[GUIDE] HOW TO TRANSITION YOUR AGENCY TO RUN ONLINE

The COVID pandemic has made one thing abundantly clear – Transforming your business to operate totally digitally is no longer an advantage but a necessity to stay in business.

Whether your clients are millennials or boomers, they are all doing more and more of their business and purchasing online. So what do you do about this? What does it mean to “go digital”?
Well, in short, it means that you must find digital solutions for what you are currently doing in person. Primarily marketing and sales. Before we dive into how you can make this transition, lets first get a baseline of where most agents are currently.

The Old Way
Insurance and financial services are all about trust. You’re tasked with protecting people’s personal and business assets. Their livelihood is quite literally in your hands; to some degree. For that reason, most clients value the integrity of their relationship with their agent/advisor more than pricing or benefits. People want to know they’re being taken care of.
What is it that your clients are really looking for?

Competency – Value is provided through solving problems. Those who have expansive knowledge on a particular subject are likely to be able to offer better solutions. People want to deal with an expert that specializes in fulfilling their need/problem.

Intentions – People want to know what’s driving you to do what you do. They want to know if you prioritize their best interest. Do you really care about getting them their desired result? Or are you looking to make a quick sale? This is especially important in service-based industries because clients have a genuine need for an expert to assist them through this process. If their “expert” just signs the deal and walks away, they could find themselves in a tough position with no help. These things are traditionally proven through name recognition & referrals. When someones longtime attorney or CPA refers them to you, the trust they have for that referral source is passed on to you. You still may have to prove yourself, but you get an opportunity to do so, simply because you were referred by someone they have a preexisting relationship with.

The Major Problems With The Old Way

• People are going online to buy these kinds of services
• Referral networks are inconsistent and hard to grow
• Meeting in person is paramount to building rapport
• You cannot control your lead volume or quality

The New Way
Contrary to popular belief, posting Canva graphics on your LinkedIn and Facebook is not the key to transitioning your business online. By now I’m sure you are aware of Facebook ads and have maybe even heard of a marketing funnel. For the sake of this article, I’ll spare you the nitty-gritty technical lingo and we’ll break down what these tools do and what it means for you. Imagine looking at your calendar for next week, seeing some time availabilities, and knowing how much it will cost you to book a sales call with your dream client. Sounds great right? All you would have to do is spend the appropriate amount of money on ads, and WALLAH! You will see your calendar is being booked with sales calls from prospects that know who you are and are interested in what you’re offering.

The Major Benefits Of The New Way

• You control your lead flow
• You save time by having the entire process automated
• You only work with qualified leads who are ready to buy
• You know down to the penny what it costs to generate a sales call
• You have established yourself as an expert in your field and the whole world can see

Step 1). Target Your Niche
This is arguably the most important step. Sales and marketing all come down to product-market fit. If you can provide someone the perfect solution for their problem, it will be very easy to market and sell them.

Example: Imagine soliciting life insurance to a 21-year-old. Do they need it? Sure, but good luck trying to convince a 21-year-old to delegate a portion of their White Claw budget to insurance premiums. Now imagine a 30-year-old who is married with children in a home he owns. Wouldn’t you say he is much more likely to be open to hearing about life insurance? Targeting a specific audience and understanding their needs, pain, and beliefs will you all the information you need to create exceptionally effective marketing campaigns.

Step 2). Landing Page
Now that you’ve piqued some interest from your ad, you want to send those users to a landing page where you will make an offer. The offer is that you will give them something of value in return for their email address. We’ll cover potential offers in the next step.

Step 3). Value Offering
There is an infinite number of ways you can approach this. Some people create training videos, case studies, ebooks, cheat sheets, guides, freebies, you name it. It will become clear what this value piece should be based on your market research. If you understand your target market, you will understand their problems and will be able to easily create a helpful resource to solve that problem here. Here’s the deal: The point of this value piece is not to sell them. You are genuinely trying to help educate them or give them tools to overcome an obstacle. By simply understanding their problem will by default lead them to believe you have the solution. At the end of your demonstration, you will invite them to book a call with you if they have any questions or need help with something. This step is very important because this is where you will build the vast majority of your trust and rapport with your prospect. This is your time to shine and show them how you are a credible expert on the topic.

Step 4). Survey / Qualification
If you haven’t experienced this already, when you start consistently generating multiple sales calls per day you’ll see that the quality of the lead you’re speaking with will almost always be a clear indicator of whether or not you close the sale.
There’s no point in taking calls from people who are not a good fit. You only want to be spending time on the phone with your dream client whos ready to buy. We sort through and filter these prospects out by qualifying them. By asking people to fill out a questionnaire before booking a call, it allows you to review who is trying to get on a call and whether or not you’re a good fit.

Step 5). Calendar Booking
After a prospect submits an application, they will be prompted to schedule a time for a call with you. We do this by using “live” calendars that sync with your existing calendar and look for time availabilities. You can customize and adjust these settings however you’d like but its a great way to lock in a call without having to go back and forth to confirm a time.

Step 6). The Sales Call
Once a prospect books a call you will get an email notification with their application & call time. This will give you all the information you need to prepare for the call. On the call, you will have a structured and clear process you take all prospects through which will give you consistent and effective closing abilities.

Conclusion
The key to your digital transformation is to establish a system that will automate all the old things you used to do in person. The result will be a lean, seamless, and scalable system that will allow you to establish yourself online, and utilize the latest tools and software to grow in a sustainable and consistent manner
For more info on how to set up these systems, check out our free training here. Or book a 1v1 strategy call with me here where we will discuss how to custom tailor a system like this to your business.