Spray Painted Grass: The Cost of Change

Shane and Tonya explore why salespeople often get sold on the next big thing, from spray-painted grass to shiny new software. They share practical strategies for avoiding impulsive decisions, questioning the need for change, and focusing on tools and processes that truly enhance your agency’s success. 

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Transcript

Announcer: [00:00:00] This is IA Forward, your playbook for success as an independent insurance agent. Here to help you knock it out of the ballpark are your hosts, Shane Tatum and Tonya Lied.  

Tonya: Welcome to IA Forward. Shane, guess what we're not going to talk about today? We are not going to talk about the hard market today.  

Shane: Oh, we're not going to talk about the hard market? 

Tonya: No discussion about the hard market today.  

Shane: We've talked about the hard market for two years.  

Tonya: We're going to talk about the fact that years and years ago, bought a house. And the neighbors spray painted their grass. When I went and looked at the house for the first time, I actually had the thought the neighbors had the prettiest green grass I had ever seen. 

It was the middle of the winter and all of the grass and all of the houses around it were dead. Except the neighbors. And I just remember thinking, oh wow, I'm gonna learn from these people. And I didn't pay attention until I moved in and figured out that they were actually [00:01:00] painting their grass green. 

Now I know that colleges and high schools that have grass on their fields that don't have turf, Do this. It makes the fields look better. Yes, some neighbors do this in the front yards.  

Shane: Were your neighbors the Brady's? Because they had AstroTurf in their backyard. Who didn't want AstroTurf in the 70s or 80s? 

No mowing.  

Tonya: So what does this have to do with insurance?  

Shane: I have no idea, but it's a podcast and we're gonna somehow segue to the insurance world.  

Tonya: Our segue is We are salespeople. Right? As agency owners, we are producers, we are salespeople, and we get sold pretty easily. Why do salespeople get sold so easily? 

And why is the grass always greener on the other side until we figure out that the grass is just spray painted?  

Shane: It's an interesting thought [00:02:00] because I've had multiple conversations in recent days around this theme or topic and sometimes it's changed just to change and sometimes it's I've been sold something. 

Salespeople want to help fellow salesmen for the most part. We will believe anything that someone selling is telling us. We will just flat out, believe it. And I, I have a really interesting dynamic just within my own household as I'm the salesperson brain. I live with a numbers person. For 29 years, I've been married to the exact opposite of who I am. 

She never gets sold. If something is purchased or agreed to between us, it's probably because I got sold. She may take influence from Instagram or Twitter. Amazon, but somebody's gonna sell us on something for whatever reason, I [00:03:00] immediately become friends with that person. Oh, we have to buy this because he or she is telling us this thing's gonna change our life. 

Like, whatever that thing is. And I will typically believe them.  

Tonya: Remember that time you bought a technology company? That was fun.  

Shane: I buy companies based on that. Which I'm  

Tonya: grateful for because that's how I ended up at Integra.  

Shane: Sometimes we just need to say no, walk away, and let our, let the thing we're doing just continue to be the thing we're doing. 

Maybe we get bored. We've been selling auto and home insurance for 20 years and forget the fact that we make really good money and we have a really successful business. I'm bored. I'll go blow it up now. That's why I believe that I have thought for many years now. I'm less and less In that way today. As a matter of fact, Tanya, you can testify to me being a little anti-change over the last year or two, just trying to push back a little bit. 

I feel like that old guy yelling at the kids to get off his [00:04:00] lawn, that's what I'm starting to feel like a little bit because I'm pushing back on why are we changing that  

Tonya: very secondhand lions of you,  

Shane: but why is something broke? Is something not working? Why are we doing this? Can you tell me again? This is really where I'm at in my agency owner life cycle. 

Tonya: We say he is anti change, but we are recording this podcast in the middle of. A CRM change experience. We are doing this podcast amidst some change because some vendors have lost their minds when it comes to pricing.  

Shane: Very true. For context, our retail operation runs on the Easylink's agency management system. 

It's all in on our retail side. But our partner network never had its own platform. From a agent relationship [00:05:00] standpoint, just tracking, documentation, tracking of carrier access for our members, all that stuff. It's never had A platform that was uniquely its own. It always has ridden on the backs of management systems. 

We've made it work within those systems to just make it work. And because of the need, because of growth, because of many needs, marketing needs, support needs, we've decided, okay, we're going to jump into more than a CRM. Instead of patching things together, we're going to try to build Around a platform that's large and customizable to a degree. 

And we're going to be able to label things the way they need to be labeled. For years made it work. There's parts of our organization. They're not going to migrate yet. Let me say it that way. They're going to come later. Our accounting may not come at all. All right. It [00:06:00] may stay on that legacy platform that it's in. 

It's an interesting take, and I'm sure there's going to be some Potential disagreements around this in terms of out in the marketplace. What do you think about this? If you could go all in on a single platform for your whole company, why wouldn't you, that's what we've done in our traditional retail agency. 

We've gone all in the EZ Links platform. That's just what we do. It makes life easy. Within the agency network side, there's no software built for agency networks. It doesn't exist. So we've had to patchwork it. You end up in this world where the phrase is tech stack. The newer thing is what's your tech stack look like. 

Our tech stack in the partner network is. Ridiculous. I lined it up. Retail versus partner network. Our retail tech stack is simple. Easy links, Office 365, Outlook, OneDrive, Teams, et cetera. And then over [00:07:00] here in the partner network, it's just this unbelievable list of things to run our business. There's no market for somebody to build agency network specific software for, or at least in a way that could be afforded. 

Some management system vendors have thought about it, tried it, and And backed off of it.  

Tonya: And some partner networks have thought about it and decided, yeah, no.  

Shane: Yeah. They were going to build their own. I don't know. And so here we are. One of the things that old man Shane is sitting back looking at and thinking about is not everything needs to change. 

And it just made me think, why do we do that? Like, why do we get sold? And think we got to change everything. No, you don't. You don't have to change something that's working just because some guy called you and told you that they got a cool thing. You don't have to change because you went to a conference and saw somebody doing something that you thought was cool with AI. 

Pay [00:08:00] attention. Take a look at it, but you don't have to do it. This whole sales arena around technology is to scare the mess out of you. A few days ago, there was an organization back in the early 2000s when the pitch was before AI, we had the digital revolution and the internet and direct selling was going to obsolete the independent agency and there was a marketing organization. 

Specifically to the insurance space that was going around and selling a digital package to large multi generational independent agencies, basically saying, if you don't do this, you're going out of business. The packages ranged from a hundred to 150, 000 to 300, 000 a year. They were insanely priced. Way out of market and it was vapor. 

The lawsuit ended up coming out of this, [00:09:00] but before that happened, thousands of agency owners purchased this vapor of a product for six figures. And you're just sitting there going, what sells people got sold and got sold on something that was just not necessary. It didn't enhance their business. It didn't make their business better. 

It didn't keep their business from going out of business. As salespeople, we got sold, I did not buy this, but overall, as salespeople, we got sold.  

Tonya: I believe this is because as salespeople, we tend to be a bit scattered. We tend to want to find products that make our lives organized. Better, faster, more efficient. 

So I can go sell so I can be a rainmaker, whatever product you're bringing to [00:10:00] me as a salesperson, you're telling me as a salesperson is going to make my life efficient and all I'm going to have to do is sell. Yeah. Here's my credit card, whatever the subscription is.  

Shane: It's like hiring without checking references. 

Many people do just that. They don't look at the product or. Ask hard questions and dive into the product. Many times they don't even understand the product. And rather than getting to understand the product, they just, okay, it's going to save me time. It's going to let me sell more. It's going to let me grow my business more. 

I put this into that same place. Like so many people hire someone and never check a reference. And I've hear all the excuses, references are worthless because the only people That someone's putting on their resume is someone that's going to give them a great reference. And I'm like, okay, I get it. I understand. 

You can't call three [00:11:00] people when you're going to make a hire. You can't just listen for the tone when you say, hey, Sally put you down as a reference looking for a job here at Integra and just wanted to just see. What you could tell me and I know there's rules around that and you can ask questions and not ask questions and all that Stuff that's come into play here. 

You can tell by tone I promise you most of the time people cannot hide their emotion And they're probably going to get a glowing recommendation from the people they put on there On their reference sheet, but if you look at their employment, you don't always have to call the references. You can call the places that she worked that they didn't put on the reference sheet, but it's on their resume. 

And just the very simple, are they eligible for rehire, which is the politically correct and legal way to do that. You would be amazed how many people will say no, and then there you go. They may not can go in to [00:12:00] the reason. Not everyone's gonna say yes. Why did they say no if it creates that kind of thing in our minds? 

We get in such a hurry to hire someone, we just go with it. We need somebody. We do the same thing in being sold. I'm guilty of this. I've almost stopped having candidates come in for second interviews with me because you know what I end up doing? End up trying to sell them on our company. This is a person that responded. 

To a job opportunity and Shane here starts selling them on all the great things about why they should come to work. They're already coming to work and we haven't offered them the job. The hiring manager hasn't offered the job and I'm over here talking about why they should work with us.  

Tonya: That's why you're supposed to send them to me  

Shane: to ask questions. 

I get it because I'm in sales mode so much. I'm like, we're great. Our [00:13:00] culture's great. You're going to love it here. If I catch the hiring manager's eyes, it's like they're looking at me going, What are you doing? I tell our story a lot, and I'm passionate about our company. If you're recruiting someone, I get it. 

But if you're hiring someone that's responded to a job opportunity, I'm the sales guy trying to sell you on something, yet I'm being sold easily. And so it's just this really weird thing that salespeople do. My whole point and theme here today is Take a deep breath, step back, and go, Why do I need to buy this product? 

Why do I need to change this process? Oh, the product's gonna make me change my process. Does my process not work? If it stinks, and you're losing business, maybe your process is broke. Maybe your system's broke. So many times, agents, process, and systems They're not broke, they're super successful, and they're ripping out a perfectly [00:14:00] good engine just to put in a new engine. 

I don't understand that. Part of it is ego.  

Tonya: Part of it is wanting to be that person that is cutting edge, the person that is new to adopt the product. It's the same person that pre orders the new iPhone before it gets released. There is a personality type that does this. And there are books written about this. 

There are books that you and I Actually encourage people to read that, that talk about this. It is a personality type that does this. What we're focused on is the larger part of the bell curve. How do we as agency owners keep from getting sold on products we don't need?  

Shane: Take a deep breath. Something looks cool. 

Somebody on your team brings you a new gadget, a new idea. You have a new [00:15:00] idea. One of those things that we can do, and I'm literally thinking about this just in the moment, I need to do this myself, is have this business version of the 24 hour role when my kids were growing up, coaches would have the parent meeting at the beginning of each season, and every coach that my daughters ever played for at any level, would announce we have the 24 hour rule. 

If you're upset about something, you have to wait 24 hours. I won't talk to you until it's been at least 24 hours. And it's to let everybody's temper cool down. The same thing could be applied here. Maybe we need a one week or one month rule where we take a deep breath, back away, process it, and identify what is it that's broke that we need to do here. 

Or what is it that's not as good as it could be that this theme, product or service that we are thinking about purchasing, what is it going to do [00:16:00] for us really do for us? Not we like the salesperson and they're nice. We feel obligated to buy something from them. Not that, but does this actually help our business? 

We need our own version of that, and I don't know what the timetable is, but some period of time for us to go away. So we're not making an emotional or spur of the moment decision. Tonya, you have examples of this with purchasing clothing, shoes. My wife does. Surely there's some rule in y'all's household where you're like, Okay. 

I'm gonna leave that in the shopping cart for two days.  

Tonya: If it's over a certain amount of money, I will put it in the cart, but then I leave it there to make sure I still want it the next day. I get that.  

Shane: Do Daniel Wanted a boat for a long time. He didn't buy a boat 24 hours from his desired point of wanting the boat. 

If I'm going to buy a vehicle, if I'm going to buy a house, if I'm going to buy a boat, I'm going to think about this. The average [00:17:00] ordinary people, not the gazillionaires. Some people just have more money and spend it, but that's rare. I don't know why though, when you think about our businesses and new shiny objects, software, business processes, what I see, it's like. 

We have to have this. It's going to revolutionize our organization. Most of the time it is. I'm not saying I don't ever buy stuff for our business. We do. What's really comical about this podcast, as I'm literally speaking out loud, I'm thinking there's about 15 people in our organization that would say, my gosh, he needs to listen to himself because he has sent us down many rabbit holes with new shiny objects over the last 20 years that we can't keep up. 

I'm speaking from failure. I was that guy. I've been fortunate to grow our business to a point that I have people, Tanya, Julie, [00:18:00] Holly, Tara, people in place. That say, whoa, what are we doing? If you're that person, find at least one person. Even if you're a solopreneur, put your spouse in that role. Put a good friend in that role. 

Hey, who can be that person to make you stop, ask questions, and think before you go and spend all this money?  

Tonya: I know we're supposed to wait 24 to 48 hours before we bring an idea to the table. We should market a product that makes you wait 24 to 48 hours before signing up for any email list. Because somehow, I end up signing up for email lists because they sound like going to be fantastic, and then it floods my email and I never read them. 

I wonder if I would pay for a service that would stop me from doing that.  

Shane: It would probably. Sell well, what better subscription to sell to the world [00:19:00] than a email subscription management tool. The buyers of that service would sign up for anything. They would have to sign up for this. Because  

Tonya: I'm going to get 10 percent off. 

If I sign up for this list and they're going to text and email me for the rest of my life, no matter how many. Times I try to unsubscribe or send it to the Google as spam. So there has to be a product we can market and make money. We'll bring that up in 48 hours.  

Shane: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. If you still feel passionate about it, of course, you should bring that back up in 48 hours. 

There is some services out there being marketed and the irony of society today, there are. Services to help you cancel or manage subscriptions. It's a budgeting tool. And guess how they're selling that tool? It's a subscription. What did we just do? The world is signing up for this. If you're a Dave Ramsey guy or gal, I use a budgeting tool called EveryDollar, a Ramsey product. 

Tonya: As do I.  

Shane: [00:20:00] And we should get some advertising from them if we're gonna talk about them. Every dollar's great. Love it. And Ramsey's the big no credit card guy. I don't use debit card online for security purposes. It's a subscription and tells you to use a debit card. Which is interesting. As an insurance person, I'm like, absolutely not. 

I'm not putting my debit card online. Credit card has different mechanisms. So I just put in the credit card anyway. Guess what happened? It took it. Push the envelope a little. Ask questions. I felt so accomplished when I did that. I understand that's the Ramsey way. No credit cards. I wasn't going to use a debit card online, so I used my credit card and it accepted it, even though it said it didn't accept credit cards. 

I was proud of myself because my typical thing would be like, maybe Mr. Rule follower, like, okay, they don't take credit cards. Gotta put my debit card in. Okay, I'll follow the rules. And I didn't because I'm like, wait a minute. I don't do debit cards online [00:21:00] for security purposes. I'm not exposing my checking account. 

I put my credit card in and it worked. I felt so accomplished and strong I did something if you take a stance around being a little more guarded and not being sold so easily by just Putting in some pauses or asking some questions ask hard questions I don't know what's happening with our society, but there's a lot of stuff where people are just mean to each other, and there needs to be less of that. 

But there's also this other spectrum where everybody's too nice. Like, they just accept the salesperson's statement as the gospel, and they just buy the product. I see that as much as the mean spirited side of things. It's okay that we ask hard questions. We get asked hard questions as insurance salesmen all the time, but for whatever reason, we don't do that when we're being sold something that's [00:22:00] gonna, as Tanya said, save us time. 

We don't ask hard questions about that. How does it save me time? How does it improve my business? If you can ask those questions and those hard questions can be answered and demonstrated to you, Maybe you need to buy that product, but just buying that product on a salesperson's statement of faith? I don't know. 

That's a hard one for me.  

Tonya: Call your salesperson and find out if the product that you're currently paid for will do that, too.  

Shane: Oh, that's a good one. That's a very good one. Does it already do what we want it to do? We've had that instance recently. Why do we not do that? Are we mad because they didn't tell us about a feature? 

Tonya: Or we didn't go through the training they offered and we just don't know that it exists. Call your salespeople for your products first. That's going to give you, or email them, but that's going to give you the 48 hours you need before buying something new.  

Shane: That's probably the best advice of this entire podcast, [00:23:00] because We don't do that. 

We just see the new thing and think, Oh my gosh, it's new. Look at that. That is awesome. Save yourself a migration process. The pain and disruption, it does it in this other way, or it does it 80 percent as well as this other thing. We've talked about that before. Where's your good enough line? A lot of agency owners want the 100 percent best process, best tool, best looking, the UI, the best looking tool for every little thing. 

And so they go, and if you go out there and you search best CRM, best online writer, best whatever, there's a really good chance they'll find you. That the quote 100 percent best tool comes from a multitude of different vendors. But what if one or two of [00:24:00] those vendors got you 80 percent of the way there? 

What's better? Is it better to have 10 tools all connected through Zapier and nothing wrong with Zapier, nothing wrong with it. I'm just saying, is it better to have 10 different tools from 10 different vendors? Trying to talk to each other or is it better to have one or two vendors with all the tools? 

Totally integrated, because I don't think anybody thinks about that. But if it's all owned by the same vendor, and all integrated directly, then the breakage opportunity is minimal, if at all.  

Tonya: You're leaving one thing out. The dopamine rush of getting to buy something new. And that's a real thing. We know that. 

Shane: So we get a dopamine hit when we buy things.  

Tonya: Absolutely, yes.  

Shane: I get a nauseous feeling when I buy things sometimes. Did I make a good decision? I always have buyers Where does buyer's remorse come in from the dopamine hit?  

Tonya: That's later on.  

Shane: Okay. How long does it take for buyer's [00:25:00] remorse to hit? And for the dopamine to the answer  

Tonya: to that question, but it sure happens, doesn't it? 

Shane: It does. It probably  

Tonya: happens about the time that it breaks your process.  

Shane: Probably. Somebody retires or quits that was with you for 20 years. Yeah. Or threatens to quit. That's when the buyer's remorse starts hitting. I had a friend of mine recently, they, he works for a very large food distributor and they're making a systems change next spring and they've been in testing, implementation and testing for two years, two years. 

Can you imagine, they're very large, but can you imagine you make a buying decision and then the process to implement test? And go live is two and a half to three years on a technology platform I know our insurance company friends are listening out there going. Oh, yeah, that's normal. But that blows my mind that Absolutely blows my mind weeks months maybe but years. 

I don't know. [00:26:00] What are we doing? Did we need to do this? Was this the best way? Those are the things that start creeping into my mind. I'm not running a 10, 000 employee organization or anything like that. But even at 30 something employees and a hundred and something partners, I still can't get my head around years of. 

Testing and implementation, is there not a better path? And so those are the things that that make me really want to curl up in a fetal position.  

Tonya: I'm going to leave us today with this quote from Babe Diederickson Zaharis. Luck? Sure. Only after long practice and only with ability to think under pressure. 

Shane: Attitude to choice. Make a great one.  

Announcer: At the Integra partner network. We understand that carrier access is the key to your agency's success. That's why Integra offers direct access to top rated personal and commercial carriers, ensuring your agency thrives in today's challenging markets. And with [00:27:00] our comprehensive resources, profit sharing and bonus opportunities, technology, and peer support, all will you retain a hundred percent. 

with no penalties to exit. Integra is ready to empower you and your agency to find sustained growth. Find your way to Integra. Visit IntegraPartnerNetwork. com today. That's IntegraPartnerNetwork. com