Episode 335: Get Obsessed With Your Clients

Welcome back to the Scale Your Insurance Agency Podcast, the show built for independent agency owners who are done being the bottleneck in their own business. I'm Daniel Metcalf, and every week I'm joined by my co-host Mike Stromso, one of the most respected operators in the independent agency world. Between the two of us, we bring you the real levers that move a $3 to $20 million agency from successful but maxed out to systemized, scalable, and running without you holding it all together. Here's what we focus on. Mike brings the people side, leadership, team development, niche sales mastery, and a three-piece system that helps agencies build a business worth owning. I bring the machine side. AI, automation, and workflow design that frees your team from the operational drag, eating your margin and your time. Together, we're building a framework that can grow an independent agency 4X to 9X without burning out your people or your checkbook. If you're an agency owner who's tired of growing by hiring, who knows you have a capacity sitting on the table but can't figure out how to unlock it, this is the show for you and your weekly edge.

Greetings everybody, welcome to the next episode of the Scale Your Insurance Agency podcast. And I want to talk with you today about something. Alright, I'm just gonna say it obsession. Yes, obsession. Now, the subject matter of obsession today is something that's really, really important. It's not like that. No, I'm talking about our clients, client obsession. So, you know, when I think about client obsession, and I think about what goes on in my own life, and I'll suggest this goes on in many of your lives as well. In fact, I just got to use it this morning uh because my wife is obsessed with it uh to buy something for one of our grandkids that was vitally, vitally important to her. And so through that obsession, I just got to, by the way, uh, this is for all of you who have been following us for a while. You know that we have 13 grandkids, and you know that we have created cousins camp to collaboratively teach all of our grandkids everything entrepreneurship-wise that we possibly can. Formally started in 2020 during COVID, one of the greatest things to come out of COVID. With that being said, we developed a new word in yesterday's session. It's called gettitude. Yeah, gettitude. And the topic yesterday was gratitude, but it morphed into gettitude, right? Because we get to have this opportunity today. We don't have to do anything. We get to. We get to have an opportunity to serve people, we get to have a business, we get to have a home to go to, we get to have a bed to sleep in. We don't have to do anything. Now, so when those tough days come, remember we get to. We don't have to do anything. And so I was encouraging our grandkids, the cousins, to make sure they have their gettitude on. And they go, that's awesome, Gramps. I get it. I said, I'm glad. Gettitude. And then one of the older grandkids came in and said, Hey, what about the pursuit? That's what I think of when you say gettitude. I said, tell me more. He goes, I get to pursue. I get to pursue my career. I get to pursue this, I get to pursue that. I said, that's a different definition of gettitude. So when you look up gettitude in the dictionary, you're gonna see one, we get to have opportunity and participate, and two, we get to pursue. So let's be in pursuit of client obsession. So I want to share with you today uh one of the obsessions that my wife has because they make it so easy, that started during a walk in Central Park. And this was many years ago, last century actually, where, yes, Jeff Bezos was walking in Central Park with his boss at the time. He was working in the financial services industry in New York. Uh, and his boss was sharing with him, Jeff, you're doing really well. I'm excited for you. You're gonna be a very wealthy man in the near future. Jeff, what do you think? And what's your plans? He goes, you know what, boss? I'm actually thinking about starting an online bookstore. Now, keep in mind his history and background was computer science. And so Jeff said that to his boss, and his boss goes, What are you talking about, Jeff? He goes, Yeah, I think I might want to start an online bookstore. And his boss said, Jeff, did you hear what I just said? You're gonna be a very wealthy man in the near future. Jeff said, but this is really what I want to do. And so the boss, his boss said, Jeff, go home and think about your future for a couple days. Come back and let's talk. Jeff went back a couple days later and said, Yeah, boss, I'm putting in my resignation. I'm going to start an online bookstore. So if you've heard Bezos talk about this, what he said was, I wasn't afraid of the regret of failure. But the one thing I did not want to ever regret is the regret of not trying to pursue my dream. And that came to my mind when thinking about sharing this topic with you, because that's what Amazon does, and that's where they started. And I would recommend there's some lessons for all of us from that starting point. The world today expects Amazon level service and convenience with hometown relationships. The world now expects things happening a certain way. Because they have set the bar. They have set the bar for how we do things. And I'll give you another little marketing note because I'm a marketing guy and I love marketing. I always think about marketing. I get the emails from Amazon. Fortunately, my bride does not. Because they're constantly checking in. Hey, have you thought about this? Hey, have you looked at this? Hey, you haven't reordered this in a while. Do you need to reorder? Constant, constant, constant. They have set the bar as far as our ability to communicate with people. So what about you? I'd be willing to bet I get a couple a day. That's the bar. So what kind of experience are you providing to your customers? Like I shared with my team for so many years. They don't pay their premium, we don't earn commission. Quite simple. Why do they stay? Because of the experience and the trust. Okay. So clients increasingly expect Amazon level experience with the hometown relationship. And it's back to the relationship. I learned from my friend Bob Berg when he spoke at our live event a couple of years ago. People follow people they know, like, and trust. Know like and trust. We say no love and trust because love's a stronger emotion than like. Whatever it is. Right? So, how are you creating that no like and trust, no love and trust relationship within your business? What does that look like? I want to give you six ways to make sure that you craft this and design it within your agency so that your clients feel like you're obsessed over them, about caring for them, about being proactive for them and with them. And I want to share with you a thought. I wrote down, I wrote this down in my notes. I don't want to get onto this topic on a squirrel basis. But client segmentation came to my mind, or tiering, as they say in some areas in the country. Client segmentation or tiering is a definite play in this whole matter. Because if you don't have the resources or budget to do it full on, you know, for a thousand clients, two thousand clients, three thousand clients, whatever it is, the dual portion of them, your top tier of clients, definitely obsess over providing a level of excellence and caring for them and serving for them and communicating with them and touching them with a hometown relationship. Because you are the local relationship they have. Granted, there's always gonna be the few who are gonna go online no matter what. I get it. I mean, I was around now 26 years ago when Safeco came to me and said, hey, we're gonna start the virtual producer program. You're one of our top agents, you want to be one of the first. I said, great. It lasted less than two years. Why? Because the ideal client avatar or ideal client profile of those buyers was not what they wanted. It was highly unprofitable. So here's the six things that great agencies do to create that customer experience. Where the customers are obsessed about doing business with your agency. Our goal is to help you put this in place and to make it reality in your agency. So that you've got nothing but a book of raving fans running around telling everybody in the world how awesome you are. That's the goal. That's the goal. Number one is speed. Money and success loves speed, and money and success never sleep. Number one is speed. So what does that look like? Do you know people love options? Yes, they do. Yes, they do. So are you giving everybody that communicates with your agency the option of a chat bot 24-7-365 communication on their time? Or is it during business hours only? Or is it both? Your goal should be both. Meet them where they are. I learned that in a personal group, very critical relationship that I had for many. One of my mentors, he's right here on my wall still. A guy named Len. He taught me that. He said, Mike, you've got to meet people where they are. Meet them where they are. Serve them how they want to be served, when they want to be served. Do you give them the option? Online 24-7 or during regular business hours if it's more complex? And what does your messaging look like? But how fast can they get what they want? And if you're looking to automate with more technology and AI and it's not working for you, or something's going wrong, listen to our most recent episode, the one just before this one. We're talking about the reasons that a lot of the technology isn't working in agencies and it's chaotic. It's because of lack of documented processes and workflows. Speed is number one. What the client wants is speed. The world has brought them to a place where they expect it, like now. Number two is accuracy. Let me ask you a leading question concerning accuracy. Are humans perfect? Far from it. I am far from it. If you ever meet my wife, ask her. Make sure you have 20 to 30 minutes carved out. Humans are imperfect. Technology is imperfect. But I will suggest this technology is going to get it right more often than a human will. And I'm not saying, let me be clear, I'm not saying everything should be pushed to technology. But use it as part of the solution to provide that experience. Back to the obsession that my wife had earlier this morning. She wanted to buy this gift, but it was technology related for one of our grandkids. And she goes, What do you think of this? I said, It's not the right one. She goes, What do you mean? I said, You see that 7.3? That's the wrong number. It should be 10.3. Oh, what does that mean? I said, let me just take care of it. The key? Accuracy. And the technology answered the question just like that. Accuracy. Are we providing accurate information? Are we providing the right information? I mean, I emailed my own agent yesterday with a coverage question on a rental car out of the country just to confirm. I just I saw the answer. I haven't looked at it yet. It came back. I know the answer. I know how to read policies. I've been reading them for almost 41 years. But I just wanted confirmation from my independent insurance agent. Just to make sure. Accuracy. Number three, in your client obsession and high-level experience of excellence that you're providing your customers. Proactive communication. Proactive communication. So are you communicating with your clients in the way that they want to be communicated with? And I'm sure all of your files in your management system, whatever that technology is, shows for all of your clients how they like to be communicated with, at what time of day they want to be communicated with, maybe the day of the week they want to be communicated with, etc., right? I know that's there. And that's how you're communicating with them proactively, right? And if not, no big deal. That's an opportunity to get better every single day. But proactively communicate with them in the way they want to be communicated with and let them know. Why do people leave agencies? Because people aren't proactively communicating. They hear about a change, they hear about this, they hear about that with the carrier. And they're sitting there waiting for their local independent insurance agent who says they care about them more to do something, to share something, to give them some kind of communication, and it never happens. I used to train my team a lot. That wonder, wonder in the minds of our client is costing us a lot of money. When you leave their minds to wander and wonder what the heck is going on with our insurance program, and they don't get an answer from the person they have built that relationship based on trust with, that's why they go looking somewhere else. Because they're thinking, oh, they don't care about me anymore. I'm just a number. Proactive communication. Topical. Tell them what's going on. They're looking to you for the answers. You are the expert in the industry. Share with them that you are. Number four, personal relationships. Personal relationships. Now, you may be thinking, how can I build a personal relationship with our customers? I have 3,566 customers, and there's no way that I can possibly build a personal relationship with all of them. I will say I disagree with that. How did we do it? We communicated on a monthly basis, twice a month, actually, more than twice a month on average, 27 times a year or more with our client base on personal relationship stuff. I mean, our grandkids were the forefront, the UABS, the Unstoppable Agents and Broker Society board, which was our grandkids. We shared stories from our family. We shared stories from the families of our teammates. I mean, we lots of pictures and communication about what we all had going on personally. We were building personal relationships with our entire database on a monthly basis, sharing of ourselves, giving from ourselves from our own personal lives and relationships with the world. Not on social media, through our own channels. We were controlling the communications consistently. I've got stories upon stories about people. Because they see it, they do read it. You think they're not watching? They're watching. And they're reading and they're looking. They just don't take the time to say, hey, I thought that was cool. But they're watching, trust me. They are watching. Build personal relationships is number four. And I'll recap this for you at the end. Number five is risk education. I mean, I had a question myself about rental car benefit in a country outside what's a territory of the U.S. That's where my question was. This destination that we're going to be going to next month is a territory of the U.S. And I know the definition. The coverage territories, the United States of America, its territories and or possessions. I know that. But I just wanted to get my professional independent agent involved. Just to double check. Risk education. How are you educating your clients? How are you educating your marketplace? How often are you doing this? I would hope monthly. Do you have a roadmap? Do you have a calendar out for the entire year as part of your marketing plan? Risk education. They're looking to you. See the thing about insurance, and I've learned I learned this years ago. Unfortunately, it stuck. And then I shifted and providing this to marketplaces. This won't come as a shock to you. Nobody likes insurance. Nobody likes insurance. But they need it. They rely upon it. They expect it to be there when they need it. And they're investing money in it. So they certainly don't want to buy it. They certainly don't want to call you. They certainly don't want to reach out to you because they have a question, because they feel silly. They certainly don't want to use it and they certainly don't want to pay for it, but they need it. So they want to be educated. They want to understand. And today's consumer is more educated than they've ever been because of AI and the whole technology uh suite that's available online. Educate them. They want to hear from their licensed professional independent insurance agency who cares. Educate them. Not every time, but have that education piece in personal relationship education. Personal relationship, education, blend in a testimonial. There's three strategies for you. Risk education is number five. And we're talking about providing a world-class experience for your customers so that they are obsessed with who you are. Number six is planning. How are you providing a plan for your customers? How are you showing them the plan for their future as part of their relationship with you? Because let's face it, isn't the goal to serve them for life? We had a tagline and I don't remember it exactly. We want to earn the right to be your agent for life. We want to earn the right to be your agent for life. I mean, let's really think about this. When I got my mind around this a number of years ago, I'm thinking, man, I've got John and Susie. I've got their home auto umbrella. I've got their business. Wait, they have three kids? At some point, those kids are going to get a driver's license and I'm going to be their agent. At some point, those kids are going to go away to college and I'm going to be their agent. At some point, those kids are going to start building their own family. Oh, wait, I'm going to be their agent. Your acre of diamonds is right beneath you. Planning. What happens? I mean, you know, I remember the point in our agency where I discovered that I had, oh, there was a lot of them, hundreds. There were hundreds of net worth millionaires that were our clients driving around with 100, 300,000 on their personal auto policy. I remember the moment I went ballistic personally. I mean having one of those conversations with myself in the mirror yelling, right? Nobody else is around. But we made it a point to get a hold of every one of them and to make sure that we communicated with them effectively and educated them. Look, we need to get your auto limits up to $250,000, $500,000 on bodily injury with at least $100 or $250,000, depending on the carrier, or combined single limit. And then we need to add an extra million dollars on top of it. Because your future earnings are at risk. Yes, they are. I have an interview with an attorney who's an insurance agent as well. Now's the day that I learned future earnings are very much at risk. So plan for the future. Set the next appointment. Even if it's a year or two out. Set the next appointment with your client. Let them know we're going to connect with you to update your plan to make sure that you're properly protected. Because we don't want everything that you've worked so hard for to ever go away. We want you to keep it all. We don't want you to ever get the lawyer, the letter from a lawyer says you don't have enough coverage, we're going to be going after your personal assets. That information is available out there. Don't ever let that be one of your clients. So let me recap the list of six items. The six items that you get to, remember? Gettitude. We have a gettitude. We don't have to do anything. We get to. What a privilege it is to serve others. And when those days come, and I see it online, many of you are having tough days. I call them character building days. I'm not removed from it, trust me. Character building days. When you have that character building day, don't forget to step back and say, I get to. I get to show up again tomorrow for another day. It's a privilege. I know that's kept. That's what kept has kept me going for 41 years in this industry. I get to. Clients increasingly expect Amazon level convenience with hometown relationships. The best of the best agencies. And if you have some work to do, let's get to work right now. The best of the best agencies combine six things to provide that level of experience. Six things. Number one, speed. Number two, accuracy. Number three, proactive communication. Number four, personal relationships. They build deep, significant, meaningful personal relationships. Not that you're going out to have lunch with them face to face all the time. There's other ways to do it, and it works. We did it. Number five, risk education. Educate them on everything surrounding insurance. And number six, planning. If you're failing to plan, you're planning to fail, Ben Franklin said. Planning. Plan with your clients for the future. To protect them and everything that they worked so hard for. That's why we existed. That was our core, that was part of our core purpose in our agency. To protect you and everything you work so hard for. Every interaction, and this is back to training your team and role-playing with your team. Every interaction should answer. How did we make our clients' life easier today? That's a hard answer in a lot of situations. I know. But how did we make our clients' life easier and better today? How do we make our clients' life easier and better today? Food for thought. Something that we get to work on. It's a privilege and an honor. And it's a privilege and an honor to be with you on this episode. And if you got great value out of this episode, we would be honored if you would share the link to this podcast with somebody else that you know that you care about. Somebody that's got the ghetitude attitude. And help them. Help them pursue and achieve the life that they have always wanted. Our goal is to impact a million lives. That's why we exist at UPP. Thank you for that opportunity. I'll see you on the next episode. By the way, if you'd like to have a deeper conversation about anything that we discussed today or anything that we do at UPP, there's a link to a UPP scaling session somewhere around this podcast or in the show notes. Check that link, click on it, schedule some time, and we'll get to work with you. Because we get to. Have a great day, everybody.

That's a wrap on this week's episode of Scale Your Insurance Agency. Quick reminder: everything we talk about on this show is built to do one thing. Turn your time into profit. More revenue, more margin, more freedom without adding headcount to make it happen. If something landed for you today, please share it with another agency owner who needs to hear it. This community only grows when good operators help each other level up. Please subscribe, download, and share our podcast and all your other favorite podcast engines. And if you're ready to stop figuring this out alone, Mike and I are both in the field working with agencies right now. Please reach out. Find us on LinkedIn or on our websites, and we'll tell you exactly where your biggest opportunity is to scale. Until next week, build the system, protect your time, and scale the right way. See you next week.