RHS 079 - Sheldon Snodgrass

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We'll be right back. In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.
Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. 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, and that is insurance, property casualty for independent agencies and specifically focused on CSRs or customer service reps.
And we talk a little bit about that particular title as well as what Sheldon's specialty is, which is getting CSRs to sell. 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 happen every day and they overcome that sales reluctance that even producers have.

And we talk about everything in between.

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. 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. Before we get to the episode, though, I want to give a big shout out to Tarmaca.
Tarmaca is the, what do we call it, headline sponsor for this show. They make it happen.
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, Tarmaca makes small commercial profitable.
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 issue that policy. 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. But the point is, regardless of size, they're able to 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, 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.
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 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. They are the insure tech tool of 2020.
If any of these other insure tech 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. They're absolutely changing the game.
Neon is going to be the insurTech 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. Get your demo.
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.

Here we go.

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.

But we're good now.

I apologize for being a couple minutes late.

No worries.

All good.

I figured you might have been wrapping up a call.

I opened the meeting and I just started multitasking. So actually just then I was listening to a Bach Goldberg variation.
Ah, okay. One of my favorites is, oh gosh, now I'm so terrible at the names.
I listened to Bach on cello. You know uh you know the bach unaccompanied cello suites yeah one five and six i have on spotify and i just that's like my when i really need to lock in i i really like bach on cello there's there's other you know i've tried to do like like beethoven on cello and stuff it's just not as good.
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? That's why I can't listen to all symphonic music.
But if you like, if you want to mix it up, do the Chopin preludes. No, Nocturnes.
Do the Nocturnes. Those are quiet.
Nocturne is a style of music that is conducive to study. And literally, like 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, or silence.
Right. But if, if I like to have music and I have to concentrate, nocturnes are a beautiful thing.
Yeah. I know C to you.
And I would do the Chopin, C-H-O-P-I-N, Chopin nocturnes. Just play those.
Cause the Bach cello suites are gorgeous, but you get tired of listening to those after endless hours, you know? Yes. And that's what happens sometimes.
I go in phases. 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 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.
I want the highs and the lows and the hits and the changes. If, if I'm writing, I really want it to just take whatever that thing is, whatever those brain waves are that, and just, and just 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? Like, I just want to give those attention, you know, whatever, uh, neurons, something to grab onto. And that's, I also listened to, there's some really cool artists who've created, um, like, like a lot of classic rock songs and turn them into like acoustic or 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 of whatever, Led Zeppelin's.
And those are kind of cool too because without the words and without all the instruments, 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. No, no.
So dude, I'm super excited to have you on the show. You know, we had an awesome one-on-one call like a week or so ago and big shout out to John Bachman for connecting us.
And we had a great conversation and I want to share with you because he may not have told you the very first time I met John Bachman in person. So we had, you know, we had been aware of each other online, and he had reached out a couple times and followed some of the stuff that I was doing.
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.
There had never been one like it before. And there will most likely never be one like it again.
Unless I'm putting it on because I do have additional ideas for what could be done. But John and his family drove, 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. And I saw him as I was walking in for the day, you know, to kind of start getting ready for the conference and stuff.
Cause I was, I was the MC and there was 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.
And he comes up and he introduces himself and he's like, man, and he tells me the story on the spot. And I was completely blown away by the fact that he would do that and wanted to be at that conference so badly.
And, um, and we've been buddies ever since that day, I gave him a shout out in the, in the intro. And, um, because I just thought that was amazing.
One, that he was so committed to his own future that he was willing to do that, was willing to take his family on that trip. And two, 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 that's how I met John. Right on.
That's a good story. Super good okay.
So let's get into you though. We're not, this isn't the John Bachman show.
This is, this is what you are here to talk about you and what you're doing. And so, so for a lot of our audience, some of which may have seen you and your work, but some may not.
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. 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. Well, rather than begin with like who I am in my background, which will emerge through the of our discussion, and frankly, it's kind of fun because it's a circuitous path to where I landed.
But my work is really focused on an audience that I see as that vast neglected audience of folks who are on the front lines of 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.
But in the area of sales effectiveness and helping folks transition from their service role into a sales role seamlessly and comfortably and consistently, I see there's a huge absence in the marketplace for that. So I stumbled myself into that role quite gradually and I'm now fully immersed within what I call the niche within a niche within a niche.
Insurance, PNC, CSR, independent agency, CSR, right? That's what I do. I work with them to help them feel more empowered and consistent and confident and capable when it comes to 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. 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? 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.
And the terms vary from office to office. I think, 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.
I just use that term generically, frankly. No, I think it's fine, and I, in many ways, I agree with you.
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.
And there's like six or 7,000 agency owners. And you post a question in there and you might get 250 comments.
It's crazy. The engagement is ridiculous.
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.
You're about ready to offend 6,000 people. Although it's probably going to be offensive to some of you.
Um, you know, you get these, 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 against me, against sales, in defense of the clients and their needs.
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, processes, procedures, tools, whatever into the office.
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. 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? 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, 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 or it's org charts.
And if we could just dispense with the form without function, that's what that is. It's form without function.
The function is to engage with customers, be that licensed advocate, that educator, that advisor, and serve their insurance needs. And while you're at it, here's where after love, sales makes the world go round.
If my need is an 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 protection. That's the game we're in.
Right now, that's a very difficult, it's easy to say and hard to do, but that's my work, right? So 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, it could be another person's account executive. In fact, there was a company for a while that was, whose name you'll know, it escapes me now, 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. 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. So the fact that you want to have a client advocate in your office, I think that's outstanding.
I can promise you they would do the same thing that another person called a CSR would do in another office. Yes.
Advocate for that client. Yeah.
You know, and, and I actually had this discussion with myself when I, cause I did the, I don't know if you, and I literally the last guest I had in the show, Miles Merwin was talking about this book and I am going to forget the name of it now. And it was just yesterday that I had the conversation with him, but he was talking about how 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. And then you erase your initials in the places that you don't want to be part of or that you already have someone.
And you how you get to where are you spending your time today, 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 whatever. Shoot, where was I going with this? I don't know, but I like that exercise.
I don't know 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. Because when I named my course, the Insurance CSR Sales Masterclass and wrote the book called the CSR Sales Masterclass Handbook, I didn't know if I should call it the account executive, the account manager, the client services advisor, the client.
So I was like, all right, CSR, it's three letters, it's short, it's sweet, everybody gets it. Let's get past the.
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 is client advocate too far.
Like one, does it matter? Cause it's really just comes down to culture and process and procedure and people anyways. And two, um, is it too far from what you would expect? Cause I hate these ludicrous job titles.
I hate them. 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? Like, like, you know, team, team love specialist, team, all these ridiculous things.
And it's like, I get it, but you know, what are they really doing? And because it doesn't help me if I have to, someone told me one time in a, this was in a different life. They said, you know, what are they really doing? And because it doesn't help me.
If I have to, someone told me one time, and this was in a different life, 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. I thought it was pretty reasonable.

That if you don't 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? And all I really want to know is can they solve my problem? Right? You know, let's, let's get to the bigger issue, right? The bigger issue is 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 can make a case for both.
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 debunking the notion that consumers are looking for insurance. 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? 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.
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. All I care about is that you respond quickly to my email thoroughly and competently.
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? The three C's, competence, character, and caring. And the word caring, I believe, 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, what matters is the culture that you create in your office by reinforcing behaviors such as advocacy. Yeah.
I'm, I'm interested in the idea and maybe this is a little off topic, but, um, being that it's my show, I can, I can do that. Go crazy.
Is this idea that you just said what a customer is looking for is a source for insurance. 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.
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're just looking for someone who can do that for them.
Like, do you think it is actually, do you think someone is thinking themselves, I need to find a good source for insurance? Or are they actually saying to 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.
Someone please. So let me, you're going to answer your own question.
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. What I'm saying, by the way, the author's name is Ben Page.
Ben, I don't know how broadly 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.
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.
Because forget about insurance for a moment, Ryan, and think if you had to buy a new computer, if you had to buy a new stereo system, if you had to buy a new cell phone, what do you typically do? What is your process when you go about a task for something that's a little complex? What do you typically do? Google. 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? 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? Yeah, that's a good question. I would say, and I would love to say that I have a definitive answer in that.
Some mashup of both, I would probably always do both. I don't know whether I'd go to one.
I would say I probably tend to, depending on the topic, lean towards the buddy. You would lean towards an expert advisor.
And I don't mean an advisor that you don't know. 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 back to your example, if you're closing on a house, if you have a buddy who's an insurance agent and you have to get 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? Yeah. The second one for sure.
You're going to do the second one. Absolutely.
And the same is true when you're going to buy your car. And if you think, wow, I've got a friend who owns an agency or works in an agency or his neighbors with that agency owner, I'm going to call them and have them shop for me.
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.
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, again, the author is Ben Page is that your job is to position yourself as the one, as in the matrix, right? Yeah. 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. 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. Yeah.
No, I think you're right. I think maybe I 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.
I think oftentimes the mistake that many agencies make is we're an insurance agency. Boom.
Right. That doesn't mean anything to anybody.
I think the positioning and often 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. That's where we fit in as a positioning statement.
I think oftentimes it's just this, you see these blanket Facebook posts of, hey, we're the Main Street Agency 101. And I think it gets lost on people.
Most consumers are consumed by what they have going on in their life they don't need that cog that even small cognitive jump to i need to get this car off the lot these guys do insurance i i think sometimes can can create friction in the process that is unnecessary does that make sense potentially you're you're going down or you're going down a rabbit hole that you're entitled to go because it's your show and I'm your guest. So we're, we're in the world, we're in the world of marketing.
When you talk about positioning and when you talk about Facebook advertising and that's, those are all worthy discussions, but certainly my, my, my sweet spot where I see the, 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 various marketing systems in play where there's some leads coming in.
Now, mind you, everybody wants more leads. Everybody wants more opportunities.
And there's ways to do that by turning the marketing dials. But for our purposes right now, I think a better discussion is around how can we take the people that we have in, whether it's one person or 100 people, because you have a large organization, 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.
In fact, you can hear it when you talk to them. My job is in sales.
My job is service. People don't like to be sold.
I'm not comfortable selling. All of these objections.
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. Or we can say commercial.
I use you for a surety bond, but I use this other agent for my bop. So whatever it is, or I have my commercial insurance with you and my employee benefits package over here.
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? Where more and more the CSR isn't needed to issue certificates of insurance or quick quotes.
That insurance agent or that CSR is in the position to talk to people about their portfolio of protection, portfolio of protection. 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.
I could have a marketing discussion. Shoot.
I got an MBA in marketing. I got a, you know, 20 books on my shelf over there about marketing.
It's a topic that excites me. But again, when we, when it comes to how you position an insurance agency, that's a whole nother avenue.
So how do you do that? How do you, how do you get, how do you get this, this, the CSR? the CSR? We'll settle on that term because I probably shouldn't even have brought it up. We're going to call it for the sake of dialogue.
Yes, let's call it CSR. So how do you get them? 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 principal, you know, this is a common conversation at conferences, right? 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. 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 everyone sees this as a lost opportunity and has absolutely no idea how to get their service team to sell, cross-sell, upsell. So how the heck do you do it? Right.
So 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. 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? 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?

How do you stay healthy?

Coffee enemas.

Coffee enemas.

Is that it?

Is that all you do?

It's all you have to do.

That's the sole thing.

That's it.

God forbid you should drop a few of the Cheetos and replace them with tail chips, right?

So no, so when you ask me, how do we get a CSR who's sales reluctant or sales

We'll be right back. drop a few of the Cheetos and replace them for kale chips, right? 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 parental question and there is no single answer. 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. And here's how I can prove that.
Take yourself as an example. Hey, Ryan, what's the secret to a good marriage? Anybody who tells you the secrets to the good marriage hasn't listened to the person next door who's got a different secret.
The point is you're constantly paying attention. You're turning the dials.
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.
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.
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 nobody complains about it. They don't do it.
How the hell can I get them to sell? Well, 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? 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. 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? You're not telling me I have to read a script, right? Ryan, read the script and you will sell more.
There's a Dilbert cartoon about that. 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 the last one first, purpose.
What is our purpose? And I can tell you with 100% accuracy or consistency, when I go to conferences, large or small, or a workshop, or even coaching at an agency with three employees, 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? 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. 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 or well taken care of, right? So people, I'm talking about service reps now, they connect to that, 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. Right? And that his insurance is changing.
His needs change because the day he adds a teen driver to his auto policy, he's probably going to need an umbrella. And if he can't afford it, that's a separate issue.
It's my job, because I care, because it's important work as an educator and advisor, to teach him about that and say, hey, Ryan, 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 team driver. 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? 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? Yeah. 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.
And the remaining ones will say, well, because I already have a good auto policy and I don't need it, right? Without knowing. 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? This is a long-winded answer to your question, Ryan. How do you get people who are sales averse to start selling? And my answer is tap into the service mandate that exists.
Tap into the service, the nobility of the work, right? and and we have to now here's the hard part, practice comfortably transitioning from service task to sales ask. And most CSRs stop at the service task and they say, Ryan, is there anything else I can help you with? As opposed to, hey, Ryan, while we're dealing with insurance, I've got a couple of things I want to ask you about.
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 Eastern Massachusetts right now. Third year coaching.
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 quote where it's possible. Still, 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. So there's the long answer.
No, that's tremendous. How much do you think, in general, and I've come up against this with some producers and stuff that have called me.
So marketing and digital marketing in general is 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, they hate cold calling, they hate drop-ins, they, here's producers or sales, you know, sales forward producers 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, and I don't think this is true for more veteran members of our industry, but I do think it's true for younger members of our industry.
They almost fall prey to the negative connotation that our industry has. Like somehow we're still saddled with the, you know, cheap black suit knocking on doors with a, with a briefcase talk, you know, selling door-to-door life insurance connotation.
How much of a role do you, 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 because I wholly agree with you that we don't, 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.
It's going to be an insurance adjuster with a check saying, here, rebuild your home. This is incredibly important work.
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? Yeah, I'll tell you why. I'll tell you 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.
Just call me and I'll shop all these agencies. And it's a habit that we have both as consumers, but also as insurance professionals.
Right. I go into agencies and very often a CSR will put a quote into the comp rate and they'll deliver the cheapest one, right? Because that's what their condition to think is the thing that matters most.
Now, I'm here to tell you, all of you listening right now saying, Sheldon, price matters. People want affordable insurance.
They want cheap insurance. I agree.
I totally agree. What I'm talking about is the conditioning that we have and our consumers have that price is all that matters, right? So you're right, Ryan.
We need to remind ourselves constantly of the importance of the work. And the reason that I say that is because that's what should empower you.
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. And you're saying, I understand, Ryan, I'm not going to get into how I model handling objections.
Although maybe I will, we still got 15 minutes left or 20 minutes on this call. 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 packed the gear. Yeah.
But I just wanted to respond with passion to your question about reminding ourselves, it was really a statement, not a question about the nobility of the work and that we don't do that enough. 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.
When you're rooted in the nobility of the work, that is my job as a licensed advisor to educate and inform. When you're rooted there, you don't worry about objections about asking for an umbrella policy or mentioning cyber liability or life insurance.
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. So that's why I go deep into an ability to work.
I love it. No, I think it is, I think what we are discussing in this exact moment feels or can feel like a fluffy topic, but it is ultimately at the core of why we don't do, take these actions on the days.
And I'll give you firsthand experience or, 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 let me help you with some cold calls can I help you right now yeah let's do it I'm gonna I'm gonna help you first of all I think cold calling is good for for young and seasoned veterans. The question is just, what's the volume of cold calls? And we also know that in terms of return on investment, that one is very low.
The highest return, of course, is a direct introduction from a current customer to a friend, right? That handoff. Like the way that you and I got connected was through a friend, John Bachman, who said, Hey, Ryan, you got to be Sheldon.
Sheldon, 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 2000 or 20,000.
I don't know. Few thousand.
Yeah. Come on, Sheldon.
Few hundred. You're raving fans.
Okay. So listen, he didn't mean it guys.
He didn't mean I'm just, I didn't mean it. Um, just playing.
I didn't mean it. 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? 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? Hold on to your hat, brother, because here we go. Let's do it.
Okay. So you were probably cold calling for commercial lines.
Was there a particular industry niche that you were focused on in commercial? Workers' compensation. Yeah, that's a product.
What about an industry vertical? Not necessarily. So you were calling on one moment, you were calling on a landscape company.
The next moment you're calling on a contract. I go into insurancexdates.com.
I find businesses that are renewing whether between three to four months from today. And I have between employers, Chubb, Hanover, and Pi, I can write pretty much anyone's workers comp at a very good degree.
Got it. 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, let's say restaurants, let's say restaurants.

So, so do you know 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.

So you like restaurants, you've got some traction there.

You've got some experience. I don't like them, but they do business with me.
Why don't you like them? 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. Now, once I break them of that, they do become good clients.
But my initial

engagement is they've had 17 different carriers and agents. And most of the time it's because

they're tough to deal with. They switch a lot.
And what I try to do and what I've done so far

is I'm trying to provide them, show them something that they haven't had before.

All right. Well, let's just say that becomes your industry niche.

Yes.

For those of you who think I'm being pretentious by saying niche, let's call it your industry niche.

Yeah, that's call it your industry niche. I say niche too.
I get made fun of all the time. You're in good company.
You know what? They're the people that don't know how to pronounce a French word. Niche.
All these niche, you Americans with your terrible accent. Niche.
It's not spelled N-I-T-C-H. All right.
So have a little flavor. Ryan, remember, I'm going to combine these four things I already forgot.
Let's do it. 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.
Let's suppose that it was landscapers. Let's suppose that it was contractors, right? So 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.
Hey, Ryan, my name is Sheldon. I specialize in working with insurance with, I mean, I specialize in working with restaurants in the greater Boston area too, or that, and then we'll fill in that blank.
I'll come back to that. Okay.
So being able to say the words I specialize in is not only a great intro, but it's also something that will become true. 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? 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 and nobility. If I were working for you right now, Ryan, what city do you live in? Albany, New York is the...
Albany. See, I like Albany.
I would go to Albany and the example is going to be easier for a personalized 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? So 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? When I say restaurant listeners, I want you to substitute in your mind dental practices or contractors or landscape firms or tree companies, whatever that niche is, right? 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.
And when I say go deep, here's the cold call. So listen, you don't even have the cold call because you have one restaurant who's a client of yours, correct? Yes.
Right. So I would go to that buddy of yours and I'd say, hey, buddy, restaurateur, what is the trade group, the industry association, the local restaurateur group that you belong to? Who do you network with when you're networking to restaurant professionals? Do you know if such an organization exists in the greater Albany area? 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.
So the capital district, have you called on the capital district restaurant association for any purpose in any way whatsoever? I haven't. I have called and talked to them.
They are not having any events, obviously, because of the vid. 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 the track where I'm going. But I'm on the track.
Yeah, I'm on the track. And 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. 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 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 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.
The self-service comes in the form of, if I do a good job for them, people will want to reach out and say, hey, could I work with you? So that's 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 apply my trade and work my hand through the organization at the greater restaurant association. What's it called again? Capital district restaurant association or something.
And by the way, these associations, you can find an association for, you know, children of half Mexican mothers that are from El Paso, by the way. I'm actually, I'm a half Mexican with a full Mexican mother in El Paso.
There's an association for them. Okay.
There's associations for everything. 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 and now ryan's thinking you know i tried the association their too expensive, and they're not taking content.
Me, am I allowed to swear on this show? Yes. I say, bullshit.
You got to go be able to back. Their job is to deliver value to the restaurant owners.
And if you could go and say, I've got a seminar, Mr. 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.
Restaurant Association Executive Director,

called the three most important things that every restaurant owner overlooks when they're buying

their commercial restaurant insurance. Now, that's something that's a headline.
Now, I'm in my

marketing. Now, I'm positioning as an expert who's giving value that that audience wants.
Yeah. That's how I tie all those things together.
So I absolutely love that idea. Um, I also like that you called bullshit because one of the, uh, first things I did in this agency, uh, was I did a webinar compensation.
Just a general webinar, not to any specific group. It was titled Five Simple Ways to Cut Costs and Free Up Cash Flow in Your Workers' Comp.
That was the name of the webinar. I love it.
Great title. 37 people attended.
I wrote four of them. I've never done another webinar.
Oh, right. my right.
So you're proving I want to hug you right now. Oh, with a you I need a hug and a slap at the same time.
Yeah, exactly. Across the face.
You hit it. That's it.
I want to give you a hug so that I can back up and slap you. Just stop right there.
Just stop right there. There's two coaching opportunities.

One of them is why?

Like, what is that?

And there's probably a dozen reasons why, and they're all good.

But you're a busy guy building an empire right there. And right now you're interviewing me, and you do this podcast twice a month or twice a week, you said.

By the way, as your unofficial coach, start cutting that in half and start replacing it with podcasts to like the one you just described, right? Become the workers comp guru in the restaurant association marketplace, all right? That's what you can start doing. And then the other coaching opportunity is that illustrates the power of what we just discussed.
Like you just did, you had 45 people. 37.
37 people attended. And you wrote four pieces of business? Four workers' comp accounts.
Yep. Four different accounts.
Four different accounts. Yes.
Call that 40 attendees, 40. That's 10% of your audience bought from you.
And this is 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.
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. That's the sales game.
And now you're no longer cold calling, Ryan. What you're doing is you're making lukewarm calls.
Granted, they're hard. Granted, you need to buckle down and make them.
Granted, you need to say something compelling in that voicemail, which you're going to land in. Now, we're into the skills of, all right, what's your voicemail sound like? What's your follow-up protocol? How do you trial close when you get them on the phone because they're going to tell you oh my policy doesn't renew until uh next august 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 I have this, my problem in business, this is a known issue and I struggle with it every day, is that I love to learn new things.
Love to. This is probably more of a life issue.
And it keeps me from staying dedicated to things. So it's, I did a webinar, it crushed.
I it's like in my mind, I go checkbox, crushed it. Let's, 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. And, and, 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, um, because the truth is a bunch of those people I now know, I've seen them kind of around my stuff.
A couple of, a couple of the business owners who I know were on that podcast or on that webinar. And I've had ideas, you know, I have the slides.
I can easily clean them up a little bit and do it again, make it even better, tighter. It was a little long.
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. 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.
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. 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? Well, I did some cold emailing and I ran Facebook ads.
You ran Facebook ads and you were promoting the webinar. Yes, so I did a little video.
I could send it to you. It's kind of cool.
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, 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 gonna show you how to do that in five simple steps sign up for this webinar it's completely free no obligation and we'll be done in 30 minutes boom i had 60 people sign up and 37 showed live and and 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 and it has close to 100 views on YouTube because after I did it, I took it down and then posted it on YouTube. And it has close to 100 views post and it gets a couple of views every month, people watching it.
I guess I went long, I went about 45 minutes. 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 I it's probably obvious I can go tangential and get way too deep into the context.
So if I can be a little tighter, I think I could, you know, these become evergreen resources over time that I think could really add value. Right on.
Love it. That's perfect.
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. I can't promise you it's going to be free.
Like I just milked him for all this free advice right now. But 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? Or how does that process begin for you with the people who are listening to this show? SteadySales.com.
SteadySales.com. That's how it begins.
SteadySales.com. Do you do the LinkedIn's or the, you're on the gram? Can they slide? Someone throw the name Sheldon Snodgrass in Google and I'll come up in all kinds of places, but my website is Steady.com.
Steady sales.com. It's what everybody wants.
Steady sales. Yeah.
Right. Um, uh, that's a whole nother story.
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. Yeah, it was a good grab.
It was lucky. Cause I was like sales, nine, one, one sales, four, one, three sales.
Now I had all these notions about like, let's do urgency. And it's like, no, man, that's all 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. 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. You know, I, and this is the very last thing I'll say about this, about, and about Steady Sales is when I think about, it's so easy to get caught in these, the people who have flashes, right? Bam, they did this big, you know, whatever.
right um actually take the time to think about the agencies that I, 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. 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 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, big logarithmic, you know, I'm going to drive everything. He just is consistent and reinvest and grows and thinks about process and blah, blah, blah.
And 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.
So I think we got, give, give me a farewell. I realized I got a two o'clock call that gives us two and a half minutes to wind down.
So how do we do that? How do we do it? We said, I say, thank you to you. I appreciate you.
I appreciate your time. I know that you're busy, but it means a lot to me.
It means a lot to the people listening to this show. I wish you absolutely nothing but the best.
And everyone, Google

Sheldon Snodgrass, connect with him, get in the ecosystem, follow his stuff. You will

not go wrong. And if you have a need, reach out.

Thank you, my good man. Yeah, be good, buddy.
Appreciate it. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Hey, that's really good! You go fuck yourself with your fat fucking ass.
Thank you. Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint bubbles?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you. Take it.
Thank you. Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint bubbles?

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