ITB with Charles Specht - Arming Your Agency With The Edge You Need

Today's equation: No Plan = No Future!

In this episode of the Insurance The Brightway (ITB) podcast, see what you and your agency need to do to separate your business from the rest!

Rick Fox welcomes 🎙️Charles Specht, CIC, CDA to the ITB. Learn what your blind spots are in the business world and make things happen right now!

Sure, it's hard to sell insurance. But Charles will show you how to survive regardless of the market.

New episodes are available every Thursday at noon EDT.

Listen and subscribe to the ITB podcast at www.brightwaydifference.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts today!

ITB is a weekly podcast brought to you by Brightway Insurance, the insurance agency distribution leader coast-to-coast.

#BlindSpots #MarketSurvival #insuranceagent #insurancepodcast

Transcript

Rick (00:03.395)
Welcome back to another episode of the ITB Insurance, the Brightway podcast. I'm the host, Rick Fox. And today he's back. He's back podcasting with me again. He's a, he's one of those guys. I've said this so many times before about people on the show, but the reason I get the guests I get is because they love this industry and they come out here and they crush it to help people just get better every single day. So Charles Specht is here today. Charles, welcome to the show.

Charles Specht (00:32.542)
Rick, it's my pleasure, man. I'm looking forward to being with you today.

Rick (00:35.275)
Awesome, man. Hey, and so Charles is the president of Permission Network Agency. He has a mastermind group. He has his own podcast, which by the way, he hasn't had me on yet, which is kind of lame, but we'll talk about that off the air. And Charles is just one of those guys who looks at problems and find solutions and then helps people, gives those solutions to people and help them do... do much better. So Charles, I'm a fan of yours. I love your work. I love your energy around what we're doing in this industry. But let's just start the way we always start, which is kind of like, give me your journey. Like how did you get here?

Charles Specht (01:15.122)
Yeah. Well, I appreciate it. So started in the insurance business, business in the year 2000. Just had a friend who was in the business and he's I was looking for a job. He said, you give this a shot. So I tried it. And you know, it's one of those things where you didn't realize you're an insurance nerd until you realize you're an insurance nerd, and loved it. And so I was a commercial property and casualty insurance agent for about 10 years, I worked for two very good agencies, interwest insurance based out of Sacramento, California. And then I worked for Arthur J. Gallagher.

And I did production for about 10 years. When then I decided to make a switch in my career around 2010, I started a consulting company and so I rolled my book, stopped selling insurance. I haven't sold insurance in 13 years. And I do consulting two primary aspects of the consulting. One, I work with insurance buyers as an insurance consultant. So they hire me to manage their agents, manage the whole process so that they don't have to do it.

That's one side of it. And then the other side is really where I spend probably the bulk of my time. And that is teaching insurance agents what insurance buyers are looking for and help them to be able to prospect to brand to market so that they can actually win more clients after all is said and done.

Rick (02:19.256)
Yes.

Rick (02:25.899)
Well, and what's so great about this is we go through these phases and I don't think, I think this will be the 417th straight podcast where I've said, we're in the middle of a hard market, but we know that we are and there are times in this business and when I was an agent where you could just sell, like it was just like you had probably more incoming prospect business than you could handle. The market's good, you're in a flow, everything's working.

Okay, what happens when that's not the case? And to me, in this kind of a market, the strategy and getting your arms around how to differentiate yourself. And I don't just mean like the way you differentiate your preparation. I think you and I were talking last week and I said, the separation is in the preparation. And I'm not taking credit for that. The last person I heard to say it was Russell Wilson.

Charles Specht (02:54.978)
Hmm.

Charles Specht (03:11.711)
Mm-hmm.

Charles Specht (03:16.959)
Mm-hmm.

Rick (03:22.279)
And I'm sure he heard it from somebody else. But what I love about the way you look at this, Charles, it's not just like, all right, let's go sell and let's say the right things or let's do the right. You're like more planned and targeted and you look at it all the way back to being prepared to prospect. So I really want to spend the bulk of our time. We'll give you guys a quick, like it's a kind of a teaser masterclass on prospecting is what I want to do today. And.

Charles Specht (03:23.792)
Mm-hmm.

Charles Specht (03:45.046)
Mm-hmm.

Rick (03:50.767)
Charles can take you like nine layers deeper than this and you can reach out to him afterward, but I want to give you the high level, at least drop you into kind of the way that Charles looks at this and the way that he, his teachings will, will help you prepare to be ready. So when I say prospecting, give me kind of an overview of that, Charles. Like, what does that mean to you? And, and, and how do you look at it?

Charles Specht (04:15.422)
So, you know, I break down the entire sales process into sections. Okay, so like I have a framework, I call it the 12x sales framework. And you look at it from different sections, because some people might be really good at things like prospecting, like they can set appointments. But then when they get to the appointment, that's when they lose the sale, or they can set appointments, and they're able to negotiate with the insured on getting what they want. But then that time period in between when they met with the client for the first time that first prospecting meeting, to the point in which they get meeting, that gap, they've lost all their position. And so I just see like all of these areas where insurance agents drop the ball period, they just flat out drop the ball because they're not prepared. And so

Rick (04:48.239)
Yeah.

Rick (04:56.435)
All right, well, let's tell them, let's figure this out. So I know what your first one is because we obviously have had conversations in the past and the last time we talked, we talked about pre-prospecting. So before you get into it, I want you to feather into the answer. A question that I asked you, which I think is very interesting is, is this an art or is this a science? And so I'll leave like...

Charles Specht (05:09.013)
Mm-hmm.

Charles Specht (05:21.407)
Yeah.

Rick (05:24.631)
This is the part I love. So I'm going to just be quiet. I'm going to let you roll. Cause this part to me, this is the game changer part for me of all of these things, we all probably do some of them pretty well, but pre prospecting is a thing that gets missed probably the most. Is that fair to say?

Charles Specht (05:26.102)
Yep.

Charles Specht (05:30.936)
Mm-hmm.

Charles Specht (05:39.146)
100% In fact, I refer to it as pre prospecting for a reason because it's not prospecting it is foundation work. It's like the foundation of a building that nobody sees, but it's the most important part of the building, right. And so pre prospecting us is more art or science, I say it starts out as art, and then it has to be science. And if you don't have enough science attached to it, it's not going to work. But that pre prospecting is

Rick (05:59.651)
I like that.

Charles Specht (06:04.77)
Probably where I would say like the vast majority of people even hire me because they don't even know what to call on at first. I mean, that's how far away they are from actually hitting the target. They don't know what types of industries to go after or what's their differentiation statement. If they're going to do personal lines or commercial or a mixture of both, they don't exactly know even who they're going to talk to. They don't know what the problems are of the people they're speaking to. They don't know what the size premiums they want to go after. They don't even know their geographic territory... so many different factors come into play. And it's that pre prospecting that before you even pick up a telephone call to figure out what you're gonna say, you gotta know who you're gonna say it to. That really is, I think, kind of the foundation work that has to take place. And frankly, most insurance agencies do a terrible job at even that foundation work.

Rick (06:43.483)
That's right.

Rick (06:52.291)
Well, and if you're listening in right now and you're thinking, man, I need more leads, I need more this, or somebody calls you, there are so many different aspects that Charles just mentioned about being ready and setting yourself up for success by going out to where you want to live. What customer do you want? I mean, that's a big part of this. If you look at pre-prospecting to me... Uh, it's the, like, so I do this thing every Sunday night. I spend about sometimes it's 30, 16, 90 minutes. Ideally it's 30 prepping for my week. And when I get up Monday morning, this, and this is obviously not for sales. This is for all of the meetings I have and the projects I need to move forward. The podcasts I need to record all of those things. But if I do that ahead of time, I feel so much more prepared when I go after that. So what you're doing is you're saying, ask some simple questions, come up with the answers, and then go from there before you start, even start the process, is that right? Yeah.

Charles Specht (08:00.81)
100%. And I would say like what you just talked about in regards to your scheduling, most insurance agents, producers, this is a generalization, but I typically find that they are not very organized. And they're flying by the seat of their pants, they're throwing mud against the wall. And the same thing goes with their scheduling, they just show up. And if they feel like prospecting, they prospect, which is why like even in my curriculum, when I'm working with somebody,

Rick (08:14.671)
That's fair. So fair. That's right. Yep.

Charles Specht (08:27.878)
The scheduling, what they're doing in their week, Monday through Friday, 8 to 5 PM is where I spend my time. I just, I want to see what we're going to do, when we're going to do it, how we're actually like spending our time, where's the follow-up, all of that. Because if we don't have a schedule, then we are just purely reacting all week and we're not being proactive in anything.

Rick (08:47.487)
That's right. And okay, so let's just say we've done, let's say like just so we can move down you're kind of into your funnel here. We've changed from, all right, I did my work, I prepared myself. I know who I want to call. I know why I want to call them. I know what it is that, why I chose them, whether that's premium or niche or whatever it is, I've done that piece. Okay. Now you get from pre-prospecting into prospecting.

Charles Specht (08:51.981)
Mm-hmm.

Rick (09:15.195)
Talk about that briefly.

Charles Specht (09:16.478)
Yeah. And so there's a little bit of a transition there. So, you know, all of that stuff you talked about now, it's like, what exactly are you going to say to that person? And in what format are you going to say it? So many times insurance producers, they have one primary way that they want to actually prospect such as maybe telephone calls, or they're only going to send out emails, or they're only going to try and work off a referral. And so they only get one, you know, one actual percentage on their hit ratio.

Rick (09:44.396)
Yeah.

Charles Specht (09:44.738)
And I usually try to work with them on having at least three ways that we're going to prospect. Four is better. The follow-up program, which most insurance agents don't have one when it comes to prospecting, is they prospect, they leave a voice message, and that prospect just falls out of the whole funnel. The follow-up program, the entire prospecting program, when we call them, when do we send an email, when do we follow up, how do we reach out to them on social media, when do we do a walk-in visit to their place or their place of business and so forth, it's the follow-up. That's where the fortunes at. Fortune's in the follow-up. I don't know who said that. I stole it, I love it because it's so true. The fortune is in the follow-up, and that's prospecting 101.

Rick (10:20.448)
I love that. Yeah. And then I'm also assuming there's some kind of accountability involved in that where it's like, you know, I made a few calls. I didn't really like the responses. So I stopped and you probably set people up to like, it's this many, whether you want to or not, it's this many connections. It's this many emails. It's this many reach outs on LinkedIn. It's... It's this many emails. It's this many reach outs on LinkedIn. It's this many emails.

Charles Specht (10:35.854)
I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

Charles Specht (10:42.574)
Mm-hmm.

Rick (10:46.465)
It's got an accountability factor to it too, right?

Charles Specht (10:48.694)
Mm hmm. Yeah. And agencies that are able to track that. So if they are, you know, an agency that has a CRM, so we can track kind of what's happening, I then look into their system each week to kind of see what they've done on a daily basis. But what I have every single one of them do is that I am the last email they send every single day. And that email that they send to me is the shortest email as well, because all I want to see is what they did for prospecting that day. So they might at 501pm, they're going to send me an email and all it's going to say is something like 23 cold calls, 14 emails, and that's it. That's all I want to see.

Rick (11:23.427)
Yeah. You said 501, Charles, the best ones never quit at 501. As I always say, there's two, the inherent kind of best practices for sales is one, you're either just a grinder. You're the first one in, you're the first one out, or the first one in, last one out. Or you have that natural sales ability, or you work on your craft of sales. You're reading the books. You're...

Charles Specht (11:27.23)
Yeah, I get it. I get it. 100%. Yep.

Charles Specht (11:41.326)
Mm-hmm.

Rick (11:50.455)
You're doing it in your brain, in the car, you're practicing. So if you can either be one, either one of those two, and you can be pretty good. Where I say that the true A pluses are, excuse me, the A pluses are, is when you have both. When you are a grinder and you have that. So 501 to me means you're not a grinder. But unless you just were so organized.

Charles Specht (12:08.811)
Hmm.

Charles Specht (12:13.981)
Right.

Rick (12:17.631)
And that was like, if I do anymore, my brain pan is done. I get it, but just the grind, I just wanted to mention the grind piece. Cause I think that's, I think in this business for a lot of time during the market, you know, the hard market, soft market thing, you don't have to grind and you can still be moderately successful to pretty successful. But what you're saying is let's be the best. Is that right?

Charles Specht (12:22.018)
Mm-hmm.

Charles Specht (12:42.45)
Yeah, exactly. The grind and preparation are two sides of the same coin. And frankly, most people let alone salespeople and insurance agents, we're usually not very good at the grind. And we're certainly not good at the preparation. So we can always work a little bit harder. But I think working smarter is more important. Like for me even like I love to watch movies. I love to hang out with my family. I don't want to work at 7pm at night. I just don't.

Rick (12:47.925)
Yeah.

Rick (13:00.504)
Yes.

Charles Specht (13:07.07)
So I am then forcing myself to grind during the hours that I have set up for that. But I plan to work smart and not stupid. I want to be smart and not foolish when I'm actually putting in the grind. That way I can actually take care of the business I need to take care of.

Rick (13:10.958)
Yes.

Rick (13:14.596)
Yeah, and

Rick (13:20.441)
And that's where I hoped you'd go, which is like, you don't have to put in 14 hour days, but when you're working, make sure you're getting it done. And set those accountability measures at a number that is out there, so you have to go get it. Like, I think that's true. Okay. All right. So we talked about pre-prospecting. We talked about prospecting. What's next?

Charles Specht (13:25.216)
Mm-hmm.

Charles Specht (13:34.026)
Yep, 100%.

Rick (13:42.211)
Was it appointments with the insured? Like, so this would be where we might differ between personal lines and commercial lines. So it might be a little different, right? If you're focused on one or the other, but what's next?

Charles Specht (13:57.346)
So.

Basically, once we're finished with prospecting, then we're gonna set up the first appointment. That first appointment for personal lines is likely gonna be a telephone call. I would shoot for a Zoom call if you can do that. If you really just focus on email, your hit ratio is just gonna go down dramatically. So how you are communicating with the insured is going to also dictate what your hit percentage is gonna be on your quote to bond ratio. But yes, if you can meet face to face, absolutely the best way to go about it. And certainly, at least when it comes to commercial,

Rick (14:07.289)
Yeah.

Rick (14:21.677)
Yes.

Charles Specht (14:28.992)
If you're going to be doing any kind of commercial, you need to be face to face. Otherwise you're just playing the game and you're going to get played. Like that's just how it works. And so you need to be as much face to face as possible. Yep.

Rick (14:34.671)
Yeah, that's so true. And I did this podcast last week about a race to the bottom, selling on price. And if you're transactional in your nature, even if it is a personal alliance, if you can get them on a zoom, one of the main questions I said, ask yourself is if your customer at renewal gets a renewal notice that is a 29% rate increase because the market's nuts, is their first call going to be to you?

Charles Specht (14:43.518)
Mm-hmm.

Rick (15:03.307)
Or is it going to be to your competitor because they're mad at you? And if you don't get some kind of a connection with them, it's to somebody else. Is that fair to say?

Charles Specht (15:06.135)
Yeah.

Charles Specht (15:12.306)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. They're gonna reach out and complain to somebody and you sure hope they're gonna complain to you first. So yeah.

Rick (15:16.043)
Yeah, that's right. That's right. OK, so appointment. OK, then what that keep going like this is this is gold.

Charles Specht (15:24.234)
Yeah, so after the first appointment, then it comes to what I refer to, you know, sometimes as pre proposal, or really, I think it's best described as strategic rapport. So you know, let's say, for example, it's 45 days in between, when you meet with the prospect for the first time, and then when you actually sit down to give them the proposal, it's going to be longer for commercial than it is for personalized, but it could be like even

Rick (15:44.555)
Yes. Because first line, sometimes it could be like that. Like I could just turn it right back around. Yeah. Yes.

Charles Specht (15:48.638)
like that, right? Or the decision making process is one of those things, right? When you first meet with them to the point which they either tell you yes or no, got to talk with my husband got to talk with my wife, you know, they're thinking about it, all of that, that's just that strategic report time, we need to be more focused on that this is really the area where the vast majority of insurance agents drop the ball period. They don't have any kind of a plan.

Rick (15:55.617)
Yeah.

Charles Specht (16:11.618)
They're basically emailing saying, hey, just kind of following up, seeing how you're doing. Like that's a weak, weak process. We need to have a little bit more strategy on, I came across this email out there that talks about how CEOs can get three more hours out of their day by better productivity. I thought this might be really helpful for you. Let me know if it's a pretty good information. Something like that can go a whole lot further than just saying, hey, I'm emailing you just to find out how things are going.

Rick (16:41.015)
Yeah, that's right. Purpose, it's purpose, right?

Charles Specht (16:41.222)
Or if you find out, you know, maybe a blog post, an article, something in their, their home life that could be really helpful. Send them that because that's the thing that is going to help them and help them to understand that you're somebody that is a professional that they need to do business with strategic report.

Rick (16:59.972)
Yeah. And you know what you're building here is you're building this framework. And again, you use the great analogy when you said the foundation of the building that we never see, like, I mean, I'm sitting in a house at some point before the walls were up and the, and the TVs were on the wall, there was a concrete being poured, right? And that's what you're saying is if you get yourself in this rhythm, it's literally impossible.

for your numbers and your hit ratios and your close rates and everything not to go, like really go up. And yet that's what this is about. And to your point of working smarter and not working harder, that's, if I could close seven out of 10 instead of four out of 10, I'm gonna get a lot more business and not have to close, not have to work as hard to get to the numbers and then just blow past them, right? Yeah.

Charles Specht (17:32.3)
Yeah.

Charles Specht (17:46.791)
Mm-hmm.

Charles Specht (17:50.43)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I really think that insurance agents probably lose 10 to 20% of the accounts they could have gotten could have won in this particular section, strategic rapport, because they just came across as a number as a commodity, and the insured didn't see any reason why they should pick you and fire their other agent. Yep, yep.

Rick (18:04.463)
Yeah.

Rick (18:10.835)
And then it's a race to the bottom, because then it's just about price. And we don't want that. OK, so we've communicated with them after we've either met with them or had a teams meeting. And now this would be probably even more important. I don't want to say it's not as important, but more important in commercial lines. But we get to the proposal phase next? Is that what's next? OK.

Charles Specht (18:32.438)
Yep, that's presentation proposal page, I refer to this as victorious positioning, or sometimes I refer to it as the front door of the agency. This is where we are ushering new clients in. And again, this is probably another major area where most agents drop the ball, do a bad job. Most agencies don't train on this. You know, they really don't train how to position yourself to win the business and hear the word yes. And so I definitely think depending upon what the product is that you're selling.

Rick (18:38.2)
I love that.

Rick (18:51.517)
Yeah.

Charles Specht (19:02.386)
If it's personalized commercially, you're talking about auto workers compensation, whatever. The strategy might be somewhat different based upon that. And it's also different based upon, for example, the type of clientele that you're working on. If you're working on a high net worth personal lines, it better look a whole lot different than people who are living out of $300,000 homes. So it has to be structured correctly. And I think that there needs to be like a little bit more of a format that we go through that someone takes a look at and says, you know what, if we put this step by step by step

Rick (19:19.355)
That's right.

Charles Specht (19:31.758)
our people are going to have much better success and win more business through this presentation process. So yeah.

Rick (19:37.679)
So if you're thinking about this from, like if I'm an agent, let's say two people are listening in, I'm a producer first and I'm listening into this and I'm like, man, I need Charles on my team. Because there's no way that you can listen through this and not take something or glean something from it. And what it mainly does is it just organizes everything. And that's kind of your job is to say, look, you're good.

Charles Specht (19:58.094)
Mm-hmm.

Rick (20:02.851)
But good is just good, let's be great. And so we do these things. We prepare before, here's how we go during, and here's how we get them through the door, the front door of the agency. That's a process. And putting that process in place is the difference between good and great, or even not good and good, right? I mean, there's layers to this. Or if you are already really crushing it, how do you expand from there? So if I'm a producer, am I...

Charles Specht (20:21.258)
Yeah.

Rick (20:30.711)
Am I reaching out to you and working one-on-one? If I'm an agency owner, am I bringing somebody like you in to help the team? Like, what, like, if, if I'm looking at this through a lens of, and whether that's you or like this kind of a thing, but like it, I know you're good at it, um, what, what do, how do people work? Like, how do they take advantage of this? Like, like, because I could write down what you just said, and now I, I wrote down pre prospecting.

Charles Specht (20:45.422)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Charles Specht (20:53.559)
Yeah.

Rick (20:59.839)
and I need to look at certain niches or GOs or things, but I still don't have a plan in place. How do I get to that?

Charles Specht (20:59.894)
Mm-hmm.

Charles Specht (21:06.718)
Yeah, first thing go look at my website permission group.com. That's where it's going to kind of be the hub to explain a lot about what I do. permission group.com. Connect with me via email, send me an email Charles at permission group.com or give me a call in on the telephone number that's there. But I would say that's where I'm at. I respond right away.

Rick (21:23.463)
Or send him a note on LinkedIn. Cause that's when I reach out to him, it's like, he's connected to it. Like, he responds in like 30 seconds. Yeah.

Charles Specht (21:31.262)
Yeah, I'm on it nonstop 24 seven. Uh, but I would say like, you know what? And I work with a lot of insurance agents one-on-one. I am hired by insurance agencies as a sales trainer. Um, I have even been hired by larger insurance agencies as a chief sales officer. So I can work with one person. I can work with a carve out of an agency. I can work with, you know, an entire agency of their sales staff. Really it's what the need of the agency is and frankly, the budget that they have available for them.

Rick (21:59.971)
So baby steps here, if I'm out there and I'm looking for an edge, and most everybody is right now, especially again, with the market the way it is, I'm looking for an edge. I can write down and I'm just going to read them off so everybody kind of puts them in order here. So we have pre prospecting, the appointment, the after appointment, which is also, I think pre proposal and then the proposal and the...

Charles Specht (22:01.73)
Mm-hmm.

Charles Specht (22:26.286)
Thank you.

Rick (22:27.983)
Those are longer cycles for commercials, shorter for personal lines, but they're the same A to Z process. I just wrote all that down. That is a step. That is, like that's the baby step into the pool. Like I just dipped my toes in the shallow end and I went, okay, this is, at least now I have a list. But beyond that, it's taking the, taking the, like, because I want you all to succeed out there. I want you producers to win business. If you're listening to this show,

It's because you understand that we're trying to help you grow. And things like what Charles is talking about and people like Charles, it can help you kind of get to that level. I don't want this to be an infomercial, but if you are looking for that co-pilot, I guess, so to speak, on how to be a better salesperson, these are the kind of things you need to be looking at. So what I would say, Charles, thank you. This is a great little teaser because we could have spent...

an hour on each one of those and then still not even cracked the surface, right? Yep.

Charles Specht (23:29.042)
Yep. Yeah. And there's two more that we didn't even talk about. I mean, it's like there's an entire year, right? There's how to actually like deliver the services. And then when you're coming up on the renewal for your client, that is a whole process by itself.

Rick (23:33.593)
Oh my god.

Rick (23:38.355)
Mm-hmm. Yes, yes. So what I would say for those that, if this is interesting and you're out there and you're in that, like you listened to my podcast last week where I ran it about being about the relationship and loyalty and doing it the right way and not racing to the bottom with price, and now you're like, that all makes sense from a mindset perspective, and now Charles has kind of given me a playbook to take my skills to the next level. Or as LeBron said, take my skills to South beach. Don't, don't get me started. Um, Charles is giving you the kind of a, like here's, here's a cheat code called Charles, uh, get in touch with him. He can give you, or go to the website. Give me the website one more time, Charles permission group.com or, um, again, like I mentioned, the way I get Charles is on LinkedIn. I just send him a note and he responds right away. So Charles, this has been great. And I think what it's so important right now that we're talking about these kind of things, because.

Charles Specht (24:19.926)
permissiongroup.com.

Rick (24:35.623)
The market is so wild and everybody's looking for an edge and they're looking for it in so many different ways with the right carrier mix, with the right marketing. But at the end of the day, this is a sales business and you're talking about kind of putting all that stuff aside and just going out and hunting and... eating what you kill and you're giving them the roadmap to that, which I think is amazing. So I, you know, I appreciate you. I appreciate you coming on. Um, everybody now knows how to reach you. So, and I would highly recommend I've worked with Charles in the past. Um, he will, you will be shocked at how quickly you'll see a difference in your sales. 

So again, broken record over here talking about the hard market and how crazy it is out there right now. But I'd love to just get your quick take, hot take on the hard market and what you think

Charles Specht 
Well, I'll tell you, this is an important topic to talk about because it's what separates the amateurs from the pros. You know, it's very difficult to sell insurance. It's extremely difficult to sell in a hard market. Those producers that don't have a strategy, a formula, they're going to be unemployed in a year to two years. They're just not going to make it. There's not enough availability out there. The market is shrinking and so forth. But those producers that actually spend the time to create a framework, a structure to how they're going to win business.... are not only going to be the ones who win, but they're going to be ones that actually build wealth over the course of time. It is a great time to be in a hard market if you're prepared for it.

Rick 
Um, but let me ask you the question. I always ask at the end. It's the, um, cause I'm very curious to hear your answer. So this is my time capsule piece. So we're going to record this next little bit you're recording, we're going to bury it somewhere, and someone's going to dig it up at some point. And at that time, when they listen to this, what is Charles Speck's one big piece of advice for the insurance industry?

Charles Specht 
Hmm.

Charles Specht 
Hmm. I would say the biggest piece of advice that I would give to the insurance industry is that you need to be more strategic about how you ask for the sale. Period. First thing is just you got to ask for the sale, which many insurance agents just never get around to actually like, Hey, would you like to get married? Like, they never really get around to asking the main question, let alone even doing it from a strategic standpoint. So strategically asking for the sale is very important for success.

Rick 
That is great. Write that down folks. Charles, I appreciate you, man. Thanks for coming on.

Charles Specht 
I appreciate it, Rick, and thank you so much for inviting me on your on your PAC podcast.

Rick 
And we'll have you back, man. We'll have you back for sure. Thanks everybody for tuning in to another episode of the ITB. Make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you hear, give us a review. We appreciate it. And as I always say, make sure we are connected on LinkedIn. Send me a direct message. If you have other people we should have on the show or any topics for rants or questions for when I do my grab bags, um, love to help any way we can. I'm telling you this sales thing.
It is a cheat code right now in this industry. Figure out how to be better at sales and when. Charles has given you kind of the playbook. Now it's time to move on it. Let's go everybody. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time.