MRL #137- Producer Q&A

First off, Merry Christmas!

Secondly, I know it's holiday season and you're all busy. Me too.

So instead of a normal deep dive, I went into my DMs and pulled out some unanswered questions for this weeks newsletter.

Below is actually just the transcript from this week’s podcast.

Busy-busy over here in the Salas household.

Hope you don’t mind I hit the easy button this week.

Let's get into it.

"I can't see comp premium data in Insurance Xdate in my state. What are some other ways I can pre-qualify whether somebody is big enough or not?"

Good question.

I didn't have work comp premium until 2020-2021. So I went six or seven years without any work comp premium data. Don't let that be a hindrance.

What I used to do is pay for another service called Reference USA. They pull D&B public information, which isn't always accurate, but it’s close enough.

I would go by SIC code and zip code. Then I'd filter by sales. I'd do $5 million plus because there are so many companies that show they only do five million because they never report it. Then they end up being much bigger prospects.

You'll have to do a little more vetting. Pull the list, look at the on Google maps. If you can’t find anything, just call them. You're going to call some smaller insureds. There's no way around it.

Number of employees, sales, number of vehicles are your classic indicators. Trey put up a post a while back on how to find this for free. Here’s the link.

The other thing I’d recommend is going old school. Create a list of 100-150 you want to start with, map them out, and go boots on the ground.

Drive out to each and put eyes on them.

"Do you ever recommend calling prospects on Mondays?"

100%.

I don't like to call Mondays before about 10:30 or 11:00 in the morning. But after about 11:00, all internal apprehension goes away. People have their mornings set up. It's all good now.

Especially afternoons, I have no hesitation at all. Mondays are actually one of my days I like to get a lot of calls in just to start the week right. Sets the tone.

I like to get a good block from 1:30 to 4:00. It's also a slower day for me. I still monitor my email and it seems like not a lot of fires pop up Monday. They usually come in Tuesday.

I think everyone else has insurance low on the priority list on Mondays. They're doing everything else, getting their company going, and then the insurance fires always come up Tuesday.

So if you don't make any calls Monday, you're sitting there Tuesday and a fire pops up with a client. Now you're in the hole going into Wednesday.

Yes, make calls on Monday.

"I've used a cold calling service this past year because I was honestly pretty apprehensive about doing it myself. After listening to some of their calls, there was definitely a cringe factor. I'm taking the deep dive and going to start doing my own cold calling next year. What did you find to make it easier? Specifically, what do your typical openers sound like?"

Congratulations on taking the jump and making your own cold calls.

I think everyone should do it. I plan on doing it when I'm 60 years old. Not as many as I do now, but I think it still makes sense.

To make cold calling easy, I think a lot of it starts with mindset. You need to take the pressure off. You're not in control. There's a lot of stuff that's out of your control. You build your prospect list (that helps increase your odds) but your thought is:

I just need to find people out there that need some help. That maybe have some pain or that maybe have some curiosity. That's all I'm trying to do.

If you go into it with that mindset, it changes everything. That internal pressure you feel kind of goes away.

When I was really nervous making cold calls, what helped me the most was keeping the script super simple.

"Hey, is this Max?"

"Yeah."

"Hey Max, Micah here at Christensen Group over in Austin. Max, I didn't know—are you in charge of the insurance or is there someone else there that handles that?"

"It's me."

"Oh, lucky you. Hey, I know you got an agent. I'm just calling. I didn't know if you'd ever be open to having a conversation about the insurance and maybe doing some due diligence."

"What do you mean by due diligence?"

"Well, I use a process that helps contractors answer two questions: Am I overpaying or am I missing something? Without actually having to quote. That's why I was calling you today. I just wanted to share a little bit more about that if you had some time when I wasn't catching you out of the blue."

That's pretty low pressure. You're just having a conversation with someone. It's no different than if you run into someone at a networking event. Try to visualize it that way.

You can go even shorter. I actually had a YouTube video on my million-dollar script, how I built a million dollars at my first agency. And it was just:

"Yeah, hey Steve, it's Mike over at MMA agency. I was just curious if you'd ever be open to having a conversation about your insurance. I know you got an agent, but I didn't know if you guys ever look outside of that."

It was super short and people were almost like, "Is there more to this pitch?" And then you just get a conversation. They start talking.

It's all about listening. You don't want to talk a lot. You want to get them talking.

We overcomplicate everything.

If you just keep it simple and do it every day and just find the people who need it, we make it harder than it has to be.

Ready to Build Your Book?

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It's a digital course that walks you through exactly how to build a book from cold outbound. From building your list, to setting meetings, to closing deals.

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Check it out here.

Ok. Thats enough for this week.

Kick ass take names,

Micah Salas