60-Second Stories: Selling Insurance With Real-Life Lessons

The best way to connect with clients is through storytelling, not by being boring or overly technical. Shane and Tonya discuss into the power of 60-second stories that turn real-life lessons into personal, memorable, and successful sales moments.  

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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. How are you today?  

Shane: I'm excellent. How are you?  

Tonya: Fantastic. My husband has been gone on a business trip for about a week and he is finally home, which is exciting. 

And he had one of the most unusual things happen that I've ever heard. with a rental car. Now you and I travel a lot and we rent cars all the time. We've had lots of stuff happen with rental cars.  

Shane: Absolutely. I still have an outstanding rental car right now on my app. I can't figure out how to get it off. 

Car rental place cannot figure out how to get it off. I get asked about it. Hey, do you still have that? Whatever. It wasn't even the car that I rented, but Somehow or another, instead of turning it in at the Kansas City Airport, it thinks that I turned it in at the San Antonio Airport, which I haven't been to in 15 years. 

Tonya: [00:01:00] Technology is fantastic when it works. Speaking of technology, because that's what my husband does, he was in Charlottesville, West Virginia last week and went to go to lunch with some co workers. Who were also from out of the area and had rented cars and Josh said, Hey, I've got a big SUV. I'll drive. So Daniel being married to an insurance person actually even made this little funny and said, Man, you're not supposed to rent Hyundai's or Kia's. 

They get stolen. And they all laughed about it and Josh was like, what are you talking about? And anyway, so they walk outside where Josh had left his rental car and it was not there. Now, keep in mind that the building that they were at in Charlottesville is not a manned building and They were like, did somebody have us towed because we had a vehicle here or what? 

What in the world happened? Josh is a very straightforward, concerned kind of guy. [00:02:00] He's freaking out because his rental car is gone. They called the police. Not only has Josh's rental car been stolen, it has been used in an armed robbery.  

Shane: Everybody wants that on their rental car experience. Your vehicle registered to your rental agreement is involved in an armed robbery. A pretty good story that's gonna last. Into infamy,  

Tonya: Daniel's response to it was, you know, Tonya says no good story ever started with. I was eating a salad, right?  

Shane: Never does. If you know me and my wife, there's certain things we don't love doing. We live in a small town. It took me. Almost 30 years of marriage to move beyond Chevrolets and Toyotas. 

A year and a half ago, I bought my wife her dream brand, which was a BMW. And it goes back to her, when her dad had a BMW, probably a 3 Series. And it was a manual transmission back when those were the thing. We jump [00:03:00] off into buying her a BMW, we buy her the X3, not the M5, not the supercharged one. I, I have to admit this, being in a small town, being the insurance agency in a small town during the middle of the hard market crisis and the premiums going through the roof, is the timing that I decide. 

I'll buy my wife a BMW now. She had waited almost 30 years and not that she was asking for it. I don't want to paint that picture at all. That was just something I wanted to do. I was like, Hey, you've been through the suburban phases. You've been through the Chevy Traverse. I've made you stay in the Chevrolet vehicles. 

I've stayed in Chevrolets and a Toyota. Here we are and we're empty nesters and. We can do it, so let's do it. It took me forever, because it's a BMW. It's a luxury brand, and you're in a small town in East Texas. It was something I struggled with. Forget the fact that our customers drive 90, 000 Ford F 250 [00:04:00] diesels. 

That's not the point. The point is just the picture. The picture of it. I kept running things through my head like, Did you see what? Julie's driving. That would be the talk amongst the small town nature. I finally did it, got over it, which was never a big deal in the first place, but I made it a big deal. 

So this is who we are. That's who we are. We started our traveling softball following the Kansas Jayhawks, whom our youngest daughter plays for. We went to Long Beach for a tournament out in California. We show up and the Long Beach airport, they don't have the traditional Emerald Isle for national rental car. 

But they do have a kiosk, this young lady's in the kiosk, and we walk over there, and she's, what do you want? And I'm like, normally a small SUV or a midsize SUV is what we would normally do, like a Nissan Rogue or something like that. She's, we got a brand new Land Rover Defender, you want it? And I'm like, okay, that's not us. 

I've never driven a Land Rover or a Range Rover. I said, you know what, we're in California. Why not? [00:05:00] We get this Land Rover Defender to drive all weekend, and it did exactly like I thought it would do. I did like the Land Rover, which is a little scary. The other side of it is it was exactly like I thought it was like, whoa, showing up in the Land Rover. 

And so we got those comments all weekend and we had to deal with that, but it made for fun and it was fun. And then I had another parent save the day. Who showed up in his Cadillac SUV and I had not even looked at my rental agreement, but it turns out they were having a special on luxury vehicles that weekend and it was 10 cheaper than my Nissan Rogue. 

Tonya: That's one of the things I like about rental cars too, is that's where I originally fell in love with the BMW X3. I got it as a rental car someplace. And decided this is what really what I want and when we went and drove it, we had a terrible sales experience and ended up getting the Cadillac instead. 

But [00:06:00] yes, rental cars are a fantastic way to try out new vehicles to we both told stories this morning. This is a podcast for. Insurance agency owners and producers. What are we doing?  

Shane: We're telling stories because that's what sells people. They should tell stories. Telling stories is so much better than sales pitches or Salesiness. 

Tell a story. You have stories to tell, and that's everything we're talking about. Most  

Tonya: insurance agents sell on price with numbers and facts. They do. I've heard it over and over again. And facts tell, but stories sell. My amazing sales mentor, Pat Couch, used to always make me repeat that every day. She was all about repeating things and one of those things was facts tell and stories sell. 

And storytelling makes insurance real. It makes it personal. It makes it [00:07:00] memorable. And today, let's talk about using stories effectively to make the sale and to make your agency successful.  

Shane: First of all, it's personable, being able to sit down in front of a customer prospect and tell a story instead of just regurgitating data or coverage information that they don't understand. 

That. Is going to be just what everyone else does, being a contrarian, going against the grain, everyone is sitting down trying to show prospect how smart they are about it. the insurance business, about risk management instead of being relatable. Relatability is a huge opportunity that is missed in the marketplace. 

One of the things that I preach to our people on our retail side that we talk about on our partner [00:08:00] network, the business development part, Robbie Jabbour, now Mike Basil on our expansion effort. I talk to them often. About relatability, about not being salesy, about providing information, which can be done in the form of storytelling and relating to where people are. 

My brother in law, uh, our primary commercial lines producer here in our East Texas agency, he's very good at. Going into a prospect, cold calling a prospect and just asking about their business and being able to be in a storytelling mode, have natural conversations that become relatable, that get to know people instead of just a text. 

Pitching. It's pitching without pitching, if that makes sense. Unfortunately, insurance training tends to go down the technical route. And that is where we have a shortfall. We [00:09:00] do not do enough storytelling to transcend the technical stuff into natural language.  

Tonya: The key to storytelling As a successful tool in any kind of sales is listening, which sounds like a total dichotomy because if we're listening, we tell the right story when I'm working with people getting ready for a job interview or a presentation where they're going to be on stage. 

I always tell them to write down the 10 things you most want your audience to know. The 10 things that are most important about the topic, about you, about what you want them to visualize, and then have a story about those things. Whether it's a funny story, a serious story, something that creates emotion. 

We know there are some very specific Things that you're going to hear as an agent. You're going to [00:10:00] hear, I don't need that much coverage. I just want the cheapest policy. I've been with XYZ insurance company for years, so If we know that those are going to be our objections, then wouldn't it make sense to have some stories already in our head for each of those objections? 

Shane: Having some idea, stories that are pre resonating, so to speak, is good. The place you want to ultimately get to is a difficult place to get to. It takes lots of practice and lots of effort and lots of working on yourself. I call it talking to yourself in a way if you are a trip taker. And what I mean by that, like you get in your vehicle and drive, sometimes that's the way I clear my head is I drive around the country roads here or around the lake state. 

I tend to go for a drive at least three or four times a year. Sometimes I'll take a half a day. I do that in some ways to clear my head. The other reasons I do it is [00:11:00] people can't see me talking to myself. The place to practice your storytelling is a good place is in your vehicle alone. If you're really Not afraid to listen to yourself, record it, put it on voice notes on your phone, do it where you can listen to yourself, play it back. 

It's practice. We don't practice enough in sales. When I say practice, I don't mean practice pitching, practice telling stories. My gut tells me that's part of this, like having some stories that you tell. You may be telling some stories. Over and over again, that it's okay, like, the prospect isn't always talking to the other prospect, so it's okay if you're repeating yourself. 

Stories become part of your craft. I'm not asking you to fake it, I'm just asking you to prepare. It's a preparation method. When I was playing baseball in college, we didn't just show up and play games. We practiced. I've been [00:12:00] watching my daughter's softball. They've been practicing since January for a spring that goes through the beginning of June. 

They put practice in starting in the fall and they do team practice. They do individual practice because they have 20 hour weeks and eight hour weeks. I have all these NCAA rules and they're practicing either on their own or as a team starting back in August or now. And now they're practicing as a team playing games in preparation for conference play. 

And so if an athlete spins. Countless hours practicing, shouldn't we spend countless hours practicing our craft?  

Tonya: You're the agent out there who's thinking people don't have time for me to tell them a story. Or I've got to get in XYZ calls a day. I don't have time to tell a story. Use the 60 second rule. 

Keep it short, keep it in pa People are going to tune out stories. that [00:13:00] go too long. Think 60 seconds, 80 to 90 seconds at most. And when you're practicing your story, you want a situation, the problem, the solution and the outcome. If you can get all of that in 60 seconds, you're going to get the sale. 

Shane: Absolutely. If you have a teenager, practice on your teenager, because if you can keep your teenager's attention for 60 seconds, you're golding. And if you go beyond that 60 seconds, to Tonya's point, you need to start over. You need to realize that you're going to lose them. Because I'm listening to my wife as I'm giving one of my life lessons to my daughters several years ago when they were teenagers. 

Or maybe still to this day and I'm doing that probably if I had to think back on it, I probably did it this last week. If you're too long, you're going to lose people. I struggle with this because I will squirrel in the middle of my stories. I will let one story add another story and before I'm Done. I'm in my fourth [00:14:00] story. 

Don't do that. Don't be me in that situation. But I love the 60 second rule. I love keeping it short. Tonya has just over and over to me. If I'm doing little videos, keep it to two minutes or less. There's reasons to keep things short, but still get your point across. Still get your story. Across, and I know that's important to just naturally be able to do that is extremely difficult. 

We're not telling you something here that's easy, but we are telling you something here that can be hugely impactful. People don't have time, but maybe that's what they need. All right, so a contrarian view. Shane, Tonya, people don't have time for me to tell them a story. Maybe they need to pause. Maybe they need to take a breath. 

Maybe you are something different in their day and that makes you more relatable and that makes you more Of an interest to them in terms of you're not just [00:15:00] some stale insurance agent trying to sell them an insurance policy. You're literally talking to them about important life changing protection, things that could go wrong, things that if it did go wrong, could be disastrous, like transferring that risk and telling stories around that. 

Maybe that's what they need. They may be super busy, but they may be able to take a deep breath and give you a little bit of time. Some of those people that aren't going to give you the time, and you're saying they don't have time for that, people are busy. Those people probably don't have time to be your client, at least on a full time basis. 

They probably just want the cheapest thing, and they may not be your prospect at the end of the day, and maybe you need to let them go. Don't get suckered into thinking that a quick sell Is financially rewarding or profitable? Just because you ding the bell doesn't mean that you did something good for your agency. 

Tonya: If you don't naturally tell stories, challenge [00:16:00] yourself to tell a story every day. Make it a habit. It doesn't have to be a story you're telling to a client. It can be a story you're telling to someone else, but just get in the habit. The more you tell those stories, the more natural it becomes. I've been in the insurance business for almost eight years now, but I'm still not an insurance person. 

It's not naturally who I am because I've never sold an insurance policy. Shane has very specifically kept me out of that part of the business to not get so involved in that I don't do what I do well. People are not going to remember policy details. They don't care. They just want it to work. Most of us really just want things that work. 

What your clients are going to remember is how you made them feel. And telling those stories, making their challenges relatable, is what is going to get your long term, full time client.  

Shane: I love speaking of [00:17:00] stories. You just brought up a story about my dad telling a client in his office. That he would sell him the policy. 

The guy was asking for. But if something ever happened on this policy, the client was going to be mad. He wanted the client to remember that he told him that he was going to be mad. And what the story is that this particular client had this inherited this old piece of property, old house and He wanted to borrow against it. 

The bank was going to require him to have insurance. Was probably worth 100, 000 to 150, 000, somewhere in there, older home. And the bank was requiring him to carry 50, 000 worth of insurance on it because that's what he was loaning against it. And he, the bank was willing to do it because the market. 

Market for property was well above 150, 000, so the bank was well protected, but they wanted this insurance policy on it. This client that, that we had other insurance with, insurance policies, we, we had the whole package [00:18:00] and everything that he did, business, personal lines. And he comes in, he's, I do not want. 

To buy this policy, the insurance company wanted the insurance to be to value, of course. And the guys, look, I want 50, 000 worth of coverage. We found this one company and it was 1, 500 a year, 50, 000 ACV that wasn't going to pack 50, 000. You got coinsurance penalties, all kinds of stuff going on in this. My dad knew it. 

We all knew it. We knew this particular client very well, a country guy, a farmer, rancher, and he was just not going to do it. He was willing to pay 1, 500 for 50, 000 worth of coverage that wasn't really 50, 000 worth of coverage. Your insurance people know what I'm talking about out there. But he wasn't willing to pay 1, 500 for 150, 000 worth of coverage, which was the appropriate coverage because it was the principle of it. 

I got a 50, 000 loan. Anyway, my dad tells him, Paul, look, we'll do this. I'll do this, but I'm making you sign right here. And he made him sign a letter that said, [00:19:00] I told Paul on this date that if there's ever a claim, On this particular policy, Paul is going to be ticked off because he's only going to get pennies on the dollar due to all the different requirements because it's an insurance contract. 

And I've told Paul over and over again, don't do this. And Paul insists on principle that he wants to do this. And they both sign the piece of paper. And we put it in the file, scanned it and put it in the file. I don't think there was ever a claim on this policy, so maybe Paul wins. But if there was a, that showed me like, hey, this is a storytelling concept. 

This is what you can do. Tell the story. This is a contract and there are stipulations to this contract and you may not want this. I'm going to get you to sign to say, I told you so. And that way you don't come after me when the insurance policy will not respond the way you think it should respond. 

That's what's so great about our industry and what's so great about insurance is that if you get out of the technical [00:20:00] realm and get into some layman's terms, translating, Things telling stories you can make your client understand our client. Paul understood he got it. He satisfied the bank. He took care of what he thought was principle and he paid the premium in full. 

No big deal. He didn't ask for a pay plan. He just paid the wrote the check 1, 500 done deal. But about that often when we're trying to help people understand the insurance. We have to understand that our audience and our prospect does not understand what we're saying. So we need to do it differently for them. 

We need to explain to them, and I'm not talking about dumbing it down. I'm talking about getting it right. To where it's in a place they can understand, and that takes practice, and that takes storytelling.  

Tonya: That brings me to another mantra that the fabulous Pat Couch would always make me repeat. Stories sell and questions close.[00:21:00]  

You tell the story, and then does your current policy cover that? Are you prepared to pay out of pocket for that? The questions are what make people take ownership of the decision. It's real easy to say no, but when you put it in those terms of here's the story, you're leading them how to answer and giving them  

Shane: the yes. 

Absolutely. I love that and I love questions to get them to the point of the actual purchase. You can learn a lot about your prospect. With that approach, one of the things that I believe has been missed, and I know you have to understand your prospects financial situation before you go down this path over the last couple of years, we have done a lot of this type of thing with deductibles, self insured retention, basically asking the customer like, Where are you? 

Can you afford to go from, you know, a 1 percent to a 2 percent that's a joke [00:22:00] because in Texas, everything's now gone to 2 percent but in other places it hasn't. And so there's situations where 3 percent hurricane deductibles, 5 percent hurricane deductibles down on the coast and you have to ask the customer, can you afford that? 

Some customers can, some can't, but they can afford an extra thousand dollars a year. On the premium or an extra 2, 000 a year on the premium, but they can't afford an extra 50, 000 in the event of a total loss or even a partial loss, depending on what we're talking about here, and we're talking property coverage. 

That's where this is going to come into play. In a lot of cases, there are a lot of business clients. Who understand that if I can control my cost by taking a little bit of risk, a little higher deductible, I might be willing to do that. And there have been a lot of clients that we have that were willing to do that because We got it down to simple [00:23:00] terms. 

If you want to take a little more risk, we can probably save you a little bit of money here, or we can probably keep it from going up at the rate that it's going up. And this has just been some of the discussions. Some people were talking, homeowners. Mortgage companies won't allow it, but when you're in a situation where a customer's financial status or financial situation, they've got money over here in the bank, and they're willing to keep their policy from going up two or 3, 000 by taking on an extra 20, worth of risk, they can look at that in terms of an investment. 

They can look at that in terms of what is my return? on this. And so that's also part of telling stories is getting down to what is going on by asking those questions. Okay, it's time to close the deal. We can go this route or we can go this other route. What makes you feel comfortable? Do you? Would you want to get an 8 to 10 percent return on your investment here? 

Because that's what you're doing. You're getting an [00:24:00] 8 percent return or a 10 percent return potentially by saving this money. Saving is actually not what it is. It's saving the increase. It's not necessarily saving discounting or going back to a reduced amount of, but in a lot of cases over the last couple of years, it kept the premium from increasing at the same rate as the market because the customer took on. 

A self insured layer within the policy through a higher deductible mechanism. I've done it personally. I've got money sitting over here in savings allocated for that purpose. And if this happens, okay. So it's a form of self insurance and people aren't using this enough. We're still trying to sell a product. 

We're not understanding where our client is. In a lot of cases, we're not telling stories. We're selling technical stuff and that's not what we need to be doing.  

Tonya: Maybe you know all this and you're the master of this. Your producers may not be.  

Shane: That's a great point. [00:25:00] Everyone that's on the front line talking to clients needs to get better at this. 

Tonya: What's the story that you have told more than anything else since you've been an insurance agent?  

Shane: Oh, man. Is this a trick question?  

Tonya: No, I know the answer to this, but I'm not sure.  

Shane: Probably the 125 premium policy on the boat that the guy just had to have and went to my dad as the banker. It was really early on in the first year or two of my insurance. 

This was pre Partner network. This was pre everything. This is just a handful of us in a small town insurance agency. My dad was a local banker and the client was so friendly and great to my dad and needed the loan. This boat was going to make his life so much better. I listened to him because you can hear him in my dad's office. 

The next office over in the bank and I'm listening to this entire conversation for 30 minutes and my dad agrees to give him the [00:26:00] loan on the boat and says, my son's an insurance agent next door. If you, we're going to need insurance on it. You know, you might give him a shot when he comes into my office 2 minutes later. 

His demeanor had totally changed. I was basically the devil at that point. And he just thought insurance was crooked. The only reason he's sitting in my office is because the bank's making him get a policy on his boat. I understood the difference at that point between banking and loan officers and insurance agents and started me down a path to be different. 

That experience Taught me that we have a challenge unique. We sell a mandate in a lot of cases. We're selling something that is being mandated by somebody either law or contract. If you're a contractor or a mortgage, somebody is requiring your customer to buy insurance and they don't like it. [00:27:00] People do not like mandates. 

I started using that word in the last few years to help agents understand that they're selling mandates. And that requires a different approach. It's not the same thing. You're not selling something that people are just dying to buy. You're not selling a boat. You're not giving a loan. On that fun boat, so you have to think about things differently. 

You have to talk about things differently. You have to tell stories. And I've told that story to a lot of agents, my dad, loaning money on the boat, me selling insurance on the boat and having the same client that was basically Jekyll and Hyde. I just witnessed two different conversations on the same piece of property, this boat that went off either end of the spectrum. 

And that to me is just this perfect illustration of what has to be different about insurance and how we sell it.  

Tonya: I'm going to leave us today with this quote from Michael [00:28:00] Jordan, I can't imagine anything more rewarding than striving for excellence. And giving it your all  

Shane: attitude to choice. Make a great one. 

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