471. HIGHLIGHT: How Agents Are Using AI to Triple Their Close Rate

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Watch the full episode on YouTube: HERE

What's in this episode:
Michael shares the story of one agency that took its close rate from 7% to 23% in a week and a half by making one change to how it held its team accountable. It's not a new closing script or a magic sales tactic. It's the power of assumption paired with real accountability, and Michael breaks down exactly what changed and why any insurance agency can put it to work starting today.

[0:00] The 7% to 23% close rate stat that opens this episode
[0:27] Why this highlight is all about AI in insurance agencies
[0:56] How a husband and wife agency customized Agency Coach AI
[2:51] What makes Ava's coaching objective and unbiased
[3:42] Prioritizing quality conversations over fast ones
[4:21] Catching tone and sentiment cues humans tend to miss
[5:03] Solving training gaps across multiple agency locations
[6:24] How producers have responded to Agency Coach AI feedback
[7:20] The translation feature that helped a bilingual producer
[7:48] Turning Ava's feedback into friendly team competition
[9:00] Refining sales processes based on what Ava uncovers
[10:19] The call about a 7% close rate that started it all
[11:48] The power of assumption close explained
[12:23] Why the coach now only checks one part of every call
[13:14] Close rate jumps from 7% to 23% in a week and a half
[13:33] Why the closing technique isn't the real reason for the jump
[14:25] The real lesson: the checker gets what the checker checks

Watch the full episodes:
416. How a Husband-Wife Agency Uses AI to Scale Without Adding Managers: https://youtu.be/Ev6Apvtb5lM

428. 7% to 23% Close Rate: The Small Change That Made It Happen
https://youtu.be/IES3ihMMIig

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

If your team has a closing problem, if you do this one thing right now, this will help you. Power of assumption. In a week and a half, their closing rate went from 7% up to 23%. A week and a half. In today's highlight episode, it is all about AI and how agents are using it to take their business to the next level. In this episode, you're going to hear about one agency going from a 7% to 23% close rate with one change, one thing they were tracking in their office. And then we have Rockstar agent Steven Mills talking about how he is using agency coach AI and AI in general in his agency to take his team and his agency to the next level. With that being said, let's start the show. You guys have really, really grasped a hold of this and and taken it and made it yours because you have you've created the specific um sales analysis for your sales team. I know that, Lindsay, you were on the Medicare division. So during that season, we had a specific analysis done for those conversations. You've created a specific um analysis for your customer service reps uh now because I know that that's going to be an incentive in the next year for retention effort. So what is your I would be curious what you all find is the biggest advantage of using agent agency coach AI from an ownership perspective. I'll start with that first and I have a follow-up question after that.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Um I think because we don't have, we know we've always recorded our calls and stuff, but you don't have time to go back and and look at this salesperson on this call, here's their weak spot, or maybe this is why the cross sales aren't happening. And and um so doing the agency AI, it does identify those things. Um and the way that we have it set up, it likes a full, well-rounded conversation. We're very um focused on education in the agency on both the PNC side and the Medicare side, that we're not just rushing through the sale. We also want them to understand their coverages, understand their options. And so it is going to downgrade you if you're not fully explaining these things to the client and in a well-educated way. It it'll sometimes even say this agent needs some assistance with understanding the coverages. And so um we've yeah, that's kind of how we've been using it specifically is um just improving those conversations for our salespeople.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

And and identifying even ourselves. Like it's one of the things where what I love about Ava with Coach A is that Ava is very objective. She does not care how long you've been in the business, she doesn't care how good you think you are, she doesn't care uh how many awards you've won, she doesn't care about anything. She is going to listen to you and judge you, and she's going to give you uh really great feedback. And so even now we can go back and look at the calls for our CSRs or our producers. And when someone did a lull, it definitely Ava picks it up. She picks up that they're not listening enough, they're not asking enough questions and gathering enough information, they're not making a sentiment connection. Like Lindsay alluded to, we're less about the speed of a call as much as the quality of a call. We have never been like a not that there aren't some agencies that do amazing work with internet leads or leads. We've been much more of a relationship-driven uh agency. Um, and so we like those deeper connections that are made with people, especially in a day and age when so much is done over the phone or via email, where we may never meet these people in person, the quality of that call becomes even more essential to making a long-term relationship and creating a customer that's going to stay that you can grow with. So I think personally, that's one of the things that I enjoy most about the uh Coach AI is that it picks up on the subtleties, it picks up on intonations and tones and connections, where when if we had to listen to that full call, and I know you guys spent years probably sitting there in the room or out of the room listening to your your staff talking. And after a while, you can kind of become tone-deaf because you just glaze over after like the third hour of calls you're listening to. Whereas now I have a system that, like you said, Michael, I can put a template in of my base expectations for a call and then get a kickback and tell me, okay, they were good here, they were good here, they were good here, we need help here. And as for expansion leadership, that kind of time savings for us, like our time's our most valuable asset.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

So yeah, it's and I do think in the past we have probably lost good employees because we haven't been as good at training employees as we should have at that point, and especially now we have multiple locations. That has created a more difficult situation for us. How do you train someone that you're not there in the same building with every day? Um, and so that those are some of those true things that we probably haven't been all that great at. And so this definitely helps us.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

I would say that's most business owners. Um, like because you have to ultimately choose between growing your business and training your team, and that's a really fine line. And so I love that you guys are really maximizing agency coach to where it sounds like you've got the uh processes in place now for not only accountability, but has freed up your time to more than likely make you more effective, efficient leaders, which is going to allow you to scale. Um, before we before we kind of move into how how you believe this will help you in 26 specifically, I'd be just interested, because we haven't had this conversation, Steven, like what's your like how are how how are your what's your producers? Like what's your feed, what's it what are the producers' feedback with using agency coach, just out of curiosity?

SPEAKER_01 6:15

So it's been it's been all good, but very mixed in the sense of so with our brand new producer, uh, our newest, yeah, like I said, he Isaiah's been really leaning into getting at bats, getting reps, you know, going in there, logging in, doing a live role play, looking at the score, then going back in, doing it again, doing it again, doing it again, until he starts hitting a goal score that he wants to achieve, or till I tell him, you know what, that's better, that's good. Uh, he's been really leaned into it from a different point of view. My more experienced producers, uh, one of them, she was hesitant at first to really embrace it. Uh she did not want to hear what she was doing wrong, or she was afraid that she would get answers that maybe she couldn't overcome. Maybe that there were problems with her. Like I said, uh, she's one of our bilingual producers, like I said. So uh she was a little hesitant on embracing it. Really quickly, she loves it now. Like uh she she gets in there, she goes back, she looks at her scores. Uh, she loves the translation feature that you know it could pick up up to 60 languages. So that's helping her, especially with kind of reviewing what the customer actually said. What was, you know, what was maybe not the words, but what was actually said. Um, so yeah, so they've all embraced it differently, but the feedback we're getting is really positive, but for different reasons. One is, hey, I'm getting some practice now, talking to people, talking to people, talking to people, working my presentation, working objection overcoming. And then on the other side, on the higher side, is how do I get better? Oh, look, this is something that I can do that's gonna make this more effective. Uh, they've all leaned into utilizing the ask Ava of like, okay, if I'm low on sentiment score, Ava, what are some questions I could have asked to create better sentiment? And then, of course, that's one of my favorite features is Ava pops out with some answers, but then shows you where in the conversation I could have integrated that.

SPEAKER_02 8:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

So, yeah, uh the producer feedback has been fantastic. Uh, and of course, within our office, we're highly competitive with all the locations.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

The highest score in this this week on a call. And usually it's me.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

For years, she's thought she's much better on the phone than everybody. We now have perfect data that she's she's great. Lindsay is the winner. Yeah, I'd put her up on the phone against anyone. She's her scores are amazing. But you know, you asked that question though, too. It's like I said, with all the processes we have, this is also helping us refine those processes. Because again, it goes back and finds the flaws for where it's weak. So maybe we change some of the questions, maybe we change some of the process to become better. And that's the goal to always improve.

SPEAKER_02 9:17

Hey, let's take a quick break and talk about something that actually matters in your agency. Carriers are expecting more out of you. Your commissions are getting cut. You're asking your team to do things that they've never been trained to do, and they're underperforming. Now, that's because you don't have a process and you don't have a framework for success. Good news is Weaver Sales Academy just turned eight years old this month. I'm so excited, and we are having a summer sizzle sale right now to where you can save $1,200 right now by signing up and getting started with Weaver Sales Academy. The average agency sees a 40% lift in production by day 90 of working with us. We're able to get brand new hires up and selling on average in about a week's time frame. So let's go ahead, team up, partner up, click the link below, take advantage of that twelve hundred dollar savings, and let's start working together and actually start crushing goals this summer going into Q3 and Q4 so that you do not have to worry about panicking in Q4 during the holiday season because you took action right now. Click the link below, let's get started. Other than that, let's get back to the show. I was on the phone with an agent. This has been about three weeks ago now. So this is this is pretty fresh. And his team was struggling with their close rate. So the close rate was roughly about seven percent. Now, at seven percent, you guys would agree that you have to talk to a lot of people to get business done. I mean, you're talking to what one out of 11 people you quote, you're submitting business. And so he contacted me, he's like, Michael, he's like, something's wrong. He's like, my team is working hard. He's like, I think they're doing the right things. He's like, but our closing rate is just really, really low. And so I started to ask questions just around accountability, like, hey, like, how often are you spot checking them? What do their conversations sound like? What do they sound like in role play? How often are you practicing? And ultimately, um, and just to give you guys an idea, uh, this is a very average agency size. So it's the agency owner, four producers, and one manager slash team lead slash coach, whatever you want to call it. And and all that team lead slash manager slash coach does is manage and coach the team members because the agent um he he knows that that's not his strong suit. His strong suit is not management, his strong suit is not coaching, his strong suit is more leadership, going out, finding leads, trying to get as many leads to the office as possible. And so I give this agent a lot of credit for doing that. But back to the story, is through asking questions, I gave them one task. So I got the I got the whole office on the phone and we talked about the importance of assuming the cell. That's it. The power of assuming the cell, meaning that at the end of every single cell's conversation, you need to go straight into the close. Hey, uh, Mr. and Mrs. Customer, for everything we talked about today, it's gonna be X amount. Do you want to put that on a Visa MasterCard, American Express, or writing an account number? So that is the assumption close. That's the power of assumption. That's all I all I trained them on. And then the team lead, the coach, I was like, hey, I want you to check every single conversation. Every single conversation I want you to check. Not the entire conversation, just the close. Is the team actually assuming the sell? Are they actually asking for the sell? And this agent just happens to use uh our our AI product, so it makes it even easier on them to be able to check uh to make sure their team is doing what they're supposed to do. But hey, even if you're not using agency coach AI right now, for example, to be able to do this, you can do this in your office. Literally, every conversation, if your team has a closing problem, if you do this one thing right now, this will help you. Power of assumption. In a week and a half, their closing rate went from 7% up to 23%. A week and a half. Now, my ego, inner Michael, would be like, man, the power of assumption, they're using the closing technique I taught. That is not the magic bullet, that is not the secret sauce here. As a coach and as a business owner, you hit really have to dissect what actually changed. So, sure, the power of assumption is very powerful, but just by doing that, you could be the worst person in the world, the worst clothes, the worst tonality. It's still gonna help. But without a doubt, the reason why they saw such a substantial increase in a short amount of time is not because of the closing technique I taught them. Let's just get that straight. Get that straight. Any trainer out there that that hangs their hat on that, it has to be deeper. There has to be a deeper level of understanding around what is going on, what actually is happening, and why I wanted to share this with you, and why this episode is called the power of accountability, or that's what I'm talking about. The checker gets what the checker checks. And now the team knows. The team knows that the team lead, that the coach is going to check every single quoting conversation and make sure that they're asking for the sell. He's not even going through the entire conversation to make sure the conversation was done right. He is only checking to make sure that they are assuming the sell in every single conversation. That is not only perceived accountability, that is accountability. That is accountability. That is why they saw their closing rate jump substantially over just a week and a half time frame. Now I know a week and a half of data is a really small amount of time and data, but they are without a doubt going to consistently close more business. Their closing rate is going to stay consistent. Sure, it may drop a little bit after a week and a half of data, but still, it's not necessarily, yes, again, they're asking for the sell every time. That is going to increase your close rate, without a doubt, but they're doing that because they know that the team lead or coach is making sure that they are doing what they're asking them to do. And that's what I want to share with you right now.