227. How to Lead with a Broker of Record without saying Broker of Record w/ Nick Aube

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Speaker 2 In the beginning, though, when I was selling BOR, when I started doing it, I didn't want to talk about price

Speaker 2 because it was like, that's beneath me. I'm not going to discuss

Speaker 2 premium. Like, are you kidding me? Like, if you want somebody to talk premium, go, that guy will quote you all day long.
Like, I couldn't get myself to do it.

Speaker 2 But as I went through it over the years, and then ultimately I see leaving, you know, and doing what I'm doing now. And actually being able to go, you know, talk with, you know, hire other coaches.

Speaker 2 Here's what I was doing and really dissect the process. It's like, holy shit, that's all we should be talking about in the sales process.

Speaker 2 Because if you think about it, that's their number one problem. We were talking about earlier, right?

Speaker 6 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.

Speaker 2 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.

Speaker 2 Today we have a tremendous episode for you, a conversation with Nick Obie, the founder of Producer Systems, a BOR strategist, a producer coach, a long time producer in the insurance industry, and somebody who I think has a very practical and straightforward approach to helping customers, particularly in the middle market, as we work through the BOR process.

Speaker 2 Now, one of the things that I find incredibly interesting is that, you know, even though I have a bunch of friends, people I really respect, who work kind of through BORs and use BOR-related systems to bring in new clients and help grow their own book of business, as well as just be value providers to

Speaker 2 their communities, et cetera. It's a process I've never really used that much of.
Like I've never engaged in a,

Speaker 2 you know, kind of strategic BOR initiative. I've taken BORs.
I've, you know, gotten BORs from people, you know, dozens, you know, of times.

Speaker 2 I don't actually know exactly, but always in the context of working through a system or

Speaker 2 a coverage review, et cetera. And just the BOR was the best thing to do.
It was never something that I strategically went after, thought through, planned around, et cetera.

Speaker 2 So I love these kind of episodes because they're...

Speaker 2 they're conversations where I know a little, maybe just enough to be dangerous, but certainly I'm not an expert.

Speaker 2 And it allows me to kind of dive into my curiosity, which hopefully if you're kind of come from where I am, where you've heard about using BORs as like a first principle strategy for growing your book of business, but aren't exactly sure what that means or how it works, you're going to learn a lot.

Speaker 2 I know I did.

Speaker 2 And also, you know, something I found really interesting that we get into is Nick and I discuss how similar the underlying core concepts of approaching a client from a BOR strategy and how we, you know, how we at Finding Peak

Speaker 2 and my team teach the inbound sales process, what we call the one called close process, and how similar the underlying kind of structure, ideas, concepts, et cetera, the feelings we're trying to get from those clients, you know, how similar they are.

Speaker 2 So, this is a wide-ranging, dynamic conversation all about growth and BORs and inbound sales. I think you're going to love it.

Speaker 2 Nick's a great guy, and I highly recommend that you connect with him on LinkedIn, posts a ton of great stuff.

Speaker 2 All right, before we get to Nick and that conversation, just want to remind you guys, the insurance growth masterclass, the first offering coming out of Finding Peak, which will be a membership community specifically focused on helping you grow the inbound side of your business, helping you understand how to get a consistent flow of qualified inbound leads, taking that through to how we actually use the one-call closed system that I've kind of patented over the last 18 years of my career.

Speaker 2 to drive max conversions, setting up clients to then maximize their lifetime value as part of your agency, right? There is a lot of conversations, a lot of amazing conversations happening in LinkedIn.

Speaker 2 And we actually even discuss it here inside of this conversation with Nick, because it was kind of happening in real time.

Speaker 2 Around so many people, you know, operate from a place of you need to completely round out an account to write them, and monoline business is garbage, et cetera.

Speaker 2 And I think that those are fine concepts.

Speaker 2 They do not allow us to maximize the

Speaker 2 conversion rate that we have for our inbound business. They tend to keep CAC high cost of acquisition.

Speaker 2 And ultimately, if we're doing the right things in kind of the third model that we teach in Finding Peak, this maximizing lifetime value, then I think if you're not getting the opportunities in, if you're not closing the opportunities at a max rate, then you don't have the ability to maximize the lifetime value of the maximum number of clients out the back end of that process.

Speaker 2 So I do think that while I believe kind of the traditional,

Speaker 2 you know, slightly more ego-driven mentality of I have to round out all the accounts and it's about educating customers and they don't know what they don't, I think all that is great. I understand it.

Speaker 2 And I am sure that many, many businesses have been built with that philosophy. However, I do not believe it is a philosophy that allows you to rapidly scale your agency,

Speaker 2 or I think it limits your ability to take in customers from a wide ranging sources of inbound opportunities, if that makes sense. So more than that to come.

Speaker 2 Incredible conversation with Nick. Guys, if you want to learn more about what we're doing at the Insurance Growth Masterclass, go to masterclass.insure.
So that's. masterclass.insure.

Speaker 2 Put that into your browser.

Speaker 2 And you can either sign up for the wait list if we haven't launched yet or once we're live, that link will take you directly to where you can learn more about the insurance growth masterclass and what we're doing at Finding Peak.

Speaker 2 Guys, I love you for listening to this podcast. It is my great pleasure to share conversations like this with you.
And here we go. Let's get on to Nick.
Well, good, I appreciate you having me on.

Speaker 2 It's good to get together here. Yeah, no, I'm excited to chat.

Speaker 2 You know, it's funny. I

Speaker 2 think this is,

Speaker 2 I'm glad we're chatting. I just posted a video on LinkedIn, which I'll have linked up in the show notes for people.

Speaker 2 And I want to get your take on it because, you know, you're a BOR guy, you know, and people take my take on this particular issue.

Speaker 2 They take it all different directions. So

Speaker 2 I'll have it linked up in the show notes, guys, so you can check out the video.

Speaker 2 And it's actually from a solo episode that I did of the podcast earlier, but it's around this idea of stop trying to round out inbound accounts, right?

Speaker 2 So the take that I took on this video, and that, and this is what I believe, is that when it comes to inbound accounts, so we're not talking about cold call prospecting or networking or even referrals.

Speaker 2 We're talking about someone who goes onto the interwebs, searches for insurance problems, finds your agency, and decides to either fill out a form on your website or call you. Okay.

Speaker 2 And my take is very specifically that you do not try to solve. You do not try to write all their insurance.
You solve the problem that they address when they call you.

Speaker 2 So if I own a business, let's say I own a bakery and I call you and I say, hey, Nick, this is Ryan. I just hired my first employee.
I have no idea what to do.

Speaker 2 Do you think you could help me?

Speaker 2 You write the workers' comp.

Speaker 2 Now, you can say, hey, you know, it's easier

Speaker 2 if I work with everything, you know, and if they want to give you it, give you the business real quick, that's great.

Speaker 2 But what I've found over and over and over again, listening to thousands of calls through trustedchoice.com, through my work coaching clients, through all the time at Rogue Gris, through all my time at the Murray Group when I've been doing inbound.

Speaker 2 I think that, you know, what I find very interesting about this process is that like I've probably listened to and or taken as many or more inbound leads talking just about inbound. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Anybody else in the space. And what I found is that if you try to write the entire account or try to sell them additional products, you lose that business more often than you get it.
Right.

Speaker 2 And the pushback is: well, we differentiate, and I love this. And like, uh, Zach Gould is pushing back on me a little bit, and Michael Cruz, who I love.

Speaker 2 I mean, I love all these guys, and I love their takes. And I, and I'm not saying their takes are wrong.
I have just found that

Speaker 2 I think we operate, and this is really where I'm interested in your position. And what I'm interested in your take on this particular topic, but then also just, I feel like we,

Speaker 2 a lot of the pushback I get on this particular topic is that I feel like comes from a legacy mindset idea that somehow writing the entire account

Speaker 2 is doing proper risk management. And again,

Speaker 2 there are absolutely undeniable evidence that the more policies you have, the higher your retention rate. So I'm not, I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 I just feel like, and I think about my own customer experience, and then I'll leave this to you, is that when I need help with something, right? Let's say I call us.

Speaker 2 Spectrum is our cable service here. Let's say I call Spectrum and I need help with my Wi-Fi.
And then they start and they're like, okay, great. Well, what about TV? Well, I don't need TV.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but we have the TV package. And I'm like, and I'm like, I don't need the TV package.
I need you to make sure that my Wi-Fi works.

Speaker 2 Well, if we speed up your internet, you could also get TV and phone. I'm like, no, I have a phone.
I don't need a phone. I don't need TV.

Speaker 2 I need you to take me from the base level spectrum internet to the top level spectrum. That's why I'm calling you.
And now I'm like, now I'm like,

Speaker 2 like, oh, you're freaking pissed off.

Speaker 2 Now I'm getting frustrated, right? And I feel like this happens in our space too.

Speaker 2 I'm a business owner. I hire my first employee.
I've heard of workers' comp. I know I need it, but I have no idea where to get it or what it is.
I call you.

Speaker 2 And now you're talking to me about my commercial auto and my cyber. And hey, who does your personal lines? And now I'm like.
All this person wants to do is sell me shit. I'm calling someone else.

Speaker 2 And then they ghost you. And then agents go, well, inbound leads are crap or the internet leads are crap or people are just targeting.
Like, no,

Speaker 2 you, they called you with a problem and you didn't solve their problem. You tried to do, you tried to do what was in your best interest, which was write all their policies at one time.

Speaker 2 And what I'm advocating for is this idea of solve their problem and then have systems, processes, and a cultural belief structure of account rounding and upselling at every touch in the future.

Speaker 2 And I just find it interesting that there's like this legacy concept that if I don't write all their business and I don't write it all in the initial interaction, that somehow they're not going to stick.

Speaker 2 And I just haven't found that to be the case. But I love your take on all this.
I know that was a lot of intro. No, it's a lot.
It was good, dude. And I hadn't quite thought about it that way before.

Speaker 2 And I, you know, honestly, never did a ton of inbound. That's that's one thing with this business that I've really started dabbling with and kind of focused on.
But it's interesting.

Speaker 2 And, you know, my wife and I, it's like a couple years ago. I'm like, son of a bitch, like, I need a personal stylist.
I want somebody to help me out. Yeah.
Yeah. And so,

Speaker 2 but in the beginning, it didn't start like that. It's still like, I need a pair of pants for this wedding to go with this jacket that I've got.

Speaker 2 And you call these people that, you know, custom clothes, we've all been hit up by him. Yep, yep.
And they're like, okay, well, you need to come in and we're going to do some measurements.

Speaker 2 We've got to figure out your summer casual style. This, I'm like, summer casual, dude.
It's the dead of winter. I got a wedding in the spring.
I just need a damn jacket. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And literally, as you're saying that, it hit me, I'm like,

Speaker 2 because I hadn't thought about inbound that way before, but when you're talking about, I'm like, I would get frustrated. Yeah.
Because what's the take?

Speaker 2 you're spot on you're just trying to sell me a bunch more that i don't necessarily need yep at one point did i probably need a stylus and do i need the full measurement yeah probably but was i personally there yet to actually sit down and go through that no like i needed to to solve that one problem and so i think you're spot on i think that the take that i would add to it is like transparency on the front end of how the process works i think you know especially you know the dor and everything that i'll do with that it's like that's the simplest thing like take the inbound thing hey process i'm i'll solve this problem all day long.

Speaker 2 You need to understand some ways that the industry works, though. Here's what it looks like.
Ultimately, long term, the best strategy for you is going to have

Speaker 2 to have everything with one carrier, one policy, or one renewal date, multiple carriers, one broker at least.

Speaker 2 We can get to that point, but let's get this thing solved so you can get that employee hiring to go do whatever you need to do. Yeah.
And you just hit on it, right? So, like,

Speaker 2 I'm perfectly willing.

Speaker 2 And again, this is all from beats doing thousands and thousands of these calls that I have this perspective. This is not like theory for me.
This is like, I've tried it every way.

Speaker 2 I've lost more accounts than any, you know, I've lost, I've watched more accounts ghost me or not call me back or say no or whatever

Speaker 2 for every reason. And I just, what is wrong with saying, hey, I'm going to do a tremendous job for you on your workers' comp? I'm going to crush you.
You're going to have no workers' comp problems.

Speaker 2 Okay. I think it's perfectly fine to even say, look, man,

Speaker 2 it may even be easier for you if you just bring over your package too.

Speaker 2 You know, let's deal with that in a couple of weeks. No problem.
Let's get your, I want to get your person on the job and I want to make sure you're squared away. Because, you know what I'm doing?

Speaker 2 You know, again, guys, if you're, if you're listening to this and, and you, you know, struggling with this concept,

Speaker 2 when you solve the one problem up front that they have,

Speaker 2 you have just now become a massive value creator in that person's mind, right? Because you didn't try to sell them something they need. You weren't pushy, right?

Speaker 2 Doesn't mean you can't ask them open-ended questions and figure out what's what's going on with their account.

Speaker 2 It doesn't mean you can't be taking notes going, you know, this person, this company probably really does need cyber or, hey, I need to BOR the front end.

Speaker 2 It's to me, it's very similar to a BOR strategy. You're just trying to be a value creator for them and getting them to choose you.
That's what you're trying to do.

Speaker 2 You're trying to get them to choose you as their, as someone they trust.

Speaker 2 And once they trust you, they're going to be willing to bring all their other stuff around and refer you and leave a Google review and all the things. But they don't trust you yet.

Speaker 2 And the more you try to push on them, the more they're going to go. All they care about is the money.
Even if that's not true, again, I don't believe anybody who's pushing back on me on this post.

Speaker 2 Actually, I love everybody who is. I think they're all amazing.
I think the difference is

Speaker 2 that I don't think we're necessarily thinking through, particularly to inbound, referrals, completely different.

Speaker 2 Outbound prospects that we reach out to to do BOR because we think we can be a better, completely different. There are other veins that I would state.
This is not the tact I would take.

Speaker 2 Only specifically to inbound people who reached out their hand and said, I have a problem. I need help.
That's what I'm trying to get to. So, bam, with that, I want to put this to bed.

Speaker 2 But right before we got on the call to do the podcast, this

Speaker 2 all these comments started blowing up with this video that I put out. And I just thought it was really cool.

Speaker 2 I said you're going viral with the thing. You're pissing people off.
I don't know about that, but it is

Speaker 2 fun. And I love these conversations.
I feel like these are the great conversations that we have.

Speaker 2 And like I said, the people that are that are pushing back, they're all, it's Michael Cruz and Zach Gould. I mean, these are great, great guys, great thoughts.
I'm not hating. I just

Speaker 2 feel very strongly on this particular topic about this particular workflow,

Speaker 2 just from my own, like I said, from my own beats. But dude, so I want to talk to you about, you know, we've connected a few times and stuff.

Speaker 2 And I want to talk about what you have going on with producer systems and in particularly this whole BOR thing, because I think there's a few different people that are teaching some different strategies and we can get into your particular style, but

Speaker 2 before we get to that, like I was never, I mean, I've done BORs, but

Speaker 2 I was never a guy who like

Speaker 2 sold or prospect on BORs, right? Like what you, I never did what you teach. It just was never,

Speaker 2 you know, was never the way that I operated.

Speaker 2 So so I'm like a neophyte to this to a certain extent.

Speaker 2 So I'm very interested in like, maybe just for those who are listening who, who are more like me, maybe they do more personal lines and BORs just aren't a big part of their process or or they're, you know, small commercial or main street, whatever,

Speaker 2 or maybe they're just new in their career and they haven't got there yet. Like talk to me just a little bit about the baseline.

Speaker 2 I know it's super remedial, but a little bit of the baseline on what exactly is a BOR and what are you trying from a tactical sense, what are you accomplishing and using a BOR to bring in business?

Speaker 2 Before Before we get into the whys and the hows and some of that kind of stuff that I really want to dig into, just the very baseline of like

Speaker 2 versus just rewriting someone's insurance, what are we actually doing here?

Speaker 2 Yeah. So,

Speaker 2 I mean, the baseline is we are literally presenting to the prospect. Here's why you should go with me, right?

Speaker 2 Here's why you should choose me to be your broker to go to the entire market on your behalf rather than quoting.

Speaker 2 So, and by doing that, as the broker, you're guaranteeing revenue. Okay, cool.
Right. We're going to get paid.
Well, we know we're going to get paid at the end of the, let's say it's 90 days.

Speaker 2 We know we're going to get paid at the end because, regardless of what happens with the marketplace, we know we're at least controlling their current insurance program.

Speaker 2 They have insurance, we're going to take it all. Okay, cool.
The client doesn't give a shit about you. Oh, great.
You get to guarantee revenue. Who cares for you?

Speaker 2 What's in it for me? And so for the client, the benefit, the strategy is to have one broker to actually see the entire marketplace, actually have a solid negotiation.

Speaker 2 So what we're positioning and pitching to the client is like, I don't care if it's me or not, dude. Kind of we're talking about the inbound, just educate them.

Speaker 2 It's like, you want to get the most of the market? Well, it's changed.

Speaker 2 You used to go, quote, multiple brokers back when Agent sold that exclusivity, and this broker had this carry, and this broker had this carrier. So, you had to go to both to see two options.

Speaker 2 But now, both brokers have both carriers.

Speaker 2 And so, you're better off finding one broker who can get to the whole market, and then they can go out and negotiate and pin the market against each other and come back to you with one, you know, with one option.

Speaker 2 So, it's basically, yeah back in the day the idea would be that you know you know how uh carriers used to pitch their appointments on like franchise value like there's like a franchise value to the appointment um i felt really bad one time because a carrier pitched me on you know there were we were going back and forth and the you know this guy was a little old school and a little pompous and he talked about he said you know something something something you know the franchise value of this appointment i kind of like giggled a little bit you know not giggle is probably wrong i just kind of like chuckled maybe it's probably a more masculine way of saying what I did.

Speaker 2 And did you giggle? Are you good? Yeah, yeah. And, and he kind of like, he kind of like did the thing.
And I was like,

Speaker 2 dude, it's 2022. Like, are we still talking about franchise value with carriers? Like, I'm not saying your appointment isn't important to me.
That's why we're on the phone. But like,

Speaker 2 do we really believe that like I'm going to sell for more because I have your appointment? Like, is that what you're pitching me right now? And,

Speaker 2 and, and, and I think that's a really good good point.

Speaker 2 So to get to the actual point of my comment is that like, so what you're saying is that there was a day when like this guy would have X carrier and Y carrier. And then this over here would have ABC.

Speaker 2 And to get to all these carriers, an account would have would have to shop multiple brokers. But today, for the most part, through wholesalers, through networks, aggregators, and

Speaker 2 just in general,

Speaker 2 agents and brokers kind of in the

Speaker 2 looseness of carrier appointments to a certain certain extent or the the uh spread of carrier appointments um

Speaker 2 it's not the case most most agents are going to be able to get to most carriers and in that way it does not make sense for a large account to and get because i'm assuming this is middle market stuff like small accounts this isn't really as important or maybe as much of a pitch right

Speaker 2 on small i would still run it and hit the broker and just condense the process make it short of the process still educate on it because i think it still is is effective and you're spot on the way you're thinking about i mean

Speaker 2 the broker, like the broker in town could be the biggest prick in the world, right? But they're the only one with a 100-mile radius that has travelers. And travelers are really good at landscapers.

Speaker 2 And you're a landscaper.

Speaker 2 Shit, okay, I got to go that guy.

Speaker 2 Like, that's how it was sold out. It's like, you have to come through me.
My service could suck.

Speaker 2 I could not pay attention to your experience about any of that stuff, but I've got the best carrier. Yeah.
The price is 20% lower. So you got to come through me.

Speaker 2 So that's, that's kind of where we were. It has evolved, right? To your point, we've gotten pretty much every broker has access to pretty much every carrier.

Speaker 2 so this the client the consumer the best strategy is to have one broker do that i mean you don't have multiple cpas

Speaker 2 can you imagine that if that's how we ran the c like the the tax system it's like all right i gotta lower my taxes i've got three cpas in here beating it you know beating it up see what they can do yeah like it just doesn't work that way and then you add on top of that the carriers block the marketplace so be like if every year you had three cpas but you could only get one to actually give you a damn tax return

Speaker 2 and finally a broker comes in and says well hey the broker cpas you know why that happens? Because the IRS is only going to release your taxes once. They're only going to do it with one CPA.

Speaker 2 So they send it to the first person

Speaker 2 that actually submits your tax return. That's the CPA that gets it.
That's the CPA that's paid on.

Speaker 2 The brokers are the same way. The carers only release one quote.

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Peace. Let's get back to the episode.

Speaker 2 You got brokers that are actually in there competing, and they need to be the first one in. What are they going to do? They're going to put together a shiny submission.

Speaker 2 So it's the first one to the carrier. So now your first representation, your first

Speaker 2 impression with the carrier is Shiny because it's incomplete submission. And so that's the concept.

Speaker 2 Like you go out and you hire a CPA, you do all this work, all this, you spend all this time to make sure you get your best shot to file your tax return because you only get one shot to reduce that tax liability.

Speaker 2 It's the same with the insurance companies. Going after them and negotiating with them.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I had this happen to me once early with Rogue where

Speaker 2 I brought an account to a carrier and submitted it. And I'm like, you know, I thought this was a lock-in, right?

Speaker 2 Because in my mind, the carrier that I was submitting it to, this is something that was in appetite, seemed to fit, the size fit.

Speaker 2 You know, I had the lost runs, you know, it was a full submission, whatever.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it goes a couple of days, and I'm like, this is odd that I haven't got a response. Like, this is a knockdown account.
I would think I would have this back and we'd be writing this already.

Speaker 2 And I reach out to the underwriter, and the underwriter goes, Oh, you know, I bottom-piled that because every year a different broker submits it to me.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I was like, that was like a really interesting moment for me because one, I had heard, you know, you hear things, you know, about it, but I never actually experienced that.

Speaker 2 And, you know, and she's a good underwriter and a good friend and

Speaker 2 she wasn't doing anything wrong. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 I understood what she was coming from. Her point was, if every year this account is submitted to me by a different broker, it shows a lack of loyalty by the customer.

Speaker 2 or by the client, you know, whatever. And, you know, while if you're telling me you have some unique and different relationship with them that's going to get us the business, I'll spend time on it.

Speaker 2 But I'm not just going to re-quote and fire off a new proposal to a different broker every year just to not get the business. And

Speaker 2 I think that

Speaker 2 while you don't always love to hear that, because especially early in a business cycle, you're like, I want to write everything I can. I take that to heart.

Speaker 2 And I said, you know, that really makes a lot of sense to me because,

Speaker 2 you know, these a lot of these underwriters, especially the ones that are doing middle market or larger accounts, you know, know, this takes real work for them.

Speaker 2 And you need to present them with something that they think they're going to win because they're humans with their own goals, just like us, right? Just like salespeople.

Speaker 2 So that was a really interesting take for me. And it really got me thinking about

Speaker 2 this process a lot because how you submit the business, who submits the business, it's meaningful to these guys. There's only so many accounts in these regions and they see a lot of the same stuff.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And if you took that back to the prospect

Speaker 2 like hey just got off a call with an underwriter i mean and essentially what you're saying is like your name's trash in the marketplace it's absolutely been destroyed based on how you navigated the market over the past three to five years they would have no idea yeah they're like hey dude i'm just playing the game i'm just trying to lower my premium like what do you mean my name's trash like this is what i was trained to do right the industry trained the you know the brokers producers to go out and quote so and then the big train the consumer so the consumer's like well these good people are calling me

Speaker 2 so i let them quote what do you mean i destroyed my name in the marketplace? And so it's like that education to the profit. Hey, here's how you actually navigate it.

Speaker 2 Here's how you repair the marketplace. Here's your name in the market.
Here's what you need to do. You need one broker to do it.
Maybe stay out of the market one or two years.

Speaker 2 And then if you want me to be the broker in its simplest form, here's what I can do to help you do that. Yeah.
Do you think the clients actually care?

Speaker 2 Like, do you think, and I mean that honestly, Dick, do you think that

Speaker 2 you bring that back and you're like, look, man, like this market's a no-go for you for a while because they,

Speaker 2 you know, they've seen the submission too many times by too many different people and it just shows them that you're not serious or at least that's what they believe that to mean is that it's not serious do you think they care are they just like whatever just shot me someplace else like do you think that's is that a real does that really carry weight with them so it's interesting before you were saying like and this is what i know about the inbound stuff because i you know i've had the beats like yeah you know i basically was looking at it it's like I was in a 12-year science experiment.

Speaker 2 Like, I was literally in this lab figuring out this BOR stuff. In the beginning, they didn't give a shit.
They did not care.

Speaker 2 My attitude in the beginning, right? Prospects talk about price. I got to pay less.
And we can't avoid it.

Speaker 2 Every one of them, I've never met anybody that is not price sensitive when it comes to insurance. And there's different variations.
And you know, some are like, oh, you know, they're robbing me blind.

Speaker 2 They go to the tallest buildings, whatever bullshit they want to give anything. They're concerned about price.

Speaker 2 And so in the beginning, though, when I was on selling BOR, when I started doing it, I didn't want to talk about price

Speaker 2 because it was like, that's beneath me. I'm not going to discuss

Speaker 2 premium. Like, are you kidding me? Like, if you want somebody to talk premium, go, that guy will quote you all day long.

Speaker 2 Like, I couldn't get myself to do it but as i went through it over the years and then ultimately i see leaving you know and doing what i'm doing now and actually being able to go you know talk with you hire other coaches and here's what i was doing and really dissect the process it's like holy that's all we should be talking about in the sales process because if you think about it that's their number one problem we were talking about earlier right yeah Hey, my problem is premium.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's great. Shut up and let me show you all this coverage stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Right? You don't have a premium problem. Did you know you're missing debris removal? That's such an important thing, right?

Speaker 2 And so that's what we're doing in the beginning, especially in the beginning, when I was basing my BOR pitch offic coverage analysis or experience amount analysis.

Speaker 2 What I wasn't doing was solving their problem. So to answer your question, do they care about it only if you position it correctly?

Speaker 2 So when we position it back to them solving their problem, hey, look, prospect, I get you want to pay the least amount possible. Who wouldn't? I've never met anybody that wants to pay more.

Speaker 2 The way you go about that and the strategy that you run to navigate the market directly impacts your premium and your chance to pay the least amount over the next three to five years

Speaker 2 here's the strategy you need to run so if we could frame it in a way that's tied to them solving their problem and really what we're doing the sale the actual bor sale isn't about asking for the bor it isn't about you know our risk management services or loss control or experience plan any of that even though it's important right there's this marketing term you probably heard it you know sell them what they want give them what they need So let's give them all that stuff in the back end because we know they need it.

Speaker 2 They need a good agent. They need the right coverage.
They need all that. But they're trying to solve the premium problem.

Speaker 2 And so when we connect it to that, the pitch for the BOR is actually selling them on a new way to think about their problem. Yeah.
And if we can get them to do that, right?

Speaker 2 Instead of quoting to solve your premium problem, hire one broker and run this strategy. If they do that, it's game over.
They're going to sign the BOR.

Speaker 2 So you're sell them what they want, give them what they need. That is the whole crux of like my inbound selling system, the one called close process.

Speaker 2 It's literally, and this is, this is the disconnect that I think going back to the very beginning of our conversation. And I love that it's now connecting.
And really, I believe this is how you sell.

Speaker 2 But I love that you're connecting it to this BOR process because that's the whole thing. Like, you know,

Speaker 2 I think, and I said this in one of the comments back to one of the people who were sharing their thoughts, was like, you're

Speaker 2 associating the fact that I'm saying solve their problem with this being transactional. I said, that's an assumption, not a reality.

Speaker 2 What I'm doing is solving a problem, but I'm also giving them what they need, right?

Speaker 2 So I'm just not, I'm just not pushing things on them today that they don't necessarily like, if they have a package policy and that package policy is fine for today, right?

Speaker 2 It serves their need for today.

Speaker 2 Why would I mess with that when what they really need is to get their employee on the job site through this workers' comp policy? So, you know, I mean, so I'm going to get them what they need.

Speaker 2 I'm going to understand what they want, come behind them. And so much of this is, and, and, and this is where, you know, I want to, I want to get your, your take on this too as it goes to BORs.

Speaker 2 And I'm assuming there's a little bit of congruency here, but it's like,

Speaker 2 so much of this is open-ended questions. And this is the part that really I find the

Speaker 2 biggest disconnect in so much of what we do, particularly on the sales process, is information gathering. versus asking open-ended questions, right?

Speaker 2 Like we get a prospect on the phone, all of a sudden it's like, well, who does your comp? and what's your limit? And how much payroll do you have? And what are your class codes? And you're like,

Speaker 2 none of that makes means anything to me. Like, I don't care.
What are you saying? Like, all I know is I got a big audit bill last year and I don't want that to happen again.

Speaker 2 And you're like, well, what about, and it's like, how about we slow down and let's figure out what their problem actually is?

Speaker 2 Because oftentimes they'll lead with price, but that's not really what they're going to buy. Because if you come back with price and again,

Speaker 2 listening to thousands of inbound calls, price, price, price, price, price is the beginning of the call.

Speaker 2 And because we don't actually dig into what's going on, we just take their information, even if we quote their whole account and we come back on price, they don't close.

Speaker 2 And then we go, they're tire kickers, they're BS accounts. These people don't really care.
They don't value relations. Like, no, price wasn't actually the real problem.

Speaker 2 They may have called you on price. They may have led with price because as you said, and I love it, they've been trained to lead with price.

Speaker 2 But that's not actually what the problem was. And we didn't slow down long enough to figure out what the real problem was that would get them to buy the policy.

Speaker 2 And that's, it's, it's such, it's a nuance, but to me, it's a, it's crucial. Does that make sense? Totally make sense.
It brings me back to,

Speaker 2 I was like six months in, I'm saying, I left Brown and Brown. I went to this agency out in California.
I was looking at Boston at the time. It snowed on Halloween.

Speaker 2 And I literally, I'm like, fuck this. I've lived in Louisiana my whole life.
Like, I'm going somewhere warm.

Speaker 2 So move out to California and

Speaker 2 I land at this agency and they're like dude perfect timing it's everything we're talking about

Speaker 2 we've got access to a hot new landscaping program we're one of four agents in all of california right so exclusivity price right it's going to be 40 less than the current landscape association there's like some association program or some bullshit that i literally died in the marketplace So we're, I mean, me and there's like a couple other producers and I'm the newest, the youngest, and we just started him.

Speaker 2 And then I've connected, I don't know anybody. I've literally moved there six suitcases, like broke into a friend's place.
Like, I'm going to crash you for a couple of weeks. Like, and

Speaker 2 so it started, started hitting the phones. And I built up a 4.8 million dollar pipeline in like a quarter.
Everything renewed premium. At the time, I was still talking premium.

Speaker 2 Everything renewed between April 1st, April 13th. And what was the pitch? Hey,

Speaker 2 one to four eight and send all the state. We're going to be 40% less.
It's time this, you know, this, what the hell you call it, like a monopoly comes to an end. Like,

Speaker 2 we're just going to kick this carrier's ass. Boom.
I'm taking applications. Everything we're just talking about, payroll, sales, all that shit.

Speaker 2 And the reality is we weren't 40% less, right? The other carriages didn't roll over and watch half their book walk out the door. So they came down.
We weren't as competitive as the programs thought.

Speaker 2 It was the first year. So we were about 12% less.
And out of the entire thing, I wrote a thousand dollar bop of 4.8.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And I was 22.
I already spent some of the damn money. Like it was, it hurt.
Like it was not a good situation. And the reality was.

Speaker 2 I sold it completely on pricing exclusivity and I didn't deliver. And at the end of the day, it was out of my control.
And what did they do?

Speaker 2 They looked at two quotes: Nick, you said you'd be a 40%, you're only 10%. We know the other broker, we trust him, they solved other problems.
We're staying with him. Yeah.
And that was at that point.

Speaker 2 I'm like, fuck this energy. I'm like, I'm quitting.
I'm figuring out a different way because I'm not going to go, I'm not going to do this for 30 years or whatever the hell it was.

Speaker 2 It was just, and it was so eye-opening to me. And that's when I started figuring out this BOR thing.
So let's talk about the BOR thing, right? Like, when you approach someone,

Speaker 2 are you

Speaker 2 like, how do you put yourself in front of somebody and start to create differentiation like what what does that look like i mean obviously you have a secret sauce in your system and i'm not asking for that but like at a high level how do you start to you call somebody and you say hey you got this broker and you've had him for five years and i'm calling you to tell you that you should work with me right like and here's the process what how do you start to break down

Speaker 2 how you might differentiate from them why they might get more value from working from you like what what does that what does that start to look like how are How are you helping your coaching clients do that?

Speaker 2 Like, what are your theories around that stuff? Yeah, so, I mean, it all comes down to positioning on the front end.

Speaker 2 I think that's some of the biggest mistakes on getting the BOR are caused by positioning on the front end.

Speaker 2 And so you have to position it. I would say lead with the BOR without saying BOR.
Gotcha. Right.
It's like if you're going to go on your first date and you're interested in marrying the girl,

Speaker 2 Okay, you can think that and you can be taking her down that path, but don't freaking say the word marriage on the first damn date. Like you're in, and that's one of the mistakes.

Speaker 2 Like people, you jump in, you're going to have to fire agent. It's like you've been talking to the person for 10 minutes, less than that.

Speaker 2 Or the other mistake I made in the beginning, I would like,

Speaker 2 I would say anything just to get a damn meeting out of books. So if they said, oh, hey, you want to, yo,

Speaker 2 you want to come quote? Yeah, yeah, shit. I'll quote.
I'll be there. I'll be there tomorrow.
What time?

Speaker 2 And then I'd in that meeting, I would try and convince them that they should move down this path and be a war. It was too late.
Cause like, it was like, Bait and Switch on us.

Speaker 2 Nick, you showed me, you told me you're going to quote. Yeah.
So when we talked about positioning on the front end

Speaker 2 really what we're trying to do is get them position them to think differently about solving this bring-in problem to think differently about the strategic approach that they're taking to the marketplace which they're not getting every broker is calling and giving them some version right there's all these different levels of you know quoting all the way down to like i'm going to do a full risk management review you know of your entire your program and get back to some results right and so everyone sounds a little different but it's all the same it's the same experience i need data to show you value that's the transaction.

Speaker 2 And the prospect's been through it a thousand times, right? Or they've at least gotten a thousand phone calls on it.

Speaker 2 And so it's like, okay, do I want to engage with this broker, have them come out to my office, spend 90 minutes with me, then try and take my ass out to lunch just to build rapport.

Speaker 2 Then I'm going to send them all the policies and all this information. Then I'm going to work with them for 90 days.

Speaker 2 They're going to ask a thousand freaking questions to maybe find out if they can save me money and I should move with them. Like down to what's going on in the prospect's head.

Speaker 2 And so we can't just have a different version of that or better version of that. My script's better, right? No.

Speaker 2 What we need to do is create a completely different experience and be able to provide value to the prospect without getting anything in return.

Speaker 2 That's what we're looking to do on the front end from the positioning perspective. So, typically, it would go something like, hey, look, I know you get a call.

Speaker 2 I need to get calls from thousands of brokers, hundreds of brokers, broken numbers, thousands would be insane, but you know, hundreds of brokers.

Speaker 2 I don't actually quote insurance. What we found is that that actually hurts your chances to pay the least amount in premium.

Speaker 2 You have 15 minutes to talk about maybe a better strategy to navigate the market, drive down costs. You know, so we're taking them somewhere in a a different direction.

Speaker 2 We don't need anything from them. And then we're getting on that 15-minute call.
We can actually interview them and start to, again, frame the process that we're taking them down.

Speaker 2 But the key to it is at the end of that 15-minute call, prospect, you're going to have a strategy to navigate the market better than you currently are.

Speaker 2 So all I got to do is show up and they're getting something compared to the traditional model where they got to give and give and give to maybe get something.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I love that approach. It's very similar to what we do with inbound stuff.
You know, it's to me, the longer you can go

Speaker 2 without asking for the particulars of their account, the info gathering stage, the more that prospect's going to trust you. Because the minute,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 how I would always position it is, I would get to a certain point, you know, and you're, you know, and you're qualifying the prospect, you know, not everyone's a good fit.

Speaker 2 And that goes for inbound accounts, just like outbound, right? And, and so, you know, we work through the process.

Speaker 2 And at a certain point, you realize, okay, this person is someone I can work with and I can help.

Speaker 2 And I would say,

Speaker 2 you know, my like kill shot phrase is, you know, we got you. That's what I tell.
That's what I teach everybody. I teach every one of my producers, everyone.

Speaker 2 I go, hey, Nick, the good news is I got you, man. I've worked with hundreds of accounts like here's I got you.
Right. So here's where I got to do my job.
I got to do my job now. Is that all right?

Speaker 2 Are we, you know,

Speaker 2 and you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, okay.
I got to grab some info from you. It's going to take 20 minutes.
I can do it on the phone or I can send you a form, whatever.

Speaker 2 Either either way i got to get that info to do my job but it's you know it's time for me to do my job how do you want to do it choose no problem boom but that's after that's after 10 15 20 minutes of talking you get to that point then you ask for the information at the end if you go hey nick i work with tons of bakeries you know how many employees do you have you're like what the what who are you what are you doing here you mean because you're trying to qualify them out you're trying to qualify them out based on data demographics when really

Speaker 2 I think we should be qualifying people out.

Speaker 2 One, if you're not doing your job on the front end and kind of understanding and filtering, then that's part of it. But

Speaker 2 I believe a much better way to go about selling insurance is to disqualify people on mindset, right? Because,

Speaker 2 and there's a couple reasons for that. One,

Speaker 2 drastically improves your closure ratio, because if someone believes what you believe and buys into the process, then

Speaker 2 they're almost sold before you even get off the phone. Two,

Speaker 2 and this goes for small accounts become big accounts. Big accounts become small accounts.
What matters is that you have accounts on the books.

Speaker 2 Now, granted, there are some situations where, hey, we don't write anything less than 5,000 in revenue, premium, et cetera. Those things are real.
I get that.

Speaker 2 But like, your prospecting or your inbound lead flow should be generating accounts closer to that ilk more consistently. There's always going to be exceptions.

Speaker 2 But like, if you are a, you know, a general agency or you do a broad spectrum of, say, commercial or a wide range,

Speaker 2 writing the type of people who believe what you believe, right? That I'm choosing you. I'm willing to buy into the mindset that I'm going to choose you.

Speaker 2 I'm going to trust you versus, you know, Nick, you seem like a nice guy and I'm willing to let you quote my insurance. And hey, maybe we can even go golfing together.

Speaker 2 But next year, regardless of what you say, I'm going to do the same crap again and I'm going to send it out to all these guys. Like,

Speaker 2 even if they're the perfect account and all their demographics line up exactly with what you want, if their mindset doesn't match your mindset, it's not going to be a great account.

Speaker 2 And you might be able to write it once and post on LinkedIn and thump your chest and tell everyone how you're this great producer, but you're going to go through all the same bullshit again next year if their mindset doesn't align with you.

Speaker 2 Dude, 100% agree. And the process for me, it's like, I started with Lundament.
I'm like, I want to see these bastards, true colors as early as I can. Yeah.
Because what kept happening was,

Speaker 2 no matter how I qualified it, I quoted a small percentage or giving that number to the incumbent.

Speaker 2 If you're going to do me like that, I don't want to work with you, one, because that's not how I would operate. But two, I want to find that out before I spend 90 to 120 days quoting you.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So let's shrink the process and let's force the prospect to actually answer a question. Are you going to hire me or not?

Speaker 2 And that's some of the biggest pushback that I've gotten is like, well, how can you possibly be a lawyer without a coverage analysis or without finding pain or experience model analysis?

Speaker 2 And it's like, all that's going to show you is that the other agent did a shitty job, right? If you look at the coverage, okay, great, that's shitty coverage. You're going to rewrite it anyway.

Speaker 2 Why do you need that to qualify the prospect? And it's exactly what you're saying. Like, is this prospect going to be a good fit for my process? Do I want to work with them?

Speaker 2 Do they want to work with me? Because believe it or not, they have a say in this. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And here's how I work. And if that's not going to be a fit for you prospect, then there's other brokers who are willing to quote it.
And I will happily make the introduction for you.

Speaker 2 Particularly my top competition should waste their document time for 120 days while I'm out working on other stuff. Yeah, I need that to qualify.

Speaker 2 I agree with you.

Speaker 2 It's funny.

Speaker 2 Micah Salas posted something the other day about how someone he was talking to said that

Speaker 2 their agency principal wouldn't allow them to BOR because of EO issues, EO concerns. And I was like, I was like, that's beautiful because

Speaker 2 one,

Speaker 2 most likely, if that agency principal looked into their own agency, there's probably ENO concerns all over like every freaking agency that exists. And two,

Speaker 2 if you properly document your conversations, there is quite literally no additional E ⁇ O exposure by

Speaker 2 BORing an account because

Speaker 2 you haven't actually changed coverage, right? So like where the real E ⁇ O issues start to come in is on misrepresentations around coverage.

Speaker 2 And if you properly articulate and document a BOR process, you're not increasing.

Speaker 2 And let me know if I'm wrong about this, but my understanding is that you're not, you're in no way increasing your ENO exposure by BORing an account, right? Am I correct in saying that?

Speaker 2 It took me a while and going on a lot of these calls to figure out why agencies were saying that. Because I mean, I had it internally, but I first started, that was one of our account managers.

Speaker 2 That's the first thing she said to me. It's an ENO issue.
Son of a bitch. I don't even care about,

Speaker 2 right? We got guaranteed revenue. Let's figure out the, let's make it not an ENO issue, whatever we need to do.
And that was the first time I heard that. What do you mean it's an ENO issue?

Speaker 2 And so I dug into it. I understood, okay, well, what can I do on the front end to prevent it from being an ENO issue? Okay, so we worked through that.

Speaker 2 What I found going through all these calls with producers, agency owners, I didn't know this until I started doing this full time.

Speaker 2 Years ago, to be awarded, you did not have to submit a new application or a new submission.

Speaker 2 So you would sign the B award and the policy would just transfer to you. You didn't even have to look at it.
So, okay, oh, I get it now. I get where they're saying.

Speaker 2 It's an ENO issue because if you don't actually re-underwrite it and the thing just transfers, you truly are inheriting somebody else's mistakes at that point. But that doesn't exist anymore.

Speaker 2 For the most part, most carriers, I'm sure there's one or two, somebody's gonna be listening. Well, technically, this carrier out and whatever, elevate them are required.

Speaker 2 Like, okay, for the most part,

Speaker 2 you don't,

Speaker 2 you can't do that. You have to submit a new, a completely new submission.
So you have to re-underwrite it. So the carriers, the process actually forces you to to re-underwrite it.

Speaker 2 So the only potential ENO issue that you would have is

Speaker 2 if they had a coverage on their current policy, you take it over on VOR, you resubmit

Speaker 2 to that carrier, the incumbent carrier, or the rest of the marketplace, and you place that coverage with anybody, the incumbent carrier or the new carrier, and you missed one of the coverages during your analysis process.

Speaker 2 However, that same ENO exposure exists if you quote. Yeah, yeah.
If you're canceling and rewriting, the same exact thing happens.

Speaker 2 Because if you quote and they, let's say they had a a coverage and they go, you didn't put it on there, they're probably going to see you anyway. So I had that with my old agency.

Speaker 2 Well, the quote didn't happen. So you have the same exposure.
So it's really, I think it's just, it's a way that

Speaker 2 I think it's a way for people to just kind of say, I don't want to deal with the BOR. And I was the same way at the beginning.
The first time I heard it was a job interview in California.

Speaker 2 And I was working at Brown and Brown. We were quoting stuff, cold calling, just kind of hammering, like grinding it out.

Speaker 2 And I interviewed this one firm and it wasn't clear on their website that they did this. And I sit down in the interview and the agency principal is like, we only BOR here.

Speaker 2 And I couldn't, I didn't get it at all. I'm like,

Speaker 2 I go, the first question I asked, I go, well, then, how do you write new business?

Speaker 2 I couldn't have told you right then I wasn't going to get the damn job.

Speaker 2 In his space, it's like, this guy just doesn't understand.

Speaker 2 But I started asking questions, like, okay, so

Speaker 2 I don't get it. How do you write your business? How do you do this? And basically, what he came down to, and he said to me, he's like, hey, clearly you don't get this.

Speaker 2 Why don't you go be an underwriter for five years?

Speaker 2 Then you can come back and maybe we would consider hiring you to go out in the field. I was pissed.
I'm like,

Speaker 2 one, I would get fired as an underwriter. I would not last a day as an underwriter.
And I was frustrated. And so that's why I took the other job quote as a broker in California.

Speaker 2 That's where I quoted all those landscapers. It wasn't until after that, I'm like, maybe that dude's on to something.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it kind of like opened my eyes to like, okay, maybe there's a different way that I can bring out a new business rather than just going out and voting it.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think, you know,

Speaker 2 just putting a pin in the E ⁇ O thing,

Speaker 2 if you're documenting, if you're documenting your conversations and you're working through processes, there is no additional E ⁇ O concern. Because even if you did straight BOR, right?

Speaker 2 Even if you just sign the letter, letter goes in, all of a sudden the policies are in your name, right? Well, then all you need to do when you get them is look at them and review them.

Speaker 2 and make sure that the coverage is right, right?

Speaker 2 And if all of a sudden you see that the liability is half of what it should be, you call your now new client and go, hey, man, just so you know, this is not near where it should be, XYZ.

Speaker 2 We just need to bump this up or whatever. And then you make the proper adjustments.
I think it's,

Speaker 2 I think oftentimes people, the idea of anything different scares them. I know for a long time, BOR scared me.
And I think, I think it has a lot to do. I think the BOR process.

Speaker 2 exposes

Speaker 2 our insecurities in sales, right? Because when we're canceling and rewriting something, we feel confident that we're coming in with a better price and different coverage and a new carrier.

Speaker 2 And look at all this work I did and I earned this business. Where with the BOR, we're like, look,

Speaker 2 you need to buy me, right? Like, I have a strategy that I'm going to deliver. I'm going to work with you.

Speaker 2 I'm going to be a partner, et cetera, you know, consult, you know, whatever, whatever, however you position yourself exactly.

Speaker 2 But like, that, so much of that has to do with my confidence to help you versus

Speaker 2 me bringing you something that I feel is superior and therefore gives me confidence, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 It's like intrinsic versus extrinsic confidence in terms of whether we're comfortable with a BOR or not. And I definitely think it exposes people who are not,

Speaker 2 and again, all of us probably, especially early in our careers.

Speaker 2 And I'm not trying to say that some are better than others, just I do think it exposes our insecurities and our own ability to be value providers.

Speaker 2 I could not agree 100%

Speaker 2 more. I think that yeah, 100% more.
That's how you say, damn, I got all chipped up.

Speaker 2 Basically, I could be a R, I can't talk. Um, but I remember, I'll never forget it, dude, because I was trying to get other people, different, you know, different agencies I was at.

Speaker 2 We're trying to, I thought, was hey, we should all be doing this. Like, this is the, like, this is, you said all the time, this is the way.
Like, that's how I felt about the BOR.

Speaker 2 I'm like, come on, yeah, yeah, but you haven't been doing this yet.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 we're sitting around the office, and this producer came in and was like,

Speaker 2 I didn't get the deal because carrier, the carrier pricing wasn't good enough. Bummer, next year, nonchalant, casual.
That was it. And I went home to my wife.
I'm like, I finally get it.

Speaker 2 I get why people don't want to do this because they have an out. There's an excuse when you don't get a deal when you quoted it.
There's always somebody to blame.

Speaker 2 The carrier wasn't

Speaker 2 competitive enough. They gave the number to the incumbent.
You know, hey, all this stuff's out of my control. Well, I was

Speaker 2 tired of having stuff out of my control. And so I wanted, you know, the BOR is is the way that you control that.
But ultimately, it's on you. And so there is no excuse.
I didn't do a good enough job.

Speaker 2 I didn't explain it correctly. They didn't get it.
Whatever it is. But there's no way out.
There's no excuse other than your process. So I think that's a huge hurdle to get over.

Speaker 2 And even me, at the beginning, I was like, I couldn't fully get to it. Like, I had this vision, this dream.
Okay, I want to build it completely out of BOR. That's all I want to operate on.

Speaker 2 And in the beginning, I would still, like, if the revenue was big enough, I'd freaking back down and I'd quote it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 They'd be like, I'd make the BOR pins and go, hey, Nick, that's great, but we're not going to do that. You're interested in quoting, though.
Shit, sure. Hey, I'll do it.
It ruins all credibility.

Speaker 2 Not only with that prospect, but then the next prospect. Because now I'm going into it.
Like, I've got no, like, I'm looking at the next prospect in the eye. I'm like, I only BOR.

Speaker 2 Well, except the one yesterday when I caved and I quoted.

Speaker 2 So talking about confidence, like, unless you fully commit to it, it starts to eat away at what you're doing because you're saying one thing and you're doing another. Like, well, I only BOR.

Speaker 2 unless you push me hard enough, then I'll quote it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So really buying in and fully going in, like, this is how I do business, that was game changing for me because now it unlocks a different level of conversation with the prospects it's so funny the similarities between the bor process now that you're explaining it and we're talking through it and how i teach selling inbound insurance you know when i'm working with a coaching client or whatever one of the things i i talk them through is like if you focus and develop a flow of inbound leads you you become supremely confident in the fact that you don't need that lead to be successful, right?

Speaker 2 That person calls you.

Speaker 2 And if you don't go straight to information gathering, if you flip the standard process on its head and you move information gathering to the very last step and you ask some open-ended questions and you confirm what's actually where they add value, you're able to disqualify the people right up front who aren't a good fit for your business, right?

Speaker 2 Because you're never going to be able to control.

Speaker 2 One with BOR is when you reach out to somebody on paper, in InfoZoom, in the magazine article that you found their business, they could seem amazing and you get on the phone with them and they could be a complete jackass and just not a good fit for you, right?

Speaker 2 So like, but you know, and like you said, you got to have the confidence to back away and say, hey, this is how I do business. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 With inbound, it's made even easier because if you ask those questions up front, you can just say, hey, I'm sorry, but I'm just, I don't have a good market for you.

Speaker 2 Uh, or I just don't have a good solution for what you're asking for.

Speaker 2 And you never have to get to the point where you're spending 30 minutes gathering information, sending it to whoever does your quoting or quoting it yourself, worrying about following up.

Speaker 2 Where if you go information gathering first, then you do all this wasted time up front. You go through all this process on the back end.

Speaker 2 You send them their proposal or you try to get them back on the phone, whatever your process is, only to find out that their brother's their agent and they were just trying to get another price to give them a hard time.

Speaker 2 And you're like, and then, and then you back all the way through that process and you start going inbound leads are terrible. These people are tire kickers.
Small commercial is the worst.

Speaker 2 You can't grow up, you know. And I'm like, no, this is not a prospect problem.
This is a systems and process problem. And if we spend that time and have a set of standards, right? I only work on BOR.

Speaker 2 I only work with customers who believe in this. You have to buy into my process.
But in exchange, I'm going to deliver this strategy for you and blah, blah, blah, you know, your value pitch, right?

Speaker 2 It's the same exact thing with inbound, where if you ask those questions up front, if you allow people to define what actually is success to them, right?

Speaker 2 And that, and that's a big part of what our process is: is like, let the person tell you why they're actually going to buy. They may call you on price.

Speaker 2 Price may actually be a concern, but if you let them talk and you label and reconfirm what, what is really important to them, oftentimes, well, price might be why they called, it is, and study after study has found this to be true, it is rarely why they actually buy.

Speaker 2 But we don't realize that.

Speaker 2 if we gather information up front and we don't know what that information we don't know what the real reason they're they're buying is if we go information gathering first so to me this it's it's just it's really opening my eyes to how uh different but similar this focusing on bor is versus you know and the inbound process like done correctly they're actually fairly similar

Speaker 2 i had no idea i'm one of the guys that assumed i just assumed inbound you're getting all the information up front you're trying to sell them on a quick quote right yeah and you're spot on that and the similarity is i think fighting that urge for every insurance broker i don't know why, but the first thing is like, give me the information.

Speaker 2 What do I need? Like, that's the first step when they get a prospect, inbound, outbound, whatever it is. Like, we need to change what our first step is.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And that's the biggest thing to create a different experience for these prospects. It's scarcity versus abundance mindset.

Speaker 2 So one of the reasons why, again, why I've always leaned into inbound is that I knew that with the right amount of focus and work up front and building, these educational platforms, be they on YouTube, your website, et cetera, wherever you decide to build it out, you create a consistent flow of business.

Speaker 2 And what that allows you to do, in my opinion, from a confidence perspective, is operate from a place of complete abundance, which is I could go over 10 today and it doesn't mean shit because I got 10 more leads coming in tomorrow and I can get after it again.

Speaker 2 I got a bad day. Maybe I'm in a bad mood.
Maybe my mind's just off. Maybe I got something going on at home and I'm not.

Speaker 2 But I think the problem is when

Speaker 2 we don't do that work and we are just getting one inbound lead a week or maybe two referrals and it's not enough and we haven't built that engine or we don't have a way of prospecting or consistency in our prospecting or whatever, then everything is so scarce.

Speaker 2 that if a lead comes in, it's like, oh my God, I got to write this. Like, if I don't write this, we're not going to put premium on the books this week.

Speaker 2 And, and that desperation and scarcity surrounding that is what forces us to, or not forces us, but I think is part of the reason why we operate in these ways that don't actually produce results.

Speaker 2 Like, just, I know I need this information to quote, and oh my God, I gotta get this business in.

Speaker 2 So, give me that information so I can go quote, feel like I've done something and hopefully get premium on the books. And it's like, it's like, okay,

Speaker 2 I get that, but let's remove that by building up, by building abundance into the front end.

Speaker 2 So for you, I know, you know, and I've talked about on the show before how I do that with inbound, but when you're prospecting on a BOR perspective, how do you go about creating abundance in the prospects that you have in front of you?

Speaker 2 Like, are you subscribed to

Speaker 2 insuranceextates.com? Is it, you know, where, what kind of systems, what kind of ideas are you using in order to create that prospect abundance on the front end? Yeah, so it's interesting.

Speaker 2 When you were at, I think you had just started road risk. At the time, I started doing videos in 2019.
And

Speaker 2 I built my book 12 years on cold calling. Like that's what I did.
Every agency I was out like, just cold call. I'd make, I would draw it out.
I'd make, you know, I still don't.

Speaker 2 I can make 25 calls in a 40-minute period. So I'd schedule those.
I'd go anywhere from 50 to 100 a day, depending on the time, right? And I just hammer the phone. So that's the system that I used.

Speaker 2 And it was, to me, it was reliable. I knew if I made X amount of calls, I'd get an X amount of appointments and I protected that time like crazy.
Nothing could get in the way in that time.

Speaker 2 Because I knew that if I just did that,

Speaker 2 I'd be okay.

Speaker 2 I would have leaves coming in. And so for me, it was always cold colon.
I was trying to figure out the video thing.

Speaker 2 And I remember watching your shit and not that shit, but you get my point. No, no, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 This dude, like, he's got this inbound thing to live. And I, for me, I never could break away enough from the cold colon to actually, because it worked.

Speaker 2 And so I was like, I was having a hard time to like, just totally blowing it up. So I used the video a little bit differently.
But for me, it was, it was cold call.

Speaker 2 And the other thing that I think this misconception out there around the BOR, maybe it's misunderstood, the BOR is actually a prospecting tool. Right.

Speaker 2 People just think it's a layer to get business, but you can actually use it as a tool in two different ways.

Speaker 2 One is if you position it correctly on the front end, it becomes a more interesting prospect, a process for the prospect.

Speaker 2 So if we say, hey, look, quoting actually hurts your premium.

Speaker 2 If you have some 15 minutes to learn a new strategy or for me to show you a strategy that you can navigate to market, you're going to set more meetings because people that everyone gives you the candid response i like my agent they don't actually like their agent they probably haven't even seen their agent they just don't want to go through the quoting process yeah so make the process different and we make it more exciting more people are going to say yes i you know we were talking really about being in putting yourself in the consumer shoes

Speaker 2 and this is an example i use all the time if a mechanic called you up right now i don't know what kind of car you drive but if a mechanic called you up and say hey ryan local mechanic i want to take over your your maintenance program for your vehicle i need you to drive down on saturday we're going to run a diagnostics report on your vehicle vehicle.

Speaker 2 Take about an hour and a half. Then we can go get some lunch.
We can kind of bullshit it. Just to make sure we get to know each other.
And then we'll run the report.

Speaker 2 I'll probably follow up with some questions. You know, tire pressure.
Could you run out to the garage, get all that stuff for me?

Speaker 2 And then we'll meet again in a week and a half and I'll show you the report and I'll show you if anything's wrong with your car.

Speaker 2 It's like, holy shit, dude, shouldn't I do that? Maybe, but I don't have that kind of time.

Speaker 2 Like, if they called you up and they're like, you know, hey, Ryan, I know you drive a shed of the tow hole. We found that most mechanics will tell you to

Speaker 2 put synthetic oil in the Tahoe. For whatever reason, it actually has the opposite effect.
It causes your car to break down sooner.

Speaker 2 Do you have 15 minutes to see you for how we might be able to help you out with this new strategy of how we're helping other Tahoe owners?

Speaker 2 It's like, well, dude, shit, I'm going to oil change next week. Like, what do you mean? I'm about to dump that shit in there.
Now, my wife back-checked me. She's like, is that true?

Speaker 2 No, that's not true. So don't, if you're going to drive to Tahoe, don't worry about it.

Speaker 2 But the concept is, what's happening now? I've already solved the prospect's problem. I already know their problem.
I don't need anything from them to tell me their problem.

Speaker 2 I have the problem and I have their solution.

Speaker 2 You're going to generate more interest. And then the final piece on the prospecting side with the POR

Speaker 2 is you create more time to do whatever it is that works for you.

Speaker 2 If you're really good at it at inbound, if you're really good at cold call outbound networking, a lot of times we don't spend time on it because we're stuck quoting this damn bullshit. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So if we can remove that part, remove the info gathering, remove the coverage analysis for anybody that's not a client.

Speaker 2 We just created all, you know, all this time to then go back out and repurpose that to drive more opportunities. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I love it, dude. Dude, I want to be

Speaker 2 cognizant of your time, of our audience's time. This has been a tremendous conversation.
I'm so glad that we finally did it.

Speaker 2 I know a lot of it was me just rescheduling in my life, but dude, I'm so glad that we had a chance to connect at this level, share what you're doing. It's producer systems.

Speaker 2 Let people know where they can connect with you, where they can learn more about what you do. And if they want to work with you or just reach out and learn more, where should everybody go?

Speaker 2 Yeah, best way, probably LinkedIn. They're pretty active on there.
You follow me there, connect with me there, message me there. It's me in the chat.
It's not a bot. So you get, you'll get me.
And,

Speaker 2 or you go to our website, producer.systems. My email is on there.
You shoot me an email, but happy to help with any questions on this process. Like,

Speaker 2 you know, just figuring it out. No matter where you're at, right? You want to just get your BOR process more dialed in or you're like, okay, quote, now it's freaking miserable.

Speaker 2 I don't even know where to start.

Speaker 2 Hit me up with any questions you got. I love it.
Guys, I'll have all the links in the show notes.

Speaker 2 Dude, appreciate the hell out of you.

Speaker 2 Look forward to more. and we'll connect on LinkedIn.

Speaker 2 Dude, sounds good. Appreciate you having me on.
All right, buddy.

Speaker 2 I'm going to Shabbos.

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