--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have Charles Speck on the podcast, a former producer for InterWest Insurance Services and Arthur J. Gallagher. For the last decade, he has been running the Permission Group, an insurance production consultancy where he's helping agents and agencies produce more business. He does it through what he calls a broker of record mentality, and we talk about what that means. We talk through his idea of micro-niching. We talk about the mental side of producing business.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Really, why I wanted to have Charles on is he's a great guy and a great thinker in our business, certainly helping a lot of agents and agencies produce more revenue. But the things we discuss in this episode are keystones to what success is going to look like moving forward. We're at a transitional time in our industry's history. For a long time, we've been able to do C-plus work and be profitable. I think that time is gone. We have to be A players today. There's the pace of business, the quality of business demanded by our clients, the aggressiveness of new agencies like Rogue Risk and mine. We're aggressive as hell, and we're coming after people who are lethargic. If you don't want to be the type of agency that is losing business to agencies like mine and others, you've got to get to work.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think some of the ideas we talk about in here will resonate with you. They're ideas you can grab hold of, and if they make sense, you can reach out to Charles and potentially work with him. But the ideas are really important, and I was just glad I could share them with you. I love talking with Charles. He's a great dude. I've been on a couple panels with him, and we always have good back and forth. I think you're going to take a lot away from this episode, and I'm very happy to share it with you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Before we get there, I want to give a big shout out to the insurance website vendor for the independent insurance agency: Advisory Evolved. Chris Langell and his team at Advisory Evolved create the best insurance websites, hands down. There's no place else to go. Carruthers uses his stuff, Nick Ayers uses his stuff, Jason Cass uses his stuff, and the list goes on and on. All the best agencies are using Advisory Evolved. The reason is it's not just a website; it's a tool to grow your agency. I use the Power Pack. I use Quote Vids all the time. These tools exclusively come with Advisory Evolved websites. Plus, cost versus other providers? The amount of value you get is crazy.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I get asked all the time, "Hey, I'm looking for a new website. Where should I go?" I tell everybody unequivocally: there's only one option, and it's Advisory Evolved. If you're looking for a website, if you're looking to take your brand and your game to the next level, if you're looking for ways to get in front of more clients—people who are searching online or just searching for you—and present a better story to those people when they find you, go to Advisory Evolved. That's advisoryevolved.com. Check them out. Get a demo. Talk to Chris. Step your game up.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Let's get on to Charles. Think about InsurTech and how it has completely changed the insurance industry over the last five to ten years. COVID is going to disrupt the insurance agency. It's going to change the entire model. Agencies are downsizing their real estate. They're getting smaller in the office. People are going home. The account manager can do what they do away from the office. People don't want their clients coming in right now to bring in a payment. Pay online. Insurance producers, go home, work from your home, and we will pay you as you actually bring in revenue. I'm seeing a lot of producers going to 1099 and not employee status anymore. It's going to be amazing to see what happens with the insurance industry.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Frankly, unfortunately, the COVID wave is going to hurt a lot of agents. They're just not going to make it at the end of 2020, 2021. We're going to see a big shift of a number of people just leaving the industry because they can't make it. They can't write the business. They didn't look at email marketing, social media marketing. If agencies didn't have it at this point, they are struggling. They are dying. Absolutely dying. So it's one of the major things that needs to take place right now. Otherwise, insurance producers just are not going to survive.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Starting this agency has been the most challenging professional thing I've done in my entire life. That's probably an adult "duh" kind of thing to say, but you never... My wife actually said it to me this morning. She said, "You underestimated how hard this was going to be, didn't you?" I thought about that for a second. I definitely don't want to say I underestimated how hard it was going to be because I knew it was going to be the hardest thing I had ever done professionally. I knew that. But there are definitely pieces inside of the business that I drastically underestimated how hard they would be to wrap my head around.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The major ones are things like consistency, finding routine, having patience, and sticking to certain things. You go off and say, "Oh, I'm going to buy leads today." Then a week later, you're like, "Ah, leads suck. I'm not doing that anymore. I'm going to do PPC." Then you're like, "Ah, PPC sucks. I'm not going to do that anymore." Any of those strategies could work if you stick to them. I've found that the emotional side of the business has been the most difficult part, especially being on your own all the time.
--:-- Charles Specht: Yeah. That's the challenge. If you're in an agency with other people, if you're just a producer with other producers, you have that camaraderie. You probably have somebody holding you accountable. But you are your own accountability partner. You're the one kicking yourself in the pants. You're the one doing operations. You're trying to manage relationships with underwriters and get appointments. All of that, along with making cold calls, sending out social media, doing podcasts. You're probably putting in 100 hours a week just doing business. If you're seeing things over here and things over there, it's very difficult not to get that squirrel syndrome. That's why being micro-niched is very important. It allows you to actually stay focused.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This is one of the things I really wanted to talk about today. I have a bunch of topics I want to talk about. I'm not going to do your whole background because one, go check out Charles' LinkedIn and you'll figure it out. Two, you did the full background on Cass's podcast and it's awesome. So go listen to those shows. I want to get into your expertise. I want to do whatever, man. Just fire away. I'm ready.
--:-- Charles Specht: Yeah. So this idea of a micro niche scares the shit out of me. The reason is, what if you make the wrong decision? What if there's no revenue there? What if my carriers change their mind? I got a little gun shy because I spent before. I launched the agency on March 9th. In the two months leading up to that, I put tons of work in going after the fitness industry. I was coming off my brief stay as a fitness CEO, which is almost weird to say now. I was like, "Okay, this is perfect. I know insurance, I know marketing, and I have a really good feel for fitness businesses." I had Cincinnati as an appointed carrier really early, who has a tremendous fitness program. I'm like, "This is it. The moon is in the sign of Aquarius. Everything is lined up for me to go after this niche."
--:-- Charles Specht: Then, one week into that, March 16th, Emperor Cuomo nixes all fitness businesses. Cincinnati throws up a moratorium, rightly so. Now I'm toast. I can't write fitness. So my thought is, how do you talk me out of being nervous? Feeling like maybe there's not enough. All those fears. How do you talk me out of that?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: First of all, the main issue to realize when you're micro-niching is that it doesn't mean you can't write whatever comes your way. It's a mindset. We're going to have to deal with that mindset issue because that's what you're struggling with right now. "I don't know if I should do this." That's just mindset. It doesn't mean if something falls in your lap, someone refers something to you, you talk with somebody at a restaurant and they happen to have a business, it doesn't mean you can't write good business. The whole idea of marketing and branding is focused on getting your prospect to see you as somebody that makes sense for them.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The whole idea of micro-niching, what it does, Ryan, is it actually allows you to market more effectively. It allows you to brand yourself very effectively. This is really the issue: it allows you to get more clients more quickly. That's the thing. Now, are there potential pitfalls to it? Absolutely. Somebody who did residential construction back in the housing market, being micro-niched in construction and residential construction got hit pretty hard. I'm doing fitness centers, restaurants right now, hospitality. That's getting hit pretty hard. It is what it is. Even if you wrote a bunch of restaurants and a bunch of car dealerships, you got hit. It is what it is right now.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But if I was a Chinese restaurant owner and somebody came into me and said, "I write some swimming pool accounts, I've got some general contractors, I write a furniture store over here, and I've got 30 personal lines clients. So I have a pretty good feel for insurance." Then another agent comes in. You come in and you're like, "I actually write 37 restaurants. I understand Chinese restaurants because I have 16 of them. These are the four insurance carriers right now in our state that are very competitive for Chinese restaurants." Then I give them my timeline of services, which says "Chinese Restaurant Insurance Program." Everything is focused on that. My loss control program is the Chinese Restaurant Loss Control Program. It becomes very apparent which agent would be the better choice.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: After all is said and done, that's what we're trying to do from positioning. When somebody is out there prospecting, you're trying to get that insured to see that Ryan is the better choice of which agent to do business with. Insurance buyers don't understand insurance. They don't know the difference between Ryan and me and the 7,000 other insurance agents in their community. They don't know how to choose a good agent or what a bad agency is. They don't know if you have a really good relationship with Cincinnati or if you're about to lose your appointment because you haven't written anything with them in the last year. They have no idea how insurance works. They are trying to figure out, based upon an overwhelming amount of ignorance in the insurance marketplace, who is the better choice.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you're micro-niched, it's a lot easier to get broker of record letters than if you just come across as just another insurance agent giving them a call saying, "I can offer you quotes."
--:-- Charles Specht: I actually can't wait to talk about BORs, but I want to pause that for a second. I want to talk more about this. So let's say I buy into this micro niche idea. I say "niche" — it just comes out of my face. Cass makes fun of me all the time for saying it. It doesn't rhyme with "rich." I know, I know. I've tried. This is like a tick. My wife always gets mad at me because I say "crick" instead of "creek." That's the way I was raised. I say "I got a crick in my neck." She drives me and says, "You know that's not the word. The word is C-R-E-E-K, and you're saying C-R-I-C-K." I just can't change it. Same thing with niche and niche. It doesn't matter. This is bad podcasting.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: By the way, are we recording yet?
--:-- Charles Specht: Yeah.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Okay. Cool. I'm glad we are. It would be bad if we just did all that and we weren't.
--:-- Charles Specht: That's right.
--:-- Charles Specht: So, let's say I start focusing on my portfolio carriers I have today. I say, "Geez, I have two or three markets that just absolutely crush manufacturers. I can go into a manufacturer and know I have a real good shot at presenting them with a proposal if I focus on manufacturers." So I'm going to be the manufacturing guy for upstate New York because I would really rather that downstate New York secede and become the 51st state. We can have a manufacturing agrarian society up here. So let's say I do that. In my head, I'm going to go, "Okay, that's awesome. But now nobody else is ever going to call me because I'm just a manufacturing guy. The nice retail furniture store down the street is never going to call me because I'm the manufacturing guy. They're just assuming I don't know anything about it." Is that baseless?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I would say there might be a thread of truth to that. But again, does the retail shop know anything about your agency? Probably not. It's probably important to have a little bit of a generalist feel when you go to the homepage of your website. But that doesn't mean you can't have specific pages on your website that are manufacturing. Then you buy manufacturinginsurance.com. Every time you're prospecting to your manufacturing companies, you don't tell them to go to Rogue Risk. You tell them to go to manufacturinginsurance.com, which points right down to that page on your website with all of that information so they can see you are an expert there.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: In the same way, you can have another micro niche. You can have two or three as a business owner. That would probably make sense. Or you can have restaurantinsurance.com, and it goes there. That way, when a business comes to your organization, they're not seeing just that one thing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: In the city where I live, Fresno, there is an insurance agency that has grown very significantly. They are called Landscape Contractors Insurance Services. LCIS is what they're known for. That's the name of their insurance agency: Landscape Contractors Insurance Agency. They're big. They have lots of locations all around. They write thousands of landscape contractors. They write some other stuff too, but they are known for writing landscape contractors to the point where insurance carriers came to them and said, "Hey, we would like to start a program with you." So they have their own program now for landscape contractors. They went all in initially, and they got a lot of business right away. That's one way of doing it. That's also very rare. I don't know too many insurance agencies doing it like that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If I started my own insurance agency, I would probably do it the first way I talked about: having a little bit of a generalist front door, and then I have lots of bedrooms where the micro niches are housed. I think that makes a lot of sense. Also, depending upon what Rogue Risk is going to be in the future, you might bring on another producer who might also be a part of that micro niche. Or maybe they have a book of business they want to bring over, and they have some clients or expertise in boat dealers. Then you're going to have a boat dealers micro niche. That's the beautiful part of it. You can create these subsectors of your insurance agency, and that's how the business is actually built.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The nice thing about it from your perspective, coming into an insurance agency or rather starting one, trying to get your markets is a bit of a nightmare. No doubt. Right now, when you look at Cincinnati or any other insurance carriers you're writing business with, they also have their own micro niche appetite list. They don't write everything under the sun. They only write a small amount of business. So it just makes sense for them to do that. They tell you what their market is. When any business goes to their website, they just see their organization. But from the sales perspective, you're micro-niched.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If I can say one other thing: when you mentioned the example of the retail shop, what if they still don't see you as a generalist? They don't see you. Does the average insurance buyer know anything about Marsh and McLennan? Does the average insurance buyer know anything about Willis? Anything about Aon? Ever heard of Gallagher in their life? Ever heard of Brown and Brown? These are the big boys out there, the alphabet houses, and they know nothing about them. After all is said and done, most of it is up here. It is absolutely mental. We just have to get over that shift because we have been taught something for so long. We have been force-fed a generalist mentality for so long. Insurance agents and agencies built their books of business being a generalist agency. It's not that it doesn't work. It absolutely did work. It's just that it's probably not going to work going forward.
--:-- Charles Specht: I'm incredibly bought in on this idea, obviously. I just love playing devil's advocate because I want to hear your... That was awesome. I have a couple of questions. My first comment is, I think the reason we went so generalist early is that our niche was actually a locale. Pre-internet days, your niche was your locale. That's what it was. It wasn't that you just did landscapers. It was that I did Latham, New York. That was my niche. I think that was the reason.
--:-- Charles Specht: So let's take a line of business like workers' comp. That's obviously a really big one. A lot of people are talking about it now. Cyber is another one, which I think a lot of people are starting to consider. Out of the 36,000 agencies, like 10 might be considering cyber. Can this idea translate to a line of business and not necessarily an industry? Or do you think that's a different thing?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's very similar. I would almost say they are kind of the same. If I was to start an agency, which I don't want to do, I have an agency. I'm actually the CEO of my own insurance agency. I just don't have any appointments, so I do something different. But if I was to actually sell insurance again, I would 100% brand myself not in a micro niche necessarily, but as a workers' compensation agency that goes after debit mod type of business. Very high rate. We go after stuff with 150, 170, 225 X-mod. I would then focus on that. I know it would be crazy successful, and it would allow me to write a lot of other business.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The challenge, however, is do you have the markets where you can feed it? That's the problem. It's easier when you're a startup agency or a smaller agency with fewer markets to go into the industry, if you will. But if you have access to the markets, then you can do exactly what I just said. It does make things easier. You can also brand yourself as the workers' compensation expert in maybe a few different micro niches. You don't have to do one industry and only write that. You can write workers' compensation. That's going to be your brand. That's going to be your marketing. But you might do it for maybe eight different micro niches. When you're bringing in all your prospects, you accumulate 1,500 prospects in these eight micro niches. These are the prospects you're going after with the focus that I'm going to initially go in on workers' compensation with high debit mod because I know I'll be able to help them in the long run. You're going to get a lot more business that way.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I know of a couple agencies that do that. Their entire model is workers' compensation. They go in, they broker it over, they do what they do, they show some expertise. Once they do that, their agreement with the insured is that once we show the other agent hasn't done a good job, you'll broker over the rest of the policies to us. That's their entire strategy. Very successful.
--:-- Charles Specht: The comp model is the way I've gone. I've been fairly lucky. Since he's not a huge comp writer, they don't really do anything monoline, but I have Hanover. Great monoline. Sneaky great monoline comp writer. Chubb. Sneaky, very good monoline comp writer. I got Employers. I got a couple more. I've been blessed, maybe just because of the podcast and some other stuff, to get some early direct appointments that have really pushed me forward. I have a great relationship with a market access company in Indium, but I haven't had to lean on them as much because I've had some good early direct appointments.
--:-- Charles Specht: I think you can differentiate yourself however you want. I do think there's a tremendous opportunity in comp. I just think there is. I don't think the window will be open forever. I think the people who can establish themselves in the next one to three years will set themselves apart because there are enough people talking about it today that it will start to spread. I saved a guy $40,000 on a $100,000 comp account. Forty grand. The beauty is that comp is very often where the premium is at. That's their big pain.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Also, it's probably the easier policy to write. The cord's not that much. It's pretty simple and straightforward. It's the X-mod stuff where most agents don't understand that. It's not like a 17-page commercial auto app.
--:-- Charles Specht: Exactly. You don't have to get all this detail, VIN numbers, all that kind of stuff. Here's another nice thing about it. If you were focused on a few different industries where you didn't have to have only one agent. For example, contractors usually want one agent because they have to request multiple certificates of insurance. But there are plenty of industries out there where it's not really that service intensive. There's no problem with having a different agent who only does the comp. You don't even have to have a whole lot of other P&C carriers to actually have that expertise in the comp and be very successful.
--:-- Charles Specht: This takes me back to the mental side eventually, but I want to talk about BORs. My issue with BORs, being from the Northeast, and I don't know how familiar you are with this part of the country, but we have almost a hundred domestics in the state of New York. Little tiny mutuals. Vermont has 50 domestics. Then you talk about micro regionals, super regionals, and nationals. The idea is there's such a small chance that you're going to walk in and actually be able to BOR that account from the standpoint of you already having the appointment. You can go in and say all the right things and get the BOR and want to provide them with that service. But then you come back out, and you don't have a community mutual appointment, and community mutual has decided they're going to write this account and they're half the price.
--:-- Charles Specht: I had this. I am the comp only. I only do the comp for this account in Vermont. I got tremendous proposals from two of my carriers. Tremendous. Any other day, I am writing this business and saving this guy money. Both great companies. I was very, very happy. Half his current carrier is half the price of those proposals because it's this tiny mutual that just decided they want this account and they're just going to write it for nothing. There's no way I'm getting an appointment with that company for that one account because I'm never going to write another account with them.
--:-- Charles Specht: How do you overcome that idea? I talked to some agents in Texas who think the exact same way on this BOR. Mike Asalis is a great example. Texas has like five carriers. Basically everyone has one of five carriers. So it's more about who your agent is. The carrier doesn't mean anything because you just BOR it. In New York, it could be one of 700 carriers. How do you manage that? I've struggled with that a little bit. I would love for you to talk me through that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: From a property and casualty standpoint, I hate broker of record letters. Hate it because it's such a hassle. This is why being an employee benefits producer is a beautiful thing. They'll just take your appointment, no big deal. Everybody accepts it. When it comes down to it, all it is is an accounting function on the P&C carrier. They're just playing hardball. With all that politics aside, broker of record letters are sometimes hard. Sometimes they're actually pretty easy. Probably more than half the time, they're really hard.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But here's the thing. I'm not against quoting. I'm against foolish quoting. I'm against blind quoting. That's the mentality that happens so often. You're so excited that somebody wants to meet with you and allow you to quote that you don't do the normal due diligence you have to do. Again, it comes down to the mentality. I actually look at it as a broker of record letter mentality rather than the broker of record letter itself.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Here's what has to happen. At some point in the process, whether you're trying to get the BOR from that one carrier or you're going to quote it with someone else to try and compete against that mutual, they're going to have to make a decision to terminate the relationship with that incumbent agent in order to do business with you. If you can't get your competition fired, you will never get a new client, period. The broker of record letter is a mentality, not necessarily just a piece of paper. If you can get it signed, awesome, because the statistics for the industry are very good. You control the account, you're going to write it. You might place it with a different carrier, but you're likely going to write it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's the broker of record letter mentality. You have to do everything you can to get that incumbent fired. You have to get the insured to allow you to access the carriers you want. You have to get them to tell you what you have to accomplish in order to get the business. You have to make sure the incumbent agent is not going to get a last look. If you can do those basic things, you're much more likely to win. You have put yourself in a stronger position. To add one thing with regards to that example, the mutual you just talked about...
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So going back to the micro niche. When I'm working with agents, I'm trying to figure out what's a good micro niche. If you're going after a class of business where there's another carrier out there that you don't have access to that's just flat out less expensive than everybody else, pick a different micro niche. That one's not a good fit. It doesn't mean it won't change in the future, but as of right now, you're not going to be able to write business if the other carrier is 50% less than you every time you go to market. It's just not a very strong play.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There's a lot that goes into figuring out the right micro niche. And if you don't have access to the carriers you need, then not only is that not a good micro niche to go after, but it's the same thing when you're meeting with a prospect. If you don't get access to the carriers you want, you're not going to write that account. That's the broker of record letter mentality.
--:-- Charles Specht: Yeah, I like that. It's funny. I learned so many things. The other day I did exactly what you just described and you shouldn't do. A guy calls me randomly, found me online. He was having problems with his agent. His agent wasn't responsive. He was getting frustrated. Calls me up. Restaurant owner, decent sized restaurant. He was about an hour and a half away, but I knew the town he was in. It was a nice town.
--:-- Charles Specht: I start walking through the process with him and he's got all the answers to the questions. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That should have been a trigger for me in the moment, but I'm just like, "I gotta call, do some business." So I get done, I look at it and I'm going, "Okay, I got a shot at this. This looks pretty good." Dude is paying like $26,000 in premium between all his accounts. I'm thinking, "Okay, this is a decent size account." The guy is giving me the information I need. I feel pretty good.
--:-- Charles Specht: I said, "Hey man, can you just send me your policies so I can verify what you've said?" It's also kind of a good show of good faith. He says, "I'm busy, I can't get those to you." I go, "Okay, well, just send them to me tomorrow. No problem." Three days go by. I don't get them. A week goes by, I get the quotes back. They come back at $16,000. I'm like, "This is a freaking home run. I'm going to do a great job for this guy. He's going to be super happy." I'm happy with the coverages based on what he told me. I'd actually improved some of them. This is great.
--:-- Charles Specht: I present the quote. He goes, "$16,000? This is outrageous." And I'm like, "Outrageous in a good way, right?" He says, "No, why would you even send me this? I'm paying — I got a quote for $6,000." And I'm like, "$6,000? That's impossible." I said, "Man, you do $1.6 million in revenue. Do you think it sounds reasonable that you're paying $6,000 a year for insurance? Does that seem like the right number?" And he's like, "Well, how come I have this quote?" I go, "Because the guy took your revenue and put in $400,000 instead of $1.6 million. That's what he did. It's a game. You're just going to get audited at the end of the year." And he goes, "Yeah, no, I'm good." Click.
--:-- Charles Specht: And I was like, "Son of a bitch. This is what I deserve because I didn't force the guy to send me his policies. I didn't ask him if he was getting quotes from other people. I just gathered the information I needed and went to work and wasted like five hours of my life."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And that's the key right there. You wasted five hours of your life and you hurt your relationship with your underwriter. You also wasted your underwriter's time. When she sent it to me, she was like, "Wow, I looked at this online. This looks like a nice spot. This is a good account. We'd like this." Everybody was happy. It made me look like an amateur in front of my underwriter, which I guess to a certain extent I am.
--:-- Charles Specht: I agree with you. What I learned is if they're not willing to step towards me, I should not be willing to step all the way to them. If there's a gap between us, I can't be the only one closing that gap. When you are, it seems like a huge red flag that you're wasting your time or practice quoting or blind quoting. And that's hard to do because meeting with that prospect is your money. It's so hard to walk away from that, even though there's that little voice in your head saying, "Something's just not right here."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This is what I tell my clients. I say, "Look, remember those five hours because that's five hours of your life that you will never get back with your wife, with your family, working on your business. And you just got ghosted by this guy who's unwilling to be ethical, knowing that he probably has something wrong on his quote. He's just not willing to actually fess up."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This goes into why the broker of record letter mentality works. If we spend five hours here and five hours there and five hours there, how much of your entire career is going to be wasted working on accounts you never had a shot to actually write? If you spend the next 25 years in the insurance business before you retire, how many months, if not years, of your lifespan are you wasting doing that? Think about that. How much time in the past have you wasted of your life doing this?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What would be a better way? Just saying to that guy, "Hey, I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you, but I'm a professional. If you're willing to meet and give me the information, I'm going to get you the price that you need. But I can't do something that's not apples to apples here." If he says no, great. You don't have to stop the relationship, but you also have to put yourself on the brakes. You don't want to ruin your relationship with your underwriters because that's going to ruin your appointments in the future.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Instead, just keep prospecting, finding the people who aren't happy right now with their current agent. There's a bunch that aren't happy. He might have actually used the $1.4 million. Maybe he just has a big exclusion for whatever he's doing. There's a lot of insureds out there not happy with their agent. If you just prospected to find those and go after the BOR on that first appointment, you're probably going to end up writing a lot more business in the long run. You'll get control of it and you're saving all that time that was wasted. You can actually focus that time on prospecting and meeting with the ones who actually want to do business with you.
--:-- Charles Specht: So I marked where niching works. You had a LinkedIn post a day or two ago. I liked it. It was something to the effect of "Selling insurance is a relationship game. Prospecting is a numbers game." That takes me back to the mental side of it. I talk to a lot of agents. I'm blessed in that regard. You see people all over the map right now. There are people who are having the best year they've ever had, and there are people who are worried they might not be in the business a year from now. That full spectrum is out there.
--:-- Charles Specht: That's not always the case in our industry. If you just put in a decent amount of work, a C-plus effort pays your bills in this industry, which is crazy. Today, it feels like a C-plus effort isn't going to pay your bills for very long. So you have a lot of people wondering where they get new business from. I would consider myself one of those people because I thought I knew where that business was going to come from, and it just doesn't seem to be working. That's okay.
--:-- Charles Specht: What I've started doing is cold calling. When I think of the numbers, it's fun, right? No, it's quite literally the worst thing ever. But just because I don't like it doesn't mean I shouldn't do it. We have to take control of this side of it. When you're working with one of your clients, say you're working with someone like me who at a base function doesn't like cold calling — even though once you get that first person to talk to you, you start to feel a little better about it. I'm one week into really making a concerted effort and I'm already feeling better about it.
--:-- Charles Specht: How do you start to break down that mentality? It's almost as if we feel like we're above the numbers game. Like, "Man, I don't need the numbers game. That's not what we do." When you talk to the best agents in the game, all they do is prospect all day long. They hear a shit ton of no's. They get some yeses. Everyone talks about the yeses and no one talks about the no's. All people hear is the yeses and they're like, "This guy over here just writes accounts," and they forget that he probably contacted 50 people who didn't want anything to do with him. How do you get people past that?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Again, going back to the mentality. Sales is hard. Sales is really hard and it's mostly mental. It doesn't matter if you're selling copiers or insurance or work comp. It's going to be mental. I was just talking with a large agency a couple of days ago. I think they're one of the top 50 in the United States. They're doing $60 million a year in annual revenue. Same problem. It doesn't matter how big the agency is or how small. Everybody's having a problem right now trying to figure out how to actually market in this place.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I said, "Look, you have agents that have $14,000 on the books right now, and you've got some agents who have $1.4 million books of business. Those agents who have been successful played to their strengths. No agent who's ever been successful says, 'I'm going to prospect in my weakest way possible.' You're not going to build a book of business that way. Everybody goes towards their strengths."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If cold calling is not your strength, I never have a producer cold call — at least not first. You're going to have to pick up a telephone, but it doesn't mean that's going to be the first way you reach out to your prospect. It might be the third way. Email might be first. Social media might be number two. Then the actual telephone call. It doesn't have to be the first thing. You have to play to your strength.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The problem is that most agents right now feel like fish out of water. They don't even remember what their strength is. I feel bad for those producers whose strength was going out and shaking hands face to face. Those are the ones who are struggling right now. That's why you have to take it to social media. It's the next best thing. You just have to be very active on social media, not spammy. But it is the mentality, 100% the mentality.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If cold calling is not your strength, make it your number three. Figure out what is your number one. That's what you have to go with. I try to take this to a baseball mentality. If you need a home run to win, you're not going to send somebody up there to bunt. The problem with most insurance agents right now is they're trying to figure out something else to do, and they're just walking up there with bunts because they don't have the power or the ability to hit a home run. They're wondering why they're not winning anything. It's because they're not playing to their strengths.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It takes us stepping back and looking at things differently. We have to look at it with COVID glasses. It's changing the business. But every single one of your competitors is in the same problem. I speak to literally hundreds of agents every single week from all over the place. I would say probably half of them right now aren't doing anything. They're just not doing anything. It is absolute mentality. It requires accountability. You need somebody who's going to hold your feet to the fire and make sure you're actually doing the work, but you have to do smart work.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The issue is squirrel syndrome. You can't be going off on different areas because you're not going to get consistency. You have to actually be doing the work that matters, playing to your strength. Having that three or four prong approach — email marketing, social media, cold call, and something else — is very important because your prospect will reach out to you when they're ready in the format they're ready for. Cold calling might not be their thing.
--:-- Charles Specht: When you say email, you're talking about cold emails, right? Outreach emails. What is your philosophy on that? Are you buying lists and running large-scale campaigns? One-offs? What is your philosophy on cold email?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Every aspect of my entire coaching philosophy goes back to micro niche. The micro niche is the foundation. Everything is built on top of that. Social media is one floor. Email marketing is another floor. Everything has to be built on the micro niche. The emails you're sending out are going to be micro niched. If you're sending out emails to Chinese restaurants, the email itself and the services you're going to offer are going to be geared towards Chinese restaurants. The email headline might say, "Top three things Chinese restaurants can do to get more customer foot traffic during COVID-19." That's going to get opened by that particular micro niche.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Cold emails can definitely work if they are micro niched. You're not going to send something that makes no sense and has no relevance to them. That's just a big waste of time and you're going to get sent to a spam folder. It has to be focused. Cold email can be really helpful. People tend to respond to email and social media a whole lot quicker than they respond to cold calls. But the script itself doesn't change. Whatever you're saying on a cold call is what you would say in the email is what you would say in the social media message. It's your carrot.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Let me put you on the spot, Ryan. If I'm a prospect and I'm looking at Rogue Risk and I'm looking at you, and we're talking on a phone, doing a Zoom, or maybe I come in and stand outside your shop door, and I say, "Ryan, why should I do business with you instead of my current agent?" What would you say?
--:-- Charles Specht: Jesus, man. This is why I'm not selling any insurance. Fuck.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That would be the wrong thing to say initially.
--:-- Charles Specht: No, I would probably dial right in on the comp. I would let them know, "Hey, I've been in the business for 15 years. My specialty during that time has been workers compensation, specifically looking inside of your program to find places where we can help improve your culture of safety, improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of your workforce, get your people back to work when they're injured, and ultimately use all of those things to help you save money on your comp." I'd probably say something like that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Good. Thanks for playing with me on this. I ask that question to every single insurance agent I speak to, even when they're calling me on the phone. I ask that question because it tells me right where they're at. You said some good things there, but I'm in the insurance business and I already forgot three quarters of what you just told me. The thing I can remember is that you said "save money on workers compensation." Those are the two things I remembered. That has to be your carrot. That has to be your focus.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Maybe this could be your approach. Your tagline: "15 minutes can save you 15% or more on workers compensation insurance." Why should I do business with you? "If you give me 15 minutes, I could probably save you 15% or more on your workers compensation insurance." Kind of sounds like Geico, right? Geico's whole slogan is "15 minutes can save you 15% or more on car insurance." Their entire slogan is micro niched. It's focused on buyers who are concerned about saving $100 or $200 on their car insurance. I'm not a Geico. I would never do business with Geico. It doesn't resonate with me, but they know their micro niche.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Their whole slogan is to try and get people to pick up their telephone and call them. They are a multi-million dollar agency, or carrier rather, and their whole philosophy is getting people to reach out to them. As an independent agent, we're trying to figure out how to reach out to people and get them excited. They've made it easy because of their slogan. It tells people what the carrot is.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: When you're talking to people about workers compensation, you have to remember you're talking to people that don't understand insurance. They don't understand how work comp works. They don't understand how it's quoted. They have no clue how their X-mod is calculated. Most insurance agents don't even know that. But what they can understand is the money. That's why I say prospecting is about the numbers. When you're meeting with someone, that's the relationship game. But when you're trying to get them to want to talk with you, to meet with you, to do a Zoom, show them the numbers.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: "In 15 minutes, I can begin qualifying you for my workers compensation program that could potentially lower your X-mod by 17%. It's going to save you about $100,000 over the course of the next four years. Let's meet. It's going to take 15 minutes. Tuesday night work for you?" The whole script changes because it goes back to "What can you do for me?" That's what they want to know.
--:-- Charles Specht: I recently changed the tagline on my website and have started using this for about two weeks now. When I see someone in person who asks me what I do, I've started saying, "Business insurance is confusing, time consuming, and costly. We solve these problems." Costly is last on purpose because I like the alliteration of the C's to help people remember. It's not perfect, but I was trying to dial in on what those major concerns are: "I don't know what the hell it is. I feel like I spend way too much time on it. And I feel like I spend way too much money on it."
--:-- Charles Specht: At Rogue, I over-educate people. I create so much ridiculous amount of content on purpose to try to make it not as confusing as it was. You're never going to understand it and I don't expect them to, but I'm trying to make it not as confusing, not as time consuming. I'm trying to make this an e-agency, whatever that term is. I don't think any of us have it figured out all the way, but I'm working towards that. The last piece is costly. That's a big part of the game for people.
--:-- Charles Specht: I hate when agents step onto their platform and go, "Oh, I don't like price shoppers" or "We don't talk about price." I'm like, "Then you're an asshole because you know what matters to customers is how much they're paying." It matters to me when I'm hiring a landscaper. It matters to me when I'm hiring someone to fix my plumbing. It matters to me when I'm going to get new tires. Price always matters. It doesn't mean it's the most important thing, but it certainly matters. That's the one thing they can understand.
--:-- Charles Specht: That one prospect — you were at $26,000, he was at $6,000 on his other quote. That's all he understood. He didn't know anything else. That price difference was too big for him. In his mind, I get it. This is a guy who doesn't know insurance. He's looking at $6,000 and $16,000 and going, "I would have to be an idiot to take $16,000." He's thinking, "This guy's a professional insurance agent just like the other guy. He must have a special market. I must be good."
--:-- Charles Specht: If those numbers were closer, I think I could have overcome it. But with it being so different, it's a big deal.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You hit the important part of what you're talking about on your webpage. There are three main objections you're going to hear from your prospect, and it's the three things they want. They want to save money. They want to save time. And they want peace of mind — to know that they went with the right agent and the right carrier. Those three things.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: When you're talking to somebody about, "We do a great job of putting together a loss control program. We're going to come in and put together this great safety program for you and all your employees. We're going to go to your job site and help you out with your visits," the typical business owner is thinking, "Man, how much of my time is that going to take? I don't even want that." We start telling them the things we can do and they don't even want that kind of stuff yet. They don't even know they need it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We have to speak to them like four-year-olds who just don't understand insurance. "Are you hungry? Would you like a Dorito?" Probably not the best thing for you, but I'm going to give you a Dorito because that's what's going to work. You're talking to them on their level.
--:-- Charles Specht: I have MyWave Connect through Zywave for my business clients. It's an awesome tool. It really is a value add. Once you explain it to people, especially if someone has an HR manager or an operations manager who handles employee-related issues, if they actually spend five minutes in MyWave Connect, they're going to love it. I guarantee it. They could give two flying craps at the time of sale whether or not MyWave Connect is included.
--:-- Charles Specht: I had a process who ultimately did business with me. He was a buddy of mine — less than a buddy, more than an acquaintance. I ended up doing his insurance. He's got like 10 employees. I got to the end and I was able to say, "Hey man, how did I do? What did you think?" He said, "This and this perfect, great, happy to do business with you. You spent 15 minutes on that employee thing. I could care less. I'm going to give it to Shirley. She'll love it, but I could care less." It was such a wake-up call to what you're saying. That's something I'm not even going to talk to him about. That's a schmuggie they get afterwards that creates a nice fence around them.
--:-- Charles Specht: I really do believe it's a really nice tool. I do think it's a value add that could retain a client. But nobody is buying insurance from me because I have that. Nobody. Never going to happen. Even bringing it up is pointless.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 100%. I believe that with all my heart. Most insurance agents are very often their own worst enemy when it comes to prospecting because they're trying to sell the prospect services and products that the prospect is just not interested in. You have to find out where the pain is, where the struggle is. That's why going back to the micro niche — you have an idea of what the problem is for that industry. Chinese restaurant, contractor, plumbing contractor, furniture store owner, accountant. You have a pretty good feel for what their problem is.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Workers compensation — right off the bat, got a high X-mod. I know where your pain is. I already know where your struggle is. You have no idea why this thing keeps going up. Maybe your agent can't even tell you why it's going up. It's just going up. Nobody's actually explained it to you. If you can figure out even the basics of it, you can explain how an X-mod is calculated in three minutes or less, and they will be able to see a significant amount of expertise from you. I think they'd probably be willing to sign your broker of record letter if you can actually follow through on their biggest pain. Speak to the pain. That's where you got to go.
--:-- Charles Specht: Dude, this has been awesome. I want to be respectful of your time. We just blew through 54 minutes and it felt like 10. I just want to thank you. I appreciate you coming on. Where can people learn more about you and what you do? Where can they connect with you?
--:-- Charles Specht: Hit them with the whole deal.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Right. Well, hey, LinkedIn is where I spend my time doing business. All my other social media platforms, I do it for fun and family and stuff like that. But LinkedIn is 100% business. Connect with me there. That's where I try to put out a lot of my free content. But go to one of my URLs. Go to www.brokerofrecordletter.com. brokerofrecordletter.com.
--:-- I'm kind of getting away from a lot of my one-on-one coaching. I'm just doing a lot of this stuff. I'm putting all of my material right there in the actual program, the mastermind. It's just right there. And that's where I'm spending all my time, coaching individual agents right there. Brokerofrecordletter.com is probably the easiest way. But send me an email.
--:-- Dude, I appreciate you. I appreciate you coming on the show. I love the way you think about the business. I just want more people to be in your ecosystem because I think you're putting out the ideas that align with where we need to be as agents moving into the future.
--:-- I was talking to a marketing rep right before this call. I got off a call with one of my marketing reps as a check-in call. We were talking about just everything that's changing and going on. I said to him, I feel like right now, the days of you being able to have an extraneous employee or a low-performing employee or a piece of technology that you're paying for but not using — like, the margins are coming down and it's time to batten down the hatches and get back to work.
--:-- If you were coasting and you're taking Tuesdays and Fridays for golf, you're going to have to cut Tuesdays. One of those days. I mean, it's time to get back to work because the margins are coming down and we need to be laser focused on what we're doing. This idea of going after bigger accounts, of micro-niching, of focusing on hitting activity numbers that lead to the goals — all this kind of stuff that I've seen you put through LinkedIn feed. I think you're right dialed in on it.
--:-- I just hope everyone who's listening, who's not connected to you, finishes up this show and goes on LinkedIn and does, because they'll be happy they did.
--:-- Charles Specht: Man, Ryan, hey, I just thank you for allowing me to be here today. Frankly, I probably am going to echo what a lot of insurance agents out there are going to say, but just thanks for being an advocate for the insurance agent. Such a blessing to have people like yourself out there trying to really actually bring something positive and helpful. So, thanks for that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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