7 Key Principles of Scaling Your Insurance Business - Part 2 Roger Short & John Wetmore (Ep.86)

In part 2 of the impactful 7 Key Principles of Scaling Your Business LIA podcast episode, Roger and John Wetmore share their insights on how they built their multi-million dollar businesses. Listen as they share a step by step guide on how you too can build a business that leaves a massive impact and allows you to get your life back. You do not want to miss this episode.

Grab the white paper download from the episode HERE.

Why Scale?

You have found something special.
You have a moral obligation.
You can secure the financial future of your family forever.

Considerable thought should be given as you lay the foundation and strategic roadmap.

Taking the time to define and work through the critical building blocks needed to scale will help immensely when it’s go-time.

1. Work On Your Business, Not In It

If you don’t focus on the key activities that move your business forward in a strategic way, you’re doomed to stagnate.

Most struggling entrepreneurs fail because they focus on the wrong things. (While work must get done inside the business, it’s the small, connected steps that get the climbers to the top of the mountain.)

One of the Most Valuable 30-minute Segments I have personally spent in the past six months was when I sat down and evaluated all of my routine and 1-off work activities. I’m defining my High Pay-Off Activities (“HPAs”) and went to work on delegating or eliminating the balance.

Networking
Presenting Ideas
Casting Vision
Empowering the execution

It is vital to get clarity on the core activities you do to be laser-focused on as the leader and visionary, and then protect your boundaries around these actions.

2. Surround Yourself With ‘A’ Players

Businesses can only scale to the degree that they are full of the right people in the right seats at the right time.

If a leader has to abandon their “HPAs” and consistently lean into an operational area because of organizational weakness, the business will not scale at the desired pace.

REMINDER: It is much easier for ‘B’ and ‘C’ players to bring an ‘A’ player down than vice versa, so if you recognize an individual as a non-progressing ‘B’ player or ‘C’ player, remove them. Immediately.

3. Introduce Automation

Integrating automation across your business is a massive win regarding saving time (which means saving money) and enabling scalability.

Automation can cover many vital repetitive processes as well as more complex processes such as:

Marketing
Recruiting
OnBoarding
Sales Automations

Example: Rather than post every piece of content you create to social media in real-time, you can automate the process (with a VR or Intern) by taking advantage of software that schedules posts for you in advance. Ideation Session.

Content Studio
Up Content
Calendly

4. Develop Effective Content & Build Your Sales Funnel

The essential requirement for any business is sales.

A Sales Funnel has 3 stages:

1. Awareness

This phase is where you need to attract leads to your solutions.

In our unique business, we have 2 levels of clients:

Insurance Clients
Agents

Which one do You focus on most to scale?

Creating a content marketing strategy is imperative. This strategy might include generating content such as:

Live Overviews/Seminars – Business Development Meetings ( Live and Virtual )
Social Media (Edutainment – Patrick BetDavid, Valuetainment)
White Papers, e-books – Downloads
Automated and Live Overview webinars
that are relevant to your business offering and attractive to your target audience.

2. Consideration

The consideration phase is the one in which prospective clients compare and contrast products and solutions, marketing organizations, FMOs, etc as they inch towards making a decision. Marketing material in this phase should include also webinars, case studies, and client testimonials geared toward equipping the prospective client to make an informed and confident decision.

3. Decision

The decision phase is where a prospective client finally decides whether they will purchase from you. In this phase, your business has the opportunity to upsell or cross-sell products to them or send them incentives that will encourage them to establish a long-term relationship with your company.

Every phase of your funnel must be well thought out, tested, and retested to determine what works and what doesn’t. Once optimized, you can effectively put the funnel “on auto-pilot” and focus your efforts on scaling your business.

5. Establish Key Relationships And Partnerships

Your expanding network is your biggest capital

“Who you know” is more important than “what you know” when it comes to scaling businesses.

Yes, it’s critical you need to know your stuff in your area of core competency. However, much of your scalability potential comes down to your connections and partnerships.

Strategic partnerships can also provide the non-core functional areas of your business operations. They can allow you the ‘just-in-time’ bandwidth needed to boost your ability to focus and balance your operations during upswings and downswings.

VA’s – Upwork, Fiver

Consultants

6. Establish A Public Profile – Put Yourself Out There

Steve Jobs or Apple — which has the more significant imprint on your brain? Even if your answer is Apple, it’s a close call. Jobs was excellent at creating a bigger-than-life public profile.

To scale your business, you need to take a lesson. The world is no longer a B2B or B2C world, it is a people-to-people (P2P) world and as the leader of your company, other people (clients, potential agents, advisors, investors, strategic partners) want to know you.

7. Think Big and Act Boldly

“Begin with the end in mind.” – Steven Covey

Have a crystal clear vision of where you are going and communicate this to your team over and over. Stretch their thinking and show them what is in it for them.

Then, follow up by taking massive action. Don’t be timid. Go big and go bold. There are many times when fear will hit while you’re in the midst of scaling.

“Fear will tell you ‘Play it safe. Hang on to what you’ve got,’ but Courage responds, ‘Let go. Life happens outside your comfort zone.’”

Scaling isn’t a smooth process. However, done right, it is incredibly rewarding.

For more information on additional content and training from Roger Short and John Wetmore please message us at 502-837-9813.