Lesson 4: Subject Matter Expert!

Welcome to lesson four of Grassroots Marketing. In this lesson, we’re gonna talk about becoming a subject matter expert. So, it is key that you become a subject matter expert for your target market within your community, not just selling over the phone or, uh, doing a sales event, but within your community, you are known as the go-to person for your target market. So, a subject matter expert is a person who has accumulated significant knowledge in a particular field or topic, and this level of knowledge is demonstrated by the person’s either educational degree licensure and or through years of professional experience within the community or within the subject. So, you want to establish yourself in all of your grassroots marketing efforts as the subject matter expert for the product you’re wanting to sell. Everyone, and we’ve said this, but we’ll continue to say it will beat this drum until you can quote it. Everyone that you know must know what you do and how it can benefit them personally, their family, their clients, and their community.

So many people go into a business and for some reason, it seems to be pervasive in the insurance industry as we go into business, and we expect people to intrinsically know that we sell insurance and they should come to us with all of their questions. But I don’t know a dentist that goes into business and doesn’t do any marketing and doesn’t hang a shingle and doesn’t advertise in the Yellow Pages and everywhere else imaginable. But for some reason in the insurance world, we think that people just automatically know through whatever means necessary that we sell insurance. We have to demonstrate that we’re the subject matter expert. We have to let everybody know in our community, our family everywhere that we go. If you went and polled your family, would they all know what you do and how it could benefit them? If you asked your friends or some of your social engagement, do they know what you do for a living and how it can benefit them and or their family? If any of those people would answer that question, no. We are not effectively doing grassroots marketing. Everybody within our target market, everybody within our sphere of influence needs to know what we do and how it can benefit them.

So, we can do that through educational events. Those take place in in group settings typically. But understand this about educational events and, and we talked in the last lesson about events. And I don’t want to overlook educational events, but understand that they should consistently happen on an individual basis, as well as inviting people into a Medicare 101 or an ACA 101 or life insurance 101. We’re, we’re not just educating the masses, we’re educating people on an individual basis as we introduce our value proposition to individuals in our community, other businesses in our community other professionals that serve the same target demographic that we do. They should all know what we do, what we know, and how it could be a resource for their friends, their family, their clients.

So, our target market is, is not just the clients and the age group that we’re targeting, not just the Medicare eligibles, not just the under 65 population but it’s the, the individuals who also serve that community. So, as we do grassroots marketing, I’m not just looking for a Medicare eligible, I’m looking for someone who works in a business who serves Medicare eligibles, and do they know who we are and what we do. Have we really established ourselves as the subject matter expert in that demographic? One way that we do that is to always think about the value that we’re delivering to our prospective clients, to our community, to our target demographic. Are we delivering value or are we just trying to make a sale? The goal should be that every customer is a happy customer, right? They receive the information that they need, they receive the service that they need, and they view us as the go-to person for whether it’s Medicare or life insurance, whatever it is, they view us as the one person in my community that I should ask my questions to or refer my friends to. So, in order to deliver value, we want to make sure that we conduct ourselves in a way that, uh, isn’t keeping people to come to us as that resource. We wanna be honest. We wanna be transparent. We wanna make sure that we’re not saying what it takes to get the sales. I’ll never be the guy that you know is teaching slick sales techniques. We’re not used car salesmen. We are serving our community. So be honest, be transparent, and listen to your customers, their needs, their concerns, their desires, so that you can properly deliver what they’re looking for. Remember this satisfaction matters. It doesn’t matter if they enrolled in a policy, if they go down the street and they found somebody that gave them what they were looking for, if you gave them a policy, but the agent down the street gave them service, they’re not gonna be a client for very long, and I promise your referral stream is gonna dry up. So, focus on client satisfaction, resolve challenges quickly. We should always be selling the service that we provide that comes alongside of the product that we sell, more focused on the service aspect than I and the sales aspect. And if there is an issue which is going to arise, we live in an imperfect world. There are gonna be challenges. Take them seriously, get them resolved quickly, and offer options, right? It’s not a one size fits all scenario in any insurance application. So, offer options, give, educate them on their options, and then deliver what’s most important to them. That’s where listening comes in.

You can also offer rewards and incentives. We’ll talk about this a little bit more  later on in this lesson. But offer rewards and incentives. Give your clients reasons to have their family and friends do business with you. Be responsive, This should probably be one of the most important things that you already know, but need to be reminded of, is to be responsive when a client reaches out and needs assistance. Provide assistance. That’s the service that we promised when we enrolled the client. And offer personalized customer service. Build a relationship again, know what matters to them, and prioritize the service that you provide to them based on what’s most important to them. Always show gratitude. Be thankful. Be grateful you could have done business with anybody else in our community. I am so glad that you chose to be a part of whatever your agency name is. You’re the, you’re now part of the family. And then always give back to the community. Do community service, donate to charitable organizations and allow that to be seen. Don’t do it to be seen but allow it to be seen. Also, think about this as I deliver value to my clients, am I allowing my clients to distribute that, distribute that value to me? It does not matter what your product is. It doesn’t matter what your value is if there’s not a distribution process in place to get that value out, uh, to additional members and prospects. So allow your clients to distribute your value after you’ve delivered it to them.

So we talked about offering rewards and incentives. You can offer a formalized referral program for your clients. If you refer your family and your friends, this is what I will do for you. So, think about, especially in the senior population. They don’t have to be large monetary incentives. Seniors respond to small tokens of appreciation. It’s kind of the old school way of, of thinking and living is to give small tokens of appreciation along the way, means a lot. They appreciate it and they’ll respond to it. Gift cards, Starbucks gift card, a swag item, a pen with your agency information on it, a t-shirt, a hat, whatever it is that they’re going to appreciate that is gonna keep them sending referrals to you. Keep you front of mind in their thought processes as they engage with their circle of influence to continue to co-incide with your sphere of influence. It’s all a branding opportunity. Your, your clients are living, breathing, walking billboards. Make sure that you give them the information that can continue to promote your service. And we’ve said this in the, the last lesson, but remember, a referral from every client and a client from every referral should be your ultimate goal in building grassroots marketing campaigns. There are so many opportunities to develop this snowball effect within your client base. That one client turns into three clients and three clients turns into a dozen clients, and a dozen turns into 50. You will find that you have a difficult time keeping up with the growth of your book of business, if you’ll just deliver value, care about your members, provide the service that they’re looking for, and then give them the opportunity to spread the good news. They’re some of the best marketing folks that you’ll ever find is a satisfied customer. So hopefully that helps. And we’re gonna go into a quiz now to test some of your knowledge from this lesson and then move on to lesson number five.