
227. How to Lead with a Broker of Record without saying Broker of Record w/ Nick Aube
Listen and Follow Along
Full Transcript
Stripe helps many of the world's most influential companies grow their revenue and build a more profitable business. Whether it's Hertz making checkout a smooth ride for their customers, OpenAI answering unprecedented demand, or PGA chipping away at back office inefficiency, Stripe's financial infrastructure platform helps companies achieve ambitious goals.
No matter what success looks like for your business, Stripe helps ensure the complexity of financial systems doesn't get in your way. Learn more at Stripe.com.
Six months from now, you could be running a 5K, booking that dream trip, or seeing thicker, fuller hair every time you look in the mirror. Through HERS, you can get dermatologists-trusted, clinically-proven prescriptions with ingredients that go beyond what over-the-counter products offer.
Whether you prefer oral or topical treatments, HERS has you covered. Getting started is simple.
Just fill out an intake form online, and a licensed provider will recommend a customized plan just for you. The best part? Everything is 100% online.
If prescribed, your treatment ships right to your door. No pharmacy trips, no waiting rooms, and no insurance headaches.
Plus, treatments start at just $35 a month. Start your initial free online visit today at Forhers.com slash talk.
That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash talk. Tumpounded products are not FDA approved or verified for safety, effectiveness, or quality.
Prescription required. Price marries both on product and subscription plan.
See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information. If you work in quality control at a candy factory, you know strict safety regulations come with the job.
It's why you partner with Grainger. Grainger helps you find the high quality and compliant products your business needs to inspect, detect, and help correct issues.
And the sweetest part is, everyone gets a product that's as safe to eat as it is delicious.
Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by.
Grainger, for the ones who get it done.
In the beginning, though, when I was selling BOR, when I started doing it, I didn't want to talk about price.
Because it was like, that's beneath me. Yeah, I'm not going to discuss premium.
Like, are you kidding me? Like, if you want somebody to talk premium, that guy will quote you all day long. Like, I couldn't get myself to do it.
But as I went through it over the years, and then ultimately, I see leaving and doing what I'm doing now, and actually getting to go talk with other coaches and 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.
Because if you think about it, that's their number one problem we were talking about earlier,
right?
In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.
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 longtime 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. 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 their communities, etc.
it's a process I've never really used that much of. Like I've never engaged in a, 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, you know, I don't actually know exactly, but always in the context of working through a system or 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. So I love these kind of episodes because they're conversations where I know a little, maybe just enough to be dangerous, but certainly I'm not an
expert. 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.
I know I did. 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 and my team teach the inbound sales process, what we call the one called closed 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.
So this is a wide ranging dynamic conversation, all about growth and BORs and inbound sales. I think you're going to love it.
Nick's a great guy. And I highly recommend that you connect with him on LinkedIn posts, a ton of great stuff.
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 called closed system that I kind of patented over the last 18 years of my career 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 on LinkedIn. And we actually even discuss it here inside of this conversation with Nick, because it was kind of happening in real time around so many people, you know, operate from a place of you need to completely round out an account to write them and monoline businesses, garbage, et cetera.
And I think that those are fine concepts. They do not allow us to maximize the conversion rate that we have for our inbound business.
They tend to keep CAC high, cost of acquisition. 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.
So I do think that while I believe kind of the traditional, 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. 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 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, 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.
Put that into your browser 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. 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, then I appreciate you having me on. It's good to get together here.
Yeah, no, excited to chat. You know, it's funny.
I think this is, 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.
And I want to get your take on it because, you know, you're, you're a BOR guy, you know, and people take my take on this particular issue. They take it all different directions.
So I'll have it linked up in the show notes, guys, so you can check out the video. 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. So the take that I that I took on this video and that 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.
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.
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. So if I own a business, I'd 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.
Do you need to help me? You write the workers comp. Now you can say, Hey, you know, it's easier if I work with everything, you know, and if they want to give you the business real quick, that's great.
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 Risk,
through all my time at the Murray Group
when I've been doing inbound.
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.
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.
And the pushback is, well, we differentiate. And I love this.
And like Zach Gould is pushing back on me a little bit. And Michael Cruz, who I love.
I mean, I love all these guys and I love their takes. And I'm not saying their takes are wrong.
I have just found that I think we operate. And this is really where I'm interested in your position.
And I'm interested in your take on this particular topic, but then also just, I feel like we, 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 is doing proper risk management. And again, there are absolutely undeniable evidence that the more policies you have, the higher your retention rate.
So I'm not sure. 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. 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. Yeah, but we have the TV package.
And I'm like, I don't need the TV package. I need you to make sure that my Wi-Fi works.
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.
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, oh, you're freaking pissed off. Now I'm getting frustrated, right? And I feel like this happens in our space too.
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 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.
And then they ghost you.
And then agents go, well, inbound leads are crap or the internet leads are crap.
for and now I'm like, all this person wants to do is sell me shit, I'm calling someone else. And then they ghost you and then agents go, well, inbound leads are crap or the internet leads are crap or people are just tired.
It's like, no, they called you with a problem and you didn't solve their problem. You tried to do what was in your best interest, which was write all their policies at one time.
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. 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.
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. And I, you know, honestly never did a ton of inbound.
That's, um, that's one thing that you're with this business that I've really started dabbling with and kind of, you know, focused on, but it's interesting. And you know, my wife and I, this is like a couple years ago.
I'm like, some of the bitch.
I need a personal stylist.
I want somebody to help me out.
Yeah, yeah.
And so, 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.
And you call all these people
that custom clothes,
we've all been hitting up by them.
And they're like, okay,
well, you need to come in
and we're going to do some measurements.
We've got to figure out
your summer casual style.
This, I'm like, summer casual, dude, it's a dead of winter. I got a wedding in the spring.
I just need a damn jacket. Yeah, yeah.
And it literally, as you were saying that, it hit me. I'm like, because I hadn't thought about inbound that way before.
But when you're talking about it, I wouldn't get frustrated. What's the take? You respond on it.
You're just trying to sell me a bunch more shit that I don't necessarily need. At one point, did probably need a stylist and do i need the full measure 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 bor and everything that i'll do with that it's like the simplest thing.
Take the amount of thing. Hey, prospecting, I'll solve this problem all day long.
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 to have everything with one carrier, one policy, or one renewal date, multiple carriers, one broker at least. We can get to that point, but let's get this thing solved so you can get that employee hired and go do whatever you need to do.
Yeah, and you just hit on it, right?
So like I'm perfectly willing, 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.
I've lost more accounts than any – I've watched more accounts ghost me or not call me back or say no or whatever, um, 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.
Okay. I think it's perfectly fine to even say, look, man, it may even be easier for you if you just bring over your package too.
You know, let's deal with that in a couple of weeks. No problem.
Let's get your work. 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? You know, again, guys, if you're listening to this and you're struggling with this concept, when you solve the one problem up front that they have, you've 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? Doesn't mean you can't ask them open-ended questions and figure out what's going on with their account.
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. 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.
You're trying to get them to choose you as someone they trust. 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.
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 in this post.
I actually,
I love everybody who is.
I think they're all amazing.
I think the,
the difference is that I don't think we're necessarily thinking through, particularly to inbound. Referrals, completely different.
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 say this is not the tact I would take.
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.
But right before we got on the call to do the podcast, all these comments started blowing up with this video that I put out. And I just thought it was really interesting.
What? I said you're going viral with the thing. You're pissing people off.
I don't know about that, but it is fun. And I love these conversations.
I feel like these are the great conversations that we have. And like I said, the people 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 feel very strongly on this particular topic about this particular workflow. 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. 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 before we get to that, I was never, and I've done BORs, but I was never a guy who sold or prospect on BORs.
I never did what you teach. It just was never the way that.
So, so I'm like a neophyte to this to a certain extent. 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.
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 and a 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 before we get into the why's and the how's and some of that kind of stuff that I really want to dig into, just the very baseline of like, versus just rewriting someone's insurance.
What are we actually doing here? Yeah. So, I mean, the baseline is where we are literally presenting the prospect.
Here's why you should go with me, right? Here's why you should choose me to be your broker to go to the entire market on your behalf rather than quoting. So if by doing that as the broker, you're guaranteeing revenue.
Okay, cool. Right.
We're going to get paid or we know we're going to get paid at the end of it. Let's say it's 90 days.
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 court insurance program. 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? 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. 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 what we're talking about with the inbound, just educate them. educate them it's like you want to get the most
on the market well it's changed you used to go quote multiple brokers back when the agents sold
that exclusivity and this broker had had this carry and this broker had this carriage so you
had to go both to see two options but now both brokers have both carriers and so you're better
off finding one broker and get to the whole market and then they can go out and negotiate and pin the
market against them each other and come back to the back to it with one option. So it's basically- Yeah, back in the day, the idea would be that, you know how carriers used to pitch their appointments on like franchise value? Like there's like a franchise value to the appointment.
I felt really bad one time because a carrier pitched me on, we're going back and forth back and forth. And, 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, giggle is probably wrong.
I just kind of like chuckled. Maybe it's probably a more masculine way of saying what I did.
Did you giggle? Yeah, yeah. And he kind of like did the thing.
And I was like, 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, 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 I think that's a really good point. 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.
And to get to all these carriers, an account would have to shop multiple brokers.
But today, for the most part,
through wholesalers, through networks, aggregators,
and just in general, agents and brokers
kind of in the looseness of carrier appointments
to a certain extent,
or the spread of carrier appointments,
it's not the case.
Most agents are going to be able to get to most carriers.
And in that way, it does not make sense
Thank you. extent or the spread of carrier appointments.
It's not the case. 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, 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? On small, I would still run it into the broker and just condense the process, make it short in the process, still on it. Because I think it still is effective.
And you're spot on the way you're thinking about it. I mean, the broker, like the broker in town could be the biggest prick in the world, right? But they're the only one with a hundred mile radius that has travelers and travelers are really good at landscapers and you're a landscaper.
Shit. Okay.
I got to go on that guy. Like that's how it was sold out.
It's like, you had to come to me. to me my service can suck yeah i could not pay attention to your experience about any of that stuff but i've got the best carrier yeah if the price is 20 percent lower so you got to come through me so that's that's kind of where we were and it's evolved right to your point we've got pretty much every broker has actually pretty much every character so the client the consumer the best strategy to have one broker do that i mean mean, you don't have multiple CPAs.
Can you imagine that? If that's how we ran the tax system, I was like, all right, I got to lower my taxes. I've got three CPAs in here, beating it up, see what they can do.
Like, it just doesn't work that way. And then you add on top of that, the carriers block the marketplace.
So be like, every year you have three CPAs, but you can only get one to actually give you a damn tax return. And finally a broker comes in and says, well, hey, I have a broker, a CPA.
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.
So they send it to the first person that actually submits your tax return. That's the CPA that gets it.
That's the CPA that's paid off. The broker is the same way.
The care is only at least releasing one quote. What's up guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show in an exchange for that.
I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, et cetera.
This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in.
We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews.
They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help.
Share the show. Subscribe if you're not subscribed.
And I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show.
I love you for listening to this show. And I hope you enjoy it.
Listening as much as I do, creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here.
Peace. Let's get back to the episode.
Your 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 shoddy submission.
So it's the first one to the carrier. So now your first representation, your first impression with the carrier is shitty because it's in complete submission.
And so that's the concept. You go 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 line dollar it's the same with the insurance companies going after that and negotiating with them yeah i had this happen to me once early with Rogue where I brought an account to a carrier and submitted it.
And I'm like, you know, I thought this was a lock-in, right? 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. You know, I had the loss runs.
You know, it was a full submission whatever and uh and it goes a
couple 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 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. And I was like, that was like a really interesting moment for me because I had heard, you know, you hear things about it, but I never actually experienced that.
And, you know, and she's a good underwriter and a good friend and she wasn't doing anything wrong. You know what I mean? 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 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.
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 I think that while you don't always love to hear that because especially early in a business cycle, you're like, yeah, I didn't want to write everything I can.
I take that to heart. And I said, you know, that really makes a lot of sense to me because, you know, a lot of these underwriters, especially the ones that are doing middle market or larger accounts, you know, this takes real work for them.
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. So that was a really interesting take for me.
And it really got me thinking about 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.
Yeah, and if you took that back to the prospect, like, hey, just got off a call with an underwriter. I mean, in a sense of what you're saying, it's 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 i need to try like this is what i was trained to do right the industry trained you know the brokers producers to go out and quote so then they train the consumers the consumer's, these guys, people are calling me.
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. 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 on the market one or two years.
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 that clients actually care? Like, do you think, and I mean that honestly, do you think that you bring that back and you're like, look, man, like this market's a no-go for you for a while because they, 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 is that it's not serious do you think they care or 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 hey this is what i know about the inbound stuff because i you know i've had beats like yeah that's good you know i basically was looking at it's like i just i was in a 12-year science experiment i was literally in this lab figuring out this blr stuff in the beginning they didn't give a shit they did not care it's my attitude in the beginning right prospects talk about price oh i gotta pay less i and we can't avoid it everyone i've never met anybody that is not price sensitive when it comes to insurance and there's different variations of you know something like oh you know they're robbing me blind they got the tallest buildings whatever bullshit they want to give me they're concerned about in the beginning though, when I was on BOR, when I started doing it, I didn't want to talk about price because it was like, that's beneath me.
Yeah. I'm not going to discuss.
Yeah. Premium.
Like, are you kidding me? Like if you want something to print and go, that guy will quote you all day long. Like I couldn't get myself to do it.
But as I went through it over the years and then ultimately actually leaving, you know, and doing doing now and actually getting to go talk with other coaches and 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.
Because if you think about it, that's their number one problem we were talking about earlier, right? Hey, my problem is premium. Yeah, that's great.
Shut up and let me show you all this coverage stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right? You don't have a premium problem. Did you know you're missing debris removal? That's such an important, right? And that's what we're doing in the beginning, especially in the beginning when I was basing my BOR pitch off a coverage analysis or experience model analysis.
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? 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. 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.
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 our risk management services or loss control or experience. I need that bullshit.
Even though it's important, right? There's a smart term, you've probably heard it. Sell them what they want and give them what they need.
So let's give them all that stuff in the back end because we know they need it. They need a good agent.
They need the right coverage. They need all that.
But they're trying to solve the premium problem. 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.
And if we can get them to do that, 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 a deal. 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 call close process. It's literally, and 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. But I love that you're connecting it to this process because that's the whole thing.
And I said this in one of the comments back to one of the people who were sharing their thoughts. It was like, you're associating the fact that I'm saying solve their problem with this being transactional.
I said, that's an assumption, not a reality. What I'm doing is solving a problem, but I'm also giving them what they need.
So I'm just not pushing things on them today that they don't necessarily, if they have a package policy and that package policy is fine for today, right? It serves their need for today. 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 what I mean? So I'm going to get them what they need.
I'm going to understand what they want, come behind them. And so much of this is, and this is where, you know, I want to get your take on this too, as it goes to BORs.
And I'm assuming there's a little bit of congruency here, but it's like, so much of this is open-ended questions. And this is the part that really I find the biggest disconnect in so much of what we do, particularly on the sales process, is information gathering versus asking open-ended questions, right? We 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, none of that 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.
And you're like, well, what about that? And it's like, how about we slow down and let's figure out what their problem actually is? 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, listening to thousands of inbound calls, price, price, price, price, price is the beginning of the call.
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 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 they may have called you on price they may have led with price because as said, and I love it, they've been trained to lead with price, 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.
And that's, it's such, it's a nuance, but to me, it's crucial. Does that make sense? It totally makes sense.
It brings me back to,
I was probably like six months in,
eight months in,
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.
And I literally am like,
fuck this.
I've lived in the land my whole life.
Like I'm going somewhere warm.
So I moved out to California and landed at this agency.
And they're like, dude, perfect timing.
It's everything we're talking about.
We've got access to a hot new landscaping program. We're one of four agents in all of California.
So we're an exclusivity price. It's going to be 40% less than the current landscape association.
There's some association program or some bullshit that I literally don't have in the morning. So me and there was a couple other producers and I'm the newest, the youngest.
We just started him. And they have connections out.
I don't know anybody. I literally moved their six suitcases, like broke into a friend's place.
Like I'm going to crash in for a couple of weeks. And so I started hitting the phones and I built up a $4.8 million pipeline in like a quarter.
Everything renewed premium. At the time I was still talking premium.
Everything renewed between April 1st, April 13th. And what was the pitch? Hey, one of four agents in 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, 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.
And the reality is we work 40% less, right? The other carriages didn't roll over and watch half their book,
you know, walk out the door.
So they came down.
We weren't as competitive as the program thought.
It was the first year.
So we were about 12% less.
And on the entire thing,
I wrote a thousand dollar bop.
I'm 4.8.
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
I sold it completely on price and exclusivity and I didn't deliver. And at the end of the day, it was out of my control.
And what did they do? They looked at two quotes. Nick, you said you'd be 40%.
You're only 10%. We know the other broker.
We trust them. They solved other problems.
We're staying with them. And at that point, I'm like, fuck this energy.
I'm like, I'm quitting or I'm figuring out a different way because I'm not going to go. I'm not going to do this for a billion years
and whatever now it was.
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,
are you like,
how do you put yourself in front of somebody
and start to create differentiation?
Like what does that look like? I mean, obviously you have a secret sauce to 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 them for five years and I'm calling you to tell you that you should work with me, right? Like, and here's the process. How do you start to break down how you might differentiate from them? Why they might get more value from working from you? Like what does that, what does that start to look like how do you start to break down how you might differentiate from them,
why they might get more value from working from you?
Like, what does that start to look like?
How are you helping your coaching clients do that?
Like, what are your theories around that stuff?
Yeah, so, I mean,
it all comes down to positioning on the front end.
I think that some of the biggest mistakes
on getting the BOR are caused by positioning on the front end.
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 mirror the girl, 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 that's one of the mistakes.
Like people, you're jumping, you're going to have to fire agent. It's like, you've been talking to this person for 10 minutes, less than that.
Or the other mistake I made in the beginning, I would like, I don't say anything just to get a damn meeting on the books. So they said, oh, hey, you want to, you want to come quote? Yeah, yeah, shit.
I'll quote. I'll be there.
I'll be there tomorrow. What time? And then in that meeting, I will try and convince them that they should move down this path and be aware.
It was too late because it was like bait and switch. I was like, Nick, you showed me, you told me.
Whoa. So when we talked about positioning on the front end, really what we're trying to do is get them, position them to think differently about solving this premium problem.
Think differently about this strategic approach that they're taking to the marketplace, which they're not getting. Every broker's 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 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. And the prospect's been through it a thousand times, right? Or they've at least gotten a thousand phone calls on.
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. 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. 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. And so we can't just have a different version of that or a better version of that.
My script's better, right? No. 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.
That's what we're looking to do on the front end from the positioning perspective. So typically it would go, okay, look, I know you get a call.
I know you get calls from thousands of brokers, hundreds of brokers, I wrote the numbers, thousands would be insane, but hundreds of brokers. I don't actually quote insurance.
What we found is that that actually hurts your chances to pay the least amount of premium. You have 15 minutes to talk about maybe a better strategy to navigate the market, drive down cost.
So we're taking them somewhere in a different direction. We don't need them anything from them.
And then we're getting on that 15 minute call. We could actually interview them and start to, again, frame the process that we're taking them down.
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. So all we 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.
Yeah. I love that approach.
It's very similar to what what we do with inbound stuff you know it's to me the longer you can go without without asking for the particulars of their account the the info gathering stage the more that prospect's going to trust you because the minute you know how i would always position it would get to a certain point, you know, and you're qualifying the prospect. You know, not everyone's a good fit.
And it goes for inbound accounts just like outbound, right? And so, you know, we work through the process. And at a certain point, you realize, okay, this person is someone I can work with and I can help.
And I would say, 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 everyone of my producers, everyone. I go, hey,
Nick, the good news is I got you, man. I've worked with hundreds of accounts like years.
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? We,
you know, and you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, okay, I got to grab some info from me.
It's going to take 20 minutes. I can do it on the phone or I can send you a form, whatever.
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 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? You mean, because you're trying to qualify them out. You're trying to qualify them out based on data demographics.
When really, I think we should be qualifying people out. 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 I believe a much better way to go about
selling insurance is to disqualify people on mindset, right?
Because, and there's a couple of reasons for that.
One, drastically improves your close ratio
because if someone believes what you believe
and buys into the process, then they're almost sold before you even get off the phone. Two, and this goes for small accounts become big accounts.
Big accounts become small accounts. What matters is that you have accounts on the books.
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. 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. But like if you are a general agency or you do a broad spectrum of say commercial or a wide range, 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. 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. 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, 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.
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.
Dude, a hundred percent agree. And the process for me, it's like, I started running it.
I'm like, I want to see these bastards true colors as early as I can. Yeah.
Because what kept happening was no matter how I qualified it, I quoted small percentage. We're giving that number to the incumbent.
If you're going to do me do me like that, I don't want to work with you, one. That's not how I would operate.
But two, I want to find that out before I spend 90 to 120 days quoting you. 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? And that's some of the biggest pushback that I've gotten is like, well, how can you possibly be a war without a coverage analysis or without finding pain or experience about analysis?
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.
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? Do they want to work with me? Because believe it or not, they have a say in this. And here's how I work.
And if that's not going to be a fit being prospect, then there's other brokers who are willing to quote it. I will happily make the introduction for you, particularly in my top competition.
So you should waste their time for 120 days while I'm not working on other stuff.
Yeah.
You don't need that to qualify. I agree with you.
It's funny. Mike Asalas posted something the other day about how someone he was talking to said that their agency principal wouldn't allow them to BOR because of E&O issues, E&O concerns.
And I was like, that's beautiful because one, most likely if that agency principal looked into their own agency, there's probably E&O concerns all over like every freaking agency that exists. And two, if you properly document your conversations, there is quite literally no additional E&O exposure by BORing an account because you haven't actually changed coverage, right? So like where the real E&O issues start to come in is on misrepresentations around coverage.
And if you properly articulate and document a BOR process, you're not increasing. 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 E&O exposure by BORing an account, right? Am I correct in saying that? 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 the, one of our account managers. That's the first thing she said to me.
It's an E&O issue. Son of a bitch.
I don't even care then, right? We got guaranteed revenue. Let's figure out the E&O.
Let's make it not an E&O issue, whatever we need to do. And that was the first time I heard that.
What do you mean it's an E&O issue? And so I dug into it. I understood, okay, well, what can I do on the front end to prevent it from being an E&O issue? Okay, so we worked through that.
What I found going through all these calls with producers, agency owners, I didn't know this until I started doing this full time. Years ago to BOR, you did not have to submit a new application or a new submission.
So you would sign the BOR 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 it's an E&O 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. For the most part, most carriers, I'm sure there's one or two, somebody's going to be listening.
Well, technically this carrier out in whatever, Alabama required, like, okay, for the most part, you don't, 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 re-underwrite it.
So the only potential, you know, issue that you would have is if they had a coverage on their current policy, you take it over on BOR, you resubmit to that carrier, the incumbent carrier, or the rest of the marketplace, and you place that coverage with anybody, the incumbent carrier or a new carrier, and you missed one of the coverages during your analysis process. However, that same E&O exposure exists if you quote.
Yeah, yeah. If you're canceling and rewriting, the same exact thing happens.
Because if you quote, and let's say they had 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 audience, see Well, the quote didn't have it.
So you have the same exposure. So it's really, I think it's just, it's a way that, I think it's a way for people just kind of say, I don't want to deal with the B-A-W-A.
And I was the same way in the beginning. The first time I heard it, it was a job interview in California.
And I was working at Brown and Brown. We were quoting stuff, cold calling, just kind of hammering, like grinding it out.
And I interviewed with this one firm and it wasn't clear on their website that they did this. And I sit down in the interview and the principal was like, we only BOR here.
And I couldn't, I didn't get it at all. I'm like, yeah.
I go, the first question I asked, I go, well, then how do you write new business? I couldn't tell you right then I wasn't going to get the damn job. Yeah.
In his face guy just doesn't understand so but i started asking questions like okay so so i don't get how do you write your business how do you do this and basically what he came down to and he said he's like hey clearly you don't get this why don't you go be an underwriter for five years then you can come back and maybe we would consider hiring you to go out in the field i was pissed i'm like one i would getwriter. I would not last a day as an underwriter.
And I was frustrated. And so that's why I took the other job as a broker in California.
That's where I quoted all those landscapers. It wasn't until after that, I'm like, maybe that dude's onto something.
And it kind of opened my eyes to like, okay, maybe there's a different way that I can bring out a new business rather than just going to quote again yeah i i think i think you know just putting a pin in the you know thing if you're documenting if you're documenting your conversations and you're working through processes there is no additional you know concern because even if you did straight bor right even if you just sign the letter letter goes in all of a sudden the policies are in yourOR, right? Even if you just sign a 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 and make sure that the coverage is right,
right? 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
X, Y, Z, we just need to bump this up or whatever. And then you make the proper adjustments.
I think
Thank you. now new client and go, hey, man, just so you know, this is not near where it should be X, Y, Z.
We just need to bump this up or whatever. And then you make the proper adjustments.
I think it's 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 exposes are 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 and look at all this work I did and I earned this business. Where with the BOR, we're like, look, you need to buy me, right? I have a a strategy that I'm going to deliver.
I'm going to work with you. I'm going to be a partner, et cetera, you know, consult, you know, whatever, whatever, however you position yourself exactly.
But like that so much of that has to do with my confidence to help you versus me bringing you something that I feel is superior and therefore gives me confidence. If that makes sense.
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, and again, all of us probably, especially early in our careers.
I'm not trying to say that some are better than others. I do think it exposes our insecurities and our own ability to be valued providers then i could not agree 100 more i think that yeah 100 more that's how you say damn i got all tripped up basic thing that i could be aware 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 we're trying to i was hey we should all be doing this like this is the way this is you said all the time this is the way like that's how i felt about the borm like come on yeah yeah but you haven't been doing this yet and um we're sitting around the office and this producer came in and was like i didn't get the deal because carrier the carrier pricing wasn't good enough bummer next year nonchalant casual home to my wife.
I'm like, I finally get it. I get why people don't want to do this because they haven't out.
There's an excuse when you don't get a deal, when you quoted it, there's always somebody to blame. The carrier wasn't competitive enough.
They gave the number to the incumbent. Hey, all this stuff's out of my control.
Well, I was tired of having stuff out of my control. And so I wanted to be worse 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. 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.
And even me at the beginning, I was like, I couldn't fully get to it. I had this vision, this dream.
Okay. I want to build it completely on BOR.
That's all I want to operate on. And at the beginning, I would still, if the revenue was big enough, I'd break it back down and I'd quote it.
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,'ll do it ruins all credibility not only with that prospect but then the next prospect because now i'm going into like i've got no like i'm looking at the next prospect in the eye i'm like i only be aware well except the one yesterday when i caved and i quoted 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 be aware only be able to work unless you push me hard enough, then I'll quote. Yeah.
So really buying in and fully going in like this is how I do business. That was game changing for me because now it unlocked 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 that I talked them through is like, if you focus and develop a flow of inbound leads, you become supremely confident in the fact that you don't need that lead to be successful, right? That person calls you.
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?
Because you're never going to be able to control.
One with BOR is when you reach out to somebody on paper and InfoZoom and that magazine article you found 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. 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. 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.
Or I just don't have a good solution for what you're asking for. 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.
Where if you go information gathering first, then you do all this wasted time up front. You go through all this process on the backend, 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. And you're like, and then, and then you back all the way through that process and you start going inbound leads.
They're terrible. These people are tire kickers, small commercials, the worst 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 BR.
I only work 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? It's the same exact thing with inbound, where if you ask those questions upfront, if you allow people to define what actually is success to them, right? 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. Price may actually be a concern, but if you let them talk and you label and reconfirm what is really important to them, oftentimes, while price might be why they called, and study after study has found this to be true, it is rarely why they actually buy.
But we don't realize that if we gather information upfront and we don't know what that information, we don't know what the real reason they're buying is if we go information gathering first. So to me, it's really opening my eyes to how different but similar this focusing on BOR is and the inbound process.
Done correctly, they're actually fairly similar. 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. 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. What do I need? Like, that's the first step when they get a prospect, inbound, outbound, whatever.
Like, we need to change what our first step is. Yeah.
And that's the biggest thing to create a different experience for these prospects. It's scarcity versus abundance mindset.
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, you know, these educational platforms, be they on YouTube, your website, etc., wherever you decide to build it out, you create a consistent flow of business. 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. 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 I I'm not but I think the problem is when 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 that if a lead comes in, it's like, god I gotta write this like if I don't write this we're not gonna put premium on the books this week and and that desperation and scarcity surrounding that is what forces us to or not forces us but I think is is part of the reason why we operate in these ways that that don't actually produce results like, I know I need this information to quote, and oh my God, I got to get this business in, 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, okay, I get that, but let's remove that by building abundance into the front end.
So I know, and I've talked about on the show before how I do that with inbound, but when you're prospecting on a, on a BOR perspective, how do you go about creating abundance in the prospects that you have in front of you? Like, are you subscribed to a, to a insurancexstates.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 when you were at, I think you had just started Rogue Risk.
At the time I started doing videos in 2019 and I, I built my book 12 years on cold call. Like that's what I did.
Every agency has that, like it's cold call. You know, I'd make, I would grind it out.
I'd make, you know, I still know I can make 25 calls in a 40 minute period. So I just get those.
I'd go anywhere from 50 to a hundred a day, depending on the time. Right.
And I just hammer the phone. So that's the system that I used.
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.
Because I knew that if I just did that, I would that, I would be okay. I would have leaves coming in.
And so for me, it was always cold calling. I was trying to figure out the video thing.
And I remember watching your shit. And not that it should be, you get my point.
No, no, yeah, yeah. This dude, he's got this name about the thing that I live.
And for me, I never could break away enough from the cold calling to actually, because it worked. And so I was having a hard time to just totally blowing it up.
So I used the video a little bit differently. But for me, it was cold call.
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. People just think it's a letter to get business.
But you can actually use it as a tool in two different ways. One is if you position it correctly on the front end, it becomes a more interesting process for the prospect.
So we say, hey, look, quoting actually hurts your premium. 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 everyone gives you the can response about like my agent. They don't actually like their agent.
They probably haven't seen their agent. They just don't want to go through the quoting process.
So make the process different. If we make it more exciting, more people are going to say yes.
We were talking really about putting yourself in consumer shoes. 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 said, hey, Ryan, look mechanic, I want to take over 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. Take about an hour and a half.
Then we can go get some lunch. We can kind of bullshit.
Just make sure we get to know each other. And then we'll run a report.
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? 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.
It's like, holy shit, dude,
should I do that?
Maybe, but I'm not that kind of time.
If they called you up and they're like,
you know, hey, Ryan,
I know you drive a Chevy Tahoe.
We found that most mechanics will tell you
to put synthetic oil in a Tahoe.
For whatever reason,
it actually has the opposite effect.
It causes your car to break down sooner.
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? It's like, well, dude, shit, I got an oil change next week. 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? No, that's not true.
So if you got to drop your Tahoe, don't work out with it. 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 them their problem.
I have the problem and I have their solution.
You're going to generate more interest.
And then the final piece on the prospecting side with the POR is you create more time
to do whatever it is that works for you.
If you're really good 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.
So if we can remove that part, remove the info gathering, remove the coverage analysis for anybody that's not a client, we just created all this time to then go back out and repurpose that to drive more opportunities. Yeah.
I love it, dude. Dude, I want to be cognizant of your time, of our audience's time.
This has been a tremendous conversation. I'm so glad that we finally did it.
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. 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? 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'll get me. Or you go to our website, producer.systems.
My email's on there. You shoot me an email, but happen to help with any questions on this process.
Just figure it out. No matter where you're at, you want to just get your BOR process more dialed in or you're like, okay, cool.
Now it's freaking miserable. I don't even know where to start.
Hit me up with any questions you got. I love it.
Guys, I'll have all the links in the show notes.
Dude, appreciate the hell out of you. Look forward to more
and we'll connect on LinkedIn. Dude, sounds good.
Appreciate you having me on.
Bye, buddy.
I'm going to shampoo. Thank you.
I'm out. Thank you.
close twice as many deals by this time next week sound impossible it's not with the one call close system you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call. This is the exact method we use to close 1,200 clients in under three years during the pandemic.
No fluff, no endless follow-ups, just results fast. Based in behavioral psychology and battle tested, the one call close system eliminates excuses and gets the prospect saying yes more than you ever thought possible.
If you're ready to stop losing opportunities and start winning, visit masteroftheclothes.com. That's masteroftheclothes.com.
Do it today. Six months from now, you could be running a 5K, booking that dream trip, or seeing thicker, fuller hair every time you look in the mirror.
Through HERS, you can get dermatologist-trusted, clinically proven prescriptions with ingredients that go beyond what over-the-counter products offer. Whether you prefer oral or topical treatments, HERS has you covered.
Getting started is simple. Just fill out an intake form online and a licensed provider will recommend a customized plan just for you.
The best part? Everything is 100% online. If prescribed, your treatment ships right to your door.
No pharmacy trips, no waiting rooms, and no insurance headaches. Plus, treatments start at just $35 a month.
Start your initial free online visit today at Forhers.com slash talk. That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash talk.
Tontounded products are not FDA approved or verified for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required.
Price marries both on product and subscription plan. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information.
If your job at a healthcare facility includes disinfecting against viruses, you know prevention is the best medicine. And maintaining healthy spaces starts with a healthy cleaning routine.
Grainger's world-class supply chain helps ensure you have the quality products you need when you need them. From disinfectants and cleaning supplies to personal protective equipment, so you can help deliver a clean bill of health.
Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done.
Spreadsheets, clunky software, a hundred different logins, just to run your business? There's a better way. Odoo.
One simple, connected platform that handles sales, inventory, accounting, and more.
So you can focus on growing, not juggling.
Make the switch today at odoo.com.
That's O-D-O-O dot com.