Motivational Archives | UPP Coaching by Mike Stromsoe

Top Tips on How to Earn More Referrals

Posted on December 13, 2018June 12, 2019 by Mike Stromsoe

Easy ways to ask for referrals to progress your agency.

It’s a common feeling for business owners to feel like they’re bothering clients when they ask for a referral. More often than not, customers will happily leave a nice review if they feel they’ve had particularly good service. However, it isn’t always high on their list of things to do. So that your business can get the referrals it needs and deserves, check out these tips to earn more referrals.

Think differently about referrals. Stop telling yourself that you’re asking for referrals. Instead, think of it as progressing your business and caring about customers. In fact, you could be saving your clients’ friends thousands of dollars. Changing your mindset towards referrals will help you to ask for them!

Make a referral reward program. Create an easy-to-follow procedure on how customers benefit from referring your business. If your customers know exactly what to expect when they refer someone, they are more likely to do it.

Add a recommend-a-friend section on your website. This strategy continues to be effective time and time again. Have a page or box somewhere on your website that allows people to send an email to a friend recommending your agency.

Include it in your email signature. Your email signature is a block of text that automatically shows up at the bottom of your emails. Most businesses have their name, contact information, and maybe a link to their website. This place is a great opportunity to request a referral because it’s not a direct email asking a client, but it does allow the reader to quickly forward on your contact information to friends and family.

Hand out two business cards. When you hand out your cards, give everyone two and ask them to hand out the second one. Mention that the second card is for a friend or family member.

Thank referrers on your Facebook page. When you receive customer referrals, go to your social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and thank the people who have provided referrals out in the open for everyone to see. Not only does this show the referrer how much you appreciate their gesture, which should get you more referrals from them, but it shows everyone else how you appreciate referrals, encouraging others to leave you one!

To learn more about how to be successful in your business, contact Mike Stromsoe’s Unstoppable Profit Producer Program. We can offer guidance, helping you perfect your professional posture. We also offer a premier wealth creation program that helps you to work less, earn more, and enjoy life.

Tips for Motivating Your Sales Team

Posted on October 4, 2018June 12, 2019 by Mike Stromsoe

Is your team motivated to generate exceptional results?

Most people are only driven when they are motivated. In professional sales, motivation can be the key to generating lots of sales (and revenue) for the company. Whether your team members have been in sales for one year or ten, all of them need a certain motivation to achieve their goals. To help get your insurance agency team motivated to sell more policies, check out these tips.

Reinforce the company mission and vision.

Sometimes, your team needs a jolt of motivation to boost morale and persist. Your company’s mission and values shouldn’t be overlooked in this case. Reinforce why your company does what it does and how your sales team is contributing to the good work. When your team believes in your company, they are more likely to want to see it succeed.

Create a sales contest.

A little friendly competition never hurt anyone. Get a large whiteboard for the team members to track their sales and goals. Set a designated prize such as a vacation day or a physical item. Make sure the prize is compelling enough to inspire the team to do well.

Offer flexibility.

By offering flexibility, such as the opportunity to work from home, you can motivate your team instantly. You can even let them come into the office early and leave early – whatever works well for them and your business. This flexibility and generous act enables your salespeople to perform when they’re at their best, as well as increasing the agency’s revenue and morale. This can also be a good way for management to establish trust with members of the sales team.

What Your Agency Needs to do to Mine Your Acre of Diamonds

Posted on June 14, 2018June 12, 2019 by Mike Stromsoe

Enrich your insurance agency.

Russell H. Conwell, the founder of Temple University in Philadelphia, delivered his most famous speech more than 5,000 times from 1900-1925. He once told a reporter that for some of his lectures, he spent over a year preparing them, only to deliver them once. That was not the case with his “Acres of Diamonds” message. He had written it on a whim and with no preparation, and the message resonated across audiences for years. His speech was about challenging yourself to seek out opportunities to find true wealth right in your own backyard. He explained that “acres of diamonds are to be found in this city, and you are to find them. Many have found them. And what man has done, man can do. They are not in far-away mountains or in distant seas; they are in your own back yard if you will but dig for them.

At this moment, you are standing in the middle of your own acre of diamonds. Every single day that you walk into your office, you are standing amidst an acre of diamonds. There is nothing but opportunity surrounding you—and all you have to do is do something with it. It’s your clients, your prospects, your centers of influence, and your community.

I’ve learned that everyone knows at least 250 people. In turn, each of those 250 people knows his or her own set of 250 people. Keep going, and pretty soon, the number of people within your reach becomes too high to count. I read a story by one of my favorite mentors, Earl Nightingale, that really drives home the importance of looking right where you stand. He told readers that before you go running off into what you think are greener pastures, you better make sure that your own is not just as green, or perhaps even greener. It’s been said that if the other guy’s pasture appears to be greener than yours, it’s possible that his pasture is simply getting better care.

While you are busy looking at other pastures, other people are looking at yours. That is why you have to make sure that you keep watering your own pasture to keep it green and growing. The easiest money that you are ever going to earn is right beside the money that you are already earning. It’s right there beneath your feet in your own acre of diamonds.

If an agency principal were to come to me and say, “Where should I start growing my business after I find a good team?” I would reply that the best place to start is your own acre of diamonds—which is your own existing client base. Once a client of mine grasped this concept, he devised a plan: I am not going to send out any marketing pieces for one year. He said, “I am going to focus solely on my own book of clients, my own acre of diamonds, and I’m going to make sure I round accounts, contact them, and fully exploit everything that’s going on in their lives before I spend one more dollar on marketing.”

When I followed up with this agent to see how his plan worked, he told me, “We had so much opportunity left after the first year that we did the same thing again for another year.” For two full years, he spent no money on outbound marketing, focused all of his energy and investments into his own existing book of business, and he actually grew about 11 percent. By rounding out his accounts on a policy count versus client count basis, he increased the value of his business ten-fold or more. That means if he ever had to sell his agency, it’d be worth a lot more money because his client base is that much more entrenched in their relationships with his agency.

To learn more about how to be successful in your business, contact Mike Stromsoe’s Unstoppable Profit Producer Program. We can offer guidance, helping you perfect your professional posture. We also offer a premier wealth creation program that helps you to work less, earn more, and enjoy life.

Tips to Motivate Your Team

Posted on June 7, 2018June 12, 2019 by Mike Stromsoe

Strive to treat people like you want to be treated.

Life can be hard—and it can throw some defeating blows. However, I believe that the winners and the ultra-achievers in this world manage to see life as a glass half full. Such people also tend to enjoy life more than others. How can we bring joy into the lives of the people around us? It’s actually pretty simple: Strive to build a work environment that is infused with motivation and fun.

I started searching for something to boost morale because I know that a happy employee is a productive employee. I set out on a mission to make sure that we had nothing but happy, productive team members all of the time. We created a list of 28 Fun Items that involved everything from Silly Sock Day to Silly String Day (we willingly brought silly string into our office and shot it at our co-workers—and even a few clients). Over the next few months, we introduced a variety of new fun activities and theme days to the group. After a short time, the bad vibes had all but disappeared, and smiles and laughter once again filled the office.

One activity that has produced great results for bonding and motivation are periodic impromptu team lunches. We’ll surprise the team by shutting down the office for an hour or so and treating everyone to a special meal. We like to do this when a team member has a big victory, or for a personal celebration like the graduation of a child, a birthday, or really any reason to celebrate. It’s good to recognize and celebrate both the big things and the minutiae of life. (Because isn’t life really about the minutiae anyway?)

Regularly plan a fun Friday afternoon, evening, or weekend event for the team. One afternoon, we met the employees of a close friend’s brokerage firm at a bowling alley for some friendly competition. We also take team members on fun trips during the holidays. A former client was in the limousine business, and we all got to ride in style to a big dinner and theater event. It felt like a true VIP experience for everyone involved. We invited all of our employees and their spouses, some of our clients, one of our vendors, and our IT person—just to let them know how much we appreciate them and all they do. It’s good to include the spouses when you can because support received at home rolls into the office.

Do your team members feel as important as the people you serve? If not, start telling them how important they are today—or better yet, start showing them. It’s important to take care of the home team as much as you take care of anyone else in your business dealings. Human beings tend to take the people closest to us for granted, but if you want to have a world-class team that supports your world-class organization, treat them like the elite group of team members they are.

Sometimes it seems like a lot of organizations focus on what their employees need to improve. I wholeheartedly agree that coaching and improving upon areas of weakness are instrumental to the growth process, but I also believe that equally important is letting others know what they are doing right. If you want your best team members to stay with you and exceed their own expectations, you must provide positive encouragement, motivation, and fun.

A lot of the time, it’s the little things you do that set you apart from your competitors. People start talking about your organization, how you treat your employees like family, how you genuinely try to help people, and how you strive to treat other people like you want to be treated.

How to Manage Business Relationships

Posted on March 29, 2018June 12, 2019 by Mike Stromsoe

Managing yourself can improve your business relations.

Theodore Roosevelt once said this about success: “The single most important ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.” If you want to achieve greatness in your business, you have to be ready and willing to do what it takes to build lasting relationships. Of course, we are talking about relationships with your clients. Of equal importance, however, are your relationships with your carriers. Mismanage either type of relationship, and you won’t have a successful business for long.

Relationships, and even personal connections that lead to business, are the crux of your business, which is why you need to focus on the two major elements of a successful business relationship. First of all, you must treat relationships with ultimate respect. When you engage with somebody, look that person in the eye. Apply the Golden Rule to even the most casual acquaintance and treat people the way you expect to be treated. Secondly, you must be quick on your toes and ready to get to the point because success loves speed. People want to know who you are and why they should bother talking to you almost instantaneously, and it only takes people a few seconds to figure out whether or not they want to have a relationship with you.

One of my greatest mentors, Jim Rohn said, “If you want to have more, you have to become more, we attract exactly what we are.” As far as business relationships are concerned, that’s the key. You must constantly be working on yourself to become more because when you become more, you become more to other people. And when you are more to other people, you can give back more to a relationship. The law of reciprocity is always in effect—and it’s going to come back to you.

Therefore, the best way to manage business relationships is to manage yourself, and to bring more to that relationship than anybody else. Consequently, more will come flowing back in your direction. So, give it out freely and be ready to accept it when it comes back your way—and that’s all in your preparation.

Contact Mike Stromsoe’s Unstoppable Profit Producer Program to grow your business, create financial security and have more freedom to live life on your terms!

How to Practice Client Segmentation

Posted on February 15, 2018June 12, 2019 by Mike Stromsoe

Open Up Doors with Client Segmentation

In 1896, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, published his first paper entitled “Cours d’économie politique” in which he proved that approximately 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by 20 percent of the population. He developed this conclusion by observing that 20 percent of the pea pods in his garden contained 80 percent of the peas. Now, well over 100 years later, thanks to Pareto’s observation about his garden peas, the business world still uses the Pareto Principle, more commonly known as the 80/20 Rule.

When applied it to business, it means that 80 percent of revenue comes from 20 percent of customers. I’ve done the math in my own business, and I’ve found it to be true—approximately 80 percent of our revenue is generated by 20 percent of our clients. Those clients then become the top 20 percent of our client base. All customers are important, but the practice of what I call client segmentation ensures you are not neglecting your top clients in the course of a busy workday.

Client segmentation involves identifying the best 20 percent of your clientele and developing a retention plan that ensures they remain loyal clients. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to determine whether client segmentation is right for your business:

Do I know who my top clients are?
Does my team know who our best clients are?
What am I doing for the top 20 percent of our customers?
Are my people on the phone with them regularly?
Are we giving them special recognition?
Do they get preferential treatment when they call?

In a lot of instances in the business world, the most time-intensive clients—and those who create more problems than positive outcomes—are the ones who represent the least amount of business. They are the complainers, the ones who are always behind on payments. That is why client segmentation is so vitally important. You must have a set process in place for how you treat your top clients so that they don’t “slip through the cracks” while you’re busy putting out fires.

The client segmentation process can be complex. The set-up process takes considerable time and effort from a detail-oriented person who is talented enough to understand this mindset and to go through your entire client book. We’ve chosen to segment our clients into three categories:

AAA clients
AA clients
A clients

We have found that 80 percent of our revenue is generated by 20 percent of our clients, and those 20 percent become our AAA clients. We make a concerted effort to pay extra attention to those top customers. This system has liberated us to the point that we now feel empowered to occasionally “fire” a few customers. We don’t

actually kick them out or send them a Dear John letter. We simply stop fighting their battles, and they fade away. Other times, we encourage them to find an insurance relationship that better fits their needs, enabling us to spend more time on people who are more profitable for our business.
Client segmentation makes the process of uncovering opportunities within your existing customer base much more streamlined and achievable. You can work to move A clients and AA clients up to AAA status by cross-selling and continuing to strengthen the relationship. In fact, you can even make a game out of it. Offer your team a crisp $20 dollar bill for every client they move up a level in the segmentation.

If you want your business to continue to grow, take the time to organize your client database in a way that allows you to get the most out of current customers, helps you allocate your time wisely, and enables you to identify which of your clients are the most influential and well connected.

Contact Mike Stromsoe’s Unstoppable Profit Producer Program for a premier wealth creation program that will help you work less, earn more, and enjoy life!

Category: Motivational

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