 Hey, what's up 8% nation, Jeff Root here. I am managing partner over at Digital BGA, we're 100% TelaSales Life Insurance Agency. I'm also author of the Digital Life Insurance Agent, which is the number one best-selling life insurance TelaSales book on Amazon. You're probably thinking, who is this dude and why should I listen to him right now, right? I've personally written over 3,000 life insurance policies from 2007 till about 2016. In 2016, I stopped my personal production and started at Digital BGA, which is focused on TelaSales and will actually be recognized this year as one of the fastest growing private companies in the nation, according to Inc. 5000 at least, when that comes out in August of this year. So with all of that said, I was thinking about what sort of value that I could provide and that would have the most impact for agents. I mean real actionable value that could really affect your bottom line that you can take action on immediately. You know, I kept coming back to what I credit for my success in the insurance industry and that's understanding cash flows and profits, okay, and how to maximize them in the insurance business. So I'm gonna share five actionable moves to increase cash flow and profits in your insurance business. So I'm in life insurance, right? So all of my examples will be in that segment of insurance business. I understand 8% nation as agents from all types of insurance verticals. So if you're not life insurance, these moves can absolutely help you. It's just, it'll just be missing some concrete examples that I'm just gonna give in the life insurance space, okay? So, you know, for 10 years, I sold term life insurance over the phone and had to learn how to cash flow. You know, a business where over half of my sales were fully underwritten and didn't pay out for, you know, around six weeks on average. You know, I saw over 90% of agents come into this business and leave the business quickly. You know, truly talented agents that couldn't put it together as an independent agent. All right, it wasn't due to not having the right leads or carriers to sell. It was simply the strategy in running their business to focus on cash flow and profits. It's stuff we're not really taught when we get into the business, right? We get all this training for sales, you know, where to buy leads and all that, but as far as cash flowing in business and optimizing for profits, okay? You know, I learned that, you know, ROI matters. That's everybody preaches, but cash flow matters even more. I've also learned that commission's deposit in your account matter. That's what all the trainers will say. You look at the commission's deposit in your account, but profits matter more. It doesn't matter if you're spending too much, right? So I picked up this, you know, most of my knowledge from reading books and hiring business coaches, all right? I believe in mentors. I've always had one and I always will, right? Somebody who knows more than me and I'm just gonna pass on everything that I've learned as far as cash flowing and, you know, building more profits into your business. Okay? So, you know, I use these strategies consistently at Digital BG as well. And it carried from the personal production I did in 2006 to, or 2007 to 2016, all right? So here's the five actionable moves to increase your cash flow and profits in your life insurance business, all right? Number one, upsells, downsells, and cross sell every single time on every presentation, all right? Number two, work your unconverted leads. Number three, beat down that P&L. Number four, enhance cash flow. And number five, word of mouth, okay? Referrals. Now I'm gonna go into the how of all those five, right? And, you know, you're probably thinking like, okay, yeah, work your unconverted leads. You know, word of mouth referrals, like everybody talks about that. I've got some pretty interesting strategies that have really worked. It's a spin on all of it that I'm gonna share with you today, all right? So let's start with number one. Upsell, downsell, cross sell on every presentation, right? Your sales process should be the same every single time. Every time there should be an upsell pitch somewhere in the process and a downsell pitch when somebody isn't interested. It has to be in every presentation you do. I can't stress that enough. It needs to be consistent and you'll see your profits and cash flow increase. So let me give you an example of each of these. So an example of an upsell pitch that can help life insurance agents is always going for the maximum close, right? The maximum close. It doesn't matter what they want. Tell them what they can get. For example, on final expense, let's say you're getting into the close. You did some health qualifications and whatnot and you're going off into presenting the rates, all right? Say, oh man, Doris, great news. One of the nation's most respected final expense life insurance companies is ready to make you a conditional offer. I requested the amount we discussed of $10,000. Well, they accepted that request and also offered an additional coverage amount of up to $35,000. I mean, that is offering the max, right? And we go into a little bit more in our script, but it's offering the max no matter what. Even if you uncover, Doris needs $10,000 of coverage. It doesn't matter, you're still gonna offer that. You can always come back down with a proper price drop back down to the $10,000 and even lower, all right? You can do the same thing on term life insurance by using the maximum multiple of their income, right? Each carrier will do a multiple, like 10X your annual income, right? If somebody can qualify for a million and a half of coverage and they're only applying for $750,000 of coverage, let them know they can qualify for up to a million and a half and even put the application in that and they can make that decision when that policy comes back approved, right? Same thing with disability insurance, give them the max, the max offer, right? So, you know, a lot of people like to sell on price, you need to sell based on the emotional connection to the coverage amount and what they're buying. And with the max close, you're hitting on that, okay? So incorporate a max close into your scripting and your annual premium per sale will increase. It has for us agency-wide since we've done that, right? Which means profits will increase, okay? On the flip side of that, there's down sales, okay? So down sales, if you quote someone and they aren't interested, the default is to keep, you know, coming down on coverage or coming down on price, right? And by that point, you're making it about price. You can never make it about price. Life insurance is not about price. There has to be an emotional attachment to the death benefit and what it will do for you and your family, okay? For term, you can lower the term length. You know, that's the first option. I think everybody defaults to that anyway. You can also take the death benefit over a period of time instead of a lump sum that can lower their premium by up to 20% with some carriers. Protective life comes to mind that does that. We do that all the time with them, okay? Another option that, you know, many agents don't even think about that can work for final expense and for term is blending an all-cause death benefit with an accidental writer or an accidental policy. So if the prospect wanted, called a million dollars of coverage but couldn't afford it, sell them $750,000 of an all-cause death benefit with a $250,000 accidental policy or writer just depending on what the carrier offers, okay? You know, then come back in a year or two and replace that $250,000 accidental with an all-cause coverage plan, all right? You're still hitting that coverage amount for them. You don't need to come down and you're gonna sell more policies that way. It works with final expense too. If someone can't afford $10,000, try selling a $5,000 policy with an accidental writer and that doubles the death benefit, right? If it happened, if God forbid something happened in an accident. So, you know, a lot of carriers do that. American amicable, prosperity, mutual vomit, foresters, you know, just off the cuff, right? And then of course you have cross-sells, okay? Every single client should be offered other products. So you have their trust and attention, right? You just sold them something. This is the best opportunity to see if you can land another sale. Calling a new lead is not gonna be the best opportunity for you. Cross-selling something else to that person you just sold is the best opportunity. You can have it that single, you know, moment in time, okay? You have their trust, you have their attention and you know, see if their spouse is around. They wanna quote on their spouse. Their child, their grandchild, whoever, you know, or a different product line all together. Sell them something else. Sell to someone else or sell them something else, okay? Every client you sell should have an automatic cross-selling strategy that you implement. It should be like the back of your hand, right? While on the call or even with follow-up calls after 30 days. So do it right then after you make a sale or do it on a follow-up call. But automate it, right? It's gotta be a process that you have so you see consistent results and can improve your profits in cash flow. That's the goal here, right? So automate some of it with automated emails and mailers even built into your process. I know agents that use a service called thanks.io. It's a website. And they automate postcards going out throughout the year. So a thank you postcard is immediately sent with their family photo with no offer. Just a pure thank you, you know. Here's my family and asking the client to think of them if they have any friends or family that need life insurance coverage. Just think of me, they're not asking for it, right? And so they have this connection and they'll, you know, we have agents that get phone calls that say, hey, I saw your family. You have a beautiful family and you know, I had no idea that you love fishing because maybe the picture was of them fishing or something, you know? And then, you know, automate a postcard later with the did you know I also do this? Medicare, disability, whatever it is, right? It's all automated and only takes the initial input of their name and address after making a sale if you set it up correctly and thanks.io, okay? I'm just giving you an example of ways that you can automate a cross-sell process. It should absolutely be in your scripting though, okay? Remember, you already paid for this, you know, for the opportunity to acquire this client. Anything you sell on top of this is pure profit and cash flow, all right? Take the time to build these upsells in your sales process, these downsells and these cross-sells into your business and your cash flows and profits will see an immediate effect. Happened when I was a personal producer and it happens again, you know, as we built an agency with digital BGA. It works, okay? So number two is working your unconverted leads. I mean, that's a, like duh, right? Of course, work your unconverted leads but not a lot of agents do it, right? Here's the thing about unconverted leads. Only a small percentage are ready to buy right away no matter who it is because you got the right message to the right person at the right time. Remember that. That's key in really building out the mindset of calling unconverted leads. If you've been taking leads consistently, you're sitting on a massive, massive, massive database of just pure opportunity, okay? Or a significant number could become clients the next 12 months if you can get the right message to them at the right time. Again, that's the mindset of this, okay? So here's two key actionable concepts to work your unconverted leads. Number one, send a simple email or text, okay? To your leads you've never spoken with. And here's what it should say. Just plain and simple. Are you still interested in life insurance? Question mark? Let me know. Jeff, that's it. Don't write a paragraph of what you do, all the companies you represent that you can get them the lowest prices on the market, you represent all these carriers, whatever that is. A short and simple message like this will get you more responses. I've tested it, it works, all right? Just that simple thing. Seriously, send it. Email or text. Just mass send it to your uncontacted leads that you're able to contact. Remember TCPA stuff, if it was an online lead you only have 90 days to contact them. If you've never contacted them before I just wanna preface that. So make sure they're within that timeframe. All right, and then the next thing. Number two, as far as the second actionable concept to work your unconverted leads, you know? You know all those not interested leads that you talk to? Call them again, right? Yes, the leads that you had a conversation with that said they weren't interested. Those leads, the ones who you wrote off, the ones who said no and you went on to your next lead. Those ones, there's gold in those, all right? Once you recognize the fact that insurance sales is about getting the right message to the right person at the right time you'll start seeing more opportunity in your unconverted leads, okay? You won't be like, oh, that person was a jerk, you know, or that person was rude, or I don't want, you know. Whatever the excuse is in your head, right? For the most, I mean, if this was somebody who filled out a form online or requested any sort of interest it was just the wrong time, all right? It just simply means not interested means they're not buying right now. Just get that into your head, get that mindset and you'll have no problem calling, you know, those not interested leads those people who told you no before. I mean, some people tell you no right away. It's really just a smoke screen, right? I'm like, oh no, I never filled that out. That's a smoke screen, they did fill it out and most agents will never call that lead again. You just caught them at the wrong time most likely, all right? So you already paid, right, to acquire those unconverted leads, okay? So go profit from them. This will cost you no extra money and just add to your cash flow and profits. Build out a process to call on those not interested leads even if it's once a month, you know? Pick a day, the 15th of every month or the third Wednesday or whatever it is and go through all your not interested leads and just call down the list, right? I mean, even just once a month you're going to find sales in there. You're going to find people that are interested and you didn't have to pay for those leads. It's all profits gonna help your cash flows, all right? This was one of the core things that I did as an independent agent that really helped with my cash flow and the very, very beginning of my career I remember calling not interested leads from other agents, you know? I'd go after them and I'd ask them like, hey, you know, all the people you quoted that were interested, can I take a shot at it? And people would send me some leads, some files, forward me some emails and I would make some sales. It might not have been right there but I'd keep following up with them and make sales, okay? There's money in those and it's ignored. To me, you know how I describe it, it's a hidden profit center in your business, you're not working. Okay, enough on that. So the third thing, all right, is to beat down the P&L. All right, so let me preface this first. To increase cash flow and process, I beat down my profit and loss statement every couple months or so, right? And I get the most juice out of the first time I did it, I'm gonna go into that in just a second. I just wanna preface this. First things first, don't commingle your personal accounts with your business accounts, okay? If you have a business account where all your commissions are getting deposited and all your marketing, lead costs, all that stuff, the cost of doing business gets drafted from that account or business credit card, great, just don't commingle. Everybody should keep that separated, okay? Next, make sure you have a profit and loss statement, all right? It may sound like overkill for a business, for an insurance business that only has commissions and marketing and lead expenses, but for the most part, it puts you in the headspace as a business owner to look at these profit and loss statements and compare them to previous periods. You're gonna see trends, you're gonna notice some things, it's almost gonna gamify it for you to see how much profit you can pull. If you can see those up green arrows and profits and revenue and those down red arrows, you know? Anyway, so I use zero.com, X-E-R-O.com for accounting software and connect my business bank accounts and credit cards so all transactions are automatically sent over, right? So it's just a matter of reconciling the categories, right? And I even pay somebody to do it. I do it automatically. I have somebody who just goes in there every month and reconciles everything for me, but it's simple, I'm gonna start with that, okay? So from looking at that profit and loss statement and comparing your previous four months, you'll notice trends in profitability and cash flows, right? And then when you see that profit and loss, you beat that thing down every month. I mean, beat it down. So what does that mean? It's one of my favorite things to do, right? I mean, I wouldn't say it's one of the things where I get a lot of, I find a lot of profit, all right? So here's some examples. Find all the subscriptions, right? Or consistent vendors you use and contact them, all right? Tell them you're thinking about leaving and email will do it. Just ask them what they can do for you. You're thinking about leaving, what can you do for me? This exercise can earn a lot of profit doing this in one afternoon, okay? If you don't have a P&L, just go to your last bank statement and look at all the charges. So if you have a lead company or any vendors charging you an extra 3.5% merchant fee because you used a credit card, right? Challenge that. 2.9% is the going rate. But even that can be negotiated if you just simply ask. I've done it before. I've got that completely removed. It's a stupid fee that a lot of lead vendors will charge and they don't have to charge. It's just, you know, it's their way of increasing profits, but if you're a trusted client of theirs, they will do it for you. If you just started with them, there's most likely everybody's gonna blow you off and not care, right? But it's worth and ask, okay? A second thing is just to cancel any subscriptions that don't make you money. I know for myself, I always forget about subscriptions, especially domain names, right? On GoDaddy. I don't know if any of you have this problem as I do. I'm a habitual domain name buyer who thinks of an idea and says, I'm gonna buy the domain name and then I forget about it until 12 months later it renews and I pay, you know, the $12 or whatnot. I call GoDaddy my boulevard of broken dreams. It's kind of a funny thing between my friends, but I mean, do you really need to pay $10 a month for that screencast software or $10 a month for that calendar scheduling software? Or could you get by with the free versions of those just and just display their branding on it, right? That stuff adds up and when you get deeper in business, subscriptions add up. Okay? If you don't have a P&L, like I said, you can do this on your bank statements and whatnot, but go through those, find those subscriptions, find those payments that you're making every single month and talk to them. Can you do better? All right? So number four is cashflow, enhancing cashflow. All right. So cashflow is the number one killer of insurance agent careers. So how do you enhance cashflow in your business? The first step is to drop your accounts receivable times. I know it's a very MBA school talk, right? So what does this mean for insurance agents? Get paid quicker, all right? Take the maximum advance on your commissions, okay? Don't write carriers who don't advance. Just don't write them, all right? Don't take commissions as earned or opt for the smaller advances because you want those months, you know, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 and 12, you know, in the future. Get as many dollars as you can in right now. Get those advances, all right? There are some carriers out there who, you know, who might even advance if you do a lot of business with them, the entire commission, okay? So, you know, write carriers that pay on issue for simplified issue carriers. A lot, you know, a lot of issues will pay on, a lot of companies will pay on draft. I mean, I have to wait 30 days if somebody doesn't want it to draft for 30 days or, you know, or on a social security drafting or billing date, okay? So, excuse me. So stop, also stop tying up capital in underwriting, write more simplified issue products. That was a huge, huge lever I lifted in my business when I started, when I got over the fear of, you know, selling something that's more expensive, you know, for the same amount of coverage and a fully underwritten carrier, you know, that would get approved either immediately or within a couple of days over, you know, something that might be 33% less expensive but it might take six weeks, right? Just get that stuff in force. And by doing so, you're not tying up capital, that's in underwriting, right? That money's gonna come in the next week if you were able to sell that person a simplified issue policy. One thing that I always did is, I'd always gave people the option, right? You could buy a fully underwritten policy or a simplified issue policy. Fully underwritten, they're gonna come to your house, you know, I'm gonna make it seem like it's a huge inconvenience, they're gonna poke you with the needle, you have to pee in a cup, you have to hand it over to them, you know, and then you're gonna have to wait six weeks and you might get approved or we can just take care of this now, it's about 33% more and you write them a simplified issue product, okay? Of course, that's for term coverage, all right? So, you know, there's two things to enhancing cash flow. So the number one is what I just said, you know, drop your accounts receivable times, all right? Get paid quicker. Obviously the second one is to lift your accounts payable days, right? So for insurance agents, here's what that means, okay? Accounts payable is your expenses, what you're paying out, right? So most of you, that's leads, right? So if you're working with a lead vendor for a while, ask for net seven terms. Instead of paying right now for, you know, for call it a 50 lead order, you know, make the order now, net seven means and then pay for it seven days later. That's what net seven terms is, all right? Or extending the terms, if you already have net seven terms to maybe 10 days or 14 days, whatever that is, you know? You can only do this if you have a good working relationship with your marketer or lead vendor, but you know, if there's that trust built, they will absolutely do that and they get it. They're a business owner. They know what those net terms mean to them, right? So that's one way. The second way to lift your accounts payables, the accounts payable days is to put all marketing and lead costs on a credit card and pay it monthly. In fact, all costs on credit card and pay it monthly. This buys you 30 days of cash flow without finance charges and you'll get rewards points on top of that, right? So a lot of agents think, you know, you know, Jeff, that's nothing that I don't know. Of course, get a credit card, right? And put it on there. But it's the concept behind it, okay? A lot of agents think this is pushing off the inevitable payment, you know, and creating a liability. If you think this way, your issue is confidence in yourself and building a business. You lack that confidence, okay? If you're turning a positive ROI on marketing and leads, this is a no-brainer to do. The moment I implemented this as a, the moment I implemented this as a producer, my bank account was flush with cash to reinvest in my business. And I did that. I reinvested and turned that cash into way more cash, okay? Now, if you take that newly found cash flow as income, yeah, that defeats the purpose. That's not why you're doing this. You're trying to turn more, you know, freed up cash into more cash. So, you know, I'm telling you that by enhancing cash flow with all of these strategies, your mindset changes as well. You can deploy funds into growth and you do just that, all right? So, you know, that's how I built my agency as a solo producer, simply getting more money quicker and pushing out expenses as far out as I could without paying interest, right? That allowed me to reinvest in more marketing. It allowed me to hire my first agents probably sooner than I should have been able to, right? It allowed me to build out better infrastructure with software that was better than what I currently had, better dialers and whatnot, okay? So, and the same thing at digital BGA, you know, everyone is always impressed, you know, with how we've grown this so quickly over four years and everybody assumes that we have an investment partner, right, or that we don't know the business. No, we bootstrap this thing, right? This entire business has been bootstrapped. I'm still 50, 50 partners with my partner and we're able to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars early on in our business on building our own technology, which has set us apart from, you know, from a lot of our competitors. And that's why, and we're able to do that by being savvy with cashflow, all right? Using these exact same principles because when you do this at scale with, you know, with more agents, more money, you know, you can free up a lot more cashflow to be able to make these bigger moves. And that's what it's all about. You have to be able to take risks in this business to get big rewards in order to take big risks. You have to have the cashflow, okay? And so enhancing cashflow, again, to recap, drop your accounts receivable times, increase your accounts' payable days, okay? That's gonna free up cash and allow you to grow, all right? And the very last thing, the fifth, you know, way to increase cashflow and profits is just to boost your word of mouth, you know? There's, you know, let me ask you this. Do you have a referral program you talk about on every presentation that results in a sale? Most agents I ask that question to say no. I would say 98% of agents that I ask that question to. And I ask it a lot when agents are contacting me that are struggling in the business. If you don't have a word of mouth, a referral program, you should. Internally in our agency, we call it an ROI maximizer because that's what it really is, okay? I find that many agents don't ask for referrals at all because of the default excuse that they just don't feel comfortable, okay? What if you were able to offer something in return, though? Okay? I'm not talking about a Starbucks gift card, right? For each referral. Remember, there needs to be an emotional attachment, especially in life insurance. That emotional attachment to the death benefit is what sells policies, right? It's not, there's no emotional attachment, you know, to... I digress here. We sell life insurance and a lot of final expense insurance by offering a free accidental death and dismemberment policy for every referral. It's scripted into the process after you make a sale. It's this fun way that we script into the process that they can get $1,000 for every referral and up to $5,000 of accidental death and dismemberment insurance, AD&D. And it's part of our script and it works like a charm. And agents are just getting referrals. And, you know, it's, it really is a maximizer of return on investment. So you can probably think of something to offer up. Let me give you another example. So I know a lot of you don't have access to a referral program like this. So here's what another agent does. That's really, really smart. So I know an agent that finds out their favorite restaurant or hobby or something as part of the rapport building process, right? And he will offer a gift card to that specific something at the end. If it's golf and you live in Austin, Texas, he's gonna research, you know, well on the call, a golf store or even a course or something and offer up a gift certificate to that specific thing. He makes his clients feel heard. And like, and by sending, you know, and it creates that relationship with them as well. And they almost feel, he says they almost feel like they have to give them something out, but he gets a lot of referrals. And just by adding that simple thing and making notes, you know, while building rapport during the presentation, you know, he incentivizes his referrals. By offering something up like that, okay? So you can probably think of different ways. I've heard of people, you know, I think there's some ways to give out, you know, vacations and whatnot, but, you know, the agent or somebody pays a fee and they are able to give out some voucher for something. There's a bunch of stuff out there, you know? But if you can incentivize, like just come up with a good incentivization offer for your referrals, it's a game changer. It absolutely is a game changer. And incorporate it into your sales process every single time. Every single presentation you make, every sale, that needs to be said, okay? So, I mean, those are five core things that will find hidden profits in your business and improve your cash flow, okay? I kind of, I can talk about this stuff all day long. I hope this was actionable. I hope this was helpful. I hope this will find hidden profits. I hope that this will help your cash flow. But if anybody has any questions whatsoever about anything discussed here, feel free to email me, Jeff at digitaldga.com and I'd be happy to answer, all right? Appreciate everybody for listening and best of luck. Hey, if you enjoyed this, I got another one you're gonna love. It's right there. Click on it. See you in there. 8% virtual. I have an unbelievable surprise guest speaker for you today, Mr. Brian Tracy, lifelong split fan of your work. Thank you so much for agreeing to spend a few minutes with me today. Well, thank you. You know, you and I,