Empower your insurance business with deal flow management for the insurance industry

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hey what's up eight percent nation jeff root here i am managing partner over at digital bga uh we're 100 telesales life insurance agency i'm also author of the digital life insurance agent which is the number one best-selling life insurance telesales book on amazon you're probably thinking who is this dude and why should i listen to him right now all right i've personally written over 3 000 life insurance policies from 2007 until about 2016. in 2016 i stopped my personal production and started a digital bga which is focused on telesales and will actually be recognized this year as one of the fastest growing private companies in the nation ing to inc 5000 at least when that comes out in august of this year so with all of that said i was thinking about what sort of value that i could provide and that would have the most impact for agents i mean real actionable value that could really affect your bottom line that you can take action on immediately you know i kept coming back to you know what i credit for my success in the insurance industry and that's understanding cash flows and profits okay and how to maximize them in the insurance business so i'm going to share five actionable moves to increase cash flow and profits in your insurance business so i'm in life insurance right so all of my examples will be in that segment of insurance business i understand eight percent nation as uh agents from all types of insurance verticals so if you're not life insurance these moves can absolutely help you it's just it'll just be missing some concrete examples that i'm just going to give in the life insurance space okay so you know for 10 years i sold term life insurance over the phone and how to and how to learn how to cash flow you know a business where over half of my sales were fully underwritten and didn't pay out for you know around six weeks on average you know i saw over 90 percent of agents come into this business and leave the business quickly you know truly talented agents that couldn't put it together as an independent agent all right it wasn't due to not having the right leads or carriers to sell it was simply the strategy in running their business to focus on cash flow and profits it's stuff we're not really taught when we get into the business right we get all this training for sales you know where to buy leads and all that but as far as cash flowing in business and and optimizing for profits okay you know i learned that you know roi matters that's everybody preaches but cash flow matters even more i've also learned that commissions deposit in your account matter that's what all the trainers will say you look at the commission's deposit in your account but profits matter more doesn't matter if you're spending too much right so i picked up this you know most of my knowledge from reading books and hiring business coaches all right i believe in mentors i've always had one and uh and i always will right somebody who knows more than me and i'm just gonna pass on everything that i've learned as far as cash flowing and uh you know building more profits into your business okay so you know i use these strategies consistently at digital bg as well um and and it carried from the personal production i did in 2006 to or 2007 to 2016 all right so here's the five actionable moves to increase your cash flow and profits in your life insurance business all right number one upsells down sales and cross-sell every single time on every presentation all right number two work your unconverted leads number three beat down that p l number four enhance cash flow and number five word of mouth okay referrals now i'm gonna go into in into the how of all those five right and you know you're probably thinking like okay yeah work your own converted leads you know word of mouth referrals like um everybody talks about that i've got some i've got some pretty interesting strategies that have really worked it's a spin on all of it that i'm going to share with you today all right so let's start with number one upsell down sale cross sell on every presentation right your sales process should be the same every single time every time there should be an upsell pitch somewhere in the process and a down cell pitch when somebody isn't interested it has to be in every presentation you do i can't stress that enough it needs to be consistent and uh and you'll see your profits and that cash flow increase so let me give you an example of each of these so an example of an upsell pitch that can help life insurance agents is always going for the maximum close right the maximum close it doesn't matter what they want tell them what they can get for example on final expense let's say you're getting into the close you did some health qualifications and what what not and uh and you're going off into presenting the rates all right um say oh man doris great news one of the nation's most respected final expense life insurance companies is ready to make you a conditional offer i requested the amount we discussed of ten thousand dollars well they accepted that request and also offered an additional coverage amount of up to thirty five thousand dollars i mean that is offering the max right and we go into into a little bit more in our script but it's offering the max no matter what even if you uncovered she you know doris needs ten thousand dollars of coverage um you know it it doesn't matter you're still gonna offer that you can always come back down with a proper price drop down to back down to the 10 000 and even lower all right you can do the same thing on term life insurance by using the maximum multiple of their income right each carrier will do a per you know a multiple like 10x your annual income right if somebody can qualify for a million and a half of coverage and they're only applying for 750 000 of coverage let them know they can qualify for up to a million and a half and even put the application in that and they can make that decision when that policy comes back approved right same thing with disability insurance give them the max the max offer right so you know a lot of people like to sell on price you need to sell based on the emotional connection to the coverage amount and what they're buying and and with the max close you're you're hitting on that okay so incorporate a max close into your scripting and your annual premium per sale will increase it has for us agency-wide since we've done that right which means profits will increase okay on the flip side of that there's down cells okay so downsells um if you quote someone and they aren't interested the default is to keep you know coming down on coverage or coming down on price right and by that point you're making it about price you can never make it about price life insurance is not about price there has to be an emotional attachment to the death benefit and what it will do for you and your family okay for term you can lower the term length you know that's that's the first option i think everybody defaults to that anyway you can also take the death benefit over a period of time instead of a lump sum that can lower the premium by up to 20 percent with some carriers protective life comes to mind that does that we do it all the time with them okay another option that you know many agents don't even think about that can work for final expense and for term is blending an all-cause death benefit with an accidental rider or an accidental policy so if the prospect wanted called a million dollars of coverage but couldn't afford it sell them 750 000 of an all-cause death benefit with a 250 000 accidental policy or writer just depending on what the carrier offers okay you know then come back in a year or two and replace that 250 000 accidental with an all-cost coverage plan all right you're still hitting that that coverage amount for them you don't need to come down and you're going to sell more policies that way it works with final expense too if someone can't afford ten thousand dollars try selling a five thousand dollar policy with an accidental rider and that doubles the death benefit right if it happened if if god forbid something happened in an accident so you know a lot of carriers do that american amicable prosperity mutual of omaha foresters you know just just off the cuff right and then of course you have cross sells okay every single client should be offered other products so you have their trust and attention right you just sold them something this is the best opportunity to see if you can land another sale calling a new lead is not going to be the best opportunity for you cross-selling something else to that person you just sold is the best opportunity you can have at that single you know moment in time okay um you have their trust you have their attention and uh you know see if their spouse is around they want to quote on their spouse their child their grandchild whoever you know or a different product line all together sell them something else sell to someone else or just or sell them something else okay every client you sell should have an automatic cross-selling strategy that you implement it should be like um like the back of your hand right while on the call or even with follow-up calls after 30 days so do it right then after you make a sale or do it on a follow-up call but automate it right there it's got to be a process that you have so you see consistent results and can improve your profits and cash flow that's the goal here right so automate some of it with automated emails and mailers even built into your process i know agents that use a service called thanks dot io it's a website and they automate postcards going out throughout the year so a thank you postcard is immediately sent with their family photo with no offer just a pure thank you you know here's my family and uh and asking the client to think of them if they have any friends or family that need life insurance coverage just think of me they're not asking for it right and so they have this connection and they'll you know we have agents that get phone calls that say hey i saw your family you have a beautiful family and you know i had no idea that you loved fishing because maybe the picture was of them fishing or something you know and then you know automate a postcard later with the did you know i also do this medicare disability whatever it is right it's all automated it only takes the initial input of their name and address after making a sale if you set it up correctly in thanks dot io okay i'm just giving you an example of ways that you can automate a cross-sell process it should absolutely be in your scripting though okay remember you already paid for this you know for the opportunity to acquire this client anything you sell on top of this is pure profit and cash flow all right take the time to to build these upsells in your sales process these down sales and these cross sales into your business and your cash flows and profits will see an immediate effect happen when i was a personal producer and it happens again you know as we built an agency with digital bga it it works okay so number two is working your unconverted leads i mean that's a like duh right of course work your unconverted leads but not a lot of agents do it right here's the thing about unconverted leads only a small percentage are ready to buy right away no matter who it is because you got the right message to the right person at the right time remember that that's key in in really building out the mindset of calling unconverted leads um if you've been taking leads consistently you're sitting on a massive massive massive database of just pure opportunity okay or a significant number could become clients the next 12 months if you can get the right message to them at the right time again that's that's the mindset of this okay so here's two key actionable concepts to work your unconverted leads number one send a simple email or text okay to your leads you've never spoken with and here's what it should say just plain and simple are you still interested in life insurance question mark let me know jeff that's it don't write a paragraph of what you do all the companies you represent that you can get them the lowest prices on the market you represent all these carriers whatever that is a short and simple message like this will get you more responses i've tested it it works all right just that simple thing seriously send it email or text just just mass send it to your uncontacted leads that you're able to contact remember tcpa stuff if it was an if it's an online lead you only have 90 days to contact them if you've never contacted them before i just want to preface that so make sure they're within that time frame all right and then the next thing number two as far as you know the second actionable concept to work your unconverted leads you know you know those not interested leads that you talk to call them again right yes the leads that you had a conversation with that said they weren't interested those leads the ones who you wrote off the ones who said no and you went on to your next lead those ones there's gold in those all right once you recognize the fact that insurance sales is about getting the right message to the right person at the right time you'll start seeing more opportunity in your unconverted leads okay you won't you won't be like oh that person was a jerk you know or that person was rude or i don't want you know whatever the excuses in you in your head right for the most i mean for if if this was somebody who filled out a form online or requested any sort of interest it was just the wrong time all right it just simply means not interested means they're not buying right now just get that into your into your head get that mindset and you'll have no problem calling you know those uh those not interested leads those people who told you no before i mean some people tell you no right away it's really just a smoke screen right i'm like oh no i never filled that out that's a smoke screen they did fill it out and most agents will never call that lead again you just caught them at the wrong time most likely all right so you already paid right to acquire those unconverted leads okay so go profit from them this will cost you no extra money and just add to your cash flow and profits build out a process to call on those not interested leads even if it's once a month you know pick a day the 15th of every month or the third wednesday or whatever it is and go through all your not interested leads and just call down the list right i mean even just once a month you're going to find sales in there you're going to find people that are interested and you didn't have to pay for those leads it's all profit it's going to help your cash flows all right this was one of the core things that i did as an independent agent that um that really helped with my cash flow in the very very beginning of my career i remember calling not interested leads from other agents you know i'd go after them and and and i'd ask him like hey you know all the people you quoted that weren't interested can i can i take a shot at it and people would send me some leads some files forward me some emails and uh and i would make some sales it might not have been right there but i'd keep following up with them and make sales okay there's there's money in those and a lot and it's and it's ignored to me and you know how i describe it it's a hidden profit center in your business you're not working okay enough on that so uh the third thing all right is to beat down the p l all right so let me preface this first um to increase cash flow and process i beat down my profit and loss statement every couple months or so right and i get the most juice out of the first time i did i'm going to go into that just a second i just want to preface this first things first don't commingle your personal accounts with your business accounts okay if you have a business account where all your commissions are getting deposited and all your marketing lead costs all that stuff the cost of doing business gets drafted from that account or business credit card great just don't co-mingle everybody should keep that separated okay next make sure you have a profit and loss statement all right it may sound like overkill for you know for a business for an insurance business that only has commissions and marketing and lead expenses but for the most part it puts you in the headspace as a business owner to look at these profit and loss statements and compare them to previous periods you're going to see trends you're going to notice some things it's almost going to gamify it for you to see how much profit you can pull um if you can see those up green arrows and those you know and in profits and revenue and those down red arrows you know um anyway um so i use xero.com xero.com for accounting software and connect my business bank accounts and credit cards so all transactions are automatically sent over right so it's just a matter of reconcil reconciling um the categories right and i even pay somebody to do it i do it automatically i have somebody who just goes in there every month and reconciles everything for me but it's simple i'm gonna start with that okay so from looking at that profit and loss statement and comparing your previous four months you'll you'll notice trends in profitability and cash flows right and then when you see that profit and loss you beat that thing down every month i mean beat it down um so what does that mean it's one of my favorite things to do right i mean um i would say it's one it's one of the it's one of the things where i get a lot of i find a lot of profit all right so here's some examples find all the subscriptions right or consistent vendors you use and contact them all right tell them you're thinking about leaving an email will do it just uh just ask them what they can do for you you're thinking about leaving what can you do for me this exercise can earn a lot of profit doing this in one afternoon okay if you don't have a p l you know just go to your last bank statement and look at all the um you know all the charges so you know um if you have a lead company or any vendors charging you an extra three and a half percent merchant fee because you used a credit card right challenge that you know 2.9 is the going rate um but even that can be negotiated if you just simply ask i've done it before i've got that completely removed um it's it's just it's a stupid fee that a lot a lot of um lead vendors will charge and they don't have to charge it's just you know it's their way of increasing profits but you but if you're if you're trusted client of theirs they will do it for you if you just started with them there's most likely everybody's going to blow you off and not care right but it's worth an ask okay a second thing is just to cancel any subscriptions that don't make you money i know for myself i always forget about uh subscriptions especially domain names right on godaddy i don't know if any of you have this problem as i do i'm a habitual domain name buyer who thinks of an idea and says i'm going to buy the domain name and then i forget about it until 12 months later it renews and i pay you know the 12 or whatnot i call godaddy my boulevard of broken dreams it's uh it's kind of a it's kind of a funny thing between my friends but i mean do you really need to pay ten dollars a month for that screencast software or ten dollars a month for that calendar scheduling software or could you get by with the free versions of those just and just display their their branding on it right um that stuff adds up and and when you get deeper in business subscriptions add up okay um if you don't have a pnl like i said you can do this on your bank statements and whatnot but go through those find those subscriptions find those you know payments that you're making every single month and talk to them can you do better all right so number four um is cash flow enhancing cash flow all right so cash flow is the number one killer of insurance agent careers so how do you enhance cash flow in your business the first step is to drop your accounts receivable times i know it's it's it's very mba school talk right so what does this mean for insurance agents get paid quicker all right take the maximum advance on your on your commissions okay don't write carriers who don't advance just don't write them all right don't take commissions as earned or opt for the smaller advances because you want those months you know 7 8 9 10 11 and 12 you know in the future get as many dollars as you can in right now get those advances all right there are some carriers out there who who you know who might even advance if you do a lot of business with them the entire commission okay so you know right carriers that pay on issue for simplified issue carriers a lot you know a lot of issues will pay on a lot of companies will pay on draft you might have to wait 30 days if somebody doesn't want it to draft for 30 days or you know or on a social security um drafting day or billing date okay so excuse me um so stop also stop tying up capital in underwriting write more simplified issue products that was a huge huge lever i i left it in my business when i started when i got over the the fear of of you know selling something that's more expensive um you know for the same amount of coverage and a fully underwritten carrier you know that would get approved either immediately or within a couple days over you know something that might be 33 percent less expensive but might take six weeks right just get that stuff in force and and by doing so you're not tying up capital that's an underwriting right that money is going to come in the next week if you were able to sell that person a simplified issue policy um one thing that i always did is i always gave people the option right you could buy fully underwritten policy or a simplified issue policy feel that they're fully into written they're going to come to your house you know i'm going to make it seem like it's a huge inconvenience they're going to poke you with the needle you have to pee in a cup you have to hand it over to them um you know and then you're going to wait six weeks and you might get approved or we can just take care of this now it's about 33 more and you write them a simplified issue product okay of course that's for that's for term coverage all right so you know the there's uh there's two things to enhance in cash flow so that so the number one is what i just said you know drop your accounts receivable times all right get paid quicker obviously the second one is to lift your accounts payable days right so for insurance agents here's what that means okay accounts payable is your is your expenses what what your what you're paying out right so most of you that's leads right so if you're working with the lead vendor for a while ask for net seven terms instead of paying right now for the you know for call it a 50 lead order you know make the order now net net seven means then pay for it seven days later that's what net seven terms is all right or extending the terms if you already have net seven terms to maybe 10 days or 14 days whatever that is you know um you can only do this if you have a good working relationship with your marketer or lead vendor but you know if there's that trust built they will absolutely do that and they get it their business owner they know what those net terms mean to them right um so that's one way the the second way to lift your accounts payables um your accounts payable days is to put all marketing and lead costs on a credit card and pay it monthly in fact all costs on credit card and pay it monthly this buys you 30 days of cash flow without finance charges and you'll get rewards points on top of that right so a lot of agents think you know you know jeff that's you know that's nothing that i don't know of course get a credit card right and put it on there but it's the it's the concept behind it okay um a lot of thing a lot of agents think this is pushing off the inevitable payment you know and creating a liability if you think this way your issue is confidence in yourself and building a business you you lack that confidence okay if you're turning a positive roi on marketing and leads this is a no-brainer to do the moment i implemented this as a perm the moment i implemented this as a producer my bank account was flush with cash to and reinvest in my business and i did that i reinvested and turned that cash into way more cash okay now if you take that newly found cash flow as income yeah that defeats the purpose that's not why you're doing this you're you're trying to turn more you know freed up cash into more cash so you know i'm telling you that by enhancing cash flow with all of these strategies your mindset changes as well you can deploy funds into growth and you do just that all right so you know that's how i built my agency as a solo producer simply getting more money quicker and pushing out expenses as far out as i could without paying interest right that allowed me to reinvest in more marketing it allowed me to hire my first agent probably sooner than i should have been able to right it allowed me to uh build out better infrastructure with uh with software that was better than what i currently have better dialers and whatnot okay so and the same thing at digital bga you know everyone is you know is always impressed you know with you know how we've grown this so quickly over four years and everybody assumes that we have an investment partner right or that we don't know all the business no we bootstrapped this thing right this entire business um has been bootstrapped i'm still 50 50 partners with my partner and we're able to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars early on in our business um on building our own technology which has set us apart from you know from a lot of our competitors and that's by and we're able to do that by being savvy with cash flow all right using these exact same principles because when you do this at scale with you know with more agents more money you know you can free up a lot more cash flow to be able to make these bigger moves and that's what it's all about you have to be able to take risks in this business to get big rewards in order to take big risks you have to have the cash flow okay and so enhancing cash flow again to recap drop your accounts receivable times increase your accounts payable days okay that's going to free up cash and allow you to to grow all right and the very last thing the fifth you know way to increase cash flow and profits is just to boost your word of mouth you know there's you know let me ask you this do you have a referral program you talk about on every presentation that results in a sale most agents i ask that question to say no i would say 98 of agents that i ask that question do i ask it a lot when agents are contacting me that are struggling in the business if you don't have a word of mouth a referral program you should um internally in our agency we call it an roi maximizer because that's what it really is okay i find that many agents don't ask for referrals at all because of the default excuse that they just don't feel comfortable okay what if you were able to offer something in return though okay i'm not talking about a starbucks gift card right for each referral remember there needs to be an emotional attachment especially in life insurance that emotional attachment to the death benefit is what sells policies right it's not there's no emotional attachment you know to i digress here we sell we sell life insurance and a lot of final expense insurance by offering a free accidental death and dismemberment policy for every referral it's scripted into the process after you make a sale it's this fun way that we script into the process that they can get a thousand dollars for every referral and up to five thousand dollars of accidental death and dismemberment insurance a d d and it's part of our script and it works like a charm and agents are just getting referrals um and you know it's it's it really is a maximizer of return on investment so you can probably think of something to offer up let me give you another example so i know a lot of you don't have access to a referral program like this so here's what another agent does that's really really smart so i know an agent that finds out their favorite restaurant or hobby or something as part of the rapport building process right and he will offer a gift card to that specific something at the end if it's golf and you live in austin texas he's going to research you know while on the call a golf store or even a course or something and uh and offer up a gift certificate to that specific thing you're he makes his clients feel heard and like in and by sending you know and and it creates that relationship with them as well and they almost feel he he says they they almost feel like they have to give him something now but he gets a lot of referrals and just by adding that simple thing and making notes you know while building rapport during the presentation you know he he um he incentivizes his uh his referrals um by offering something up like that okay so you can probably think of different ways i i've i've heard of people you know i think there's some um ways to give out you know vacations and and whatnot but you know you the agent or somebody pays a fee and they're able to give out some voucher for something there's a bunch of stuff out there you know but if you can incentivize like just come up with a good incentivation offer for your referrals it's a game changer it absolutely is a game changer and incorporate it into your sales process every single time every single presentation you make every sale that needs to be said okay so i mean those are five core things that will find hidden profits in your business and improve your cash flow okay i kind of i can talk about this stuff all day long i hope this was actionable i hope this was helpful i hope this will find hidden profits i hope that this will help your cash flow but if anybody has any questions whatsoever about anything discussed here feel free to email me jeff digitalbga.com and i'd be happy to answer all right appreciate everybody for listening and um best of luck hey if you enjoyed this i got another one you're going to love it's right there click on it see in there 8 virtual i have an unbelievable surprise guest speaker for you today mr brian tracy lifelong fan of your work thank you so much for agreeing to spend a few minutes with me today well thank you you know you you and