The Preeminent Producer Podcast

How To Structure My Day For Success As An Insurance Producer

• The Preeminent Producer • Season 1

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Properly structuring your day as an insurance producer is huge! In this episode of The Preeminent Producer Podcast, that is what our coaches dive into.

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Are you a commercial insurance producer struggling to stand out from the competition? Do you find it challenging to grow your book of business and create a fulfilling career?

Then welcome to The Preeminent Producer Podcast! Each week, we'll be tackling important topics, sharing proven strategies and insights from successful producers that are in the trenches and have traveled the journey to becoming a Preeminent Producer.

You'll discover what it really takes to become Preeminent & build your book of business, in a way that isn’t being taught anywhere else. Our hosts are experts in the field and have built thriving businesses by becoming the most trusted adviser to their clients. Welcome to your journey to becoming a Preeminent Producer.

Let’s dive in!

Ready To Grow Your Book Of Business?
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Speaker 1:

As an insurance producer on your journey to becoming a preeminent producer, how do you structure your day to achieve ultimate success? This is a question we got and this is a question that is going to be answered in this episode of the Preeminent Producer podcast. Let's dive in.

Speaker 2:

Are you a commercial insurance producer struggling to stand out from the competition? Do you find it challenging to grow your book of business and create a fulfilling career? If so, then welcome to the Preeminent Producer podcast. Each week, we'll be tackling important topics, sharing proven strategies and insights from successful producers that are in the trenches and have traveled the journey to becoming a preeminent producer. You'll discover what it will take to become preeminent and build your book of business in a way that isn't being taught anywhere else. Our hosts are experts in the field and have built thriving businesses by becoming the most trusted advisor to their clients.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to your journey to becoming a preeminent producer. Let's dive in.

Speaker 3:

You know, as producers we live a different kind of a life and sometimes it's frenetic and many times we're not in control of our day. And when I was a young guy I attended a lot of time element seminars and then found out that they really didn't work very well for me because I could get a call that upsets everything and we're kind of at the whim of our clients many times. But what I did find is that I could find structure in a week and I can tell you the way that I do mine, and Matt could be different and Christian could be different, and you may steal a little from me and a little from Matt, a little from Christian and kind of create your own dynamic. But here's what I've done with the structure of a week. Mondays are typically meeting days for me. I have meetings in the office and all staff meeting with our staff here, and then I have my own team meetings and I try to set as many meetings as I can on Monday, because it's such a terrible day and it's a hard day to reach out to prospects because they're kind of very busy getting their week started as well. What I do is the team the all staff meetings kick the week off with the staff obviously my team meetings. We find out what my schedule is for the week, what I'm going to need from them, what they're going to need from me, and then we meet again on Friday. We'll get to Friday in a minute, so I try to pack all of those.

Speaker 3:

Tuesday, wednesday and Thursday we are playing the game. In other words, we're in it. We're trying to sell insurance, we're servicing clients I'm not servicing a team of servicing them and I try not to have any internal meetings or any other meetings between about 10 o'clock in the morning and three o'clock in the afternoon. Those are prime times, or me being available to my clients or me reaching out, trying to develop other centers of influence or prospects. Friday is a mop up day. Friday morning again, I reconnect with my team finding out what happened this week that I need to know about, because they do all the service on these clients and they need to know for me what happened in my week and it also gets us an opportunity to get ready to play the game again the next week.

Speaker 3:

So I've tried to structure Tuesday, wednesday, thursday or really those days that we focus on outreach to clients and prospects, and then Monday and Friday are kind of mop up days. Also, saturdays can be used, although I know my kids are out of the house and have been, and when I would come into the office on a Saturday it would break my heart to see a young producer here. I don't want to see that. I want to see them with their life in balance with their family. But that's kind of the day where I would get ready, I would research prospects, I would research to make sure if I'm reaching out to somebody they're highly qualified. So that's kind of the way I've done it. And, matt, how about you? What do you do?

Speaker 4:

Thanks, rick. Well, two things that you do that I don't do. Let me start there. I don't structure the week like that. I don't structure my week. That's an interesting thought. And the Tuesday, wednesday, thursday, you know, we know we've always always heard things like sending out emails, promoting things, doing webinars, podcasts, whatever. Those are the action days. So that's pretty interesting. The other thing I don't do a lot of is Saturdays. I do some, you know I save that for what I'll call my creative type work. You know I do write various white papers and reports and use them for marketing purposes. I do a lot of that on Saturdays. I try not to spill over onto Sundays. But, rick, you got my attention with that. Structuring your week, that's something I'm going to give some thought to. And yeah, you're right, you acknowledge it, it's going to be different for each of us.

Speaker 4:

One thing that's probably a lot of people have in common with me on the following is man, I get more productive stuff done in the first two or three hours of the day, the morning hours. Then I do the entire rest of the day. Things blow up, you know, whatever some issue comes up with the client. You know things that are out of our control and I just have a lot more energy in the morning. I'm kind of an early bird. I do start around 6am and those first couple hours before the staff arrives, or you know, you can just get a lot done.

Speaker 4:

Another thing I know we've talked about before is and this, the following, takes some discipline, but whenever I've done it it really helps, not only to, you know, keep a to-do list, that's just old school, but I do it but to actually clean up and structure that to-do list the night before so that I hit the ground running in the morning knowing exactly. Again, I don't always do that, but whenever I do the benefits are so great. And a silly little thing and then I'll shut up and let Christian chime in. But a silly little thing in keeping again a to-do list is especially when you prioritize that the night before. So it's really good when you start lining through certain things that you get done again in those first couple hours. It's a pretty good feeling, you know. You feel like you're actually accomplishing something. What do you think?

Speaker 5:

Amen brother, amen, no, I think that I definitely have. Every day I have it to-do list. It does carry over from the next day, but it's a scratch pad and I think the important thing with that is and a piece of advice I'd give people is make sure certain that not only do you have your list of items you have to do, but you absolutely prioritize them on. Use this, which is making me the most amount of money. That's what this is about. So if it's prospecting, okay, that's priority number one. When you're prospecting as a young producer, never go a day without prospecting. No matter what you have doing, you have to put yourself first and you have to prospect. Prospecting meaning it could be looking for businesses to go after, it could be working on your scripts, it could be working on your email drops, it could be working on taking up the phone and calling the people, whatever that is. That should be your top priority, especially as a new producer. But I will say I've been doing it for 30 years now. I still prospect and have that on my list because my feeling is I'm paranoid that if I go a day without prospecting I'm going to dry up. So I do do that every single day.

Speaker 5:

One thing I just wanted to say is, when you're prospecting, think about how your prospect day is going. What I mean by that is it's really easy, like with restaurants never, ever, ever, ever, ever call between the hours of 11 and two. Just don't do it. You will look like an absolute rookie and you're not going to get through to who you need to get to. Typically, most restaurant tours are in there actually in the early mornings, eight, nine o'clock or… they're working on Mondays. So just a piece of advice, because we do a lot of restaurants. That's a great little tidbit, but okay, I guess that's all I have.

Speaker 4:

But Let me jump in.

Speaker 4:

You mentioned prospecting and I love Christian because I try to do the same thing and prospecting in terms of trying to do something every day along those lines.

Speaker 4:

And again, prospecting can take shape in different forms, right? Not just the traditional picking up the phone and cold calling, yeah, but to do something every day. And I just wanna mention that there's a really cool tool that this group developed and Jerry really took the lead on it, and it's that tool about knowing your numbers and breaking down if you wanna achieve a certain goal by the end of the year in terms of your production so you wanna add 150,000 of new annual commission Reverse engineering that and figuring out literally what do I need to be doing every day to achieve that, and when you do that and prospecting is obviously a key component of that and when you do that and work with this tool that Jerry developed, you can see pretty quick that how do I put this you don't have to be just an absolute workaholic to achieve even some pretty ambitious goals If you are disciplined enough to make those just picking a number here those eight prospecting calls each and every single day.

Speaker 5:

Then you can get yeah, another thing that I've seen, at least with newer producers, and they get tripped up where they're gonna prospect but they don't put it in their calendar. You absolutely have to knock it out. You have to put it in your calendar. It's you time. Put yourself first. Tell your staff I'm making prospecting calls.

Speaker 5:

Get in the habit of that, no matter how difficult it may or may not be. If you're gonna be successful, you gotta do that, and it not only sets the stage for you to become consistent in your behaviors and create a habit, but it actually will be another way of emphasizing in your mind putting yourself first as a producer. You have to put yourself first, because shit happens during the day, guys, and it's gonna knock you off the center and you're gonna not be doing what you should be doing, which is prospecting and selling insurance. I know I've said this before, but one of my best ways of prospecting is just I've got it in my mind that anywhere I am, I'm looking around. I mean it could be on the sides of trucks, it could be as I'm walking into a restaurant, I'm looking to the business next door. There's a zillion ways to prospect, but you gotta put it first.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, christian, I think you said something. I'll try to be quickly here. Quick here. We did a training for our members earlier this year, I believe Paul, on owning your calendar, and I think Christian just spoke to that. In other words, you really live your life from your calendar and when you block time out to do things, make sure those things are money-making activities. They are not service activities. They are things that either help you obtain or retain insurance clients, and taking a notice of a change of car is not a money-making activities activity. So you've gotta own your calendar.

Speaker 3:

And again, if you join us, which I hope you do, you know these are the kind of things we wanna delve into in detail about how you can do this. And again, as I say a lot of times at the end of these podcasts, just the fact you must be curious, you must be uncomfortable, maybe, with where you are in your career in this amazingly wonderful industry and the fact that you're looking out, you're looking into the areas of how can I get better. That's what we're all about and that's what we wanna do. We wanna help you in this industry. Christian's got a lot of experience in this, matt. So do I. We love the industry so much we wanna help you get better. So you love the industry, you become preeminent in this industry and you have an amazing, amazing career.

Speaker 1:

All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode. It's interesting that each coach had something different to bring to the table in this topic of structuring your day. Ultimately, it is worth taking the time to evaluate your day and really assess where your time, effort and energy is going and really focusing on those revenue-generating activities. So until next time, guys. We'll see you in the next episode of the Preeminent Producer.

Speaker 2:

Podcast. Thanks so much for joining us on this episode of the Preeminent Producer Podcast. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to subscribe, rate and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. That helps others find the show and we greatly appreciate it. Once again, thanks for joining us and we'll catch you in the next episode of the Preeminent Producer Podcast.