Why Insurance Sales Problems Are Not Sales Problems | Insurance Agency Playbook

Welcome back to another heart-to-heart insurance conversation with the Idudes!

This time they talk about how struggling with insurance sales is not solely a sales problem.

They discuss how even the worst salesperson, when following a solid process, can yield comparable results to a top performer. The duo emphasizes the importance of focusing on the entire process, from generating leads to converting clients, and highlights the power of mental fortitude over pure sales skills. They share personal anecdotes of their journey in refining their approach and how mindset training became a game-changer for their teams.

As the discussion wraps up, the duo provides valuable insights into the challenges and successes in the insurance industry, leaving the audience with a teaser for future episodes that promise to uncover more secrets and strategies for success in insurance sales.

📻 Tune in for an insight-filled conversation with the Idudes!

The Insurance Dudes are on a mission to find the best insurance agentsaround the country to find out how they are creating some of the top agencies. But they do not stop there, they also bring professionals from other industries for insights that can help agents take their agencies to the next level. 

The Insurance Dudes focus on your agency’s four pillars: Hiring, Training, Marketing and Motivation! We have to keep the sword sharp if we want our agencies to thrive. 

Insurance Dudes are leaders in their home, at their office and in their community. This podcast will keep you on track with like minded high performing agents while keeping entertained!

About Jason and Craig:

Both agents themselves, they both have scaled to around $10 million in premium.  After searching for years for a system to create predictability in their agencies, they developed the Telefunnel after their interviews with so many agents and business leaders.  

Taking several years, tons of trial and error, and hundreds of thousands of dollars on lead spend, they’ve optimized their agencies and teams to write tons of premium, consistently, and nearly on autopilot!

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Transcript

Jason Feltman: 0:00

This is insurance playbook, and we're going to talk about why your insurance sales problem is not a sales problem. Insurance

Craig Pretzinger: 0:08

dudes are on a mission to escape being handcuffed by our agents.

Jason Feltman: 0:13

Now, by uncovering the secrets to creating a predictable, consistent, and profitable agency sales.

Craig Pretzinger: 0:21

I am Craig Pretzinger.

Jason Feltman: 0:23

I am Jason Feldman.

Craig Pretzinger: 0:24

We are agents.

Jason Feltman: 0:26

We are insurances. What up Mr. Greg,

Craig Pretzinger: 0:31

what up, Mr. Jason, that is crazy. How is it even possible that your sales problem can't be a sales problem? Hi,

Jason Feltman: 0:38

now, I know. That's what we always think, right? Is that that? Anytime we're struggling with sales, we think, Oh, man, it's a sales problem.

Craig Pretzinger: 0:48

It's a sales problem. And then so what do we do? So I think the first thing that that I've done over the course of my career is is they're not selling well. We're gonna run out and really work on training them to sell that right. It seems like the natural thing to do.

Jason Feltman: 1:06

Right seems like the right thing. Yeah. So we

Craig Pretzinger: 1:09

get them in, we buy some kind of coaching platform, get them in there and train and train and train and train and make them these these incredible salespeople. And then what happens?

Jason Feltman: 1:21

We're still getting the same results, same results. How a little bit better,

Craig Pretzinger: 1:26

maybe a little bit, right? Yeah, slightly. So we were experiencing this right. We were sitting here trying to do this, in fact, Mr. Jason, I have to give you a little backstory, the reason the way that we met was I was selling him a coaching program to do sales. Right. And, and as we started building out the marketing component, and really figuring out what would drive the most quotes in our agency, we were at the same time trying to get really good at selling. And what we noticed was the very thing we've been talking about.

Jason Feltman: 1:59

Yeah, yeah. And I remember during that time, I bought a bunch of sales stuff. I was on a sales. Yeah, you always make fun of me for how much stuff I buy. But I bought every course, every book, and everything because I knew that that was the thing for me. And my agency, it was like, Dude, I was making nothing. I think I made 60 grand, the first year, like netted around 60 grand and I was like, locked into a$750,000 loan payment for 10 years. And I was like this, this sucks like this, this can't just keep going because I don't want that life. I mean, not that that's bad. But like, I did not want that. So

Craig Pretzinger: 2:44

Right. Right. Well, and so. So when we started putting pen to paper, and we're watching, we're watching these results, we noticed that when our people were doing more quotes, they wrote more business, go figure, right? And, and we're thinking, oh, wait a minute. So we have we have different variables that we're inputting into this thing, one that's further towards the front, right, one that can make a bigger impact sooner. And that's more quotes. Yeah. So it's interesting trying to solve the I need to make more sales. So I'm going to train them to get better at selling, but not look at the thing over here that actually is really going to move the needle the most, which is more quotes.

Jason Feltman: 3:30

Right? Right. And there always has to be a through line from the beginning. So the beginning would be making sure that there's enough people for them to talk to, up until the end where you convert them to a client. Right? Yeah. And it's like, all the every single touch point in between needs to be looked at. Hmm. And what's fascinating, I didn't even realize this until we opened that second agency, and we started selling a lot is that and we started, you know, we had a big team of around 15 people at that time. Yeah, crazy. And I was looking at all the different skill sets everybody who had different skill sets, right? Based on numbers, you would say I used to always look for people that were the best salespeople, and you could say, oh, this person is the best salesperson. But when you look at the numbers, all the touchpoints and everything else, whoever followed the process, even the worst salesperson would get a very similar number, the swing point between a great salesperson, and the worst salesperson, all things being equal. All the touch points being equal, was a very slight difference of result, very slight. So it became well, it's the process rather than the person, right? It's the person that can and follow the process that that has the, the advantage, so it's more of a mental fortitude thing. It's like, and that's when you and I started getting really into, you know, teaching like the mindset stuff to our teams. And that's honestly, so much more powerful you almost. And that's where you were saying at the beginning of this, that the sales skills, the sales skills important, but all you need is a few of these like, theories, right? The a few of these principles instilled in your team. And then you need less tactics, if you can get them to perform consistently. And that's the hardest thing. Right?

Craig Pretzinger: 5:50

And in the beginning, I think it can help if you have one really good salesperson just to prove that it's doable, right? Because I remember, like, forever buys my salespeople were stuck. And I mean, this is before we open to third all that stuff, but but they were stuck at that 2025, like, above 25. Almost impossible, right? And it really, it really felt like if somebody like got to 29 or 30 it was like whoa. And and it was it's all in here, right? We probably weren't feeding them enough, enough quotes, but they also didn't believe like 25 was the amount it's kind of like Bannister is breaking the four minute mile, right? Nobody can beat the four minute mile because nobody could beat the four minute mile. But as soon as somebody believed they could do it, they did. And now everybody beats it, even you.

Jason Feltman: 6:48

Right? And you can even take that to the agent. We work by so many agencies, and a lot of them come in and don't believe, right, as well. They're like, alright, well, let's see if this works. It's like anything works. If you work it, anything, even mailers? You know, I think mailers are garbage. I mean, but if they do work, they have a

Craig Pretzinger: 7:17

higher CPMs. That's fine. If you want to pay more, you know, right. But if you do it, and you follow the process, and you do it for long enough, and you track and measure, yeah, that'll work. Right, it won't work as well. I mean, you could get the same output, but maybe it's going to cost more. That's the problem, right? Like maybe after tests, and that's where you get right. If you could load them up with enough quotes, then now you have data, you can look at which thing that I'm loading them up with the most quotes actually gets the best results, you know, the best CPS?

Jason Feltman: 7:49

And I would say I think you can get the same CPS with mailers, maybe Yeah, so I would say that the reason why you probably won't, is because going back to everything that we're talking about now, consistency and having the process, there's it's impossible to track a lot of that and measure and be able to follow the KPIs. So although that you could get the same numbers, and I'm sure some people do, but there's no way to monitor that. So that it can be done consistently, like you can do if, you know following a process of of leads coming in like like definitive leads, like you know exactly this, like these 10 people, their names and everything, and then tracking it all along your CRM. And then following that, and like there's no way that you can't have that level of accuracy with mailers, unless you're tracking every single incoming call and tagging them as as a lead, and then tracking it back to the marketing material. And

Craig Pretzinger: 8:58

there's though, there's also no way to know how many people open it. Right, right. I mean, and that's an important detail what you're spending 10s of 1000s of dollars, because you need to to get the volume from the mailer. And you don't even know how many people opened it is problematic, right? That's like saying, I don't know how many people when I made dials actually pick the phone up. And the second piece is, arguably, the well the second piece is the next most important piece, right? Because if we don't know our contact rate, we don't know what they opened, and it's hard to make the next decision.

Jason Feltman: 9:33

Right? And I would argue that it's like what if it's a branding play? If you have a independent agency? Sure. It could be a little bit of a branding play as well. But if you are a captive, you are promoting the captive agency and what's crazy is they could take that material and then call in and then the call gets diverted to the local agent and You did the marketing for it. Yeah. That's us. It's bananas. I don't want to spend money for Sam's agency down the street. Right. Right. Yeah. So that's a little tangent on.

Craig Pretzinger: 10:14

Yeah. Well, that's good stuff. I think we could put a button in it because we're 1024 in. Cool. And you know what, most people don't get it, get an audio timestamp like that. So you're welcome.

Jason Feltman: 10:27

Do us a favor, subscribe, whatever you're listening to right now subscribe to this. And we have a few other subjects that I know you will be dying to hear. Because we have uncovered some secrets that we are excited to share with you. Yeah,

Craig Pretzinger: 10:44

if you want to hear a little bit about how one of my folks is going to is on pace for 53k this month. Maybe you want to listen to the next one who

Jason Feltman: 10:55

or Click below for internet leads secrets and we have a look. Are we is it$7.07 bucks, seven bucks, you get a book on everything internet leads and how to close them.

Craig Pretzinger: 11:09

Yep, it's the best seven bucks. You could ever stay. That's it. That was cool.