How to Lead with a Broker of Record without saying Broker of Record w/ Nick Aube

In the beginning, though, when I was on b- selling BOR, when I started doing it, I didn't wanna talk about price because it was like, "That's beneath me." You know, "I'm not gonna discuss- Yeah ... fucking premium. Like, are you kidding me? Like, if you want somebody to talk premium, go, that guy will quote you all day long." Like, I, I couldn't get myself to do it.

But as I went through it over the years, and then ultimately actually leaving, you know, and doing what I'm doing now and actually being able to go, you know, talk with or, you know, hire other coaches, say, "Here's what I was doing," and really dissect the process, it's like, holy shit, that's all we should be talking about in the sales process. Because if you think about it, that's their number one problem we were talking about earlier, right? In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today we have a tremendous episode for you, a conversation with Nick Obi, the founder of Producer Systems, a BOR strategist, a producer coach, uh, long time, uh, producer in the insurance industry, and somebody who I think has a very practical and straightforward approach to helping customers, particularly in the middle market, as we work through the BOR process.

Now, one of the things that I find incredibly interesting is that, you know, the-- even though I have a, a bunch of friends, people I really respect, who work kinda through BORs and use BOR-related systems to, uh, bring in new clients and, and help grow their own book of business, as well as just be value providers, uh, to, to their communities, et cetera, it's a process I've never really used that much of. Like, I've never engaged in a, you know, kinda strategic BOR initiative. I've taken BORs. I've, you know, gotten BORs from people, you know, dozens, you know, of times. I, you know, I, I don't actually know exactly, but always in the context of working through a system or a, or a coverage review, et cetera, and just the BOR was the best thing to do.

It was never something that I strategically went after, thought through, planned around, et cetera. So I love these kinda episodes because they're, they're conversations where I know a little, uh, maybe just enough to be dangerous, but certainly I'm not an expert, and it allows me to kinda dive into my curiosity, which hopefully, if you're kinda come from where I am, where you've heard about, uh, using BORs as like a, a first principle strategy for growing your book of business but aren't exactly sure what that means or how it works, uh, you're gonna learn a lot. I know I did. And also, you know, something I found really interesting that we get into is Nick and I discuss how similar, uh, the, the underlying core concepts of approaching a client from a BOR strategy and how we, y- you know, how we at Finding Peak and my team teach, uh, the inbound sales process, what we call the one-call close process, and how similar the, the underlying kinda structure, ideas, concepts, et cetera, the feelings we're trying to get, uh, from those clients, you know, how, how similar they are. So this is a wide-ranging, dynamic conversation all about growth and BORs and inbound sales.

I think you're gonna love it. Uh, Nick's a great guy, and I highly recommend that you connect with him on LinkedIn. Posts a ton of great stuff. All right. Before we get to Nick and that conversation, just wanna remind you guys, the Insurance Growth Masterclass, the, uh, first offering coming out of Finding Peak, which will be a, uh, membership community specifically focused on helping you grow the inbound side of your business, helping you understand how to get a consistent flow of qualified inbound leads, taking that through to how we actually use, uh, the one-call close system that we, that I've kinda patented over the last 18 years of my career to drive max conversions, setting up clients to then maximize their lifetime value as part of your agency, right?

Uh, there is a lot of conversations, a lot of amazing conversations happening on LinkedIn, and we actually even discuss it here, uh, inside of this conversation with Nick 'cause it was kind of happening in real time around, uh, so many people, you know, operate from a place of you need to completely round out an account to write them, and monoline business is garbage, et cetera. And I think that those are fine concepts. Uh, they do not allow us to maximize the v- the conversion rate that we have for our inbound business. They tend to keep CAC high, uh, cost of acquisition, and ultimately, uh, if we're doing the right things in kinda the third model that we teach in Finding Peak, this maximizing lifetime value, then I think if you're not getting the opportunities in, if you're not closing the opportunities at a max rate, then you don't have the ability to maximize the lifetime value of the maximum number of clients out the back end of that process. So I do think that while I believe kinda the traditional, uh, you know, slightly more ego-driven mentality of I have to round out all the accounts and it's about educating customers and they don't know what they don't-- I think all that is great.

I understand it, and I am sure that m- many, many businesses have been built, uh, with that philosophy. However, I do not believe it is a philosophy that allows you to rapidly scale your agency, um, or I think it limits your ability to take in customers, uh, from a wide-ranging sources of inbound opportunities, if that makes sense. So, uh, more on that to come. C- incredible conversation with Nick. Guys, if you wanna learn more about what we're doing at the Insurance Growth Masterclass, go to masterclass.insure.

So that's masterclass.insure. Put that into your browser, and you can either sign up for the waitlist if we haven't launched yet, or once we're live, that link will take you directly to where you can learn more about the Insurance Growth Masterclass and what we're doing at Finding Peak. Guys, I love you for listening to this podcast. It is my great pleasure to share conversations like this with you. And, uh, here we go.

Let's get on to NickWell, good. I appreciate you having me on. It's good to get together here. Yeah. No, excited to chat.

Um, you know, it's funny, I, uh, I think this is, um, I'm glad we're chatting. I just posted a video on LinkedIn, which I'll have linked up in the show notes for people, and I wanna get your take on it because, you know, you're, you're a BOR guy, you know, and people take my take on this particular issue, um, they take it all different directions. So, uh, I'll, I'll have it linked up in the show notes, guys, so you can check out the video, and it's actually from, uh, a solo episode that I did of the podcast earlier, but it's around this idea of stop trying to round out inbound accounts, right? Okay. So the take that I, that I took on this video, and that, and this is what I believe, is that when it comes to inbound accounts, so we're not talking about cold call prospecting or networking- Sure ... or even referrals.

We're talking about someone who goes onto the interwebs, searches for insurance problems, finds your agency, and decides to either fill out a form on your website or call you, okay? Got it. And my take is very specifically that you do not try to solve, you do not try to write all their insurance, you solve the problem that they address when they call you. So if I own a business- Okay ... I, let's say I own a bakery, and I call you and I say, "Hey, Nick.

Uh, this is Ryan. I just hired my first employee. I have no idea what to do. Um, do you think you could help me?" You write the worker's comp.

Now, you can say, "Hey, you know, it's easier if I, if I work with everything," you know, and if they wanna give you a, give you the business real quick, that's great. But what I've found over and over and over again, listening to thousands of calls through trustedchoice.com, through my work, uh, coaching clients, through all the time at Rogris, through all my time at the Murray Group when I've been doing inbound, I think that, you know, what I find very interesting about this process is that, like, I've probably listened to and/or taken as many or more inbound leads, talking just about inbound- Yeah, yeah ... than anybody else in the space. And what I've found is that if you try to write the entire account or try to sell them additional products, you lose that business more often than you get it, right? And the pushback is, "Well, we differentiate," and I love this, and, and like, uh, Zach Gould is pushing back on me a little bit, and Michael Cruz, who I love. I mean, I love all these guys and I love their takes and I, and, and I'm not saying their takes are wrong.

I've just found that I think, I think we operate, and, and this is really where I'm interested in, in your position, and one I- I'm interested in your take on this particular topic, but then also just I feel like we, a lot of the pushback I get on this particular topic is that I feel like comes from a legacy mindset idea- Mm-hmm ... that somehow writing the entire account is doing proper risk management. And again, there are absolutely undeniable evidence that the more policies you have, the higher your retention rate. So I'm not, I'm not saying- Oh, sure ... I just feel like, and I think about my own customer experience, and then I'll leave this to you, is that when I need help with something, right? Let's say I call, uh, uh, Spectrum is our cable service here.

Let's say I call Spectrum and I need help with my Wi-Fi, and then they start and they, they're like, "Okay, great. Well, what about TV?" Well, I don't need TV. "Yeah, but, but we have this TV package." Right.

And I'm like, and I'm like, "I don't need the TV package. I need you to make sure that my Wi-Fi works." "Well, if we speed up your internet, you could also get TV and phone." I'm like, "No, I have a phone. I don't need a phone.

I don't need TV. I need you to take me from the base level Spectrum internet to the top level Spectrum internet. That's why I'm calling you." And, and now I'm like, now I'm like, "Ah." Like- Oh, you're freaking pissed off ... yeah, now, now I'm getting frustrated, right?

And I feel like this happens in our space too. I, I'm a business owner. I hire my first employee. I've heard of worker's comp. I know I need it, but I have no idea where to get it or what it is.

I call you, and now you're talking to me about my commercial auto and my- Yep ... cyber and, "Hey, who does your personal lines?" And, and now I'm like, all this person wants to do is sell me shit I'm calling someone else. And then they ghost you, and then agents go, "Well, inbound leads are crap," or, "The internet leads are crap," or, "People are just tire kickers." Like, no. You, they called you with a problem, and you didn't solve their problem.

You tried to do, you tried to do what was in your best interest- Correct ... which was write all their policies at one time. And what I'm advocating for is this idea of solve their problem, and then have systems, processes, and a cultural belief structure of account rounding and upselling at every touch in the future. And, um, I just find it interesting that, uh, there's like this legacy concept that if I don't write all their business and I don't write it all in the initial interaction, that somehow they're not gonna stick, and I, I just haven't found that to be the case. But I, I'd love your take on all this. I know that was a lot of intro.

No, it's a lot, it was good, dude. And I hadn't quite thought about it that way before, and I, you know, honestly never did a ton of inbound. That's, um- Yeah ... that's one thing I, you know, with this business that I've really started dabbling with and, and kind of, you know, focused on. But it's interesting. And, you know, my wife and I, this is like a couple years ago, I'm like, "Son of a bitch," like, "I need a personal stylist."

Like, "I want somebody to help me out." Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so, but in the beginning, it didn't start like that. It started like, "I need a pair of pants for this wedding to go with this jacket that I've got."

And you call these people that do, you know, custom clothes. We've all been hit up by them like, you know. Yep. And they're like, "Okay, well, you need to come in and we're gonna do some measurements. We gotta figure out your summer casual style.

This..." I'm like, "Summer casual? Dude, it's the dead of winter. I got a wedding in the spring. I just need a damn jacket."

Yeah, yeah. Yep. And it literally, as you were saying that, it hit me. I'm like, because I hadn't thought about inbound that way before, but the, when you're talking about, I'm like, I would get frustrated. Yeah.

Like, because the, the, what's the take? You respond on, you're just trying to sell me a bunch more shit that I don't necessarily need. Yep. At one point, did I probably need a stylist and do I need the full measure? Yeah, probably, but was I personally there yet to actually sit down and go through that?

No. Like I need it to, to solve that one problem. And so I think you're spot on. I think the, the take that I would add to it is like transparency on the front end of how the process works. I think, you know, e- especially, you know, the BOR and everything that I'm doing with that, it's like that's the simplest thing.

Like take the inbound thing. "Hey, prospect, I'm, I- I'll solve this problem all day long. You need to understand some, some ways that the industry works, though." Yeah. "Here's what it looks like.

Ultimately, long term, the best strategy for you is gonna have the, uh, to have everything with one carrier, one policy, or one renewal date, multiple carriers, one broker at least. We can get to that point, but let's get this thing solved so you can get that employee hired and go do whatever you need to do." Yeah. Like- Yeah, and, and, and you just hit on it, right? So like I c- I'm perfectly willing, and, and again, this is all from beats doing thousands and thousands of these calls- Yeah ... that I have this perspective.

This is not like theory for me. This is like I've tried it every way. Right. I've lost more accounts than any, you know, I've lost, I've watched more accounts ghost me or not call me back or say no or whatever, um, for every reason, and I just, what is wrong with saying, "Hey, I'm gonna do a tremendous job for you on your workers' comp. I'm gonna crush it.

You're, you're gonna have no workers' comp problems," okay? I think it's perfectly fine to even say, "Look, man, it may even be easier for you if you just bring over your package, too." "You know, let's deal with that in a couple weeks." No problem. Let's get your w- I wanna get your person on the job, and I wanna make sure you're squared away. 'Cause you know what I'm doing?

You know, again, guys, if you're, if you're listening to this and, and you, you know, struggling with this concept, when you solve the one problem up front that they have, you have just now become a massive value creator in that person's mind, right? Because you didn't try to sell them something they need. You weren't pushy, right? Doesn't mean you can't ask them open-ended questions and figure out what's going on with their account. It doesn't mean you can't be taking notes going, "You know, this person, this company probably really does need cyber," or, "Hey, I need to BOR the front end."

It's, to me, it's very similar to a BOR strategy. You're just trying to be a value creator for them and getting them to choose you. That's what you're trying to do. You're trying to get them to choose you as their, as someone they trust. And once they trust you, they're gonna be willing to bring all their other stuff around and refer you and leave a Google review and all the things.

But they don't trust you yet, and the more- Well- ... you try to push on them, the more they're gonna go, "All they care about is the money," even if that's not true. Again, I, I don't believe anybody who's pushing back on me on this post. I, actually, I love everybody who is. I think they're all amazing. I think the, the difference is, I, I don't think we're necessarily thinking through, particular to inbound.

Referrals, completely different. Outbound prospects that we reach out to to do BOR 'cause we think we can be a better ser- completely different. There are other veins that I would state this is not the tact I would take. Only specifically to inbound people who reached out their hand and said, "I have a problem. I need help."

That's what I'm trying to get to. So bam. With that, I wanna put this to bed, but right before we got on the call, uh, to do the podcast, this, um, uh, all these comments started blowing up with this, uh, video that I put out, and I just thought it was really interesting. You're going viral. What?

I said you're going viral with the thing. Wow. You're pissing people off. I don't, I don't know about that. But it is, uh, it is fun, and I, and I love these conversations.

I feel like these are the great conversations that we have, you know? And like I said, the people that are, that are pushing back, I, they're all, it's Michael Cruz and Zach Gould. I mean, these are great, great guys, great thoughts. I'm not hating. I just, um, feel very strongly on this particular topic about this particular workflow, um, just from my own, like I said, from my own beats.

But dude, so I wanna talk to you about, you know, we've, we've connected a few times and stuff, and I wanna talk about, uh, what you have going on with, um, producer systems and, and in particularly this whole BOR thing because, uh, I think there's a few different people that are teaching some different strategies and, and we can get into, to, into your particular style. But before we, before we get to that, like I was never, I mean, I've done BORs, but I've never, I was never a guy who like sold or prospect on BORs, right? Like what you- Yeah ... I, I never did what you teach. It just was never, you know, was never the way that I operated.

Um, so, so I'm like a neophyte to this to a certain extent, so I'm very interested in like m- maybe just for those who are listening who, who are more like me, maybe they do more personal lines and BORs just aren't a big part of their process or, or they're, you know, small commercial or Main Street, whatever, um, or maybe they're just new in their career and they haven't got there yet. Like talk to me just a little bit about the baseline, I know it's super remedial, but a little bit of the baseline on what exactly is a BOR and what are you trying, from a tactical sense, what are you accomplishing in using a BOR to bring in business? Before we get into the whys and the hows and some of that kind of stuff that I really wanna dig into, just the very baseline of like versus just rewriting someone's insurance, what are we actually doing here? Yeah, so I mean, the baseline is we're, we are literally presenting to the prospect, "Here's why you should go with me," right? "Here's why you should choose me to be your broker to go the, to the entire market on your behalf," rather than quoting.

So if by doing that as the broker, you're guaranteeing revenue. Okay, cool, right? We're gonna get paid or we know we're gonna get paid at the end of it. Let's say it's 90 days. We know we're gonna get paid at the end because regardless of what happens with the marketplace, we know we're at least controlling their current insurance program.

They have insurance, we're gonna take it over. Okay, cool. The client doesn't give a shit about you. They, oh great, you get to guarantee revenue. Who cares for you?

Right? What is it, what's in it for me? And so for the client, the benefit, the strategy, is to have one broker to actually see the entire marketplace, actually have a solid negotiation. So what we're pi- you know, positioning, pi- pitching to the client is like, "I don't care if it's me or not, dude." Kind of what we're talking about with the inbound, just educate them.

It's like, you wanna get the most on the market? Well, it's changed. You used to go out and quote multiple brokers back when agents sold on exclusivity, and this broker had, had this carrier, and this broker had this carrier, and so you had to go to both to see two options. But now both brokers have both carriers. And so you're better off finding one broker who can get to the whole market, and then they can go out and negotiate and pit the market against them- each other, and come back to with one, you know, w- with one option.

So- So that's basic- Back in the... Yeah, back in the day, the idea would be that, you know, you know how, uh, carriers used to pitch their appointments on, like, franchise value? Like, there's like a- Yeah ... franchise value to the appointment. Um, I felt really bad one time 'cause a carrier pitched me on, you know, they were, we were going back and forth, and the, you know, this guy was a little old school and a little pompous, and he talked about... He s- he said, you know, "So and so and something, you know, the franchise value of this appointment."

I kinda, like, giggled a little bit. You know, not giggled, giggle is probably the wrong word. I just kinda, like, chuckled maybe is probably the more masculine way- Yeah ... of saying what I did. Yeah. And, uh- I get it.

You giggle, I get it. Yeah, yeah. And, and he kinda, like, he kinda, like, did the thing, and I was like, "Dude, it's 2022. Like, are we still talking about franchise value with carriers? Like, I'm not saying your appointment isn't important to me.

That's why we're on the phone. But, like, do we really believe that, like, I'm gonna sell for more because I have your appointment? Like, is that what you're pitching me right now?" And, um, and I, and, and I think that's a really good point. So to get to the actual point of my comment is that, like, so, so what you're saying is that there was a day when, like, this guy would have X carrier and Y carrier, and then this over here would have ABC, and to get to all these carriers, an account would have, would have to shop multiple brokers.

But today, for the most part, through wholesalers, through networks, aggregators, and, and, and just in general, uh, uh, agents and brokers kind of in the, in the, the looseness of carrier appointments to a certain extent- Yeah ... or the, the, uh, spread of carrier appointments, um, it's not the case. Mo- most, most agents are gonna be able to get to most carriers, and in that way, it does not make sense for a large account to... And get, 'cause I'm assuming this is middle market stuff. Like, small accounts, this isn't really as important or maybe as much of a pitch, right? Say, on, on small, I would still run it and hit the broker and just condense the process.

Make it a shorter- Yeah ... process. Still educate 'em on it 'cause I think it still is, is effective. And you're spot on the way you're thinking about it. I mean, th- the broker, like, the broker in town could be the biggest prick in the world, right? But they're the only one with a 100-mile radius that has Travelers, and Travelers is really good at landscapers, and you're a landscaper.

It's like, "Shit, okay, I gotta go with that guy." Like, that's how it was sold. It's like, "You had to come through me. My service could suck." Yeah.

"I could not pay attention to your experience, about any of that stuff, but I've got the best carrier." Yeah. "And the price is 20% lower, so you gotta come through me." So that's, that's kinda where we were, and it's evolved, right? To your point, we've gotten pretty much every broker has access to pretty much every carrier.

So this, the client, the consumer, the best strategy is to have one broker do that. I mean, you don't have multiple CPAs. Can you imagine that? If that's how we ran the C- like, the, the tax system. It's like, "All right, I gotta lower my taxes.

I've got three CPAs in here beating it, you know, beating it up, seeing what they can do." Yeah. Like, it just doesn't work that way. And then you add on top of that the, the carriers block the marketplace. So it'd be like if every year you had three CPAs, but you could only get one to g- actually give you a damn tax return.

And finally a broker comes in and says, "Well, hey." Not even a broker, a CPA. You know why that happens? 'Cause the IRS is only gonna release your taxes once. They're only gonna do it with one CPA, so they send it to the first person that actually submits your tax return. That's the CPA that gets it.

That's the CPA that get p- gets paid on. The, the brokers are the same way. The carriers only release, releasing one quote. And so if you- What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show, and in exchange for that, I need your help.

If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, et cetera. This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, uh, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are gonna help you, uh, grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews.

They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and wanna bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show. Subscribe if you're not subscribed. And I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show, 'cause I read all the comments.

Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show. I love you for listening to this show, and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right, I'm outta here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode.

You have brokers that are actually in there competing, and they need to be the first one in. What are they gonna do? They're gonna put together a shoddy submission so it's the first one to the carrier. So now your first representation, your first, you know, uh, impression with the carrier is shitty because it's a complete submission. And so that's the concept.

Like, you go out and you hire a CPA. You do all this work, all this, you know, you spend all this time to make sure you get your best shot to file your tax return, 'cause you only get one shot to reduce that tax liability. It's the same with the insurance companies, going after them and negotiating with them. Yeah. I had this happen to me once early with Rogue, where I brought, uh, I brought an account to a carrier and submitted it, and I, I'm like, you know, I thought this was a lock-in, right? 'Cause m- in my mind, the carrier that I was submitting it to, this is something that was in appetite, seemed to fit, the size fit.

You know, I had the loss runs. You know, it was, it was a full submission, whatever. And, uh, and it, it goes a couple days and I'm like, "This is odd that I haven't got a response. Like, this is a knockdown account. I would think I would have this back-" Yeah ...

"and we'd be writing this already." And I reach out to the underwriter, and the underwriter goes, "Oh, you know, I bottom piled that because every year a different broker submits it to me." Mm-hmm.And I, I was like, that was like a really interesting moment for me because o- one, I, I had heard, you know, you hear thing, you know, about it, but I never actually experienced that. And, you know, and she's a good underwriter and a, and a good friend, and, uh, and, uh, and she wasn't doing anything wrong. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I, I, I understood where she was coming from. Her point was, "If every year this account is submitted to me by a different broker, it shows a lack of loyalty by the customer," or by the client, you know, whatever, "And, you know, while if you're telling me you have some unique and different relationship with them that's gonna get us the business, I'll spend time on it. But I'm not just gonna re-quote and fire off a new proposal to a different broker every year just to not get the business." And I think that while you don't, you don't always love to hear that because especially early in a, in a business cycle, you're like, "Yeah, I just wanna write everything I can."

Yeah. I, I took that to heart and I said, "You know, that really makes a lot of sense to me," because, you know, these, the- Right ... a lot of these underwriters, especially the ones that are doing middle market or larger accounts, you know, this takes real work for them, and you need to present them with something that they think they're gonna win because they're humans with their own goals just like us, right? Just like salespeople. So that was a really interesting take for me, um, and it really got me thinking about, uh, about this process a lot. Because how you submit the business, who submits the business, it's meaningful to these guys.

They, there's only so many accounts in these regions, and they see a lot of the same stuff. Yeah. And, and if you took that back to the, the, the prospect, like, "Hey, just got off a call with an underwriter." I mean, and essentially what you're saying is like, "Your name's trash in the marketplace. It's absolutely been destroyed based on how you navigated the market over the past three to five years."

Yeah. They would have no idea. Yeah. They're like, "Hey dude, I'm just playing the game. I'm just trying to lower my premium."

Yeah. Like, "What do you mean my name's tra-" Like, "This is what I was trained to do," right? The industry trained the, you know, the brokers and producers to go out and quote. So and then the, they trained the consumers, so the consumer's like, "Well, I don't want these guys, these people calling me. So I, I let them quote.

What do you mean I destroyed my name in the marketplace?" And so it's like that education to the prospect, "Hey, here's how you actually navigate it. Here's how you repair the marketplace. Here's, uh, your name in the market. Here's what you need to do.

You need one broker to do it. Maybe stay out of the market one or two years. And then if you want me to be the broker, in its simplest form, here's what I can do to help you do that." Yeah. Do you think that clients actually care?

Like, do you think, and, and I mean that honestly, Dick, do you think that you, you bring that back and you're like, "Look man, like, this market's a no-go for you for a while," because they, you know, they've seen the submission too many times by too many different people, and it just shows them that you're not serious? Or at least that's what they believe that to mean, is that it's not serious. Do you think they care or are they just like, "Nah, whatever, just shop me someplace else"? Like, do you think that's... Is that a real, does that really carry weight with them?

So it's interesting, before you were saying like, "Hey, this is what I know about the inbound stuff," 'cause I, you know, I've had the beats. Like- Yeah ... that's g- you know, I basically was looking at it, it's like I ju- I was in a 12-year science experiment. Like, I was literally in this lab figuring out this BOR stuff. In the beginning, they didn't give a shit. They did not care.

Because my attitude in the beginning, right, prospects talk about price all, "I gotta pay less." I, and we can't avoid it. Every one of them, I've never met anybody that is not price sensitive when it comes to insurance. And there's different variations of, you know, some are like, "Oh," you know, "they're robbing me blind. They got the tallest buildings."

Whatever bullshit they wanna give me, they're concerned about price. And so in the beginning, though, when I was on b- selling BOR, when I started doing it, I didn't wanna talk about price because it was like, "That's beneath me." You know? Yeah. "I'm not gonna discuss premium.

Like, are you kidding me? Like, if you want somebody to talk premium, go, that guy will quote you all day long." Like, I, I couldn't get myself to do it. But as I went through it over the years, and then ultimately actually leaving, you know, and doing what I'm doing now and actually being able to go, you know, talk with, you know, hire other coaches, say, "Here's what I was doing," and really dissect the process, it's like holy shit, that's all we should be talking about in the sales process. Because if you think about it, that's their number one problem we were talking about earlier, right?

Yeah. "Hey, my problem is premium." "Yeah, that's great. Shut up and let me show you all this coverage stuff." Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right? "You don't have a premium problem, you... Did you know you're missing debris removal? That's such an important..." Yeah, right.

And so, and that's what I would do in the beginning, especially in the beginning at, at, when I was basing my BOR pitch off a coverage analysis or experience mod analysis. What I wasn't doing was solving their problems. So to answer your question, do they care about it? Only if you position it correctly. So when we position it back to them solving their problem, "Hey, look, prospect, I get you wanna pay the least amount possible.

Who wouldn't? I've never met anybody that wants to pay more. The way you go about that and the strategy that you run to navigate the market directly impacts your premium and your chance to pay the least amount over the next three to five years. Here's the strategy you need to run." So if we could frame it in a way that's tied to them solving their problem, and really what we're doing, the sale, the actual BOR sale isn't about asking for the BOR.

It isn't about, you know, our, our risk management services or loss control or experience mod. Any of that bullshit, even though it's important, right? There's this marketing term, you've probably heard it, you know, sell them what they want and give them what they need. So let's give them all that stuff on the back end, 'cause we know they need it. They need a good agent.

They need the right coverage. They need all that. But they're trying to solve the premium problem, and so when we connect it to that, the pitch for the BOR is actually selling them on a new way to think about their problem. Yeah. And if we can get them to do that, right, instead of quoting to solve your premium problem, hire one broker and run this strategy.

If they do that, it's game over. They're gonna sign the BOR. Um, so your sell them what they want, give them what they need, that is the whole crux of, like, my inbound selling system, the one called- Yeah ... Close Process. It, it's literally, and this is, this is the disconnect that I think going back to the very beginning of our conversation and, and I love that it's now connecting.

And, and really I believe this is how you sell. Um- Sure ... but I love that you're connecting it to this BOR process because that's the whole thing. Like, you know, you know, I think, yeah, and I said this in one of the comments back from one of the people who, who were, um, sharing their thoughts, was like, uh, you're, you're associating the fact that I'm saying solve their problem with this being transactional. I said that's a, that's an assumption, not a reality What I'm doing is solving a problem, but I'm also giving them what they need, right? So I'm just not, I'm just not pushing things on them today that they don't necessarily-- Like if they have a package policy and that package policy is fine for today, right?

It serves their need- Yeah ... for today, why would I mess with that when what they really need is to get their employee on the job site through this workers' comp policy? So, you know what I mean? So I'm gonna get them what they need. I'm gonna understand what they want, come behind them. And so much of this is, and, and, and this is where, you know, I wanna, I wanna get your, your take on this too as it goes to BORs and, and I'm assuming there's a little bit of congruency here, but it's like so much of this is open-ended questions, and this is the part that really I find the, the biggest disconnect in so much of what we do, particularly on the sales process, is information gathering versus asking open-ended questions, right?

Mm-hmm. Like we get a prospect on the phone, all of a sudden it's like, "Well, who does your comp, and h- what's your limit? And how much payroll do you have? And t- and what are your class codes?" And you're like- Yeah ... the prospect's like, "None of that makes, means anything to me."

Yeah. Like, "I don't care. What are you saying?" Like, "All I know is I got a big audit bill last year and I don't want that to happen again." And you're like, "Well, what about..."

And it's like how about we slow down and let's figure out what their problem actually is, 'cause oftentimes they'll lead with price, but that's not really what they're gonna buy. 'Cause if you come back with price, and, and again, listening to thousands of, of inbound calls, price, price, price, price, price is the beginning of the call. And because we don't actually dig into what's going on, we just take their information, even if we quote their whole account and we come back on price, they don't close. And then we go, "They're tire kickers. They're BS accounts. These people don't really care.

They don't value relations." Like no, price wasn't actually their real problem. They may have called you on price. They might have led with price because as you said, and I love it, they've been trained to lead with price. Yeah.

But that's not actually what the problem was, and we didn't slow down long enough to figure out what the real problem was that would get them to buy the policy, and that's, it's, it's such, it's a, it's a nuance, but to me it's a, it's crucial. Does that make sense? Totally makes sense. It brings me back to, um, I was probably like six months in, eight months in, I left Brown and Brown. I went to this agency out in California.

I was living in Boston at the time. It snowed on Halloween and I literally am like, "Fuck this. I've lived in New England my whole life." Yeah. Like I'm going somewhere warm.

Like, so moved out to California and, um, and land at this agency and they're like, "Dude, perfect timing. It's everything we're talking about. We've got access to a hot new landscaping program. We're one of four agents in all of California," right? So exclusivity, price, right?

It's gonna be 40% less than the current landscape association. There's like some association program or some bullshit that like they literally dominate the marketplace. Yeah. So we're, I mean me and there was a couple other producers and, um, you know, I'm the newest and youngest and we just start. And, and, and they have connections.

I don't know anybody. I literally moved there with six suitcases, like broke into a friend's place like I'm gonna crash here for a couple weeks like. And um, so, so started hitting the phones and I built up a $4.8 million pipeline in like a quarter. Everything renewed premium. At the time I was still talking premium.

Everything renewed between April 1st, April 13th. And what was the pitch? "Hey, one of four agents in all the state. We're gonna be 40% less. It's time this, you know, this, uh," what the hell you call it?

Like a monopoly comes to an end. Like we're, you know, "We're just gonna kick this, this carrier's ass. Boom. I'm taking applications." Everything we're just talking about, payroll, sales, all that shit.

And the reality is we weren't 40% less, right? The other ca- carriers didn't roll over and watch half their book, you know, walk out the door. Yeah, yeah. So they came down. We weren't as competitive as, you know, the program thought.

It was the first year, so we were about 12% less. And out of the entire thing, I wrote a $1,000 BOP on $4.8 million. Ugh. Yeah. And I was 22.

I already spent some of the damn money. Like it was, it hurt. Like it was not a good situation. And the reality was I sold it completely on price and exclusivity and I didn't deliver. Yeah.

And at the end of the day, it was out of my control. And what did they do? They looked at two quotes. "Nick, you said you'd be 40%. You're only 10%.

We know the other broker. We trust him. They've solved other problems. We're staying with him." Yeah.

And at, at that point I'm like, "Fuck this industry." I'm like, "I'm quitting or I'm figuring out a different way," 'cause I'm not gonna go, I'm not gonna do this for- Yeah ... 30 years, which is what that now was. It, it was just, and it was so eye-opening to me, and that's when I started figuring out this BOR thing. So let's talk about the BOR thing, right?

Like when you approach someone, are you-- Like how do you put yourself in front of somebody and start to create differentiation? Like what, what does that look like? I mean obviously you have your secret sauce to your system and, and I'm not asking for that, but like at a high level, how do you start to, you call somebody and you say, "Hey, you got this broker and you've had them for five years and I'm calling you to tell you that you should work with me," right? Like and- Yeah ... here's the process. What, how do you start to break down how you might differentiate from them?

Why they might get more value from working from you? Like what, what does that, what does that start to look like? How are you, how are you helping your coaching clients do that? Like what are your theories around that stuff? Yeah.

So I mean it all comes down to positioning on the front end. I think that some of the biggest mistakes on getting the BOR are caused by positioning on the front end. And so you have to position it from the-- I always say lead with the BOR without saying BOR. Gotcha. Right?

It's like if you're gonna go on a, your first date and you're interested in marrying the girl, may- okay, you can think that and you can be taking her down that path, but don't freaking say the word marriage on the first damn date. Like- Yeah ... you, and that's one of the mistakes, like people, you jump in, you, you're gonna have to fire your agent. It's like you've been talking to this person for, for 10 minutes, less than that. Yeah. Right?

Or the other mistake I made in the beginning, I would like, I, I would say anything just to get a damn meeting on the books. Yeah. So if they said, "Oh hey, you wanna, uh, you know, you wanna come quote?" "Yeah, yeah, shit. I'll quote.

I'll be there, I'll be there tomorrow. What time?" And then I'd, in that meeting I would try and convince them that they should move down this path of BOR. It was too late, 'cause like, it was like bait and switch almost. "Nick, you, you showed me, you told me you'd do a quote."

Yeah. And so when we talked about positioning on the front end- Really what we're trying to do is get them, position them to think differently about solving this premium problem, think differently about this strategic approach that they're taking to the marketplace, which they're not getting. Every broker's calling and giving them some version, right? There's all these different levels of, you know, quoting all the way down to like, "I'm gonna do a full r- uh, risk management review, you know, of your entire, your program and get back to you with some results," right? And so everyone sounds a little different, but it's all the same.

It's the same experience. "I need data to show you value." That's the transaction, and the prospect's been through it 1,000 times, right? Or they've at least gotten 1,000 phone calls already. And so it's like, "Okay, do I want to engage with this broker, have him come out to my office, spend 90 minutes with me, then try and take my ass out to lunch just to build rapport?

Then I'm gonna send him all the policies and all this information. Then I'm gonna work with him for 90 days. They're gonna ask a thousand freaking questions to maybe find out if they can save me money and I should move with them." Like, down to what's going on in the prospect's head. And so we can't just have a different version of that or a better version of that.

"My script's better," right? No. What we need to do is c- create a completely different experience and be able to provide value to the prospect without getting anything in return. That's what we're looking to do on the front end from the positioning perspective. So typically it would go something like, "Hey, look, I know you get a call.

I, I know you get calls from thousands of brokers," hundreds of brokers. We don't have the numbers. Thousands would be insane, but, you know, hundreds of brokers. "I don't actually quote insurance. What we found is that that actually ha- hurts your chances of paying the least amount in premium.

We have 15 minutes to talk about maybe a better strategy to navigate the market, drive down cost." You know, so we're, we're taking them somewhere in a different direction. We don't need anything from them, and then we're getting on that 15-minute call and we can actually interview them and start to, again, frame the process that we're taking them down. But the key to it is at the end of that 15-minute call, prospect, you're gonna have a strategy to navigate the market better than you currently are. So all they gotta do is show up and they're getting something, compared to the traditional model where they gotta give and give and give to maybe get something.

Yeah. I, I, I love that, um, approach. It's very similar to what, what we do with inbound stuff. You know, it's, to me, the longer you can go without ha- without asking for the particulars of their account, the, the info gathering stage, the more that prospect's gonna trust you. Because the minute, you know, I- how I would always position it is I would get to a certain point, you know, and, and you're, you know, and you're qualifying the prospect.

You know, not everyone's a good fit, and that goes for inbound accounts just like outbound, right? And, and, um, so, you know, we work through the process, and at a certain point you realize, "Okay, this person is someone I can work with and I can help." And I would say, uh, you know, I, my, like, kill shot phrase is, "You know, we got you." That's what I tell, that's what I teach everybody. Yeah.

I teach every one of my producers, everyone. I go, "Hey, Nick, the good news is I got you, man. I, I, I've worked with hundreds of accounts like yours. I got you, right? So here's where I gotta do my job.

I gotta do my job now. Is that all right? Are we..." You know? And you're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."

And I'm like, "Okay. I gotta grab some info from you. It's gonna take 20 minutes. I can do it on the phone or I can send you a form, whatever. Either way, I gotta get that info to do my job, but it's t- you know, it's time for me to do my job.

How do you wanna do it? Choose. No problem. Boom." But that's after, that's after 10, 15, 20 minutes of talking you get to that point.

Then you ask for the information at the end. If you go, "Hey, Nick, I work with tons of bakeries. You know, how many employees do you have?" You're like, "What the f- what? Wh- who are you?

What are you doing?" Yeah. You mean- How do you know? 'Cause you're trying to qualify them out. You're trying to qualify them out based on data, demographics, when really I think you sh- we should be qualifying people out, one, if you're not doing your job on the front end and kind of understanding and filtering, then that's part of it, but, but I believe a much better way to go about selling insurance is to disqualify people on mindset, right? Yeah.

Because... A- and there's a couple reasons for that. One, uh, drastically improves your close ratio, 'cause if someone believes what you believe and buys into the process, then you're, you're almost, they're almost sold before you even get off the phone. Yeah. Two, uh, and this goes for small accounts become big accounts.

Big accounts become small accounts. What matters is that you have accounts on the books. Now granted, there are some situations where, hey, we don't write anything less than 5,000 in revenue, premium, et cetera. Those things are real, I get that, but, like, your prospecting or your inbound lead flow should, should be generating accounts closer to that ilk more consistently. There's always gonna be exceptions.

But, like, if you are a, you know, a general agency or you do a, a broad spectrum of, say, commercial or a wide range, writing the type of people who believe what you believe, right? That I'm choosing you. I'm willing to buy into the mindset that I'm gonna choose you, I'm gonna trust you, versus, "You know, Nick, you seem like a nice guy and I'm willing to let you quote my insurance, and, uh, hey, maybe we can even go golfing together." But next year, regardless of what you say, I'm gonna do the same crap again and I'm gonna send it out to all these guys. Like, e- even if they're the perfect account and all their demographics line up exactly with what you want, if their mindset doesn't match your mindset, it's g- not gonna be a great account.

And you might be able to write it once and post on LinkedIn and thump your chest and tell everyone how you're this great producer, but you're gonna go through all the same bullshit again next year if their mindset doesn't align with you. Dude, 100% agree. And, uh, the process for me, it's like I start running it. I'm like, "I wanna see these bastards' true colors as early as I can." Yeah.

Because what, what kept happening was no matter how I qualified it, I quote it, small percentage were giving that number to the incumbent. If you're gonna do me like that, one, I don't wanna work with you, one. Yeah. 'Cause that's not how I would operate. But two, I wanna find that out before I spend 90 to 120 days quoting you. Yeah.

So let's shrink the process and let's force the prospect to actually answer a question, "Are you going to hire me or not?" And that's some of the biggest pushback that, you know, that I've gotten is like, "Well, how can you possibly do a war without a coverage analysis or without, um, you know, finding pain or experience mod analysis?" And it's like all that's gonna show you is that the other agent did a shitty job, right? If you look at the coverage, okay, great. They have shitty coverage.

You're gonna rewrite it anyway. Why do you need that to qualify the prospect? And it's exactly what you're saying, like, "Is this prospect going to be a good fit for my process? Do I wanna work with them? Do they wanna work with me?" 'Cause believe it or not- Yeah ... they have a say in this.

Yeah, yeah. Right? "And here's how I work, and if that's not gonna be a fit for you, prospect, then there's other brokers who are willing to quote it, and I'm h- I will happily make the introduction for you." Particularly my top competition so you can waste their goddamn time for a n- 120 days while I'm out working on other stuff. Yeah.

But- But I, I needed that to qualify ... I g- I agree with you. I, uh, it's funny, um, uh, Mike Salas posted something the other day about how, uh, someone he was talking to said that, um, their agency principal wouldn't allow them to BOR because of E&O issues, E&O concerns. Oh, that's good. And I was like, I was like, "That's beautiful," because, one, most likely if that agency principal looked into their own agency, there's probably E&O concerns all over, like every freaking agency that exists.

And two, if you properly document your conversations, there is quite literally no additional E&O exposure by BOR, BOR-ing an account because you have a- ha- you haven't actually changed coverage, right? Right. So, like, where the real E&O issues start to come in is on misrepresentations around coverage. And if you properly articulate and document a BOR process, you're not increase... And, and let me know if I'm wrong about this, but my understanding is that you're not, you're in no way increasing your E&O exposure by BOR-ing an account, right?

Am I, am I correct in saying that? It, it took me a while and going on, you know, a lot of these calls to figure out why agencies were saying that. Yeah. Because, I mean, I had it internally when I first started. That was one of the, you know, one of our account managers, that's the first thing she said to me, "It's an E&O issue."

Son of a bitch. I don't even care then, right? We got, we guaranteed revenue. Let's figure out the E&O. Let's make it not an E&O issue, whatever we need to do.

Right. And that was the first time I heard that. What do you mean it's an E&O issue? And so I, I dug into it. I understood, okay, well, what can I do on the front end to prevent it from being an E&O issue?

Okay, so we worked through that. What I found going through all these calls with producers, agency owners, I didn't know this till I started doing this full-time. Years ago, to BOR you did not have to submit a new application or a new submission. Hmm. So you would sign the BOR and the policy would just transfer to you.

You didn't even have to look at it. So okay, oh, I get it now. I get where they're saying it's an E&O issue because if you don't actually re-underwrite it and the thing just transfers, you're, you truly are inheriting somebody else's mistakes at that point. But that doesn't exist anymore, for the most part. Most carriers, I'm sure there's one or two, somebody's gonna be listening, "Well, technically this carrier out in whatever, you know-" Yeah ...

"Alabama requires," like, okay, for the most part, you don't, you, you can't do that. You have to submit a new, a completely new s- submission. So you have to re-underwrite it. So the carriers, the process actually forces you to re-underwrite it. Right.

So the only potential E&O issue that you have is if they had a coverage on their current policy, you take it over on BOR, you resubmit to that carrier, the incumbent carrier or the rest of the marketplace, and you place that coverage with anybody, the, the incumbent carrier or a new carrier, and you missed one of the coverages during your analysis process. However, that same E&O exposure exists if you quote. Yeah, yeah. If you, if you're canceling- Right? So you- ... and rewriting, the same exact thing happens.

Because if you quote and they, let's say they had a coverage and they go, "You didn't put it on there," they're probably gonna sue you anyway. So I, my, I had that with my old agency. Well, the quote didn't have it, right? So you, you have the same exposure. So it's really, I think it's just, it's a way that, I think, you know, it's a way for people to just kinda say, "I don't wanna deal with the BOR."

And dude, I was the same way in the beginning. The first time I heard it, it was a job interview in California, and I was at, working at Brown & Brown. We were quoting stuff, cold calling, just kind of hammering, like grinding it out. And, um, I interview with this one firm, and it wasn't clear on their website that they did this, and I sit down in the interview and the, the agency principal's like, "We only BOR here." And I couldn't, I didn't get it, like, at all.

I'm like- Yeah ... I go, the first question I asked, I go, "Well then how do you write new business?" I could've told you right then I wasn't gonna get the damn job. Yeah. He looks at me in his face, he's like, "This guy just doesn't understand."

So, but I started asking questions like, "Okay, so, so I don't get it. How do you write new business? How do you do this?" And basically what he came down to, and he said to me, he's like, "Hey, clearly you don't get this. Why don't you go be an underwriter for five years?

Then you can come back and maybe we would consider hiring you to go out in the field." I was pissed. I'm like, "I'm not gonna..." One, I would get fired as an underwriter. I would not last a day as an underwriter.

And I was frustrated, and so that's why I took the other job quote, um, as a, as a broker in California. That's where I quoted all those landscapers. It wasn't until after that I'm like, "Maybe that dude's onto something." Yeah. And it kind of just, like, opened my eyes to like, okay, maybe there's a different way that I could bring on new business rather than just going out and quoting it.

Yeah. I, I think, I think, you know, just putting a pin in the E&O thing, if you're documenting, if you're documenting your conversations and you're working through processes, there is no additional E&O concern. Because even if you did straight BOR, right? Even if you just sign the letter, letter goes in, all of a sudden the policies are in your name, right? Yeah.

Well, then all you need to do when you get them is look at them and review them and make sure that the coverage is right, right? And if all of a sudden you see that the liability is half of what it should be, you call your now new client and go, "Hey, man, just so you know, this is not near where it should be, X, Y, Z. We just need to bump this up," or whatever, and then you make the proper adjustments. I think it's, I think oftentimes people, they, the idea of anything different scares them. I know for a long time BOR scared me, and I think, I think it has a lot to do...

I think the BOR process, um, exposes our insecurities in sales, right? 'Cause when we're canceling and rewriting something, we feel confident that we're coming in with a better price and different coverage and a new carrier, and look at all this work I did, and I earned this business. Where with the BOR we're like, "Look-" You need to buy me, right? Like, I d- I have a strategy that I'm gonna deliver. I'm gonna work with you. I'm gonna be a partner, et cetera, you know, consult- you know, whatever, whatever, however you position yourself exactly.

But like, that, so much of that has to do with my confidence to help you versus me bringing you something that I feel is superior and therefore gives me confidence, if that makes sense. It's like intrinsic versus extrinsic, uh, confidence in terms of whether we're comfortable with a BOR or not. And, uh, I definitely think it exposes people who are not... A- and again, all of us probably, especially early in our careers. I'm not, I'm not trying to say that some are better than others, just I do think it exposes our insecurities and our own ability to be value providers.

Dude, I com- I could not agree 100% more. I think that, yeah, 100% more, that's how you say it. Damn, I got all tripped up. So I, basically, I could, BOR, I can- can't talk. Um, but I rem- I'll never forget it, dude, 'cause I was trying to get other people, different, you know, different agencies I was at, we're trying to, I was always, "Hey, we should all be doing this."

Like, "This is the w- like this is," you said all the time, "This is the way." Like, that's how I felt about the BOR. I'm like, "Come on." Yeah, yeah. "Why don't you have me doing this yet?"

And, um, we're sitting around the office and this producer came in and was like, "I didn't get the deal 'cause carrier, the carrier pricing wasn't good enough. Bummer. Next year." Nonchalant, casual. That was it.

And I went home to my wife, I'm like, "I finally get it. I get why people don't wanna do this." Because they have an out, there's an excuse- Yeah ... when you don't get a deal when you quoted it. There's always somebody to blame. The carrier wasn't, the carrier wasn't, uh, competitive enough, competitive enough.

They gave the number to the incumbent. You know, "Hey, all this stuff's out of my control." Well, I was tired, like, tired of having stuff out of my control, and so I wanted, you know, 'cause the BOR's the way that you control that. But ultimately, it's on you, and so there is no excuse. Yeah.

I didn't do a good enough job. I didn't explain it correctly. They didn't get it. Whatever it is, but it, there's no way out, there's no excuse other than your process. So I think that's, that's a huge hurdle to get over.

Um, and even me at the beginning, I was like, I couldn't fully get to it. Like, I had this vision, this dream, "Okay, I wanna build it, uh, completely on BOR. That's all I wanna operate on." And in the beginning I would still, like, if the revenue was big enough, I'd freaking back down and I'd quote it. Yeah.

They'd be like, I'd make the BOR pitch. They'd go, "Hey, Nick, that's great, but we're not gonna do that. You interested in quoting though?" "Shit, sure. Hey, I'll do it."

Ruins all credibility, not only with that prospect, but then the next prospect, because now I'm going into like I've got no, like I'm looking the next prospect in the eye. I'm like, "I only BOR." "Well, except the one yesterday when I caved and I quoted." So talking about confidence, like- Yeah ... unless you fully commit to it, it starts to eat away at what you're doing 'cause you're saying one thing and you're doing another. Like, "Well, I only BOR, unless you push me hard enough, then I'll quote it."

Yeah. And so really buying in and fully going in, like, "This is how I do business," that was game changing for me because now it unlocked the, a different level of conversation with the prospects. It's so funny the similarities between the BOR process, now that you're explaining it and we're talking through it, and how I teach selling inbound insurance. You know, when I'm working with a coaching client or whatever, one of the things I, I talk them through is like, if you focus and develop a flow of inbound leads, you, you become supremely confident in the fact that you don't need that lead to be successful, right? Yeah.

That person calls you, and if you don't go straight to information gathering, if you flip the standard process on its head and you move information gathering to the very last step, and you ask some open-ended questions, and you confirm what's actually where they add value, you're able to disqualify the people right up front who aren't a good fit for your business, right? 'Cause you're never gonna be able to control, one with, with BOR is when you reach out to somebody. On paper, in InfoZoom, in the magazine article that you found their business, they could seem amazing, and you get on the phone with them and they could be a complete jackass, and just not- Yeah ... a good fit for you, right? So like, but, you know, and like you said, you gotta have the confidence to back away and say, "Hey, this is how I do business. I'm sorry." With inbound it's made even easier because if you ask those questions up front, you can just say, "Hey, I'm sorry, but I c- I'm just, I don't have a good market for you."

Uh, or, "I just don't have a good solution for what you're asking for." And you never have to get to the point where you're spending 30 minutes gathering information, sending it to whoever does your quoting or quoting it yourself, worrying about following up. Where if you go information gathering first, then you s- you do all this wasted time up front, you go through all this process on the back end, you send them their proposal or you try to get them back on the phone, whatever your process is, only to find out that their brother's their agent and they were just trying to get another price to give them a hard time. Right. And you're like, and then, and then you back all the way through that process and you start going, "Inbound leads are terrible.

These people are tire kickers. Small commercial's the worst. You can't grow a b-," you know. And I'm like, "No, this is not a prospect problem. This is a systems and process problem."

Mm-hmm. And if we spend that time and have a set of standards, right? I only work on BOR, I only work with customers who believe in this. You have to buy into my process, but in exchange, I'm gonna deliver this strategy for you, and blah, blah, blah, you know, your value pitch, right? It's the same exact thing with inbound, where if you ask those questions up front, if you allow people to define what actually is success to them, right?

And that, and that's a big part of what our process is, is like let the person tell you why they're actually gonna buy. They may call you on price. Price may actually be a concern. But if you let them talk and you, you label and reconfirm what, what is really important to them, oftentimes while price might be why they called, it is, and, and study after study has found this to be true, it is rarely why they actually buy. But we don't realize that if we gather information up front and we don't know what that informa- we don't know what the real reason they're buying is if we go information gathering first.

So to me, this, it's, it's just, it's really opening my eyes to how, uh, different but similar this w- focusing on BOR is versus, y- you know, and the inbound process. Like, done correctly, they're actually fairly similar. Agreed. Yeah, and I had no idea. I'm one of the guys that assumed.

I just assumed inbound you're getting all the information up front, you're trying to sell them on a quick quote, right? Yeah. And, uh, you're spot on. The, and the similarity is I think fighting that urge for every insurance broker. I don't know why- But the first thing is like, "Give me the information.

What do I need?" Like, that's the first step when they get a prospect, inbound, outbound, whatever it, like, we need to change what our first step is. Yeah. And that's the biggest thing, to create a different experience for these prospects. It's scarcity versus abundance mindset.

Mm-hmm. So one of the reasons why, again, why I've always leaned into inbound is that I knew that with the right amount of focus and work upfront in building, you know, these educational platforms, be they on YouTube, your website, et cetera, wherever you decide to, to build it out, you create a consistent flow of business. And what that allows you to do, in my opinion, from a confidence perspective, is operate from a place of complete abundance, which is I could go 0 for 10 today and it doesn't mean shit because I got 10 more leads coming in tomorrow and I can get after it again. I got a bad day, maybe I'm in a bad mood, maybe my mind's just off, maybe I got something going on at home and I'm not f- but I think the problem is when, when we don't do that work and we are just getting one inbound lead a week or, you know, maybe two referrals and it's not enough and we, we haven't built that engine or we don't have a way of prospecting or a, or consistency in our prospecting or, or whatever, then everything is so scarce that if a lead comes in, it's like, "Oh my God, I gotta write this. Like, if I don't write this-" Yeah ... we're not gonna put premium on the books this week."

And, and that desperation and scarcity surrounding that is what forces us to, or not forces us, but I think is, is part of the reason why we operate in these ways that, that don't actually produce results. Like just, I know I need this information to quote, and oh my God, I gotta get this business in, so give me that information so I can go quote, feel like I've done something, and hopefully get premium on the books. And it's like, it's like, okay, I get that, but let's remove that by building up, by building abundance into the front end. So for y- I know, you know, and I've talked about on the show before how I do that with inbound, but when you're prospecting on a, for, on a BOR perspective, how do you go about creating abundance in the prospects that you have in front of you? Like, are you subscribed to a, to a insuranceestates.com?

Is it, you know, w- where, what kind of systems, what kind of ideas are you using in order to create that prospect abundance on the front end? Yeah. So it's, it's interesting. When you were at, I think you had just started Rogue Risk. At the time, I started doing videos in 2019, and I was, I, I built my book 12 years on cold calling.

Like, that's what I did. Every agency I was at, like it's cold call. You know, I'd make ... I would grind it out. I'd make, you know, I still know I can make 25 calls in a 40-minute period, so I'd schedule those.

I'd go anywhere from 50 to 100 a day depending on the time, right? And I'd just hammer the phone. So that's the system that I used, and it, it was, to me it was reliable. I knew if I made X amount of calls, I'd get X amount of appointments, and I protected that time like crazy. Nothing could get in the way of that time. 'Cause I knew that if I just did that, I would be, I, I'd be okay.

I'd have leads, I would have leads coming in. And so for me it was always cold calling. I was trying to figure out the video thing. And, um, I remember watching your shit and, not that it's shit, but you get my point. Like- No, no.

Yeah, yeah. No. This dude, like, he's got this inbound thing dialed in, and I, for me, I never could break away enough from the cold calling to actually, 'cause it worked. And so I was like- Yeah ... having a hard time to like just totally blowing it up. So I used the video a little bit differently, but for me it was, it was cold call.

And the other thing that I think this, this misconception out there around the BOR, or maybe it's misunderstood, the BOR is actually a prospecting tool, right? Mm-hmm. People just think it's a letter to get business. But you can actually use it as a tool in two different ways. One is if you position it correctly on the front end, it becomes a more interesting prospect, uh, process for the prospect.

Right? So if we say, "Hey, look, quoting actually hurts your premium. Do you have some 15 minutes to learn a new strategy or for me to show you a strategy that you can, you know, navigate the market?" You're going to set more meetings because people, that everyone gives you the canned response about, "I like my agent." They don't actually like their agent.

They probably haven't even seen their agent. They just don't wanna go through the quoting process. Yeah. So if we make the process different, if we make it more exciting, more people are gonna say yes. I, you know, we were talking earlier about being in, putting yourself in the consumer's shoes, and you, this is an example I use all the time.

If a mechanic called you up right now, I don't know what kind of car you drive, but if a mechanic called you up and say, "Hey, Ryan. Look, mechanic, I wanna take over your, your maintenance program for your vehicle. I need you to drive down on Saturday. We're gonna run a diagnostics report on your vehicle. It could take about an hour and a half.

Then we can go get some lunch. We can kind of bullshit, get, just make sure we get to know each other. And then we'll run the report. I'll probably follow up with some questions, you know, tire pressure. Could you run it to the garage, get all that stuff for me?

And then we'll meet again in a week and a half and I'll show you the report and I'll show you if anything's wrong with your car." It's like, holy shit, dude. Should I do that? Maybe. But I don't have that kind of time.

But if, like, if they called you up and they're like, "Yo, hey Ryan, I know you drive a Chevy Tahoe. We found that most mechanics will tell you, uh, to, uh, uh, put synthetic oil in a Tahoe. For whatever reason, it actually has the opposite effect and causes your car to break down sooner. Do you have 15 minutes to see if we're, how, you know, we might be able to help you out with this new strategy of how we're, we're helping other Tahoe owners?" It's like, "Well, dude, shit, I got an oil change next week.

Like, what do you mean? I'm about to dump that shit in there." Now, my wife fact-checked me. She's like, "Is that true?" No, that's not true.

Don't, so don't, if you got, drive your Tahoe, don't worry about the- Yeah, yeah, yeah ... oil. But the, but the concept is what's happening now? I've already solved the prospect's problem. Yeah. I already know their problem.

I don't need anything from them to tell me their problem. I have their problem and I have their solution. Yep. You're gonna generate more interest. And then the final piece on the prospecting side with the BOR is you create more time to do whatever it is that works for you.

If you're really good at, at inbound, if you're really good at, uh, cold call outbound networking, a lot of times we don't spend time on it because we're stuck quoting this damn bullshit. Yeah, yeah. So if we can remove that part, remove the info gathering, remove the, remove the coverage analysis for anybody that's not a client, we just created all, you know, all this time to then go back out and repurpose that, you know, to drive more opportunities. Yeah. I love it, dude.

Dude, I wanna be, uh, I wanna be cognizant of your time, of our audience's time. This has been a tremendous conversation. I'm so glad that we finally did it. I know, uh, a lot of it was me just rescheduling in my life, but dude, I'm so glad that we had a chance to connect at this level. Share what you're doing.

It's Producer Systems. Let people know where they can connect with you, where they can learn more about what you do, and if they wanna work with you or just reach out and, and, and learn more, uh, where should everybody go? Yeah, best way, probably LinkedIn. They're pretty active on there. You can follow me there or connect with me there, message me there.

It's m- me in the, uh, the chat. It's not a bot. So you get, you'll get me. And, um, or you go to our website, producer.systems. My email's on there.

You shoot me an email. But happy to help with any, any questions on this process. Like, you know, just figuring it out. And dude, no matter where you're at, right, you wanna just get your BOR process more dialed in, or you're like, "Okay, quote now, it's freaking miserable. I don't even know where to start."

Yeah. You know, hit me up with any questions you got. I love it. Guys, I'll have all the links in the show notes. Uh, dude, appreciate the hell out of you.

Um, look forward to more, and, uh, we'll connect on LinkedIn. Dude, sounds good. Appreciate you having me on. All right, buddy. I'm going to Shaboom.

Close twice as many deals by this time next week. Sound impossible? It's not. With the one-call close system, you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call. This is the exact method we used to close 1,200 clients in under three years during the pandemic.

No fluff, no endless follow-ups, just results fast. Based in behavioral psychology and battle tested, the one-call close system eliminates excuses and gets the prospect saying yes more than you ever thought possible. If you're ready to stop losing opportunities and start winning, visit masteroftheclose.com. That's masteroftheclose.com. Do it today.