Get Savvy With David R. Carothers -The Process Behind Proving An Idea
The Principal at Florida Risk Partners, International Best-Selling Author of ‘The Extra 2 Minutes’ and ‘The Dirty 130’, and a Partner at Savvital, David R. Carothers is an absolute genius, to say the least.
David Carothers has over 20 Years of experience in the fields of insurance, sales and marketing. With his quick wit, and natural born talent for the art of closing deals, David has gained a massive reputation within the Insurance Community. Due to his exemplary leadership skills, David regularly takes up the roles of a mentor, speaker and sales coach.
For a fair amount of time David was a regular guest on podcasts, but more recently he’s been hosting his own podcast “The Power Producers Podcast”. He’s laid back in his role as a guest again as he joins the podcast from his office.
David mentions how he’s had a rough week trying to manage work on four desks, with most of the staff on holidays alongside his normal responsibilities. This did nothing but accelerate David’s need for virtual professionals to help assist him and his company with tasks that are time consuming and tedious. He mentions he’s been on the look out for someone to help set up a telemarketing campaign.
Even though the difference between the experience between a producer conducting a campaign versus a virtual professional is massive. However, if producers are getting appointments that assigned to them on the CRM, there are untapped leads going to waste. This is where a virtual professional can step in. Without having to concur geography, a virtual assistant focus on those prospects. David gives it credibility by dubbing it a “numbers play”. Being able to get themselves in front of someone is not just part of the sale, it is the sale.
Since everyone wants an appointment, but no one ever seems to want to be on the phone. David is questioned about why and how virtual professionals over the telephone is still a major player with regards to getting clients and closing sales. “People get their feelings hurt”, David answers candidly as he goes over the psychology of how producers go about their business. They invest a lot of time into one appointment, doing their research – sometimes even too much to their detriment and if they don’t get the response the way they want; they feel dejected and use it as an excuse to not make any other calls that day.
In Savvitals case, with their virtual professionals, their job is not to sell their insurance policy, it is to secure an appointment. Just because someone says no, doesn’t mean they have been stopped in their tracks. On the contrary it means they can get to the next call faster, securing that next appointment faster.
The point David proceeds to make is that he doesn’t need his Virtual Professionals to sell insurance on the fly to try and secure a client. They might not have insurance experience and won’t have the 10 years of experience however they can get appointments booked regularly. Agents tend to overcomplicate things, if they start to think too much about selling over the phone; whereas the Virtual Professional just must book an appointment or move onto the next call. This method has been a great success as it has brought 5-25 booked appointments a week to the calendar.
The Virtual Professionals are heavily integrated into the culture and systems at David’s firm. Not only are they trained by the firm on how to use their software’s, but since they use all the native software’s – the firm can monitor their activities and appropriately give feedback.
“It’s not a process until it is a proven process. It’s an idea otherwise”
Since no transition is seamless with Virtual Professionals, David had to step back and rework a system to ensure the Virtual Professionals would not be regularly ghosted during their appointments. The learning curve was there, as it is with joining any new profession – but it’s how you find solutions for those problems that defines your company’s chance of success. There’s a strange phenomenon where companies have processes set to fail them. They believe if they replace an underachieving employee with a virtual professional. They will save costs and get the benefit of higher rate of success while not doing anything about their process.
Towards the end, David is asked to provide his bullet points on what an insurance agency should consider before hiring a Virtual Professional
- Identify the needs you have
- Make sure you have proven processes around those needs
- Hire professionals with the best qualifications
David elaborates further that finding the people that match the culture of your firm, that are going to deliver the results the operations need is essential. Being able to surround yourself with people that you want to be surrounded by is of the essence. It is not advisable to hire labor just because its inexpensive. This style of short-sighted approach ends up hurting businesses more than it does save money. Hiring right the first time, not only saves time – it saves money.