Sell Better By Staying Objective When Big Deals Get Emotional

We break down how a new independent agent can win the first 90 days by simplifying carrier and tech choices, then scaling with discipline instead of chaos. Bradley Flowers shares the mindset shifts that protect your agency’s long-term value while improving sales performance, inbound marketing, and client retention. 
• choosing a small set of strong auto and home carriers early 
• avoiding “whack-a-mole” agency software that does not integrate 
• evaluating franchise, aggregator, and cluster contracts by the exit clause first 
• treating big deals and acquisitions like investments to avoid emotional mistakes 
• using constraints and compressed goals to raise sales expectations 
• building inbound demand with content, positioning, and brand consistency 
• driving local SEO with Google reviews and simple A/B testing 
• redesigning insurance customer experience using the Tesla service model 
• replacing generic welcome gifts with personalized “Portal Pure” moments 
Just Google Bradley Flowers Portal Insurance. 

How to Reach out Bradley Flower:

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Complimentary Edwards Consulting Session: https://calendly.com/jordan-edwardsconsulting/30min 

Transcript

Recording Started

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Yeah, I got a special guest here today. We have Bradley Flowers. He's a nationally recognized insurance agency owner and a business enthusiast. He's the founder and CEO of Portal Insurance with locations in Mobile, Alabama, and Atlanta, Georgia. Top he's a top independent insurance agency owner in the U.S. He's also married and has three beautiful children. Bradley, welcome to the hashtag Clockedin Podcast. The first question is if you were a new agent, how would you set yourself up for success in the first 90 days?

SPEAKER_04 1:33

So that that's a really tough question. I don't know that I would do it any differently than I did it. But I tell every new independent agency owner, especially, is most most independent most startup independent agencies are people who are formerly on the captive side and they come over to independent. And I think one mistake two mistakes that they really make is you know, you're on the captive side and things are a little bit more controlled, right? And now all of a sudden you're independent and the world is your oyster. And people, I think, go a little bit crazy in two ways. They go crazy and they get appointed with every single insurance carrier under the sun, if they assuming they can, they sign up for every piece of technology under the sun. And I think both of those things are a bad way to do that. The the carrier side of things, I tell people, especially on personal lines, you need like three good auto carriers and three good home carriers, and that's it, right? I think too many people they start out with way too many carriers, and they spin their wheels a lot in the beginning. And then there's also the angle of keeping keeping all those carriers happy, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:56

I was gonna say, because now you're getting into like decision fatigue and for sure.

SPEAKER_04 3:02

And and the thing is too, is sure once you scale up, you're gonna have more carriers and things like that. And I look a little bit hypocritical because I bet we're appointed with a hundred, but I'm speaking from experience here. Sure, there's gonna be deals along the way that you lose, but if you weigh those deals by not having a specific carrier, if you weigh those deals against the time that you lose by not knowing XYZ carrier, and you have to figure out how to quote it and what's their appetite and things like that. I think it more than makes up for that. I also think the amount of deals you lose because you don't have XYZ carrier is a lot lower than people think. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 3:45

Like we especially when you present it this or that. Yeah, no one's ever gonna go off the menu. I'm gonna have a steakhouse, I want steak or lobster, and then they're like, Can I please have a pasta dish?

SPEAKER_04 3:56

Right, exactly. Well, it's like we so we went to a on a carrier trip for a carrier that we represent that we didn't put a ton of business with because we had better options. And the agency, they had like an award ceremony there, and the agency that won was like 15 miles from my office, and we we had never heard of them. And we got to look in, like, I was like, Well, I've got to do a little bit of research on this person, and they had one carrier, that carrier, and they wrote like a couple million dollars in premium for a carrier that we had, but we put it with us, and it's like it just goes to show like if you do good at selling, you're gonna be able to help people, you know what I mean? And then on the technology side of things, that's really the bad one because you know, you go from not having any options whatsoever other than the one you're provided, and now you have all of these like tech tools you can sign up for. And I think people sign up for too much technology that doesn't fully integrate, yeah. And you end up with what I call a whack-a-mole problem. Like you solve this problem, but you create another one over here because these two tools aren't talking to each other, and then they also get like super oversaturated in the amount of tools they're using as it relates to like customer experience and client communication and things like that. And all of that stuff is important, but you don't need it in the beginning. Like when we started our agency, I had an agency management system, a phone system, and an e-signature platform. That was it. And and I I often said in that first year, once we become profitable, then we're gonna layer on these other tools that like make our lives easier and add to the customer experience, but you've got to be profitable first. The only other person I've seen that did sign up for every tool that it worked out was my good buddy Scott Howell. When he went independent, he actually signed up for every tool under the sun, but signed no contracts. And he had the discipline to say, I'm gonna sign up for everyone and then call the ones that don't fit what we're trying to do. I think that's another way, but you just have to make sure you have that discipline. And then outside of that, I know I said there's two things. I'm gonna add a third. Outside of that is especially when you're going independent, you have to be very, very mindful and very, very careful of the aggregator, franchise, market access contracts you sign. Everybody wants carrier contracts. Too many people, when they're interviewing aggregators or clusters or franchises or whatever you want to call it, too many people when they're interviewing them, they start with, what carriers can you get me access to? And then they it's like they stop reading the contract. Right? When really what you should do is start with the exit clause and work your way backwards and overall find something that fits what you need. Like I put these groups into three categories. Okay, you've got franchises, you've got aggregators and clusters, and you have market access. Okay, so starting at the top, you've got most helpful to least helpful. Yeah, most restrictive to least restrictive, yeah. So it's like a trade-off. You know what I mean? Like if you want a ton of help, you're going to have to that's gonna come with some restrictions, right? If you don't need a lot of help, that's gonna come with less restrictions, but you're not, you know what I mean? So it really comes down to like what do you what do you want? You know what I mean? Yeah, I feel like so many agencies, dude, signed some of these cluster agreements, these aggregator agreements, and they basically own them. You know, I tried to buy an agency a few years ago that I couldn't buy. This is a huge agency, and they couldn't leave this aggregator unless the purchaser signed a contract with the aggregator. I'm like, no, that's like taking a crazy tax deduction. Like the taxes don't go away, you're just kicking it down. Now it becomes my problem. You know what I mean? These guys had a huge agency that they could not sell, it was basically worthless.

SPEAKER_02 8:05

That's horrible. And this is why I always try to help everyone whenever I coach anyone. Look at the end of mine. Like, what do you actually want?

SPEAKER_04 8:13

Here's the thing, you have to look at things as an investment. And anybody who is super well versed in investing is what's your exit, what's your out, right? And it like that's probably like the biggest differentiator, I think, in me and other agency owners is I look at my agency as a company that I own, not the company that I own. I look at it almost as an investment because you have to approach things objectively and take the emotion out of it. Like I had an agency owner call me a couple years ago and he had an agency on the hook that wanted to sell to him. And he's like, You got any advice for me? I said, I have one piece of advice. He's like, What's that? I said, do not fall in love with the deal. You look at it as an investment, not end all be all. If you fall in love with it and you're not willing to walk away, emotion gets involved. And when emotion gets involved, the person who's the most emotional is gonna lose. Yeah, and so two days later, he called me back and he was like, Man, I'm devastated. I was like, What's going on? He's like, that the guy ended up trying not to sell, and now my feelings are hurt and I'm all upset. And he's like, and I got emotional, like, yeah, you did, you got emotional. Whereas if you approached it just like an investment, you know, like if I'm gonna buy some Tesla stock today at a certain price and I miss my window and the stock goes up, like I'm just like, okay, we'll wait on it again. You know what I mean? I think too many people approach things like they get so involved, and don't get me wrong, like we all I do that sometimes, but you have to try your best to recognize when you're being emotional and when you're not.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

And it comes down to an expectation game there. Yeah, a lot of people have an expectation. Like, I was just coaching someone and he's like, Oh, I got this job coming up. Like, I might be able to get this new job. And I'm like, What if what if the job doesn't happen? Like, are you gonna be devastated and upset and sad and lose all the progress he made? Like, and yeah, same things with big deals, same things with any deals when you're sitting there and you think you have this thing in the bag.

SPEAKER_04 10:02

The reason that guy got disappointed is because his expectations were like, Oh man, I'm gonna double my size, and now he's he started thinking about the other side, yeah, started thinking about what this would do for us rather than just looking at like dollar and cents, here's what this means. And when you look at things that way, even like clients and stuff, like when you look at things that that way, you can almost see the bad side that you wouldn't see otherwise. You know, like like I remember our first year in business, we had this insure, this this prospect, the the deal was three million dollars in premium, right? Okay, and the guy looked at me, and at the time our agency wasn't even a million in premium, it was like a couple months in business, right? Oh wow, so 300,000 in revenue, give or take. And he and I did have an employee at the time who's still here that had was well versed in this niche. And he looks at me and he says, What are you gonna do different than the agency we're with? And I leaned up in my chair and I said, I'm gonna hire an employee with the revenue that I make from your deal that's only gonna deal with you. I'm basically gonna hire you an insurance assistant. And it was like one of those, he was like, Okay, you know, type of person that really like respected that or that that resonated with him. And we ended up not getting the deal. And then now looking back, it would have been a it would have been terrible. Like it would have been awful because now, like this one deal is 98% of my revenue, and I live or die based on what this person does, and probably would have gotten a little bit comfortable on the revenue and not grown as fast.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

Because then you also have this, yeah, because now you have this new identity, and this happens to a lot of us with our bank accounts where we we have our bank account and it's at 5,000, then it goes to 25,000, then it's 50,000, then it's a hundred thousand and five hundred, and people don't realize, oh my god, it went from 500 to 300, and you're like, I'm broke. What happened? Yeah, you never really had that 500, like raised your threshold.

SPEAKER_04 12:08

Yeah, well, it's it's like so. Have you ever heard the the you know, the have you read the book Profit First? So it talks about like right when you when you get a new tube of toothpaste, yeah, you put the big old glob on there, but as you you use the toothpaste, now you're squeezing out just as much as you need. And I relate that to a story that I have. So I had a buddy who started his agency the same, like the same month I did, right? Oh wow. And I started with$25,000 cash. He started with$300,000 cash. He got investors.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 12:44

And I remember back then thinking, man, we could grow so much faster with$300,000, right? And two or three years into it, he decided to sell his agency. And I was interested in buying it. So I got the financials, we're the exact same size. And I think the difference is is when you are bootstrapped and you only have a very specific amount of money, you don't spend money and do things out of convenience that you don't need. And I think when you do start with a bunch of money, it's like, oh yeah, we can pay this person ten thousand dollars more. Whereas when you don't have that extra nest egg, like you're forced to figure out how to solve the problem in the with the tools that you have, not just throwing money at it.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

You know, yeah, you get very resourceful. Yeah, well, it's like happening.

SPEAKER_04 13:39

Elon Elon has said a lot, you know, if you give somebody two months to solve a problem or do a project, they're gonna take the two months. If you take tell them two weeks, they're gonna figure out a way to get it done in two weeks.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it's it's it's very, very true. And you you start to look at it and then you start to realize like, how does this pressure actually help the sales team? Like, how are my people actually gonna start doing better if I provide them, hey guys, you set this goal for six months, let's see if we can compress it to a month. Do you have the ability to take that? Oh my god, I wanted to get 50,000 and I only hit 37,000, but their highest they've ever hit was 22,000. Like, but they still didn't reach the goal, but they should feel amazing because they just did 1.5x more than they've ever done before. It's a very interesting expectations game.

SPEAKER_04 14:27

Well, that's that's kind of what we're trying to do with our sales team now is we had gotten into a we've we've we've kind of settled into our comfort zone with our new business production. It's it's been really good. I mean, I would argue nobody in our area does as much new business as we do in terms of like revenue and premium. Three years ago it was a really good amount, right? But as the business grows, now if you maintain the same production level, you're not growing every year that goes by, you're growing by less. Yeah, and so and I and I think what happened is we got comfortable where we were. Yeah, and and so now we're we're putting a lot of things in place to try and raise everybody's expectations, which has gotten them very uncomfortable in some areas, but you you can do way more, you know what I mean? It's like I had a buddy that I used to play golf with growing up that, and this has happened to anybody that plays golf. I don't know if you play golf, but if you have insurance listeners, probably every one of them plays golf. And I had this buddy, and he would, he would, he was a good golfer, but he would shoot like around par. Well, if he would start a tournament or say a round and he'd be like two or three under through the first five holes, it's the same feeling as when you're driving down the road and a police car gets behind you. You know how to drive, but all of a sudden you're like you're very aware, like I have to be perfect. And then you almost like he would almost like self-sabotage and get back to even par where he's comfortable at. You know, it's the same thing with sales, like, oh, this is where I'm comfortable at. I'm not comfortable in, you know, do I'm comfortable doing like 300k in premium a month. I'm not comfortable doing a million, right? Whereas if you raise that expectation and now all of a sudden this becomes the normal, it's like, oh, okay, I know how to do this. You know, it's like the scene from the movie Hoosiers.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:10

And they go to the big arena and he makes them measure the goal, and he's like, look, this is the same exact size court we play on at home, it's just a bigger arena. Yeah, I tell my my team that I had a producer one time that was working on a million-dollar deal that she ended up closing, and and she was like all wigged out, and we had to bring in like the special ops team to get in there and help her and stuff. And I was like, Look, it's it's this is insurance, it's the same stuff you deal with every day, it's just bigger dollars, you know.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I have a mentor of mine who's 80 years old, and he he told me, he's like, Jordan, whether it's ten dollars or ten billion dollars, it's just more zeros. Don't worry about it, it's all the same stuff.

SPEAKER_04 16:49

And granted, there's some complexities that come with bigger stuff, but it's it's I think what it is, as far as insurance goes, it's like it's just harder to close. You know what I mean? There, there's more things can go wrong. You got more competitors eyeing it versus like a thousand dollar deal, you know, but fundamentally it's the exact same thing.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

I think it's more of also the mental model of like like you said, this girl came in, she wants a closed million-dollar deal, she looks at the commission, she goes, This is gonna be awesome. Expectation. And now we've been talking about it for months, and we're like, where's the deal? And it's like that's what happens on a thousand dollar deal. You're like, ah, I'll grab another one. But but that becomes comes from the abundance that you have, like the more people that you're servicing, the more clients that you have, you're not so laser focused on this one special one.

SPEAKER_04 17:38

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

So I think that helps a lot of people because when I see any insurance agent or just any salesperson in general, when they're down and out and they're like, Oh, this thing happened, I'm like, you don't have enough clients, you don't have enough deals, brother. Like, I'm gonna be honest with you, don't feel bad or good about this, you just don't have enough.

SPEAKER_04 17:56

Yeah, and it's like I'm not a huge fan of of Grant Cardone for a lot of reasons, but like one thing that he said that really sticks is you should have 10 deals going for everyone that you want. Yeah, and that way you really don't care. And back to approaching things objectively, if you actually don't care if you get it or not, then you increase your chances of getting it. Oh I remember one time I was in a car with my my now wife, who was my girlfriend then, and this customer called me about insuring a rental property, and and I don't remember exactly what I said, but I was communicating in a way like she was doing me a favor. Yeah, like, yeah, yeah, I'm I I'll take a look at that. Like, you know what I mean? Like stuff like that. I remember I hung up and and my wife was like, You make it sound like it's a privilege to do business with you, and I said, It is. And if you give that, if you give off that that vibe without being arrogant, they it makes them feel like they're getting something that they wouldn't, you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean my good buddy CJ Hudson Piller, when you apply to for a job on his website, instead of saying submit, it says join wait list. Yeah, there is no wait list, right? But it you you you put that I can't this a it's a privilege to be accepted, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 19:16

Framing, yeah. So framing things. So whenever we frame things, it's super, super important because what ends up happening is there's very different ways, right? Like so you could get an insurance client from like cold traffic, or you can get them from warm traffic. And when someone goes, I've seen your podcast, I want to work with you, that's a frame of this is inbound. I have control of inbound, I have control of outbound as well, but they know you more. And then it's another thing, it's another frame when someone you really like validates that person, the frame is even stronger. And when you have that swagger like that, hey, yeah, you're working with the best. It's gonna be it's gonna be a different experience than someone who gets back to you. Hey, we need 72 hours to think about this, right?

SPEAKER_04 20:01

And and what happens to when it comes to like creating whether it's creating content or or let's just say like building a brand, however you do that, right? That's like all encompasses everything, and you're able to generate that inbound, the longer you do it, the easier it gets. Yes, because uh like to to use like a recruiting example, so I was given a talk recently to a group of agents on uh our specific recruiting strategy, and it involves a lot of outreach, right? Yeah, well, my first three years in business, I was having to spend the first three paragraphs of the outreach explaining who we were and what our mission was.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:49

Now I don't have to do that because we have a brand here locally, and in fact, and this is not me bragging in any way, shape, or form. In fact, a lot of times the reaction when I reach out to somebody I'm recruiting is OMG, I'm so honored that you guys would consider me. I've seen a lot about you, da da da, like we know you're the best, et cetera. And so I tell that to people like it's the case with prospecting, it's the case with recruiting, it's the case with carriers, that the longer you can build that brand and become that expert in your field, the easier it gets. Because now, even though they may or may not be coming to you, they already know who you are.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

It it's it's very, very ironic too, because like if you're a new person in the business, you think if you get one deal, like that is the the win all, right? So last week I gave a presentation to an insurance firm, and the only reason it worked was because he knew the other guy that I was working with, and then there's another person who's like, Oh, I saw your presentations. Like, do you want to present? And it's like, is it surprising that it's all happening at the same time? No, it's because once one person validates, then another person validates, and another person validates, and you can feel that with someone on like, yeah, I know exactly what you're asking for and I know how to do that. Let me do that for you. Yeah, and it's funny because as an insurance like agent, you do a one million dollar deal, you you zone comes for you to two million. I got it, no worries. I someone comes for 500, I got you. And it's just a confidence that comes from these people. So, how has the content and podcasts, because it's a pretty regulated industry, so how has that helped you in a way that's niches you out in a different way? Because I think something really unique about you is that you told me before you're like, I enjoyed business. Like it's a different frame.

SPEAKER_04 22:38

Yeah, so so I it's it you mentioned the compliance regulation angle. So it's not quite as we're lucky in that it's somewhat regulated, but it's not as regulated as like financial services and stuff like that. So a funny story, one time I was given a presentation on social media to a group of financial advisors, and anytime I Talking to a group that's more regulated than we are, I always open with, Hey, what I'm about to show you, 80% of it's probably not going to be compliant. It's your job to figure out what can work or to figure out the compliant version. And I get off stage and this guy walks up to me, and I don't remember his name, but he says, Hey, I'm such and such. I'm the commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Nice to meet you. Great job. I was like, Oh, okay. I might want to be a little more legalistic on my disclaimer. But so I got started doing social media in 2015-ish. And I was a captive agent then, and I recognized, so like with marketing, I think there's one of two ways to win in marketing outsmart your competition or outspend your competition. One obviously is much more expensive than the other. And in 2015, nobody was doing social media.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:48

And all of my competitors, the companies they work for, were very strict as it relates to compliance on social media. The company I worked for at the time had zero compliance on social media. They might as well have not even known it existed. So I looked at my competitors. My competitors are doing radio, billboards, TV, newspaper, commercials, all that kind of stuff. And none of them are doing social media. And I'm like, well, this thing over here is free, and I'm not, I'm not, I don't have any compliance. So I just like went gangbusters on social media. And a lot of it was like figuring out what worked, figured out what didn't, trial and error. My like coming out moment was there's an Irish pub two blocks from what is now my office, and I did a Snapchat Geo Geotag, which is like the little thing that's like a logo for the city you're in. And Mobile didn't have one at the time. So it was a St. Patrick's Day party. There's like 5,000 people there. So I did a Snapchat geo tag. It's like the height of Snapchat. And and that that got like 25,000, 50,000 impressions or something like that. And and with Snap, that was like people using it and their people seeing it. And then we ended up selling some insurance from that. So I was like, okay, I've got to, I've got to go where the attention is. And so I I started transitioning late 2017, early 2018 to doing just like generic, not generic, but like business content. Like not like not, here's what uninsured motorists means, or here's what a workers comp experience mod is. And I think that kind of stuff is valuable too, but you're not going to get the attention from that. So it was all like around like doing a podcast like this. I'd have a camera go and grab a clip, and it was all like business content. And I remember early on in the days of Portal when I was doing a lot of insurance thought leader-ish type stuff, I would have some people that would like sort of criticize me like, well, you're just you're making content for the insurance industry. You're not making content for your clients. And we sold one metric button of insurance from that. Because people would see, and that's a very technical mathematical term. People would I think there's a few reasons for it. One, people would see it, and they would be like, Oh, this person is teaching other insurance agents how to be successful. I want to go there. Business people would see it and be like, Wow, this is really solid advice. These people, this guy's sharp. You know what I mean? And so my whole strategy has almost always been not talking to the clients, talking to the industry. And then the people see that. And then what happens is you like you slowly build up your brand and your area as like this guy that does this or this gal that does this. You know what I mean? And that creates inbound traffic. The other angle is if you become a thought leader in your field, you get access to things before other people do, and or you learn things that other people haven't learned yet. So, like where it comes to like SEO and website, and like our agency, and this is like a such a stupid simple strategy. Like, our agency has more five-star reviews than any insurance agency in the state of Alabama on Google. Oh, wow. Okay. I think number two is my wife. I'm not 100% sure. She's in the like the top five, and then everybody else has got like 10 reviews. Yeah, because we get a ton of traffic just from that. And I like look at my competitors and I'm like, guys, like you didn't have to listen to me talk. Like, look what I'm doing. Like, okay, hmm, this guy's a thousand, we have four. Maybe if we went to 50, that would benefit us. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_02 27:44

Well, here's the challenge that a lot of people get in that I see is the producer versus the consumer mindset. Yes, we're all on the same frame, but we just love to consume. And it's like producing's really scary. Producing, I don't know. I don't know. What if someone judges me? What if they say, dude, I literally just had a flat tire, had the guy come, he literally, I didn't even know this was a thing. He came to my place, was gonna fix the tire. He goes, bro, your tires are kind of shot. Like, let's get you new tires. I'm like, Well, what do I do with the car? He's like, I'm gonna take them off, I'm gonna lift your car up, and then we're gonna move it back. He comes back in less than an hour, new tires on. At the end of the call, he goes, Hey, you got a Google review? Like, can I fill out your Google thing? Yeah, it's that easy. And I looked at a really nice one. I was like, come on, bro.

SPEAKER_04 28:29

Like I had a competitor one time that was like, Oh, I know these reviews are just your friends. I'm like, okay, first of all, I do not have a thousand friends. Secondly, yeah, they're all real. All we do is we ask and we A-B test when in the sales cycle do we ask. Yeah, originally it was 14 days, then we noticed we didn't get as many, so I can let's move to 10. Okay, now it's now it's day three. Right? We're gonna do it day three, and we're gonna, and it's it's like the and and that's like a really stupid simple example.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

But I think when you that's that's really important for people to realize that when you and and Bradley kind of said it a few times, but you have to iterate what you're doing. What he means by that is look at the data, see what works, see what doesn't work, make a decision, move on, try again, A-B test. Because if you're not constantly testing, you're gonna you're gonna lose.

SPEAKER_04 29:18

Too many people are scared uh to try things because they're scared. So on the Google review example, yeah. So I had an agency owner in Auburn, Alabama call me one time, a friend of mine, and he said there was another agency owner that worked for the same company.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:38

And he's like, Man, this guy's just kicking my butt. And I'm like, okay, let's let's look, I try to look at things very pragmatically. Like, what can we see on the surface? And this guy paid me for a consulting call. What can we fix on the surface that's like low-hanging fruit easy before we dive deep into like like what are some symptoms we can fix first before we fix the disease? Let's get those handled, show you, and then let's dive into like how you're doing things, right? And I don't want anybody to read this like a brilliant strategy is Google reviews. That's like one one hundredth of it. And it's like, okay, this guy that you're saying's kicking your butt has 300 five-star Google reviews. You have in zero. So I said, I want you to spend if you go from zero reviews on Google to five, Google rewards you because they're like, oh, this person's paying attention to us now, right? And so I was like, we're gonna do another call in two weeks. I want you to have five five-star reviews. Just ask five customers that you know love you. So we go back two weeks later, he's got one. And and it hit me in that moment, the thing I was about to say earlier is I think some people are scared to try things that may work because they may not be as good as they think they are. You know what I mean? But I'll tell you my flat tire story. So this kind of folds into the conversation as it relates to like customer experience, right? So, like, literally, if you're listening to this in your insurance agency, literally zero people that call your office today are excited about talking to you. There's no, there is no single thing in the whole insurance transaction from getting a quote to filing a claim to canceling to everything that people are excited about. The only way we are not the least favorite thing they're doing that day is if they happen to be renewing their driver's license, right? Nobody's excited about talking to insurance people. And so about a month ago, I was in Pensacola, which is like an hour and 20 minutes from here, and my low tire light came on. I drive a Tesla, a low tire light, which if you know, if you know, you know a flat tire and a Tesla is not good because they do not have spare tires. And so I I get out, and sure enough, there's like a it was like actually like a bone from a piece of roadkill in my tire.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04 31:50

And this is a Sunday, okay. So I get on there and I Google 24-hour tire place. I see one that's open that's about maybe five minutes away. And I'm like, okay, I think I'll have enough air to get there, right? Well, six minutes away was the Tesla service center. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go to the 24-hour tire place. Worst case scenario, I can go to the Tesla service center, leave it there, Uber home, right? My wife's at home with the my young kids, she can't come get me. If I call my father-in-law, I'm gonna have to wait an hour, so I'll just Uber home, right? So I go to the 24-hour tire place, again, advertise all over the place. 24 hours, I get they're closed, right? Of course, they're closed. I drive very slowly to Tesla Service Center. I'm about two minutes away. I order my Uber because I know an hour Uber drive is gonna take a minute before somebody connects to that ride. And I pull into the Tesla Service Center and I see the lights are on, and I'm like, oh, they must be open. And I was like, I thought I was like, okay, car dealership, of course they're open. So I park the car and I walk in and I tell the girl, I'm like, hey, explain what happened. She's like, yeah, service department's not here, you'll have to leave it here. And I said, That, yeah, that's fine. And I was about to say I got an Uber ordered, and she's like, Do you want a car? Like, what do you mean? She's like, just let me see your driver's license. Boom. All right, here's here's your driver's license back. The key's in your phone. I got you a brand new Model Y out there waiting on you. And so I I get in, I walk up, it's connected to my phone, the car opens. I'll get in because it's connected to my phone, the car has all my stuff in it. Like the like the app. Yeah, yeah. The mirrors and everything. And so I'm driving home and I'm like elated. I'm like, this is so fun. I'm in a brand new car that has bells and whistles that mine does not have. And now I have this really cool story. It delayed me maybe 20 minutes, and that was only because I had to drive slow. And I thought about it on the way home. I was like, you know, other than like major life events like deaths and stuff like that, like a flat tire is one of the like top 10 inconveniences. Maybe the most top 10 if you filter it through conveniences that most everybody's going to deal with at some point in life. And they just turn this from a really bad day to like, I'm actually kind of glad it happened. Dude. And I think we need to think about that in our insurance agencies. I don't know what the answer is, but I would love for somebody to listen to this and tell me, like, hey, I have this idea. Like, how can we take this experience of dealing with insurance that literally nobody likes? And how can we turn it into something positive? I did have one guy talk about this on my podcast, and Scott, the co-host of my podcast, he does he does something similar where there's this problem with auto insurance where somebody has an accident, the body shops are backed up, the rental car, the insurance company only pays for your rental car, and most of the time only a few a certain amount of days. So he actually has a vehicle that his agency owns that he'll just give customers to drive. So that's like one like example. Granted, there's a ton of liability that comes with that, but I think it's what we need to think about because as companies like Tesla, as companies like Amazon, as companies like Apple become more and more companies copy those, like that's what consumers are going to expect.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

Well, depending on how much money is made on the deal and how much you're willing to put out. I mean, a really interesting one would be hey, you came back to us, you have the issue, it's not going to be ready for a day or two. Here's a$50 Uber credit, so you can Uber back and forth to work. Something like that.

SPEAKER_04 35:27

And I've actually had them do that, do that for me too when they didn't have a car. I did it wasn't a flat tire, but I was getting my car serviced and they gave me an Uber credit. Yeah. 100%. Stuff like that, you can certainly do for sure. And you have to make sure it's legal and compliant. There's no rebating, or you know, you got to go through all those filters, but there's there's some that there's things that we can do to make things a little bit better for our customers and turn it into a positive experience. I'll tell you one thing we started doing in the last year is we and I can go a few over if you want to, you just text me. But okay, is we uh we always had these new client welcome gifts we would send out. The typical like branded box with the t-shirt and the and the coffee mug for whatever carrier sent us a bunch of coffee mugs, right? And and we would only send these out to people over a certain amount of revenue. We had actually exactly zero people in three years of doing this tell us thank you or even acknowledge it whatsoever. Yeah, and these boxes are costing me like 50 bucks, right? Yeah, and so we scrapped it in uh September, October of last year. And uh it was two things going on. One, we scrapped it because it was like it was almost like saying thank you for your money. You know, it just didn't, you know, whatever. And and the other reason was is you know, as we gr we have grown, I noticed a little bit the team getting a little transactional. And it's easy to do that, right? And so what we did is we rolled out a program called Portal Pure, pure stand admittedly, I heard this somewhere else. Portal Pure and Pure stands for personalized, unexpected, realistic, personalized, unexpected, realistic, and extraordinary. Okay, and so a real and extraordinary. So what the idea is is I want every single person who's on the phones as they're talking to our customers, I want you to dig a layer deeper with the customer and find out something personal about them. It may it could be something as extreme as they just had a parent pass away, down to oh, they really like Led Zeppelin and all the stuff in between. And we're gonna send them some kind of gift that's associated with that thing, right? So if they had a major medical thing, we might send them a care package, right? If their daughter is doing trying out for softball and is really nervous, we may send something related to that, right? We had one guy, we sent him a Led Zeppelin coffee mug, and so we just send these out, and not only is it cheaper, but literally every single person we've sent one of these to has been like over the moon. Like we went from no responses to everybody responded. We're actually collecting those responses up and we're gonna put them in like a little book to give to everybody. And but what we do, what we what we tailor, what we layer on with this is we have a weekly meeting where we show everybody's numbers on the board. And one of the things we cover is portal peer, like, okay, who has this portal peer moments? And so it's got the team in this almost like peer pressure, like, oh, I have to give one. Well, then what's happening is they're almost like it's forcing them to go a layer deeper with the customers. And so not only do we have this like really cool moment, I think at scale it's gonna have a positive impact on retention because we're building these relationships and they know that we know that the daughter's doing ballet lessons.

SPEAKER_02 38:54

I love that. Yeah, because what it ends up doing is it's giving something when they're not expecting it, it lands a lot better and it kind of blows them away. And some of the different things I've seen, I've Gary Vanderchuk talked about it when he was doing his wine thing. He said one of the guys was a huge like football fan, and they would sign the autograph and send him the autograph. He's like, I only made 50 bucks. I sent him a 200 jersey two weeks later.

SPEAKER_04 39:20

You referred a big account, yeah. I so I did that back in my captive days a few times, and I remember this one guy was a huge Julio Jones fan. Not Julio Jones, not Julio Jones, TJ Yeldon, Alabama, Alabama running back, and I found a TJ Yeldon autograph for five dollars on eBay, and I mailed it to him. This was over 10 years ago. That guy is still a client of mine today.

SPEAKER_02 39:44

He's following me everywhere I've been because it's the coolest thing ever, and people, the unexpected nature of it is so amazing. Like I do it with some of my clients. Like, as soon as someone becomes a client, I'll send them a book, give them access to my portal, all this kind of stuff. But if you can hit them with something super unique where it's like, I got you, it lands so much better.

SPEAKER_04 40:04

There's a there's a company right now, a tech company in insurance, that's doing a campaign, book a demo with us and get a free pair of AirPods. And and I was talking to a buddy about it the other day, and I'm like, that comes across as really desperate, yeah, and kind of cheesy, and the only people you're gonna get are people that can't afford AirPods. A better way to do this, granted, this would be more expensive, a better way to do this would be to mail me AirPods and then say, would you mind doing a demo with us? And I'll tell you right now, Bradley Flowers responds to less than five percent of demo requests. But if somebody, if somebody mailed me a pair of AirPods, I'm gonna give them what I call a mercy demo, and then it's your job to impress me, you know what I mean? And that's happened a lot. There's been a lot of people that I'm just like, man, I feel bad. These people followed up so much. I'm gonna give them a demo, and then I'm like, oh wow, this is really good. You know what I mean? And so it's that there, I think there's there's too many people with stuff like this focus so much on the dollars and the cents, yeah, or the time, like us with the customer welcome gift.

SPEAKER_02 41:17

Like, like I had that idea before, but it's it's just easier to send the portal t-shirt and uh whatever it's and you start to prioritize it, and that's where people are missing the ball is because what is the most important thing to you and what is the most important thing here? Because to change up the systems takes a minute and it takes some time, and to pass it on to the team and to perform well, it it's it's challenging. So, yeah, Bradley, where can people learn more about you? Where can they learn more about Portal and what you got going on?

SPEAKER_04 41:46

Just Google Bradley Flowers Portal Insurance. I'm pretty active. I don't put as much content out as I used to, mostly because I'm busy. Um, and and I I used to hire full-time videographers to do content, and I got tired of dealing with creatives. But you know, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter. I'm probably the most active on LinkedIn, I would say. But yeah, pretty much anywhere you find anybody else.

SPEAKER_02 42:15

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 42:16

I I always am uncomfortable answering that question.

SPEAKER_02 42:19

I can tell. You're so confident everywhere else, and you're like, I'm good, I'm good. Just I'm amazing.

SPEAKER_04 42:25

Well, I just the word influencer makes me want to throw up in my mouth. And we we've gotten into this culture where you know everybody, everybody's a content creator now. Everybody's trying to be a thought leader, and and I've gotten I've gotten increasingly more spicy online with some of my replies because there's so much bad advice out there that everybody's trying to be a thought leader, you know what I mean? And so it's it's almost like it's almost like a zigwin zag. You know what I mean? Like now it used to, it was like nobody was creating content. I was doing a ton, now everybody's doing like I'm gonna do less but be more intentional. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 43:02

100, 100, and that's where it lands. I appreciate the time, Bradley.

SPEAKER_04 43:07

Absolutely, man. This is a lot of fun.