RHS 079 - Sheldon Snodgrass

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Speaker 8 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the

Speaker 8 show.

Speaker 8 Today's episode is tremendous. My guest is Sheldon Snodgrass.
He is the owner of Steady Sales and he describes himself as operating in a niche, in a niche, in a niche, in a niche.

Speaker 8 And that is insurance, property casualty for independent agencies, and specifically focused on CSRs or customer service reps.

Speaker 8 And we talk a little bit about that particular title, as well as what Sheldon's specialty is, which is getting CSRs to sell.

Speaker 8 How do you build the process, procedures, mentality, mindset into the culture of your agency so that your CSRs help sell, so that they make sales

Speaker 8 happen every day and they overcome that sales reluctance that even producers have. And we talk about everything in between,

Speaker 8 but what you will absolutely take out of this episode is that Sheldon is tremendous at what he does. He's incredibly knowledgeable, and there is tons of value packed in.

Speaker 8 So you do not want to miss this one. You're already more than a minute in, so I'd be surprised if you changed it, but you will love this episode.

Speaker 8 Before we get to the episode, though, want to give a big shout out to Tarmica. Tarmica is the,

Speaker 8 what did we call it? headline sponsor for this show. They make it happen.

Speaker 8 They were the first sponsor of the Ryan Hanley show and they're good friends, good people, and a product I use every single day in my agency. And, you know, Tarmica makes small commercial profitable.

Speaker 8 And we've all stayed away from small commercial unless we've, you know, quote unquote bumped into it for a long time, because we all know you write a $500 bop, you will never get that $50 back or whatever it is, $65 that you make off of that, off of that account back unless it takes you 15 minutes to quote bind to issue that policy.

Speaker 8 And this is what Tarmica does. Now, again, Tarmica is not just for $500 bops.
You know, I've written much bigger accounts. I know people that have written much, much bigger accounts.

Speaker 8 But the point is, regardless of size, they're able to

Speaker 8 compare multiple commercial lines carriers for something like 300 plus lines of business in just a matter of minutes and show you what the market is for that account. And then you bridge, you bind,

Speaker 8 you're right in business. And if you can set up flows around this and process in your agency to fit the speed of the product, you're going to make small commercial profitable very quickly.

Speaker 8 And there are plenty of agencies doing this, hundreds of agencies doing this today. I called Tarmica early.
I said, this is a company that you want to get in front of. You want to do this demo.

Speaker 8 And it's all playing out as they just add carrier after carrier after carrier to their portfolio, making them the insure tech tool of 2020. I'm calling it right now.

Speaker 8 They are the insure tech tool of 2020.

Speaker 8 If any of these other InsureTech publications call any other tool, then you need to question their ability to see what's happening in the marketplace because Tarmica is changing the game.

Speaker 8 They're absolutely changing the game. Neon's going to be the Insure Tech tool of 2021.
Tarmica is the InsurTech tool of 2020. I'm calling it right here.
Go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com.

Speaker 8 Get your demo.

Speaker 8 see what all the fuss is about, and then sign up and start making small commercial profitable. There's no reason to wait.
All right, let's get on to Sheldon.

Speaker 8 Here we go.

Speaker 7 Hey, what's going on, Sheldon? Hey, Ryan, how you doing? Sorry, man. Zoom was acting a little wonky there for me for a minute.

Speaker 7 But we're good now. I apologize for being a couple minutes late.

Speaker 10 No worries.

Speaker 10 All good. I figured you might have been wrapping up a call.

Speaker 10 I open the meeting and I just start multitasking. So actually, just then I was listening to a bach goldberg variation ah okay i uh

Speaker 7 well i'm i uh one of my favorites is um

Speaker 7 oh gosh now i'm i'm so terrible uh at the names i listen to

Speaker 10 uh

Speaker 7 Bach on cello.

Speaker 10 You know, the Bachello, unaccompanied cello suites.

Speaker 7 Yeah, one, five, and six. I have on Spotify.
And I just, that's like my, when I really need to lock in. I really like Bach on cello.
There's there's other,

Speaker 7 you know, I've tried to do like Beethoven on cello and stuff, it's just not as good.

Speaker 10 No, if you got to lock in and concentrate, you need it a little, I'm guessing a little softer, a little quiet, can't be distracting, right? Like, um, that's why I can't listen to all symphonic music.

Speaker 10 But if you like, if you want to mix it up, um, do the

Speaker 10 Chopin preludes.

Speaker 10 No, nocturne's do the nocturne's. Um, those are quiet.
Nocturne is a style of music that is conducive to study.

Speaker 10 And literally, like when right now I'm working on a presentation for tomorrow, and I had on some symphonic music and it was just too much. And so I boom, stop, quiet,

Speaker 10 or silence, right? But if I like to have music and I have to concentrate, nocturne are a beautiful thing. Yeah.

Speaker 10 N-O-C-T-U. And I would do the Chopin, C-H-O-P-I-N, Chopin Nocturne.
Just play those because the Bochello suites are gorgeous, but you get tired of listening to those after endless hours, you know?

Speaker 7 Yes. And that's what happens sometimes.

Speaker 7 I go in phases is

Speaker 7 I will do just some classic, like full orchestra, Mozart or Beethoven when I have work to do, but it's not writing work. I find that

Speaker 7 where I need to be completely depends on what kind of work I'm doing. If I need concentration, but it's not writing, then I want a little energy.

Speaker 7 I want the highs and the lows and the hits and the changes. If I'm writing, I really want it to just take whatever that thing is, whatever those brain waves are,

Speaker 7 and just collect, give them something to grab onto. So they're not saying, hey, look out the window.
Hey, you know, make this phone call. Hey, you know what I mean?

Speaker 7 Like, I just want to give those attention, you know, whatever

Speaker 7 neurons something to grab onto. And that's, I also listen to, there's some really cool artists who've created

Speaker 7 like

Speaker 7 a lot of classic rock songs and turn them into like acoustic or, you know, they take the words out and they'll do them on piano or they'll just do them on cello or they'll just do a single guitar.

Speaker 7 uh of you know whatever uh led zeppelins so and those are kind of cool too because um without the words and without all the instruments

Speaker 7 just being a single instrument, especially when it's piano, it smooths everything out and is cool too. So it all depends.
I'll change it up quite a bit.

Speaker 7 So dude, I'm super excited to have you on the show.

Speaker 7 You know, we had an awesome one-on-one call

Speaker 7 like a week or so ago. And big shout out to John Bachman for connecting us.

Speaker 7 And we had a great conversation.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 I want to share with you because he may not have told you the very first time I met John Bachman in person.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 we had, you know, we had been aware of each other online, and he had reached out a couple of times and followed some of the stuff that I was doing.

Speaker 7 But we put on a conference in Cleveland, Ohio, Elevate 2018. It's the greatest insurance conference that has ever been put on in the history of the world ever.

Speaker 7 There had never been one like it before, and there will most likely never be one like it again,

Speaker 7 unless I'm putting it on because I do have additional ideas for what could be done. But

Speaker 7 John and his family

Speaker 10 drove,

Speaker 7 they were supposed to have plane tickets, and something happened. They couldn't get the plane.
So they drove from New Hampshire to Cleveland overnight to get to the conference.

Speaker 7 And I saw him as I was walking in for the debt, you know, to kind of start getting ready for the conference and stuff because I was the MC.

Speaker 7 And there's probably 815 people there. And I see John pull up in his station wagon or van or whatever, you know, the car and the family's all in it.

Speaker 7 And he comes up and he introduces himself and he's like, man, and he tells me the story on the spot.

Speaker 7 And I was completely blown away by the fact that he would do that and wanted to be at that conference so badly. And

Speaker 7 we've been buddies ever since that day. I gave him a shout out in the intro and

Speaker 7 because I just thought that was amazing. One, that he was so committed to his own future that he was willing to do that,

Speaker 7 was willing to take his family on that trip. And

Speaker 7 two,

Speaker 7 he's just a great professional in the industry. So that's how I met.
And shout out to John if he's listening. But

Speaker 7 that's how I met John. Right on.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Super good guy. So, okay.
So let's get into you, though. This isn't the John Bachman show.
This is,

Speaker 7 we're here to talk about you and what you're doing. And

Speaker 7 so for a lot of our audience, some of which may have seen you and your work, but some may not,

Speaker 7 I will have done like the super high level of who you are, but maybe break down a little bit what your expertise is and just get into the wherever you want to go with it.

Speaker 7 This isn't like I have a set thing. So you just tell me a little bit about how you, what you're doing today and where you're focused on and maybe why and we'll go from there.

Speaker 10 Well, rather than begin with like who I am and my background, which will emerge through the course of our discussion and frankly, is kind of fun because it's a circuitous path to where I landed.

Speaker 10 But my work is really focused on an audience that I see as that vast, neglected

Speaker 10 audience of folks who are on the front lines of

Speaker 10 insurance sales and service, and that's the CSRs. And when I say neglected, there's plenty of opportunities for CSRs to pursue professional growth, particularly when it comes to CEs.

Speaker 10 But in the area of sales effectiveness and helping folks transition from their service role into into a sales role seamlessly and comfortably and consistently, I see there's a huge absence in the marketplace for that.

Speaker 10 So I stumbled myself into that role quite gradually and am now fully immersed within what I call the niche within a niche within a niche.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Insurance, PNC, CSR, independent agent, CSR, right?

Speaker 10 That's what I do.

Speaker 10 I work with them to help them feel more empowered and consistent and confident and capable when it comes to sales sales ask and everything that follows from that right handling resistance trial closing all of those skills that producers you could shake a stick and hit a producer's school about how to do that stuff so let me get this very stupid question out of the way first because i just feel like i need to ask it um

Speaker 10 do you like the term csr do you find it to be productive is it just does it not matter even in a little bit should we you know why i use it you know why i use it Because one person's account manager is another person's account executive, is another person's account advocate, is another person's sales assistant.

Speaker 10 And the terms vary from office to office. I think,

Speaker 10 so, and also a CSR could be confused with someone who's answering phones at a Verizon call center, right? So forgive me, those of you account managers who fancy yourselves beyond a CSR.

Speaker 10 I just use that term generically, frankly.

Speaker 7 No, I think it's fine. And in many ways, I agree with you.

Speaker 7 I just, you know, there's this group on Facebook that you may or may not have heard of called IAOA, Independent Agency Owners Alliance is the name of the Facebook group, and you have to be an agency owner to be part of it.

Speaker 7 And there's like six or seven thousand agency owners, and you post a question in there, and you might get 250 comments. It's crazy.
The engagement is ridiculous.

Speaker 7 Um, which and it's a wonderful group of people. So, everyone that's listening who's part of the group, don't take the next thing I'm about to say.

Speaker 10 You're about ready to do a fan 60.

Speaker 7 Although it's probably going to be offensive to some of you.

Speaker 7 You know, you get these,

Speaker 7 like, so the reason I said this is a stupid question is because like in my office, I already know I want them to be called client advocates. And the reason is, is I want them to advocate

Speaker 7 against me,

Speaker 7 against sales. in defense of the clients and their needs.

Speaker 7 And I don't mean in an adversarial way, but I mean I want them to tell me what do our clients need, advocate for those needs so we can build those services, process, procedures, tools, whatever into the office.

Speaker 7 That's kind of where my head is at. That's a completely malleable idea.
I don't have a CSR yet, but that's kind of where I'm at.

Speaker 7 But I also don't think the term CSR, there's anything wrong with it, but you will get these strings of comments about it should be this and it's a this. And what if they do this?

Speaker 7 And can you call them a CSR if they also sell? And I'm like, Oh my god, we are taking this term way too far, right?

Speaker 10 Right, because really, what matters most is how I engage with the clients. And the reason that I don't get tripped up on the title is because, really, that's our egos at play, frankly, and/org charts.

Speaker 10 And if we could just dispense with the form without function, that's what that is. It's form without function.

Speaker 10 The function is to engage with customers, be that licensed advocate, that educator, that advisor,

Speaker 10 and

Speaker 10 serve their insurance needs. And while you're at it, here's where, after love, sales makes the world go round.

Speaker 10 If my need is on auto policy, your job as a servant of me is not just to get me a cheap auto quote, but to say, hey, let's take a look at your entire portfolio of protection. That's the game we're in.

Speaker 10 Right now, that's a very difficult,

Speaker 10 that's easy to say and hard to do, but that's my work, right? So

Speaker 10 just putting to bed this notion about what the right title is, I think that your client advocate could be another person's client service manager, could be another person's account executive.

Speaker 10 In fact, there was a company for a while that was

Speaker 10 whose name you'll know, it escapes me now,

Speaker 10 that referred to everybody as raving fan managers. Because your job, Ryan, as my account executive slash CSR slash client service manager, is to create raving fans by doing such a good job.

Speaker 10 So, what you're going to be now is the raving fan manager. And so to me, that was just an example of carrying a good notion to a ridiculous extreme.

Speaker 10 So the fact that you wanna have a client advocate in your office, I think that's outstanding.

Speaker 10 I can promise you, they would do the same thing that another person called a CSR would do in another office, which is advocate for that client.

Speaker 7 Yeah, you know, and I actually had this discussion with myself when I, because I did the, I don't know if you, and I

Speaker 7 literally, the last guest I had on the show, Miles Merwin, was talking about this book. book, and I am going to forget the name of it now.

Speaker 7 And it was just yesterday that I had the conversation with him, but he was talking about how

Speaker 7 a good exercise for leaders is, you were talking about the org chart, you create your organization the way that you would want it to be, and then you put your initials in literally every single box.

Speaker 7 And then you erase your initials in the places.

Speaker 7 where that you don't want to be part of or that you already have someone and you kind of that you know that's how you get to where are you where are you spending your time today?

Speaker 7 And then you have a better idea of where you don't want to be spending your time and where you need to find someone or okay, whatever. So,

Speaker 7 shoot, where was I going with this?

Speaker 10 I don't know, but I like that exercise.

Speaker 10 I don't know why, what, what got you off on that, but we were talking about, oh, you just jumped in right away because I kept using the term CSR and I use it as a catch-all phrase, a generic phrase that everyone understands.

Speaker 10 Because when I named my course the Insurance CSR Sales Masterclass and wrote the book called the CSR Sales Masterclass Handbook.

Speaker 10 I didn't know if I should call it the account executive, the account manager, the client services advisor.

Speaker 10 So I was like, all right, CSR, it's three letters, it's short and sweet. Everybody gets it.
Let's get past the

Speaker 7 that's yes. Okay, now I know where I was going.
So what I was going with that is I literally had this discussion in my head with, you know, with myself.

Speaker 7 Is client advocate too far? Like, one, does it matter? Because it's really just comes down to culture process, and procedure, and people, anyways. And two, um,

Speaker 7 is it too far from what you would expect? Because I hate these ludicrous job titles. I hate them.

Speaker 7 It is one of the, you know, if I could list the things I hate most about the startup world, and there are many things I like about the startup world too, but the ridiculous job titles would be on the hate list, right?

Speaker 7 Like, like,

Speaker 7 you know,

Speaker 7 team, team love specialist, team, you have all these ridiculous things. And it's like

Speaker 7 i get it but you know what are they really doing and and because it doesn't help me if i have to someone told me one time and this was in a different life um they said if i don't your job title matters because people in the outside world need to know what it is you do and if they have to guess at what you do your job title is losing That was their perspective.

Speaker 7 I thought it was pretty reasonable

Speaker 7 that if, you know know what I mean? Because like internally, we might know what a client advocate does. Externally, they may go, who is this person and why are they speaking to me?

Speaker 7 And all I really want to know is, can they solve my problem, right?

Speaker 10 You know,

Speaker 10 let's get to the bigger issue, right?

Speaker 10 The bigger issue is

Speaker 10 a customer experience. And what is the experience that your customers or your clients, again, there's a term we could use interchangeably, right? And we could make a case for both.

Speaker 10 What do they need and want? I was reading a book recently, and the name escapes me, but it will come to me shortly about

Speaker 10 debunking the notion that consumers are looking for insurance.

Speaker 10 They're looking for cheap insurance. What they're really looking for is a source for insurance.
And that source for insurance needs to be you. right?

Speaker 10 And the reason that people will want a source for insurance is because that person demonstrates competence, caring, and character, right? These big three C's.

Speaker 10 And when it comes right down to it, those are qualities that emerge not in a job title, Ryan. So I see that your business card or your email signature says client advocate.
I don't even care.

Speaker 10 All I care about is that you respond quickly to my email thoroughly and competently.

Speaker 10 And that when I connect with you on the phone, you're courteous and you're prompt and you seem to know your stuff and you have the ability to build rapport with me, right?

Speaker 10 The three C's: competence, character, and caring. And the word word caring,

Speaker 10 I believe,

Speaker 10 subsumes this notion of advocacy, right, that you're describing. So your question, does it matter? I think in the grand scheme of things, no.

Speaker 10 What matters is the culture that you create in your office by reinforcing behaviors such as advocacy.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 I'm interested in the idea, and maybe this is a little off topic, but

Speaker 7 being that it's my show, I can do that.

Speaker 10 Go crazy.

Speaker 7 Is this idea that you just said what a customer is looking for is a source for insurance.

Speaker 7 And I'm interested if you think that that is actually true, or if what the customer is looking for is they need to drive their car and the state won't let them drive their car without insurance.

Speaker 7 Or they're looking for, they want a home and they can't get a loan for their home unless they have insurance. And so they, so they're just looking for someone who can do that for them.

Speaker 7 Like, do you think it is actually a, do you think someone is thinking themselves i need to find a good source for insurance or are they actually saying themselves i need this freaking loan and my loan officer won't tell me tells me i can't get this loan unless i show up with insurance so someone please for the love of god provide me with insurance so that i can get this house like someone please so let me you're going to answer your own question yeah yeah so on the face of it you're saying all i need is a quick quote so i can close out my house or drive this car off a lot right and what i'm saying, by the way, the author's name is Ben Page.

Speaker 10 Ben, I don't know how broadly

Speaker 10 your reach extends, but here's his book. A shout out to you, Ben.
I appreciate it. Escape the Price Battlefield Insurance Sales Secret.
Nice. My plan is to finish this book.

Speaker 10 I'm halfway through and reach out to Ben with some gratitude. But this is his concept that I'm noodling on, and I like the idea.
And here's why.

Speaker 10 Because forget about insurance for a moment, Ryan, and think, if you had to buy a new computer, if you you had to buy a new stereo system, if you had to buy a new cell phone, what do you typically do?

Speaker 10 What is your process

Speaker 10 when you go about a task for something that's

Speaker 10 a little complex? Like, what do you typically do?

Speaker 7 Google.

Speaker 10 Google. And what if you have a buddy who you know is a techno geek and all he does or she does is fix computers and build computers.

Speaker 10 Would you first go to Google or would you call your computer geek friend and say, look, or maybe you'll go to Google, say, I got these six things. What should I do?

Speaker 7 Yeah, that's a good question. I would say, and I would love to say that I have a definitive answer on that, some mashup of both.
I would probably always do both. I don't know whether I'd go to one.

Speaker 7 I would say I probably tend to, depending on the topic, lean towards

Speaker 7 the buddy.

Speaker 10 You would lean towards an you would lean towards an expert advisor. And I don't mean an advisor that you don't know.

Speaker 10 I mean a friend, a resource, a trusted confidant, an ally, people who know the game, right? And so here you are. I'm going back to your example of your closing on a house.

Speaker 10 If you have a buddy who's an insurance agent and you have to get

Speaker 10 a binder for your home purchase, are you going to go to Google and start Googling cheap insurance? Are you going to call your buddy and say, buddy, who should I use? to get this binder?

Speaker 7 Yeah, we're going to do that. We're going to do the second one for sure.

Speaker 10 You're going to do the second one. Absolutely.
And the same is true when you're going to buy your car.

Speaker 10 And if you think, wow, I've got a friend who owns an agency or works in an agency or is neighbors with that agency owner. I'm going to call them and tell them and have them shop for me.

Speaker 10 So you think it's, I just need an auto policy and I need it fast and cheap, or I need a home binder fast and cheap. But really, what you need is to trust that you're getting well taken care of.

Speaker 10 And so it's a source for insurance that will get it to you fast and cheap, right? But the whole premise of this book,

Speaker 10 again, the author is Ben Page,

Speaker 10 is that

Speaker 10 your job is to position yourself as the one, as in the matrix, right?

Speaker 10 The source for insurance. And that's your first step in getting off the price battlefield.
Now, I don't want to go down a rabbit hole on his book because it's his book. I appreciate it.

Speaker 10 It's newly published, but I consume this stuff. And when it came up on my radar, I said, okay, I like that ocean.
And that's so far as my big takeaway.

Speaker 7 Yeah. No, I think you're right.

Speaker 7 I think maybe I miss mispositioned what I was trying to say is that the core motivation is I need to get this car off the lot, right? That's the core motivation.

Speaker 7 I think oftentimes

Speaker 7 that the mistake that many agencies make is we're an insurance agency, boom, right?

Speaker 7 That doesn't mean anything to anybody. I think the positioning and

Speaker 7 often

Speaker 7 I think better positioned is we help you get your car off the lot. We do that through the use of insurance.
That's how we help that process.

Speaker 7 That's where we fit in as a as a as a positioning statement.

Speaker 7 I think oftentimes it's just this, you know, you see these blanket Facebook posts of, hey, we're the, you know, Main Street Agency 101, you know, and that I think it gets lost on people.

Speaker 10 People are

Speaker 7 most consumers are consumed by what they have going on in their life. They don't need that,

Speaker 7 even small cognitive jump to, I need to get this car off the lot. These guys do insurance.

Speaker 7 I think sometimes can create friction in the process that is unnecessary. Does that make sense?

Speaker 10 Potentially,

Speaker 10 you're going down a rabbit hole that you're entitled to go to because it's your show and I'm your guest.

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 10 we're in the world of marketing when you talk about positioning and when you talk about Facebook advertising, and those are all worthy discussions. But certainly

Speaker 10 my sweet spot where I see

Speaker 10 the highest potential return on investment of time, energy, and money is at the point of service. So I'm assuming already an agency that's got a book of business, that's got these

Speaker 10 various marketing systems in play where there's some leads coming. And now, mind you, everybody wants more leads.
Everybody wants more opportunities.

Speaker 10 opportunities, but and there's ways to do that by turning the marketing dials.

Speaker 10 But for our purposes right now, I think think a better discussion is around how can we take the people that we have, and whether it's one person or 100 people, because you have a large organization,

Speaker 10 how can we turn them, the service-oriented folks, into sales generators, into sales advocates without freaking them out? Because historically, this is an audience that is averse to the idea of sales.

Speaker 10 In fact, you can hear it when you talk to them. My job isn't sales.
My job is service. People don't like to be sold.
I'm not comfortable selling. All of these objections.

Speaker 10 And yet here you are on the phone and on email handling walk-ins day after day after day with people who have their car with you and their home with someone else or their home with you and their car with someone else.

Speaker 10 Or we can say commercial. You know, I use you for a surety bond, but I use this other agent for my bop, right?

Speaker 10 So whatever it is, or I have my commercial insurance with you and my employee benefits package over here.

Speaker 10 So whether it's personal, commercial, employee benefits, life, regardless of what it is, there's opportunities for those folks in the service seats, call them what you will, account managers, account executives, client advocates, call them what you will, CSRs, there's opportunities for them to not only be advocates, to use your term, and deliver that baseline level of service, which admittedly is increasingly getting automated, right?

Speaker 10 Where more and more the CSR isn't needed to issue certificates of insurance or quick quotes.

Speaker 10 That insurance agent or that CSR is in the position to talk to people about their portfolio of protection, portfolio of protection.

Speaker 10 And for you and me, that's code word for cross-sell, upsell, account round, right? So that's a discussion that I'm equipped to have.

Speaker 10 I could have a marketing discussion, shoot, I got an MBA in marketing. I got

Speaker 10 20 books on my shelf over there about marketing. It's a topic that excites me.

Speaker 10 But again,

Speaker 10 when it comes to how you position an insurance agency, that's a whole nother avenue.

Speaker 7 So, how do you do that?

Speaker 7 How do you get

Speaker 7 the CSR?

Speaker 7 We'll settle settle on that term because I probably shouldn't have even brought it up. But

Speaker 10 we're going to call it for the sake of dialogue, right?

Speaker 7 Yes, let's call it CSR. So how do you get them?

Speaker 7 And I've seen this, and I know you have, but I've seen it as well. And how many, you know, countless agencies, the, the principal, you know,

Speaker 7 this is a common conversation at conferences, right?

Speaker 7 You're sitting at the lunch. Everyone's, you know, eating their chicken and their mashed potatoes going, you know, Sally, I've tried a thousand times.
I've incentivized her.

Speaker 7 I've told her I'll send her and her family to Hawaii for six months if she'll sell 10 policies and she just won't do it. And

Speaker 7 everyone sees this as a lost opportunity and has absolutely no idea how to get their service team to sell, cross-sell, up-sell. So how the heck do you do it?

Speaker 10 Right. So

Speaker 10 I got a couple of answers, the first two of which you won't like, particularly in front of those people who says, I've tried.

Speaker 10 It's not that nobody knows how to do it. It's that they've tried things and those haven't worked.
So is it that the thing was a bad idea or was the implementation bad?

Speaker 10 So let me just key on one word that you said. Well, so the short answer is try, try again.
That's like asking, how do you get fit?

Speaker 10 How do you stay healthy?

Speaker 7 Coffee enemas.

Speaker 10 Coffee enemas. Is that it? Is that all you do?

Speaker 10 That's all you have to do.

Speaker 7 That's the sole thing.

Speaker 10 Right, that's it. God forbid

Speaker 10 you should drop a few of the Cheetos and replace it with sale chips, right?

Speaker 10 So, no, it's so when you ask me, how do we get a CSR who's sales-reluctant or sales-averse to sell, right? That's the question, and it's a perennial question, and there is no single answer.

Speaker 10 And I think that's part of the challenge. We're constantly looking for the silver bullet or the secret sauce, and it's about steady attention, it's about repeated attention.

Speaker 10 And here's how I can prove that: take yourself as an example. Hey, Ryan, what's the secret to a good marriage?

Speaker 10 Anybody who tells you the secrets to the good marriage hasn't listened to the person next door who's got a different secret.

Speaker 10 The point is, you're constantly paying attention, you're turning the dials.

Speaker 10 And so one dial that you just mentioned three minutes ago is, I offered incentives, I promise to send their people to Hawaii. Okay, that could work for some people.
It's called extrinsic motivation.

Speaker 10 And there's a lot of research that says that can work for a short blip, but what really matters long term is intrinsic motivation.

Speaker 10 So if I'm an agency owner and I think, how can I get these CSRs to sell? Because I've been going to conferences for years and everybody complains about it and they don't do it.

Speaker 10 How the hell can I get them to sell?

Speaker 10 Well,

Speaker 10 Sheldon is saying, constantly think about it. Constantly try new things.
Bring focus and attention. All right, Sheldon, I'm focused and attended.
What do you want me to attend to? How about this one?

Speaker 10 What's a way that we could tap into intrinsic motivation? Well, what do you mean by that? I mean, stop giving incentives and awards and tap into the thing that drives behavior personally.

Speaker 10 I can tell you, the research says it's three things. It's autonomy.
That is, I have some sense of agency in my own life, in my own decision, in my own career, right?

Speaker 10 You're not telling me I have to read a script,

Speaker 10 right?

Speaker 10 Ryan, read the script and you will sell more. There is a Dilbert cartoon about that.

Speaker 10 I've taken away your autonomy to be who you are, right? Mastery, that's the second thing. And purpose.
Autonomy, mastery, and purpose. So in my coaching, Ryan, I focus on

Speaker 10 the last one first, purpose. What is our purpose?

Speaker 10 And I can tell you with 100% accuracy or consistency when I go to conferences, large or smaller, a workshop, or even a coaching at an agency with three employees.

Speaker 10 Let alone 300 employees. And I ask folks to tap into the value of their work.
I use the term noble. I say, Do you think that this profession that you're in is a noble profession?

Speaker 10 And then we argue a little bit about what the word nobility means. But ultimately, we get people connected to the idea that, yeah, I help make people whole.
Yeah, I give people peace of mind.

Speaker 10 Yeah, my job is to help educate and inform. My job is to make sure that people, God forbid, if they ever have a loss, are well taken care of, right?

Speaker 10 So people, I'm talking about service reps now, they connect to that,

Speaker 10 Right? That's my job. And so there we go.
So my purpose is to make sure that Ryan Hanley is well taken care of. He understands what he's doing.
He's getting good value.

Speaker 10 Right? And that his insurance is changing, his needs change, because the day he adds a teen driver to his auto policy,

Speaker 10 he's probably going to need an umbrella. And if he can't afford it, that's a separate issue.

Speaker 10 It's my job, because I care, because it's important to work as an educator and advisor, to teach him about that and say, hey, Ryan,

Speaker 10 I noticed that you don't have, by the way, I'm going to give you a script right now as a CSR. I'm the CSR, Sheldon CSR.
Hey, Ryan, congratulations on having a teen driver.

Speaker 10 God love you and God help you. I have to tell you that I'm looking at your account and I see you don't have something called umbrella protection in place.
Are you familiar with what that is?

Speaker 10 And I'm just wondering why you don't have that. And the answer is always going to be, I don't know what that is.
Why don't you tell me? Or I can't afford it, correct?

Speaker 10 They're going to say, if someone's, if you ask, why don't you have an umbrella? And are you familiar with what this protection is? Nine out of 10 are going to say, I don't know what that is.

Speaker 10 And the remaining ones will say, well, because I already have a good auto policy and I don't need it, right? Without knowing.

Speaker 10 And to me, that's the moment where a service rep can turn on the sales hat. In fact, that was a sales question.
I see that you're missing this line of coverage. Can I ask you about that?

Speaker 10 This is is a long-winded answer to your question, Ryan. How do you get people who are sales averse

Speaker 10 to start selling? And my answer is tap into the service mandate that exists. Tap into the service, the nobility of the work, right?

Speaker 10 And we have to, now here's the hard part, practice comfortably transitioning from service task to sales ask.

Speaker 10 And most CSRs stop at the service task and they say, Ryan, is there anything else I can help you with?

Speaker 10 As opposed to, hey, Ryan, while we're dealing dealing with insurance, I've got a couple of things I want to ask you about.

Speaker 10 And then that's not a magic bullet. You have to remind people of that again and again and again.
I'm in my third year of coaching with an agency out in

Speaker 10 eastern Massachusetts right now, third year coaching.

Speaker 10 And many times we meet twice a month and we're still working on life insurance asks, how people can pivot seamlessly and generate a quick coat where it's possible.

Speaker 7 Still,

Speaker 10 because why? We lose focus on that. We lose interest on that.
It becomes hard. We get rejected.
A few people, six people in a row or 60 people in a row say, no, thanks. I'm not interested.

Speaker 10 So there's the long answer.

Speaker 7 No, no, it's that's tremendous. I, how much do you think

Speaker 7 in general? And I've come up with against this with some producers and stuff that have called me. And

Speaker 7 so marketing and digital marketing in general is

Speaker 7 a strength of my work and my agency. So I get a lot of calls from people who are interested in adding that to their agency.
And oftentimes when I ask them why,

Speaker 7 they hate cold calling, they hate drop-ins.

Speaker 7 Here's producers or

Speaker 7 sales forward

Speaker 7 who also have sales reluctance. And I get it.
I hate cold calling too, even though I do it. So, you know, when I dig a little deeper sometimes, it's almost as if,

Speaker 7 and I don't think this this is as true for more veteran members of our industry, but I do think it's true for younger members of our industry.

Speaker 7 They almost fall prey to the negative connotation that our industry has.

Speaker 7 Like somehow we're still saddled with the, you know, cheap black suit knocking on doors with a briefcase, talk, you know, selling door-to-door life insurance connotation.

Speaker 7 How much of a role do you, and because that's what, and the reason I'm asking this question is because I love your concept of building in the nobility and importance of what we do into the conversations about the work.

Speaker 7 Because I wholly agree with you that we don't,

Speaker 7 I feel like not often enough are we almost doing the affirmations around how important what we do is. If someone's house burns down, the community is not rallying to put that house back up.

Speaker 7 It's going to be an insurance adjuster with a check saying here,

Speaker 7 rebuild your home. That is what this is an increase.
This is incredibly important work.

Speaker 7 And I feel like we don't tell ourselves that enough. We don't remind ourselves enough of that.
So, do you see that? Do you see that?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I'll tell you why.

Speaker 10 I'll tell you what, why you need to remind yourself of that and why it's almost impossible to keep it top of mind is because of the constant drumbeat of it being a commodity, it being about price, it being cheap, it being the same everywhere else.

Speaker 10 Just call me and I'll shop all these agencies. You know, and it's a habit that we have both as consumers, but also as insurance professionals, right?

Speaker 10 I go into agencies and very often a CSR will put a quote into the comp rator and

Speaker 10 they'll deliver the cheapest one, right? Because that's what they're conditioned to think is the thing that matters most.

Speaker 10 Now, I'm here to tell you, all of you listening, who right now saying, Sheldon, price matters. People want affordable insurance.
They want cheap insurance. I agree.
I totally agree.

Speaker 10 What I'm talking about about is the conditioning that we have and our consumers have that price is all that matters, right? So

Speaker 10 you're right, Ryan. We need to remind ourselves constantly of the importance of the work.
And

Speaker 10 the reason that I say that is because that's what should empower you.

Speaker 10 That's what should help you feel courageous when you're having conversations with people who are just beating you up or not even beating you up, but just asking for a cheap quote or asking for one thing.

Speaker 10 And you're saying, I understand, Ryan.

Speaker 10 I'm not going to get into how i model handling objections although maybe i will we still got you know 15 minutes left or 20 minutes on this call i'm i'm happy to go down and do some role plays with you about what i teach so that way you can you can test drive whether or not you think i i pack the gear all right

Speaker 10 but um

Speaker 10 i just wanted to respond uh in passion with passion to your question about um uh reminding ourselves, it was really a statement, not a question, about the nobility of the work and that we don't do that enough.

Speaker 10 And I don't do it just as, I don't advocate it as an exercise in self-aggrandizement, but rather a way to help CSRs push past sales reluctance.

Speaker 10 When you're rooted in the nobility of the work, that is my job as a licensed advisor to educate and inform.

Speaker 10 When you're rooted there, you don't worry about objections about asking for an umbrella policy or mentioning cyber liability or life insurance.

Speaker 10 You don't worry about that because that's your job is to say, hey, we do all these things. It's important to talk about your portfolio on and on and on.
I'm not going to model the dialogue.

Speaker 10 So that's why I go deep into

Speaker 10 the nobility to work.

Speaker 7 I love it. No,

Speaker 7 I think it is, I think what we are discussing in this exact moment feels

Speaker 7 or can feel like a fluffy topic, but it is ultimately at the core of why we don't do, take these actions.

Speaker 7 On the days, and I'll give you firsthand experience or, you know, firsthand thing, on the days where I struggle to make my cold calls it's a hundred percent because i'm feeling shitty about myself that day right all right let me help you with some cold calls can i help you right now yeah let's do it i'm gonna i i i'm gonna help you first of all i think cold calling is good for for young and seasoned veterans alike the question is just what's the volume of cold calls yeah and um what what

Speaker 10 And we also know that in terms of return on investment, that one is very low.

Speaker 10 You know, it's the highest return, of course, is a direct introduction from from a current customer to a friend right that that handoff like the way that you and i got connected was through a friend john bachman who said hey ryan you got to meet sheldon sheld you got to meet ryan boom it was done i didn't call you and say hey i want to be on your podcast with your 200 viewers or 2 000 or 20 000 i don't know few thousand yeah come on sheldon few hundred you're raving fans come on guys

Speaker 7 he didn't mean it guys he didn't mean i'm just i didn't mean it

Speaker 10 um i i want i want to help you with the cold call. And it goes all the way back to this moment in our conversation 20, 25 minutes ago when I said, let's not talk about marketing, right?

Speaker 10 So let's not talk about marketing or positioning. So I'm going to combine service, the nobility of the work, marketing, and cold calling all into one fell swoop.
You ready?

Speaker 10 Hold on to your hat, brother, because here we go.

Speaker 10 Okay.

Speaker 10 Were you cold, you were probably cold calling for commercial lines. Was there a particular industry niche that you were focused on in commercial?

Speaker 7 Workers' compensation.

Speaker 10 Yeah, that's a product. What about an industry vertical?

Speaker 7 Not necessarily.

Speaker 10 So you were calling on one moment you were calling on a landscape company, the next moment you're calling on a contractor.

Speaker 7 I go into insurancexdates.com. I find businesses that are renewing whether between three to four months from today.

Speaker 7 And I have between employers, Chubb, Hanover, and Pi, I can write pretty much anyone's workers' comp at a very

Speaker 10 stop right there. So my first thought would be, okay, is it possible for you to identify an industry vertical? And if not, a narrow vertical.

Speaker 7 Let's say restaurants. Let's say restaurants.

Speaker 10 So, so do you know?

Speaker 7 I have like a 75% hit rate on restaurants that will allow me to quote. If I get to the quoting process, I'm three out of every four.

Speaker 10 So, so you like restaurants, you've got some traction there, you've got some experience?

Speaker 7 I don't like them, but they do business with me.

Speaker 10 Why don't you like them?

Speaker 7 They just, they're kind of like, they're kind of like subcontractors. They know more about insurance than I do always.
And I have to wear them down.

Speaker 7 Now, once I break them of that, they do become good clients. All right.
So my initial engagement is they've had 17 different carriers and agents.

Speaker 7 And most of the time, it's because they're tough to deal with. They switch a lot.

Speaker 7 And, you know, what I try to do and what I've done so far is I'm trying to, I'm trying to provide them, show them something that they haven't had before.

Speaker 10 All right. Well, listen.
So, so let's just say that becomes your industry niche. Yes.

Speaker 10 For those of you who think I'm being pretentious by saying niche let's call it your industry i say niche too i get made fun of all the time no you're you know what they're the they're they're the people that don't know how to pronounce a french word okay niche all these niche you americans with your terrible accent

Speaker 10 spelled n-i-t-c-h all right so have a little flavor

Speaker 10 ryan remember i'm going to combine these four things i already forgot let's do it

Speaker 10 So there's you've got your industry niche, restaurants, workers' comp, there's your product. And let's suppose that you, it wasn't restaurants.
Let's suppose that it was professional services firms.

Speaker 10 Let's suppose that it was landscapers. Let's suppose that it was

Speaker 10 contractors, right? So

Speaker 10 where I'm going is identifying a specialty helps. It helps in your positioning.
It helps in your sales, right? And when I say positioning, for example, it would sound like this.

Speaker 10 Hey, Ryan, my name is Sheldon. I specialize in working with insurance.
I mean, I specialize in working with restaurants in the greater Boston area too, or that. And then we'll fill in that blank.

Speaker 10 I'll come back to that. Okay, so being able to say the words I specialize in is not only

Speaker 10 a great intro, but it's also something that will become true.

Speaker 10 The more fluent you become in that, the more you're able to understand it, which is why I have success in the insurance industry space now, because I've been in so many insurance agencies, large and small, and conferences and carriers, right?

Speaker 10 I speak that language, and it gives me a certain level of credibility and so too would a young producer an old producer in an agency who's trying to build a name for him or herself okay so now marketing um and nobility if i were working for you right now ryan what city do you live in uh albany new york is the albany see i i like albany i would i would go to albany and this the example is going to be easier uh for a personal lines producer but personalized producers that's tough work that's a tough sell And commercial lines is equally tough, but you get more bang for your buck, right?

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 10 I think about education marketing, and I think about positioning myself as the insurance expert. So I would go to your restaurant or whatever niche you've identified, right?

Speaker 10 When I say restaurant listeners, I want you to substitute in your mind dental practices or contractors or landscape firms or tree company, whatever that niche is, right?

Speaker 10 Or maybe you can have a couple. You could have a couple, but very quickly, two or three, you're no longer a specialist and you lose the ability to go deep.

Speaker 10 And when I say go deep, here's the cold call.

Speaker 10 So listen, you don't even have to cold call because you have one restaurant who's a client of yours, correct?

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 10 Right. So I would go to that buddy of yours and I'd say, hey, buddy, restaurateur,

Speaker 10 what is the trade group, the industry association, the local restaurateur

Speaker 10 group that you belong to? That you part, like, who do you network with when you're networking to restaurant professionals?

Speaker 10 do you know if such an organization exists in the Greater Albany area?

Speaker 7 Do I? Yes, there is. It's not just Albany, it's the Greater Capital District, but yeah, it's the Capital District Restaurant Association.

Speaker 10 So, the Capital District, have you called on the Capital District Restaurant Association for any purpose in any way whatsoever?

Speaker 7 I haven't. I have called and talked to them.

Speaker 10 They

Speaker 7 are not having any events, obviously, because of the vid,

Speaker 10 and their sponsorship options at the time were a little outside ryan's budget and they weren't taking any content partners okay so you're on you're you're on the track where i'm going but i'm on the track yeah i'm on the track and so so what i begin to think about again i'm tying together the nobility of the work your nobility is tied into your ability to educate and inform and enlighten and make easier.

Speaker 10 So what is the value that you could bring to the restaurant association whose job it is to bring value to their members? Right. And so when I think about my

Speaker 10 job, people join a PIA or a big I, they join their state association to go get a variety of benefits. And one of those benefits could be sales advice.
So I go to an industry association and

Speaker 10 offer to speak, to write an article, to be a guest on a webinar, right? And so I position that in a way that delivers value. It's not a commercial, it's not self-serving.

Speaker 10 The self-service comes in the form of if if I do a good job for them, people will want to reach out and say, hey, could I work with you?

Speaker 10 So that's what, when I think about being an insurance producer, I think instead of cold calling every restaurant in the greater capital district of Albany, which I would continue to do, by the way, I would also ply my trade and work my hand through the organization at the Greater Restaurant Association.

Speaker 10 What's it called again?

Speaker 7 Capital District Restaurant Association or District Restaurant Association.

Speaker 10 And by the way, these associations, you can find an association for, you know um

Speaker 10 children of of of of half mexican mothers that are from el paso by the way i i'm actually i'm a half mexican with my full mexican mother in el paso there's an association for them okay there's associations for everything

Speaker 10 and i think my for my money i would say all right how can i get in front of them deliver value so that they can put me in front of their members now you're trying that but on a separate call maybe we could talk about how you're trying that i think about the agency owners as sheldon I've thrown money at them, I've taken their trip, but still they won't sell.

Speaker 10 And now, Ryan's thinking, you know, I tried the association, their sponsorship's too expensive, and they're not taking content. Me as a kid, am I allowed to swear on this show?

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 10 I say, bullshit. You got to go be able to back.
Their job is to deliver value to their restaurant owners. And if you could go and say, I've got a seminar, Mr.

Speaker 10 Insurance Association Executive, it's a 15-minute webinar on the five most important pitfalls that restaurant owners fall into when they're insuring their eatery. I've got a seminar, Mr.

Speaker 10 Restaurant Association executive director, called the three most important things that every restaurant owner overlooks when they're buying their commercial restaurant insurance.

Speaker 10 Now, that's something that's a headline. Now I'm in my marketing.
Now I'm positioning, right, as an expert who's giving value that that audience wants.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 10 That's how I tie all those things together.

Speaker 7 So I absolutely love that idea.

Speaker 7 I also like that you called bullshit because

Speaker 7 one of the first things I did in this agency was I did a webinar on workers' compensation, just a general webinar, not to any specific group.

Speaker 7 It was titled

Speaker 7 Five Simple Ways to Cut Costs and Freed Up Cash Flow in Your Workers' Comp. That was the name of the webinar.

Speaker 10 I love it. Great title.

Speaker 7 37 people attended. I wrote four of them.
I've never done another webinar.

Speaker 10 Oh, my, right, so you're proven. I want to hug you right now.

Speaker 7 With a, I need a hug and a slap at the same time. Slap across the face.

Speaker 7 You hit it.

Speaker 10 That's it. I want to give you a hug so that I can back up and slap you across the face.

Speaker 10 Just stop right there. Just stop right there.

Speaker 10 There's two coaching opportunities. One of them is why.
Like, what is that? Like, and there's probably a dozen reasons why, and they're all good.

Speaker 10 But it's like, but you're a busy guy building an empire right there. And you've, you're right right now you're interviewing me and you do this podcast twice a month or twice a week, you said.

Speaker 10 By the way, I would, as your, as your unofficial coach, start cutting that in half and start replacing it with podcasts to like the one you just described, right?

Speaker 10 Become the workers' comp guru in your in the restaurant association marketplace. All right.

Speaker 10 That's what you can start doing.

Speaker 10 And then the other coaching opportunity is

Speaker 10 to that illustrates the power of what we just discussed. Like you just, if you had 45 people,

Speaker 7 37, 37 people attended.

Speaker 10 And you wrote four pieces of business?

Speaker 7 Four workers' comp accounts. Yep.

Speaker 10 Four different accounts.

Speaker 7 Four different accounts. Yes.

Speaker 10 Not call that 40 attendees, 40. That's 10% of your audience bought from you.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 10 And that says nothing about the remaining that didn't, but have you in their head that you can now follow up on? And that cold call becomes a warm call. Yeah.

Speaker 10 And then you get on their radar, not to sell a policy today, but to circle back with them in three, six, eight, nine months.

Speaker 10 Right. That's the sales game.
And now you're no longer cold calling, Ryan. What you're doing is you're making lukewarm calls.
Grant you, they're hard.

Speaker 10 And grant you, you need to buckle down and make them. And granted, you need to be say something compelling in that voicemail, which you're going to land in.

Speaker 10 And now we're into the skills of, all right. What's your voicemail sound like? What's your follow-up protocol? And how do you trial clothes when you get them on the phone?

Speaker 10 Because they're going to tell you, oh, my policy doesn't renew until uh next august

Speaker 10 now boom right you're going to follow up next well before august anyway that's it i love it you got me going you got me going this is great this is what it's all about i i i wholly agree with you um

Speaker 7 i have

Speaker 7 uh this

Speaker 7 I my

Speaker 7 problem in business,

Speaker 7 this is a known issue and I struggle with it every day, is that

Speaker 7 I love to learn new things.

Speaker 10 Love to.

Speaker 7 This means it's probably more of a life issue. And it keeps me from staying dedicated

Speaker 7 to things. So it's, I did a webinar, it crushed.
It's like in my mind, I go checkbox, crushed it.

Speaker 7 Let's figure out how to do Facebook ads. You know what I mean? Instead of going, okay, I'm going to do a webinar every month forever because, you know, I'm getting a great return.

Speaker 7 And, you know, in talking to you now, the literally I'm writing down, I just wrote down, yo a hole, do another webinar in December. So

Speaker 7 because the truth is, a bunch of those people I now know, I've seen them kind of around my stuff.

Speaker 7 A couple of the business owners who I know are on that podcast or on that webinar. And

Speaker 7 I've had ideas, you know,

Speaker 7 I have the...

Speaker 7 the slides.

Speaker 7 I can easily clean them up a little bit and do it again, make it even better, tighter. It was a little long.

Speaker 7 I've had the idea to do one for cyber insurance. You know, I mean, just to break it up, you know, I could literally take 12 topics and do a different webinar topic every month.
They're super easy to.

Speaker 10 Now you're the source for insurance. Now you are the insurance educator.
Now you're talking about the positioning that we got into during our marketing first quarter of this call.

Speaker 10 That's it. You're now all of a sudden, you become the one because people hear about you and someone says, oh, Jesus, I got my network hacked.
You got to get insurance from this guy, Ryan.

Speaker 10 What's his name? I don't know. I heard a podcast of his.
By the way, how did you get your invitation list for that webinar with 40 restaurateurs?

Speaker 7 Well,

Speaker 7 I did some cold emailing and I ran Facebook ads.

Speaker 10 You ran Facebook ads and you were promoting the webinar. Yes.

Speaker 7 So I did a little video. I could send it to you.
It's kind of cool.

Speaker 7 I did this video where I'm standing in front of the camera and I'm waving and it's got the word stop on the thing, you know, pattern interrupt.

Speaker 7 And then it says, hey, if you own or are part of a business and you've ever had a question ever about workers comp or you just want to put more cash back into your pocket, I'm going to show you how to do that in five simple steps.

Speaker 7 Sign up for this webinar. It's completely free, no obligation, and we'll be done in 30 minutes.
Boom.

Speaker 7 I had 60 people sign up and 37 showed live. And I know it has close to 100 views on YouTube because after I did it, I took it down and then posted it on YouTube.

Speaker 7 And it has close to 100 views post and it gets a couple views every month, people watching it. Like I said, I went long.
I went about 45 minutes.

Speaker 7 And I think if I could get that down to like 15 or 20 minutes, tighten it up a little bit and make it more punchy because it's probably obvious I can go tangential and get way too deep into the context.

Speaker 7 So if I can be a little tighter, I think I could turn, you know, these become evergreen resources over time that I think could really add value. Right on.

Speaker 10 Love it. That's perfect.

Speaker 7 So, guys, if you're listening to this and you're like, holy shit, I want the kind of breakthrough that Ryan just had with Sheldon.

Speaker 7 I can't promise you it's going to be free. Like, I just milked him for all this free advice right now.

Speaker 7 But

Speaker 7 where do they reach out to you? Where do they get in your ecosystem to start to either just simply follow your content or if they want to have a conversation with you?

Speaker 7 Or, you know, how does that process begin for you with the people who are listening to this show?

Speaker 10 Steadysales.com.

Speaker 10 Steady sales.com. That's how it begins.

Speaker 7 Steady sales.com. Do you do the LinkedIns or the, you're on the Gram? Can they slide?

Speaker 10 Someone throw the name Sheldon Snodgrass in Google and I'll come up in all kinds of places. But my website is steadysales.com.

Speaker 7 SteadySales.com.

Speaker 10 It's what everybody wants. Steady sales.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Right.

Speaker 10 That's a whole nother story.

Speaker 7 I love that URL. When I saw that you had that URL, I was like, wow, that was a good grab.
That was a real good grab.

Speaker 10 Yeah, it was a good grab. It was lucky because I was like, sales 911, sales 413, sales now.
So I had all these notions about like, let's do urgency.

Speaker 10 And I was like, no, man, that's all freaking fluff and puff. And what I want to do is be steady as she goes.
Steady wins the race. And so it's about steady sales.
And yeah, that's it.

Speaker 10 My website, steady sales.com. People can find it easily or just Google the name Sheldon Snodgrass and you might bump up some YouTube videos.

Speaker 7 You know, and this is the very last thing I'll say about this, about, and about steady sales is when I think about

Speaker 7 it's so easy to get caught in these flat, the people who have flashes, right? Bam, they did this big, you know, whatever. Right.

Speaker 7 When I actually take the time to

Speaker 7 think about the agencies that I'm using envy in the positive, in the very positive sense, that I aspirationally would say, hey, I would love to have an agency like that.

Speaker 7 One that always comes to mind is Paradiso, right? I don't know if you know Chris Paradiso. I think you said you did, but he's been a friend and a mentor of mine for over a decade now.
And

Speaker 7 I look at how he's done it and what he's done and the way he's gone about it has not been flashy, you know,

Speaker 7 big logarithmic, you know, I'm going to drive everything. He just is consistent and reinvests and grows and thinks about process and

Speaker 7 it, you know, over, over, you know, he's gotten to a, you know, wonderful place, but it has just been this consistent, steady growth that has got him there, not some, hey, in the next year, you're going to quadruple your, you know, everything kind of process.

Speaker 7 So I think.

Speaker 10 Hey, we got, give, give me a farewell. I realize I got a two o'clock call.
That gives us two and a half minutes to wind down. So, yes,

Speaker 10 how do we do that?

Speaker 7 How do we do it? We said, I say thank you to you. I appreciate you, I appreciate your time.
Um, I know that you're busy, but it means a lot to me, it means a lot to the people listening to this show.

Speaker 7 I wish you absolutely nothing but the best, and everyone, Google Sheldon Snodgrass,

Speaker 7 connect with him, get in the ecosystem, follow his stuff. You will not go wrong, and if you have a need, reach out.

Speaker 10 Thank you, my good man.

Speaker 7 Yeah,

Speaker 7 You go fuck yourself with your fat fucking ass.

Speaker 7 Thank you.

Speaker 7 Wanna few drinks and smoke a joint bubbles?

Speaker 7 oh

Speaker 7 make it by

Speaker 7 the sorry,

Speaker 7 make it in

Speaker 7 this life of the children,

Speaker 7 take it in,

Speaker 7 make it in my father.

Speaker 7 Take it in my brother Charlie,

Speaker 7 take it in the

Speaker 7 old

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Speaker 7 Want a few drinks and smoke a joint bubbles?

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