Finding Peak w/ Ryan Hanley - How to Lead with a Broker of Record without saying Broker of Record w/ Nick Aube

Episode Date: February 8, 2024

Spartan philosophy, built in the black-ops lab of business: https://www.findingpeak.comFinding Peak podcast: https://linktr.ee/ryan_hanleyHave you ever wondered if insurance agents should play the long game or just hit the immediate pain points? ✅ Join the Insurance Growth Masterclass: https://masterclass.insure✅ For daily insights and ideas on peak performance: https://www.instagram.com/ryan_hanley/✅ Hire me to speak at your next event: https://ryanhanley.com/speaking✅ Nick Aube's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-aube/** More about this episode **Our latest conversation tackles this nuanced debate, revealing why addressing the specific need that prompted the client's call, such as providing workers' comp for that budding business owner, might just be the key to unlocking long-term loyalty.We also discuss how to strategically round out accounts and upsell down the road, challenging conventional sales wisdom and underscoring the importance of customer-centric service.Have you been curious about the Broker of Record (BOR) process and how it can streamline your insurance dealings? We break down the tactical advantages of this single-broker approach, demonstrating how it can give prospects a powerful incentive to choose you, the broker capable of surveying the entire market for their needs.In a candid exchange with our guest from Producer Systems, an expert on producer systems, we explore how loyalty can shape underwriters' perceptions and the significance of educating clients on market behavior for their benefit.Wrapping up this episode, we share real-world insights into the art of differentiation and positioning in the sales process. We tackle misconceptions and insecurities about the BOR process, emphasizing the need for proper documentation and the importance of re-underwriting to sidestep the pitfalls of inheriting predecessors' blunders.We wrap up our episode with a focus on prospecting for better results, encouraging an abundance mindset for more successful outcomes. Our conversation with the Producer Systems expert is a goldmine for those looking to refine their sales approach, and as always, we encourage continued dialogue on LinkedIn with us and our esteemed guests.--Recommended Tools for GrowthOpusClip: #1 AI video clipping and editing tool: https://link.ryanhanley.com/opusRiverside: HD Podcast & Video Software | Free Recording & Editing: https://link.ryanhanley.com/riversideWhisperFlow: Never waste time typing on your keyboard again: https://link.ryanhanley.com/whisperflowCaptionsApp: One app for all your social media video creation: https://link.ryanhanley.com/captionsappGoHighLevel: It's time to take your business workflow to the Next Level: https://link.ryanhanley.com/gohighlevelPerspective.co: The #1 funnel builder for lead generation: https://link.ryanhanley.com/perspective--Episodes You Might Enjoy:From $2 Million Loss to World-Class Entrepreneur: https://lnk.to/delkFrom One Man Shop to $200M in Revenue: https://lnk.to/tommymelloIs Psilocybin the Gateway to Self-Mastery? https://lnk.to/80upZ9This show is part of the Unplugged Studios Network — the infrastructure layer for serious creators. 👉 Learn more at https://unpluggedstudios.fm.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

At the beginning, though, when I was selling B-O-WR 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 somebody to talk print and go,

that guy will quote you all day want. Like, I couldn't get myself to do it. But as I went through it over the years, and then ultimately I've seen leaving, you know, and doing what I'm doing now and actually be able to go, you know, talk with, you hire other coaches. And here's what I was doing. And really dissect the process.

It's like, holy 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

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 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, et cetera, 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, 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 principal 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 and buying leads, taking that through to how we actually use the one called closed system that we, 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 in 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 KAC 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. Dot ensure.

So that's masterclass. Dot ensure. Put that into your browser and you can either sign up for the waitlist 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. a 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 the Nick. Well, good. I appreciate you on the on. It's good to get together here. Yeah, no. I'm 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 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 took on this video, and this is what I believe, is that when it comes to inbound accounts,

So we're not talking about cold call prospecting or networking or even referrals. We're talking about someone who goes on to 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 you can 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 trusted choice.com, through my work coaching clients, through all the time at Rogue Gris,

through all my time at the Murray Group when I've been doing inbound. 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 it 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've just found that I think, I think we operate. And this is really where I'm interested in

your position. And what I'm interested in your take on this particular topic, but then also just I feel like we, 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. Oh, 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, ah, like.

Oh, you're freaking pissed up. 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 they just go, well, inbound leads are crap. Or the internet leads are crap. Or people that are just tired. They called you with a problem and you didn't solve their problem.

You tried to do what was in your best interest. Correct. Which was right 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 was good, dude. And I hadn't quite thought about it that way before. And I honestly, I never did a ton of inbound. That's one thing 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.

Like, 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, you know, custom clothes, we've all been hitting up by my, you know. 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 debt of winter I got a wedding in the spring I just need a damn jacket yeah yeah and it literally as you're saying that it hit me I'm like because I hadn't thought about inbound that way before but when you're talking about me I wouldn't get frustrated yeah because what's the take you respond on you're just trying to sell me a bunch more shit that they don't necessarily need yep at one point did I 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 solve that one problem and so I think you're saying you're spot on. I think that the take that I would add to is like transparency on the front end of how

the process works. I think, especially the BOR and everything that I'll do with that, it's like, that's the simplest thing. Like, take the end-bout thing. Hey, prospect, 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 use 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, shall so you get that employee hiring and go do whatever you 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, you know, I've lost, I've watched more accounts ghost me or not call me back or say no or whatever 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 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, you know, struggling with this concept, when you solve the one problem up front that they have,

you've just now becoming 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 be OR 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 on this post. Actually, I love everybody who is. I think they're all amazing. I think the difference is I don't think we're necessarily thinking through, particularly to infound. 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 all their 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 like, but I said you're going viral with the thing. You're pissing people on.

I don't know about that. But it is, it is fun. And I love these conversations. I feel like these are the great conversations that we have. 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, 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 into your particular style. But before we, before we get to that, like I was never, and I've done BORs, but I've never, I was never a guy who like sold or prospect on BORs, right? Like what you, I never did what you teach. It just was never, you know, was never the way that I operated. 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 are more like me, maybe they do more personal lines and BOR is just aren't a big part of their process or, or their, 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, I know it's super remedial, but a little bit of the baseline on what exactly is a BOR and what are you trying, from a tactical sense, what are you accomplishing and using a BOR to bring in business? before we get into the whys and the house 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 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 by doing that as the brokers, you're guaranteeing revenue.

okay, cool, right? We're going to get paid. 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 current 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 care two revenue. Who cares for you? Right?

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, you know, positioning and pitching to the client It's like, I don't care if it's me or not, dude.

Kind of we're talking about the imbound. Just educate them. It's like, do you want to get the most in the market? Well, it's changed. You used to go, quote, multiple brokers back when the agent sold that exclusivity, and this broker had this carrier and this broker had this carrier. So you had to go to both to see two options. But now both brokers have both carriers.

And so you're better on 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 with one option. So back in the day, the idea would be that, you know, 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 the carrier pitched me on, you know, we were going back and forth. And this guy was a little old school and a little pompous. And he talked about he said, you know, something something, you know, the franchise value of this appointment, I kind of like giggled a little bit.

You know, that giggled. I just kind of like chuckled. Maybe it's probably a more masculine way of saying what I did. And he kind of like, 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. and 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 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 program and just condense the process, make it short the process, still educated on it, because I think it still is a vacuum. And you're spot on the way you're thinking about anything. The broker, like broker in town could be the biggest prick in the world.

Right. But they're the only one with a 100 mile radius that has travelers. And travelers are really good at landscapers. 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. My service can suck.

Yeah. I could not pay attention to your experience by any of that stuff. But I've got the best carry. Yeah. And the price is 20% lower. So that's kind of where we'd, worry, it's involved, right? To your point, we've got pretty much every broker has actually pretty much every carrier. So the client, the consumer, the best strategies to have one broker

do that. I mean, you don't have multiple CPAs. You can imagine that. If that's why we ran the tax system, I'm going to lower my taxes. I've got three CPAs in here, beating it up, see what they can do. Yeah. Like, it just doesn't work that way. And then you add on top of that, the carriers block the marketplace. So be like, in 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, the 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 submit your tax return. That's the CPA that gets it. That's a CPA that's paid up.

The brokers are the same way. The carriers only release in 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. And in 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, etc.

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 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. Let's get back to the episode. You have brokers that are actually in their 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 shirmy because they can complete submission. And so that's the concept. Like you go on, you hire a CPA, you do all this work, all this, you spend all this time and make sure you get your best shot to buy your tax return. Could you only get one shot to reduce that tax on door?

It's the same with the insurance companies, going after that and negotiated with that. 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. You know, it was a full submission, whatever.

And it goes a couple of days and I'm like, this is odd that I haven't got a response. Like, this is a knockdown account. I would think I would have this back and we'd be writing this already. 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 one, I had heard, you know, you hear things, you know, 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 know, you don't know, 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 think 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, essentially what you're saying is like, your name's trash in the marketplace. It's absolutely been destroyed based on how you navigated the market over the past three to five years. They would have no idea. Yeah. They 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 would go out and quote. So then they train the consumers. The consumers are like, oh, these good 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 is the process.

Hey, here's how you actually navigate it. Here's how you repair in 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. brok print in the simplest form here's what i can do to help you do though yeah do you think

that clients actually care like do you think and and i mean that honestly dick 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 mean 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 the beats like, you know, I basically was looking

at it's like, I was in a 12-year science experiment. I was literally in this lab figuring out this be a war stuff. In the beginning, they didn't give shit. They did not care. It's my attitude in the beginning, right? Prospects started about price. Oh, I got to pay less. And you can't avoid it. Every one of, I've never met anybody that is not price since when comes to insurance. And there's different variations. And, you know, some like, oh, you know, they're robbing me blind. They come to tallest buildings. Remember bullshit, they don't give me.

They're concerned about price. And so in the beginning, though, when I was selling Beowar, when I started doing it, I didn't want to talk about price because it was like, it's beneath me. Yeah, I'm not going to discuss. Yeah. Premium. Like, are you kidding me? Like, if you want somebody to talk print and go, that guy will quote you all day

want. Like, I couldn't get myself to do it. But as I went through it over the years, and then ultimately I see leaving, you know, and doing what I'm doing now and actually be able to go, you know, talk with people, hire other coaches. I said, here's what I was doing. It 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? Yeah. 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. Yeah, right? And that's what we're doing at the beginning, especially in the beginning at when I was based in my BOR pitch off at CUMGE 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, you know,

our risk management services or loss control or experiment on any of that bullshit. Even though it's important, right, there's a market term. You've probably heard it. You know, 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. Yeah. And if we can get them to do that, right? 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 sell them what they want, give them what they need. That is the whole crux of like my inbound selling system, the one called closed 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 be a process because that's the whole thing. Like, you know, I think, and I said this in one of the comments back to the people who were sharing their thoughts was like, you're, you're associating the fact that I'm saying solve their problem with this being transactional. I said, that's a, that's an assumption, not a reality. What I'm doing is solving a problem, but I'm also giving them what they need. right so I'm just not I'm just not pushing things on them today that they don't necessarily like if they have a package policy and that package policy is fine for today right 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 and this is where you know I want to 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? Like we get a prospect on the phone. All of a sudden, it's like, well, who does your comp? And what's your limit? And how much payroll do you have? And what are your class codes? And you're like,

It's 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 if I? 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 is the beginning of the call. 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, their 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 you 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, it's a nuance. But to me, it's a, it's crucial. Does that make sense? So it really makes sense. It brings me back to, um, 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, snowed on Halloween.

And I literally am like, fuck this. I've lived in my whole life. Like, I'm going somewhere warm. Like, so move out to California and, um, I'd land up 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.

Right. So, we're exclusivity. Price, right? It's going to be 40% less than the current landscape associated. There's like some association program or some bullshit that I literally doubt in a marketplace. So we're, I mean, me and there's a couple other producers. And I'm the newest, the youngest. We just start him.

And they have connections out. I don't know anybody. I literally go with their six suitcases like broke into a friend's place. Like, I'm going to crash your first. for a couple 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 preening. Everything renewed between April 1st, April 13th. And what was the pitch? Hey, one or four, eight and sent all the state. We're going to be 40% less. It's time this, you know, this, what hell you call it? Like a monopoly comes through an end. Like, we're just going to kick this carrier's ass.

Both. 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 carrier just didn't roll over and watch half their book walk out the door, so they came down.

We weren't as a competitive as the program thought. It was the first year. So we were about 12% less. And out of the entire thing, I wrote $1,000 bob. Yeah. And I was 22. I already spent some of the damn money. Like, it hurt. 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 him. And at that point, I'm like, fuck this energy. I'm like, I'm quitting. I'm figuring out a different way because I'm not going to go. I'm not going to do this for a year, which is what I'm now. It was just, and it was so eye-opening to me. And that's when I started figuring out this B-O-R thing.

So let's talk about the B-O-R 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. What, 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 are you, how are you helping your coaching clients do that? Like, what are your theories around that stuff? Yeah, so, I mean, it all comes out in position on the front end. I think that's some of the biggest mistakes on getting the BOR are caused by a position on the front head. And so you have to position it from me.

I would say lead with the BOR without saying BOR. Got you got it. 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 you're in that's one of the mistakes like people you jump in you're going to have to fire agent It's like you've been talking to this person for for 10 minutes less than that Right or the other mistake I made in the beginning I would like I would say anything just to get a damn meeting on books

So they said oh hey you want to you want to come cold yeah yeah shit I'll quote I'll be there I'll be there tomorrow with time And then I in that meeting I'll try and convince them that they should move down this path and be a war was too late because like it was like bait and switch on us nick you know you show be you told me you're gonna quote yeah 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. I 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 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 about it. That's the transaction. And the prospect's been through it a thousand times. 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, none of us send them all the policies and all this information, then to work from them for 90 days. They're going to answer 1,000 freaking questions to maybe find out if they can save me money and I should move with them. Like, that's 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 need to get calls from thousands of brokers, hundreds of brokers, drove numbers, thousands of being insane. But, you know, 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 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're going to do is show up and they're getting something compared to the traditional model where they've got to give and give and give to maybe get some. Yeah. I love that approach. it's very similar to what we do with inbound stuff. You know, it's to me, the longer you can go without asking for the particulars of their account,

the info gathering stage, the more that prospect's going to trust you. Because the minute, you know, how I would always position it is, I would get to a certain point, you know, and you're qualifying the prospect. You know, and 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 counts 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 it. 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 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? Who are you? What are you doing? Yeah. 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 closed ratio

because if someone believes what you believe and buys this into the process, then you're almost, they're almost sold before you can 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 revenue, premium, etc. 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, you know, 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, 100% of great.

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 it kept happening was, no matter how I qualified it, I quote it, small percent, you were giving that number to the incumbent. If you're going to do me like that, I don't want to work with you, one,

if that's not how I would operate. But too, I'm going to find that out before I spend 90 to 120 days. Quote you. Yeah. So let's shrink the process and let's force the prospect to actually answer 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 upon 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 or not, they ever say in this. Yeah, yeah. And here's how I work. And if that's not going to be a fit-meat 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 out working on other stuff. Yeah. I need that to qualify. I agree with you. It's funny,

Mike Oss posts some 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, I was like, that's beautiful because one, most likely if that agency principle 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 BOR in account because you haven't actually changed coverage, right?

So like where the real E&O issue starts to come in is on misrepresentations around coverage. And if you properly articulate and document a BOR process, you're not increased. 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 our account managers. That's the first thing she said to me. It's an E&O issue. Some of a bitch, I don't even care of that. Right? We got guaranteed revenue. Let's figure out the E&O. Let's make it not an EO issue, whatever we need to do.

And that was the first time I heard that. What do you mean it's an EO 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 EO issue? Okay. So we worked through that. When 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 new submission.

So you'd sign the BOR and the policy who just transferred 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 carry out and whatever, Alabama requires, 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 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 they, let's say they have it covered, and they go, you didn't put it on there. They're probably going to see you anyway. So I had that with my old agency. Well, the quote didn't happen. Right. 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 from people just kind of say, I don't want to deal with the be a war. And dude, I was the same way in the beginning. The first time I heard it was a job interview in California. And I was working at Brown Brown. We were quoting stuff, cold calling just kind of hammered. Like Ryan ended out. And I interviewed this one firm.

And it wasn't clear on their website that they did this. And I sit down in the interview. And the agency principal was like, we only be a war 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, it's like, this guy just doesn't understand. So, but I started asking questions, like, okay, so, so I don't get it. How do you write your business? How do you do this? And basically what he came down to and he said, and 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 not going to, one, I would get fired as an underwriter. I would not last a day as an underwriter. And I was frustrated. And so that's why I took the other job before. 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. Yeah. And it kind of just like, open my eyes like, okay, maybe there's a different way that I can

bring out a new business rather than just going to vote again. Yeah. I think, I think, you know, just putting a pin in the E&O thing. If you're documenting, if you're documenting your conversations and you're working through processes, there is no additional E and O concern. Because even if you did straight BOR, 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 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 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 our insecurities in sales, right? Because when we're canceling and rewriting something, we feel confident that we're coming in with a better price and different coverage and a new carrier 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? Like I have 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 value providers. I could not agree 100% more. That's how you say. Damn, I got all chipped up. Basically, I can be a more. I can't talk. But I'll never forget it, dude, because I was trying to get other people, different agencies out.

We're trying to, hey, we should all be doing this. Like, this is the way. Like, this is, you said all the time, this is the way. Like, that's how I've got to be on. Yeah, yeah. I've been doing this shit. And we sit 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. That was it. And I went home to my wife. I get it. I get why people don't want to do this. Because they happen 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, the carrier wasn't competitive enough. They gave the number to the incumbent. You know, hey, all this stuff's out of my control. Well, I was tired of having stuff out of my control. And so I wanted, you know, because the B-WRs, 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.

Like I had this vision, this dream. Okay, I want to build it. Completely on D. That's all I want to operate on. And at the beginning, I would still, like, if the revenue was big enough, I'd freaking back down and I'd quote it. Yeah.

They'd make the BOR PINC to go, hey, Nick, that's great. But we're not going to do that. You're interested in quoting, though. Shit, sure. Yeah, I'll do it. 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 a war. 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 a war, 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 of it and how I teach selling inbound insurance, when I'm working with a coaching client or whatever, one of the things 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 in the magazine article, you found their business. They could seem amazing, and you get on the phone with them

and they could be a complete jackass and just not a good fit for you, right? 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 back end. 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 brothers, their agent, and they were just trying to get another price to give them a hard time. And you're like, 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 are 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 BOR. 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 up front, 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, well, price might be why they called. It is, and study after study has found this to be true, it is rarely why they actually buy.

But we don't realize that if we gather information up front and we don't know what that is. information. We don't know what the real reason they're buying is if we go information gathering first. So to me, it's just, it's really opening my eyes to how different but similar this focusing on BOR is versus, you know, and the inbound process, like 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, giving 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 these educational platforms, be they on YouTube, your website, et cetera, wherever you decide to build it out, you create a consistent flow of business. 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 0 for 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 and I'm not focused. 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, oh my God, I got to write this. Like if I don't write this, we're not going to put premium on the books this week. And that desperation and scarcity surrounding that is what forces us to, or not forces us, but I think is part of the reason why we operate in these ways that don't actually produce results.

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, it's like, okay, I get that. But let's remove that by building up, by building abundance into the front end. So for you, 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 insuranceexstates.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 built my book 12 years on cold calling. That's what I did. Every agency is out.

Like, it's cold call. I'd make, I would drive it out. I'd make, you know, I still know. I could make 25 calls in a 40-minute period. So I'd just get to lose. I'd go anywhere from 50 to 100 a day depending on the time, right? And I'd 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 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 saying.

And I remember watching your shit. And not that he should be, give my point. Like, this dude, like, he's got disneyed about a thing that I'll live. And I, for me, I never could break away a, enough from the cold colon to actually, because it worked. So I was having a hard time to like just totally blowing it up. So I used the video a little bit differently.

But for me, it was cold call. And the other thing that I think this this misconception out there around the BOR is maybe it's misunderstood. The BOR is actually a prospecting tool. Right? People just think it's a letter to get business. But you can actually use it as a tool two different ways. One is if you can position it correctly on the front end,

it becomes a more interesting process for the prospect. Right. So we say, hey, look, quoting actually hurts your pringham. He has some 15 minutes to learn a new strategy for me to show you a strategy that you can navigate the market. You're going to set more meetings because people, everyone gives you the can response about it 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. Yeah. So make the process different. If we make it more exciting, more people are going to say yes. We were talking early about being in putting yourself in the consumer shoes. And this is an example I used all the time. If a mechanic called the up right now,

I don't know what kind of car you drive, but if we can't call you up and say, 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 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 shed in the 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 you car to break down sooner. Do you have 15 minutes to see you for how we might be to help you out of this new strategy of how we're helping other Tahoe owners?

It's like, well, dude, shit, I can oil change next week. Like, what do you mean? I'm about to dump that shit in there. Now, my wife back checked me. She said, is that true? No, that's not true. So don't, if you got to drive you, tell the home, don't work about 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 it 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 gatherer, 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, you know, to drive more opportunities. Yeah. I love it, dude. Dude, I want to be, I want to be cognizant of your time, of our audiences 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 or connect with me there, message me there.

It's me in the chat. It's not a bot. So you'll get me and or you go to our website, producer. system, my email's on there. You shoot an email, but happen to help with any questions on this process. Like, you know, just figuring it out.

If you don't matter where you're at, right? You want to just get your BOR process more dialed in where you're like, look, I quote it now. It's freaking miserable. I don't even know where to start. You know, 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 of out of you. Look forward to more and we'll connect on LinkedIn. Dude, sounds good. Appreciate you. I'm going to chaboo. All right, buddy. I'm going to chaboo. Twice as many deals by this time next week.

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