. Activation turns those into conversations. And hundreds of dials come off of the sales producer's plates. They stay longer in your agencies. And really, when you and I had this conversation initially, it was like, how do we just triple the sales producer's sales? Right. Because I'd rather triple their sales, have callers on the back end that are a third of their price. And now they're doing triple the activity, triple the sales. And here's the crazy thing. And I don't think a lot of people think about this. If they're if their sales tripled, that means they're commission tripled. That means they're getting paid a lot more, right? It also means your commission tripled. Yeah. So, but you're giving them a lot of the commission, but that's fine. Because A, you're not paying it out of pocket. The carrier's paying it out, paying it for you. So even though they're commission tripled, it's not like you're paying them more without it coming out of your own pocket.

SPEAKER_03 25:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

That's a good deal right there. It is.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

I like to also think of it this way that continuity of the people, let's say situation A is, you know, they last, you you grind them, they're making all these dials themselves. They they burn out after six months, they bounce, now you got to look for somebody. And if you don't have somebody ready, now you're down. A producer, there's an empty seat, you have a you know, a seat in the in your dialer or whatever you use that you're paid for. And until somebody is producing again, you just lost that continuity. Now you probably take now you probably have now you're buying less leads so you can save some money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, you're it's like you're restarting the engine again. So in that scenario B, the one that is providing for for the team, there isn't that downtime. So think of just as two lines going next to each other. How much more premium is written in the one where there isn't that downtime? I mean, you could it could be three months, right? Three, four months, who knows? Right? Yep. So so that amount, and then oh, I pulled leads back because I wanted to say, buddy, it's a waste to buy leads with. Oh, okay. Well then that's another month that it's gonna take for those to marinade and and so on and so forth, right? So it's it's it's insane when you put it next to each other, right? If that person wrote 30k, well, you just lost 120k in premium.

SPEAKER_03 26:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

That would have been written. A hundred percent. Lifetime value of that's 60,000. Rough numbers. Call 50,000.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

Another byproduct of this is you know, I just had to hire two sales agents. And within a day and a half, I had them a day and a half because of all this process that we have. I had them on the phones and they were producing sales in less than a week for the agency. I I don't know what onboarding times are for other people, but when I first started, they were six months before I like knew if they were good or not, knew if they could handle it. And then I got it down to three months, and I was like, three months is pretty good, right? But now it's like, dude, within a week, they're they're crushing it. A week, dude.

SPEAKER_02 27:36

Well, and why don't you share what you shared with me about the one that was struggling a little bit? As far as not having sales for a week or whatever, and then you want to save it.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Yeah, we'll we'll save that. That's a that's a uh that makes a different point, but I like that point as well. But there are ways to just there are ways to dominate this game. Because when you have it set up in this fashion, you're just going to the different areas of the of the funnel and you're just how do I optimize? How do I optimize? Right. But I I I would say when you have it set up like this, you can hire someone and within a week, they're pr they're making money for your agency. Within a week, oh, it's so good. So good. So and I think we'll have it under this video. But you made an AI calculator. I did. I think you did it again, Mr. Craig.

SPEAKER_02 28:27

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

Go on. Of like you put in what you want to write for the month, the cost per lead, all that stuff. Do you still have that? Are we are we giving that out?

SPEAKER_02 28:37

Okay. It's on the uh we could drop the drop the link in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 28:43

For sure.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Let's do let's do it. So how do we turn repetitions into sales? Right? Sales conversion. What are we gonna do for this? I think the easiest way when you and I were talking about this is to break it down into three things. And it's one opener, five stories, ten objections. And I think if you can get that down, that that's the 80-20 principle right there. That will that 20% will hand will carry the 80% of what a sales agent needs in a script to convert to a sale. Right? And like we like you said to me once, small, small hinges swing big doors. They do. And if this is all you practice, you will be dominating because repetition creates mastery. Repetition is the mother of skill. And so why is the opener so important? And I know it seems so stupid. I, you know, clearly I was just doing this recently with my new sales agents, but that opener makes all the difference because we've seen it in the data. When you get a lead on the phone, somebody makes an opinion of somebody within the first, first, what is it, three seconds or something like that? So the way you come out of the gates is everything. And so we've seen a difference of about 50% of the amount of quotes that you get to just by the opener, just by how we structure the opener. And most people handle the opener like they're talking to their mom or their friend or whatever, right? Like, oh, I'm busy. And they just kind of let them go. If you just, if you just acknowledge whatever they say, I don't have time. I totally get it. This won't take long. And then acknowledge, agree, and then question. That alone, you will get twice as many quotes from the same amount of leads. And it seems so stupid. It's like it's such a it's such a little thing. Why do I need to practice? Hey Sam, how's your day going? Why do I need to say that over and over again?

SPEAKER_02 30:42

Because when you get up to bat, you get nervous because Randy Johnson's over there throwing a hundred mile-an-hour fastball at you.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

Dude, it's like the That's a it's so crazy. In case you didn't know that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

He actually hit a bird one time here in Tucson during spring training. I was there. A bird flew across and got hit by a hundred mile an hour fastball and exploded. Ooh. Yeah, it was pretty crazy. Did you watch that? I did. I was there, yeah. It was pretty wild. We're like, what did what just happen? We I just thought that somebody threw a bunch of feathers out there. But we digress.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

Okay. Okay, that's so that's number one. Number two, five coverage stories. You explained this one.

SPEAKER_02 31:22

Five coverage stories? Well, allow me to grab my notes here. Five coverage stories. Just just having, well, it's a little story that has to do with each each line of coverage. Okay. So, not like you've said this a lot, but I think we've talked about it a lot, where for some reason, once somebody gets into the agency and they get on the phone, they think that they have to talk in their insurance voice and they have to be, I have to be very professional. And it's like, yes, of course you need to be professional. So don't act like an idiot, but you also need to have some life, right? If you're not talking to them like a human, then the AI is going to be talking better than you pretty soon. So it's at the end of the day, we need to make it fun. Make make it because nobody wants to talk about this. Nobody cares. No matter how much you may love talking about liability, they don't. It becomes a liability. Right. And if you don't believe me, go home to your spouse and start telling them about liability coverage and what it means. And it'll be a very dull evening. So it's having a story, right? Liability is the first thing. You mind if I share a quick story? They'll say yes. And then, you know, um, I could go into what it all means and everything. I don't want to do that. I just want to tell you a quick story about what happened to one of our clients here at the agency, and then blah, blah, blah, right? You have a story that actually has to do with that coverage that makes it interesting. Because if you have something interesting to talk about, then they're actually going to lean in and listen a little bit. But it, but if you don't, they're going to be looking at their phone, they're not going to be paying attention, and you're you have no rapport. And then when you get to the part where you ask for the business, it's much more challenging. Then you have to deal with all the objections. But the easiest way to eliminate all the objections is to make them like you. Right. And that's and that's certainly by not by talking about what each coverage means. You can tell them what each coverage means, but but but do it by telling the story about it. Yep. This is collision. Why it's really important? Well, I know you're probably a great driver. You know, we pulled your thing. Yeah, you you've you've never had an accident. Here's the thing: all those other people out there, have you noticed that they're good drivers? No, huh? Yeah, I mean, if one of them hits you and one of them doesn't have insurance, this is what would happen. Imagine being on the side of the road and blah blah blah blah blah, right? No, it's covered. That's what's great.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

That's why you have the collision. And the whole point of this is, dude, stories sell. We've you and I have talked about this a lot, even outside in other businesses with with selling the stuff that we've done. It's like everything comes down to stories. And even when I was talking to my agents this morning, we're talking about like if most people do one thing, then then maybe that's not the best way to go about it. So everybody's going, this is uh per accident, this is per occurrence, blah, blah, blah. It's like, dude, everyone's gonna tune out. So if most agents are doing that, dude, just talk. Sound real, sound like a friend. Because one of the coolest things I've ever heard is like, you know, when do people buy? When they're happy. When they feel like it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:33

And that's when they're happy.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

It's probably pretty important to make them feel like it. You know what I mean? What makes somebody feel? Stories make them feel. Uh-huh. You know, numbers and and statistics don't make somebody feel. Unless you're talking to an engineer.

SPEAKER_02 34:48

Yeah. But if you're talking to an engineer from Raytheon or something, then sure. Go into your nerd talk, no offense to any engineers. Because that's I'd like it like that. You know, the I'd I'd have fun with the nerdy talk.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

But yeah. But I think the point behind this, though, is you have sales agents in your agency. They're going to try to do the right thing. They don't understand how they sound. So if you can just get five stories from them, practice the five stories of the five most important coverages on the policy, dude, they're going to sound awesome. It's like, again, small hinges swing big doors. And then the final one is 10 objections. There are never more than 10 objections that your agents hear. That will cover 95% of objections, right? If that's the case, and they're probably hearing five of them the most, or maybe even less than that, three to three to five the most. Practice those. Why? Because I I've seen it for 10 years, over 80 agents in my agency of the anxiety. They go through the quote, they get to that place that they they're going to get an objection. They know they're going to get an objection. Why? Because we're only closing one call closes 5% of the policies. So they're know that they're going to get an objection. And when they do, they get so much anxiety about it. It's just because they haven't practiced what to say. They haven't talked about the fact that you're going to get an objection. Well, how do we handle them? Practice that. So when it comes up, they're just the anxiety levels down. And if you can do that, it it changes everything for them because now they don't sound like they're babbling. I don't know what to what else to say. Those are the those three things right there. And just go over it with them. It doesn't even matter what the object, like the specific method that you use to objection handling. The point is practice it so you don't sound like an idiot. Right.

SPEAKER_02 36:40

Everybody like I could fill a room up with everybody if we said, hey, we're going to teach you how to overcome every objection in this thing. Everybody shows up because they want to know the secret. But there isn't a secret. They're going to object, and you have to be okay with that. You have to anticipate that that will happen. Not like when Craig was selling cars and was worried that they were going to not want the car. You know, it's said I was, I'd focus on, oh no, they're going to say no and then I'm going to fold. Instead of actually practicing what to say when they say it. And the best and even better way to do it and prevent it is to create the rapport ahead of time. And I know everybody will build rapport, build rapport. Yes, create that rapport by telling the story. Like you're doing it throughout. It isn't like, hey, how's the weather? Great. Okay, wonderful. Now we have rapport. That isn't how it works. It's yeah, you know, you build it throughout.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

You earn trust. Yep. 100%. Okay, so that's the script. And on sales conversion, that's a huge one to practice right there. Sales tell you that you have a problem, but the funnel tells you where the problem's at, right? We got the we got leads coming in, we got the frontline callers making the dials. You have the contacts made, you have the transfer being made, you have a licensed agent quoting it, and then you have the close or nurture to close, right? That's the the the funnel that we're talking about. And and sales are at the end of the process, but we want to find out where in the process is broken so we can fix it. And I think that's that's where I see a lot of agents have problems is because they set the things up right and it's it's working, but it's not profitable yet. Because it's new. You're filling pipelines, you're learning leads, you're learning contact. There's there's a there's quite a bit involved, you know. You just need to tweak it. And I think the optimization part is where agents don't spend enough time. So, how do we optimize this thing, Mr. Craig?

SPEAKER_02 38:46

How how don't we? Well, I mean, we gotta we have to track and measure. Yes. It's critical to to know what data to look for and then to slice it, dice it. And the great thing is, is it's so much easier now. So much easier. Right. So an optimization of of of the folks, you gotta listen to the calls, and now you don't have to listen to the calls because you can actually just dump the calls into, you know, once you take out personal identifiable information and all that, you you make sure that you're dumping clean data in there, but you you could pull, you could get valuable, valuable intel from all the calls. You may be surprised. And I've been surprised here and there.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

There there are little, again, small hinges swing big doors. I would say this a five-number scorecard tells you more about a producer's day than watching them for eight hours. Some agents feel like sitting next to their agents, looking, listening. Oh my gosh. And like being involved is the way to like, I'm uh that's the way to be responsible in your agency. Dude, a five-number scorecard changes that. Because at the end of the day, if I look at these five, five numbers, I know exactly where the problem is. I love these little awkward pauses. I'm hoping that they land.

SPEAKER_02 40:02

They're good. I mean, they need a little bit of thought.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Yeah. So what are what are those five numbers? I'm giving you a dramatic pause. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

Dramatic pause.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

Number one, the dials. How many dials are you making? I used to think that that was the most important one. It's not. Number two, talk time. It's the first most important. Well, I had no idea, but there is a direct correlation with sales and talk time. Uh-huh. Out of all the numbers, that is one of the most important. Transfers. How many transfers are they taking? Are they aggressive? Are they actually trying to take transfers? Are they passive? Tells a lot about attitude. Quotes, how many quotes are they getting for the day? I mean, that's the number one leading indicator for sales, right? And then, of course, sales, which is the one that we used to always track, and that's it. But that's hey, guess what? Guess what, Mr. Craig? It's too late. It's too late. It's too late if that's the only number you're tracking. Is that Def Leopard?

SPEAKER_00 40:57

Too late, too late, too late to say goodbye.

SPEAKER_01 41:02

But dude, though right there, you could diagnose the problem that your sales agent is happening that that that they're having without guessing. And in one minute, the scorecard tells you more about a producer's day than sitting next to them for eight hours. Wouldn't you say? Day say. All right. So that's enough, Mr. Jason. Okay, let's optimize this even more. What what's another small thing that we can do during the day that dramatically changes? And I call this a target meeting. 15 minutes. You can catch a drifting agent in 24 hours, not 30 days. Again, this is stuff that you usually don't see until it's too late. But because you're having a daily meeting that's only 15 minutes, trust me, you can spend 15 minutes to make sure that all that lead spend, all the spend is going, is being invested properly. 15 minutes. And it's got to be consistent. 100% consistent. This is the one thing that makes the agents successful. And if you don't do this, they will stray. It's the biggest hinge on the biggest door. Dude, every single agency that we talk to, it's like the number, it's like the thing that we ask them, are you doing daily meetings? No. Well, sometimes, well, there you go. I mean, I don't know what else to tell you. If you're not doing daily meetings, but what do I talk about? What do I talk about? Here's the thing. I call them a target meeting. Why? Because we got to know our targets for the day. Where did we miss yesterday? What are we doing today? That's it. Like, so so what do we talk about? We go over the scorecard, the five numbers. We say them out loud. Why? Because we all hold each other responsible. Accountability, targets versus actual. We know the targets, but what what what are we actually hitting? What was where where do we get stuck yesterday? Hot seats, what's stuck? What changes today? How can we tweak, make a small tweak to yesterday to make today better? And then recognition. Dude, everybody likes recognition. Recognize those agents that are crushing it. It'll help the other agents do better. All you know, rising tides, all ships. Right.

unknown 43:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:08

Well, and and you could find, especially now, right? I hate to harp on the AI, but it's here to stay. And you can extract something good from a day of somebody calling. There may be a plenty of stuff that that is that may need some improvement, and that's great too. But you want to hit on the positives too.

SPEAKER_01 43:27

Right. Dude, and here's a here's a tip for this, for this one. The daily meeting, if you're not going to hold it yourself, have your assign someone to it, give it a bit of a structure like we did, have them do it on Zoom, have something called fathom.video. Go into the meetings. It's an AI note taker, and then have them uh send that to you daily. And you can run that through AI and just say, hey, does anyone, does it seem like anyone's not feeling feeling it today? This is our daily, give it context. This is our daily. If they don't got the feels what's that? They don't got the feels. Yeah. And dude, every day, you don't even have to be in the meeting and you can tell how they're all doing. Anything I need to look out for, I'm the agency owner. Boom. But you you should probably be in the meetings. I will say.

SPEAKER_02 44:12

At least in the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 44:13

Yeah. It's only 15 minutes. Dude, and this really like those meetings isn't one more thing to manage. It's the one thing that keeps everything managed. It's the lever. It's the lever.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

I I think it's but no, no, I know it's much more effective to spend those 15 minutes than it is to sit over their shoulder all day long. Yeah. Nobody wants anybody over their shoulder. Nobody wants that. They're they're not going to do better with somebody over their shoulder. 100%. Whether or not I used to not understand that I'm not one of the buddies out there. I'm still the boss. They're still talking shit. They're still it's you're the boss. If you're the boss, make a boss move and it extract yourself. Yep. Nothing's been more powerful for my agency than me getting the F out of the way.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_02 44:59

And for me.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

Yeah. So that's the that's going a little bit more into the weeds of the of the system. But then next time, Craig, since this is an hour and that's ridiculous, we gotta talk about the numbers and not not the numbers of the agency build ROI. Like Okay. I may have put something together. I want to know. I want to know whether or not we know that we know what to do, but should we do it? Right. We need to answer that question. Should we put this kind of thing together? Should we invest? All those questions. Does this make sense for me? There's a few numbers that are kind of a big deal that we're going to go through, but there's one number hiding right in front of most agencies that most owners overlook. And that is what we'll talk about next week. Oh, that's right. You better not, you better not give it away. Ooh, I'm excited. Sounds like a cliffhanger. This is like, you know how they say working in the business or working on the business? That was this the conversation was working in the business, but this is working on the business. This is like, how do we like, how do we make some serious money doing that? It's possible.

SPEAKER_02 46:10

There you go. That's a mailbag, my friend. And that's it. You can put on your take off your work sweater and put on your your outdoor coat and take off, Mr. Rogers.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

And if you want some of the AI tools that Craig and I were talking about, look in the show notes, grab and use them. And that's a bag.