Producers, it’s that time of year again when things are starting to wind down, which means you need to ramp up. As producers, we must maintain momentum going into the new year. So today, I’m going to talk to you about five things producers should be doing as we get closer and closer to the end of the year.
We are nearing another year’s end, which happens every single year. The holidays come around and feel a little bit sluggish, we have the tryptophan of the business world dragging us down, but we can’t do it as producers. We have to finish the year strong. So today, I want to talk to you about several things that every producer should be doing as we move toward the end of the year. The first thing is to fine-tune your business plan and update your numbers as we move into a new year. Now, if you wrote a business plan last year, that’s great, good for you. You’re already ahead of the curve because most people don’t see any reason to do that, but it was only good for last year. So you’ve got to go in and update the numbers because that will dictate the behaviors you use over the course of the new year.
The second thing you need to do in conjunction with freshening up your business plan is to revisit your ideal prospects. You have to know that you are staying in your lane and putting critical mass in those ideal prospects you identified going into the current year. If carrier appetites have changed or pricing has spiked, and it looks like it’s going to be much more difficult for you to gain entry and deliver the value proposition to those people, you may need to course correct and determine that next year you’re going to use different ideal prospects. Essential for you to do that. The other thing you need to do is go back and look at your pipeline. Come on man; you can’t just let your pipeline collect a bunch of stuff over the course of the year. It’s like going into a manufacturing facility that doesn’t ever do any high cleaning and seeing, “Oh my gosh, there’s like three inches of dust on the rafters. This place can spontaneously combust at any moment.” You wouldn’t do that if you were running a manufacturing facility. Don’t do that in your pipeline.
You have to purify your pipeline constantly to ensure you’re not putting garbage in the top. When you do, it’s a major distraction for you to focus on those ideal prospects that should be in there. I’ve said it many times; I am not a big fan of the sales funnel. I want you to have a sales cylinder. If you have the right ideal prospect and only put those in, you should see stuff coming out the bottom at almost the same rate. You’re putting it in at the top. It’s essential to look at that at the end of the year.
 The fourth thing I want you to do is I want you to phone a friend. Find somebody in the industry that you can be accountability partners with or someone who may have more tenure. But also find someone newer in the industry that you’re willing to be a mentor to in the next year. While it’s good to receive from other people, it’s never going to feel as good as if you give to others. And by being a mentor, you’ll help somebody flatten that learning curve and get up to speed much quicker. I think you should do both. The last thing, number five, that every producer should do between now and the end of the year is prospecting. Don’t get sluggish. Don’t get lazy. I think it’s so easy for people to say, “Circle back after the holidays.” No. Let’s talk about this right now. Everybody will be slowing down, and we will come up with the preconceived notion that people don’t want to meet; they don’t want to talk about insurance. Guess what? That’s not true.
People who slow down have more time to give you their undivided attention. So why wouldn’t we be going full force? Now, I’m not advocating that you go out and get in front of somebody on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day or even Black Friday either. But every other workday in between now and the end of the year aside from those is fair game. And the people that are going to win big in the new year are the people who understand you have to keep prospecting so that you don’t lose that momentum and you don’t run out of opportunities. If you could do those five things between now and the end of the year, next year, you’re going to kill in commercial insurance.
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