The Ryan Hanley Show - 224. Stop Selling Inbound Insurance Leads

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comEver had a lightbulb moment that shifted how you approach your business? That's what we're unpacking today, the seismic shift inbound marketing can create for insurance agencies.✅ 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** More about this episode **I bring my journey to the table, sharing my days at the Murray Group to my current insights as Chief Marketing Officer at TrustandChoice.com and Agency Nation. We dissect the rise of 'closers', the unsung heroes in converting inbound leads, and why their existence marks a pivotal turn from aggressive selling to strategic closing. Embrace the nuances of this transformative role and discover how answering client questions can lead to a trust so deep that it practically sells your policies for you.Real-life stories are the heart of this session, like the one about Virginia from Clifton Park, whose inquiry became an eye-opening testament to the power of content marketing. And let's not forget the contractor whose life was changed by a workers' compensation video.These narratives cement that addressing specific needs can spark organic growth and solidify lasting client relationships. As we wrap up, I sincerely thank our community and urge you all to lean into the Inbound methodologies.For those who dare to adapt, the next decade promises many opportunities. So, tune in, join the conversation, and let's chart the course to a thriving future in the insurance space.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today, we have a topic that is near and dear to my heart, inbound leads in the insurance industry, which so many people talk about, but so few have had the experience that I've had with dealing with these literally thousands, tens of thousands of leads in multiple different formats. And just to give you a feel for what I mean, I was generating back in the good old days with the Murray Group for more than eight years. We were doing close to, we averaged somewhere between like 85 to 100 leads a month. And I was doing that on a hundred dollar budget, making every mistake, wasting time, energy, content all over the place and really cutting my teeth on what

it meant to be, to do inbound, what inbound marketing was, what content marketing was. These are terms that aren't used as much today. It's more like digital marketing or brand building, et cetera. But the core principles were really built back in from like 2010 to 2018 ish around these ideas of inbound and content marketing. And when I was doing this for the Murray Group, what I learned very clearly was that by answering at its base, answering simple questions that you consistently receive from your target market, putting them online and written in my preferred format video, as well as others, generates inbound opportunities. People find you. They see that you know what you're talking about. They understand that you have an expertise.

They may appreciate the way you look, you talk, your feel, your authenticity, whatever vibe you're giving off, whether it be hyper-professional, very casual, et cetera. It could be some sort of connection to a particular niche market, et cetera. Whatever it is, they connect with it. They build trust with you in

the digital environment. And then when they have a problem, they reach out to you. Okay. So that is primary lessons I took away from the Murray Group. Transitioning into the second phase of my career, which was as the chief marketing officer for trustedchoice.com and Agency Nation, I got to teach a lot of these principles and see the results in real agencies across the country. I did a lot of that through Agency Nation. And then through the lead delivery system that trustedchoice.com has, we were able to watch the result of agencies across the country of every shape, size, and every geographical region, how they handled inbound leads, leads that were delivered via like a warm call transfer and leads that were delivered via email or what are commonly known as data leads. And what were the obstacles they were consistently having to hurdle? Where were the spots? Where did

things come up that they didn't see? We'll call those blind spots. And what were the problems that seemed to be easily solved, etc. I'm pushing through that and a couple other businesses and just continuing to apply the results in the entire time working my own personal brand using a lot of these techniques, a lot of the whether you're listening to this in the podcast or seeing in social or on the YouTube channel, eventually coming to the agency that I founded, sold and ultimately exited Rogue Risk, where in less than four years, we applied these principles and saw massive growth. Not to mention over this time, I have consulted with just under two dozen clients on the side for a period of a few years in which I didn't talk about these very much and we'll never tell you who they are specifically. That's just out of respect for them. But I've been able to see this work over and over and over again. I believe that inbound marketing, generating opportunities,

which reach out to us, our agency. So inbound, meaning they come to us. We're not, we're not have to call them. We're not warming them up. We're not wedging our way in, meaning they come to us, we're not, we're not have to call them, we're not warming them up, we're not wedging our way in, etc. They're raising their hand and contacting us. I believe that this is one of the most important aspects of scaling and growing an agency. Cold calling is amazing. I have absolutely no problem with cold calling. I did cold calling. I think that some amount of outbound prospecting, whether it's cold calling. I did cold calling. I think that some amount of outbound prospecting, whether it's cold calling, cold emailing, using tools like Loom to do very targeted, very personalized outreach can be highly effective. And on a

one-to-one basis, like producer by producer, these methods can generate real revenue and real wealth for us over time. However, if you're trying to scale an agency, if you're trying to scale a business, from my perspective and my experience, the best way to do that is not to just hire, hire, hire, hire, hire cold callers and then spend tons of time training in them, hoping some percentage of them hit and work and actually can produce results. It's build a team of closers that are absolutely tremendous at closing inbound leads. Now, the title of this video is Stop Selling Inbound Insurance Leads, and I firmly believe that. So what do I mean? What is the difference between closing and selling?

Selling is where we feel the need to inject ourselves into the process. If we're doing inbound right, we're not part of the process. And this is why I believe, and we're going to do future videos on this here at Finding Peak, and if you're part of our training programs or one of our coaching clients, we dive deep into this topic, talk about outbound hunters, our chest thumpers, those people who want to write a piece of business and post it on LinkedIn and get all the likes and hand clap emojis and love that stuff. Those people are important, amazing, but they have a very specific disposition. And then you have your account executives who are more about nurturing and caring and solving, you know, kind of service related issues and retaining business, right? Those are AEs. And what happens in so many agencies is that we try to take someone from

either one of those buckets and turn them into an inside sales rep. And neither one of those profiles exactly matches, in my opinion, an inbound sales rep. I call this third production position a closer. Like I said, we'll do deeper dives on this in future videos. But that position has to be able to operate from a different mindset than you would want a producer to operate or an A8 to operate. And the difference is you are closing business. You are not selling insurance. I'm going to say that one more time. A closer closes business. They do not sell insurance. So what are the difference between selling and closing? I learned this from the very first inbound lead that I ever got. So the very first inbound lead that I ever received was in 2011. I had been

writing blog posts on my ex-father-in-law's agency's website for a while, about six months. And a woman called me and her name was Virginia. And Virginia, I got a, you know, beep, Ryan, there's someone on the phone for you. Her name's Virginia. Okay, great. So I pick up the phone and this woman responds and she says, hi, Ryan, you don't know me. My name is Virginia. I'm from a town called Clifton Park. That's about 20 minutes from where our agency was located. You don't need to know where that is. But she wasn't calling from like, she didn't like driven by our agency. She was from a different town. She didn't even necessarily know where we were located. She said, I'm from Clifton Park. We've never met, but I've been reading your blog posts for a few months now.

And I want you to quote my insurance. Or she said, I want you to handle my insurance. I'm sorry. I want you to handle my insurance is what she said. And I said, oh, so you're looking for a quote. And she said, no, no, I'm not looking for a quote. I'm going to send you everything I have. I want you to look through it. Make sure I have the right stuff.

If there's anything I need that's not there, let me know. I want you to give me the best price you have. Send it back to me, and I want to do business with you. See, Virginia was already sold. Virginia wanted to work with me, with our agency, with the mindset that I had. She was already sold. I just had to close the business, meaning do the job, do the job that we do. Make sure she had all the right coverages, make sure she was with the right carrier, make sure she had competitive pricing, et cetera. That's the job. But if I tried to sell Virginia

on things, she would have balked. She would have jumped. She didn't want to be sold. She didn't want to have things pushed down her throat. She didn't want to know all the options. She certainly didn't want to have me deny doing business with her because I couldn't completely round out her account in some way, shape, or form. Virginia had a problem. And her problem was she didn't particularly have a good relationship with her agent. She had read my content and thought that I would be a good fit and was already sold when she reached out. Okay. Another example of this is the very first inbound lead that I ever got at the agency that I started back in 2020, Rogue Risk. And this was a contractor who was about two hours south of our location. He had found one of my videos on YouTube about workers' compensation for painters. And he had been a lifelong solo shop, just him painting, never needed workers' comp

because most jobs being individual, he was a sub. And he had recently, this was 2020, he had recently, before COVID, unfortunately, gone out on his own and formed his own shop and hired a couple guys to come work for him. And he had never had workers comp before, but he already had general liability. So he had general liability through his current agent, but he didn't know, and again, and some of this is the power of inbound marketing and how, unfortunately, how poorly we as agents often explain to our customers all the potential services and policies that we can provide. So he was unaware that his agent could actually write workers' comp, found us online, saw the video on workers' compensation insurance for painters that we had done, reached out, said, hey, I just hired two guys. I know I need workers' comp to get on these job sites. I have absolutely no idea how to do it.

Can you help me? And this is like June or no, late May of 2020. So the zombie apocalypse has happened and we're starting to open things up a little bit. Certain people were able to go back to business. In this case, he was. And they still had to wear like masks and stuff at that time. But I, you know, so just so you know, I launched in March and didn't write a policy for two and a half months, which was scary. But once once the COVID stuff

started to go away, everything changed, but he reaches out. And and he had a problem. His problem was, I have no idea how to do workers compensation. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. I don't know what it requires. I think to some businesses, workers, even though to most insurance agents, workers compensation, once you understand the mechanics is fairly straightforward. To many business owners, workers comp is scary, right? They know that they need it. They know they have to have a cert for it. They know they can get in trouble if they don't do it properly. So he reached out. If I had pushed this gentleman for all his insurance, his commercial auto, his general liability, he would not have done

business with me. He had a problem. His problem was workers' comp. And I was able to write that policy for him and get him squared away so that the next day he could get on a job that he needed to pay his bills. I then went back around about two months later and did end up writing the general liability. And a couple months, maybe like a year after that, I think we ended up writing the commercial auto as well because he moved the truck from his personal name into his business name. We didn't do personal lines or I tried to stay away from personal lines at that time. So the idea was if we sell, right, the common sales process is, well, you need this and you have to have this and I need to have your general liability.

And, you know, if you're driving that truck around, it should be in commercial, you know, that should be a commercial auto policy, et cetera. No, not on inbound stuff, not on the first contact, not in that initial call, not in the initial sale. Now, if someone comes in and says, Hey, I have all this stuff. If you want it, you can have it. 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'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show.

I love you for listening to this show and I hope you enjoy it. Listening as much as I do, creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode. Awesome. But we need to stop thinking on inbound leads. This is just right. If you're doing outbound stuff, cold calling, you want to get the whole account. That makes a lot of sense to me. But on inbound leads, what that person is saying is they're raising their hand saying, I have a problem. My problem is insert whatever it is. In this case, it was had never purchased a worker's comp policy before and needed help. It could be, I just got my first commercial vehicle. It could be, I'm starting a business. It could be, I can't get ahold of my agent. It could be, I've been auto renewed for five years and I'm sick of it. It could be, you know, we're starting a sub company. We're starting a spinoff where

there are 10 million potential reasons that someone does not 10 million. There's probably about a dozen or so really, but in five seven are most common, of reasons that someone reaches out for you and they say, I have this issue. And your job is to solve that problem. A closer's job is to solve the problem, not to sell them a bunch of insurance. Now, you might be saying, Ryan, monoline accounts, accounts that are split with other agents tend to not renew at as high as a rate. It opens us up to having our work stolen or BOR.

And that's 100% true. That is why on the backend, you need to have an onboarding process which maximizes the lifetime value of that customer by one setting expectations that you are going to reach back out and, and, you know, look into their other stuff or, and, you know, you need to have a reminder set up in your systems. You need to have some automation, some touchpoint automations, some introductions set up. We need to have trainings with our AEs so that any touch points

we're asking for the rest of the account, we need to be asking for reviews and referrals, etc. And those are all things that we set up during our onboarding process for that lead, right? So the idea is get as many leads in the top of the funnel as you can and solve their problems. Be a solution provider. Get that huge blast of positivity and trust that you get when you solve someone's problems or when they reach out to you on inbound, they are saying, I have an issue that I need help with. And whatever's in my physical right in front of me world is not getting it done. That's why I'm coming to you. So solve their problem. You are, they now see you as a solution provider,

that you have incredible value in their mind, and you have all the momentum to then, during the onboarding process in the following two, three, six months, to come back around, upsell, cross-sell, ask for Google reviews, ask for referrals, and maximize the lifetime value of that customer. But if you try to do all that work upfront, if you try to ask for referrals, ask for Google reviews, round out the account, try to sell them more than what they really need or what they're asking for, in that initial interaction, you will lose that account. They will absolutely ghost you. They

will go away. They will find someone else because they don't understand what you understand. They don't understand your business model. Frankly, they don't understand what you understand. They don't understand the, you know, your business model. Frankly, they don't care about your business model. They don't care that, you know, we go from, you know, 30% retention rate with one policy to 70% with two to 91 with three, right? They don't care about those numbers. Those numbers mean nothing to your inbound prospects. All they know is they have a problem and they want you to solve that problem. And if you can change that mindset, if you can start to change that mindset, there's all kinds of things you can do. There's, you know, this is what we do with Finding Peak is we help agencies fix this mindset, build this mindset.

If they don't have it in the beginning, help you recruit closers. If you don't currently have them, this, this changing this mindset, changing this idea to be just pure problem solvers, and then allowing our CRM automation wrong, right? Unless they're truly wrong. But I've seen people lose accounts because someone wanted a $1 million umbrella and you're like, well, really, they should have three and I don't want to write one. It's like, if they need a $1 million umbrella to get on the job, you should be recording phone calls, et cetera. Anyways, you say, look, I want you to know my recommendation is a $3 million umbrella, but I understand you only need the one to get on the job. I'm going to write you the $1 million umbrella, but I just want you to know I'm going to notate my system

that I offered a three. Here's the price. And if you ever change your mind, let me know. And if it's okay with you, I'd like to follow up with you in six months and just make sure that $1 million umbrella is still okay. That's all you got to do. Simple stuff like that, right? You've solved their problem. You've got them the commercial umbrella that gets them on the job. That's what they're worried about. You've gotten them the commercial umbrella that gets them on the job. That's what they're worried about. You've gotten them the commercial umbrella that gets them a contract, that gets them paid. That's what they needed. You solve that problem.

And then by handling the process correctly, by not trying to sell them, by just closing the business, you can then come back around now that you're seen as a value provider and get the rest of the account and do what you do best and make sure they're properly protected and all that kind of good stuff. So my friends, I highly, highly recommend that this is a mindset you address inside your agency for inbound accounts, inbound accounts, that you are solving problems, that you are closing business, that you are not trying to sell people insurance. I promise you, if you're looking at low conversion rates, if you get ghosted,

if people tend to push back or give you a hard time, it is most likely because you are trying to sell them when really they just want you to solve their problem. If you enjoy this content, if this is something you're interested in, guys, I love you for being part of Finding Peak and part of this community. If you're watching on YouTube, love for you to subscribe.

Leave me a comment. If you have any questions about this process, thoughts, whatever, leave them inside of YouTube. If you're listening on the podcast, share this with friends. Guys, I love you. I believe the next 10 years in particular are wide open for those who want to adopt the technology systems, processes, and cultural mindsets of inbound in conjunction with everything they're currently doing. Those are going to be the agencies that stand out and grow. And at Finding Peak, that is what we're helping agencies do. I love it. If you're listening to this, I'm out of here. Thank you. Thank you. so close twice as many deals by this time next week. Sound impossible? It's not.

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