 Hey there, this is Vlad from the Insurance Sales Lab and in this video I'd like to go over a topic that is a very sensitive topic that's circulating amongst many insurance agents who are worried about the federal minimum wage going up to $15 an hour. At the time of this recording, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 and if it goes up to $15 an hour, a lot of insurance agents are afraid that they won't be able to afford their team members. I just had a few conversations this week with agents who are reluctant with bringing on new team members because they're afraid they won't be able to afford them. In fact with their current staff, they're not sure if they'll be able to afford them once this law goes through. So the point of this video is not to pick a side and debate whether or not it's a good or bad thing that this minimum wage is going to go up to $15 an hour, but instead provide some clarity on what you can do as an insurance agent to make sure that you're not hurt financially when it does happen. So let's first run through the numbers of what this will mean to your bottom line. Let's suppose you pay a team member or you pay your team members $12 an hour. I don't know of many agents that pay less than $12 an hour. So that's the starting point and if you go to $15 an hour, that's a $3 an hour increase, right? So $3 an hour multiplied by 173 working hours throughout the course of a month. That's about $520 of additional payroll expenses. Now let's not forget payroll taxes, that's another about 10%. So we're looking at about $572 of additional payroll expenses per team member. And this is again just an average. We can just say it's between $5 and $600 per month per team member. And if you have four or five team members, that's an extra $2,000 a month of additional payroll expenses. And if you have a big agency and a big book of business, this may not hurt you too bad. You might be just fine. However, for newer agents who are just starting off or for agents who have a smaller book of business, which is most agents, this can hurt them substantially. So if you don't prepare yourself properly, then you may have to let team members go. And that's not what anybody wants to do. So what I'd like to do is come up with a few strategies with you on what you can do to make up that extra $5 to $600 in revenue for every person that works in your agency. So let's start off with your CSRs. CSRs, customer service representatives, are traditionally not responsible to bring in any new business or additional revenue. Their main job is to make sure that your current clients are happy and that they renew their policies. So when a current client of yours calls in to replace their vehicle, make a payment, add a driver, that's what they do. They handle the task, they move on to the next call. The next person that calls in, they handle that task and they move on to the next call. There's not really much selling involved. That's just traditionally what it's always been for CSRs. Now what if you could have your CSRs, not just end the call every time, but say, hey, who do you have your life insurance through? We see that you have your car and homeowners insurance with us, but we don't have your life insurance policy. Who carries your personal life insurance policy? And then have a conversation about having a personal life policy. Now if your CSRs are licensed, then they can just cross out a life insurance policy themselves or they can set up an appointment for you as the agency owner. And imagine if you can get one additional life policy from every CSR per week. It's about four life policies per month. Do you think that would make up that extra $5 to $600 in expenses that you have? Probably. What if you're an independent agent and you don't sell life insurance? Well, you can have your CSRs ask for a referral. How often is it that your CSRs ask for a referral at the end of every call? Every time? Do they ask for a referral every other time? Or is it whenever they remember? Well, if you institute a policy in your agency and you say, look, every time you have a good interaction with a client, ask for a referral. It's not an optional thing. You have to ask for a referral. And here's how you need to do that. And you give them a process that they follow. Well, guess what? Now you're going to start getting referrals in your agency. And the more referrals you get, the more business you write, the more business you write, the more revenue you make. So that could help offset some of the additional payroll expenses. And we're talking about your CSRs here, your customer service representatives whose main job is not to sell. But now it could be bringing in additional revenue. Now on the sales side, it's a little more clear on what they can do. They can write more business. What if they brought in additional one household per week? That's additional four households per month that they would bring on. Every household is say $200 in additional commission. Well, now you've made up your increase that you have in payroll. So the point of this video is not to get very granular and specific on the exact number of policies or premium that your team members need to bring in as a result of this minimum wage increase, but instead just make the obvious clear that team members, sales and service just need to produce more to offset that increase in expenses. That all being said, if you're watching this and thinking, all right, Vlad, that all sounds great. But how do I get my team members to cross out life insurance? How do I get my sales team to write more business? Well, I'll give you two resources. One of them is a paid resource. The other one is a free resource. The paid resource is my one-call-close masterclass. If you have never looked into the one-call-close masterclass, you have to do it. There's a link right below this video. All the information will be there. But essentially, the one-call-close masterclass will teach your current team members how to cross out life insurance. But more importantly, the bulk of the time, we focus on training your sales team on how to close sales in the first call, even if your price is more expensive, specifically in having P&C conversations. So if you're an agency owner and you want your team members to write more business, then enroll in the masterclass. The link will be right below this video. Now, for the free resource, I will include a link to a free training webinar that I did where I broke down my sales script. This sales script is responsible for, I can't even tell you how much more policies that agents wrote. Agents who used to write 20, 30 policies a month are now writing over 100 policies per month just because they follow this script. I personally created this script and used this script to write over 150 policies per month, and a lot of agents have done the same. So if you want to see how this sales script works, there's a free link or a free webinar right below this video that you can click on and to see that script in action. So with all of that being said, there are things that you cannot control and things that you can't control. And one thing that you can control is training your team on how to sell. And if you're not a good sales coach, then hire someone to do that for you. So if you have any questions on anything that we covered in this video, please reach out to me. I'll include my contact information below this video as well. Hope you have a blessed day. Take care.