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Agency Acceleration Lab is the podcast for insurance agents and agency owners who want to scale smarter, not harder.
Hosted by Alex Branning, each episode breaks down real growth strategies, marketing systems, and client retention frameworks that help you attract better clients, increase lifetime value, and build a more predictable agency.
If you're serious about building a high-performance insurance business, you're in the right place.
Alex Branning
What's up guys? Today I got John Wetmore with us, the man, the myth, and the legend. One thing happened the last time I heard John speak at SWAT. He convicted the heck out of me because I realized that my number tracking is nowhere near where it needs to be. John, thank you for joining the lab, man. Talk about what numbers you're tracking as an agency owner that's now back in the field.
John Wetmore
Yeah, I appreciate it, dude. Thanks for having me on. So to be clear, I've tracked numbers my whole career in the business because I'm a number tracking nerd since I was a kid. The ones I've used the most — I like to keep it simple. I think a lot of people think I track 17,000 things and I really don't do that many. For me, I've always kept track of the number of phone calls I make, how many pick up, how many I present to, and how many I sell. Outside of that, I don't need a ton because that can give me a lot of insight into how to scale it. And then from an agency owner standpoint, if I know those basic things from an agent, I can look at it and see where they're weak. Meaning, if they don't make enough phone calls, that was sort of obvious. But if their phone calls to pickups don't make sense — I have one guy that did 5,000 phone calls last week and talked to seven people. I'm like, that ain't real. And then if they have a lot of pickups and not a lot of presentations, I can go, all right, they're weak at converting pickups to presentations. Presentations to sales — oh, they're weak at getting the close. So just the basic numbers, man. It can give me insight into the main things that have helped me. One, how much are they working? And then of the work they're doing, where are they weak? Are they weak right on the initial pickup, meaning not converting to presentations, or are they strong maybe on the pickup but weak at the closing, meaning their close rate is low relative to the amount of presentations and pickups.
Alex Branning
That's good. So that's the small side. I mean, I think as you get a little bit deeper, I think it's funny how few agents track their clients, and they are weak at tracking if and when they even get deposits when they're supposed to.
John Wetmore
Most don't know that. And most don't actually keep up with when they get it and if it's the right amount. So I take it a little bit deeper. If I can get them to do those initial things, then I start keeping track of — can you at least at a basic level know, hey, I sold Alex a policy at Mutual of Omaha and that thing is supposed to draft on July 1st and based on Mutual I should get paid by July 5th. Do you even know that? And are you keeping up with that? Because as you start doing high volume, that leads to if I don't teach them to manage their cash flow, they're going to be weak at the lead flow. And if they're weak at lead flow, they're going to be weak at how many phone calls and presentations — it's like a circle. So if I can teach the concept first, then teach them to manage the cash flow, manage the lead flow, they can do more of these, which leads to profitability for me. So little round robin of those in your tracker, which by the way for everyone listening it's free. You can download it at his website. I'll put a link in the playbook.
Alex Branning
You get down to actually figuring out what you're getting paid per dial, which you break down from like okay I made this many appointments and I made this many sales, but it gets down to per dial. You asked the people at SWAT — you said if I paid you a dollar per dial, how many dials would you make a day? And I was like, that's a really good stat to get us excited. And then you showed yours. What were your numbers?
John Wetmore
Mine this year. So the initial — when I wrote the book, chapter four in this sucker is 17, the number that changed my life. Because I learned in my first year part-time, I made 60 grand that year and I made like 3,500 phone calls. And one day I just divided one by the other. So to make 60 grand with 3,500 phone calls, that equaled every one of those 3,500 equaling 17 bucks for that year. And it changed the way I looked at the business from that point on. I became unemotional about the process and it also gave me insight into how little I was working, to be clear. So I tracked it. Then I got back on the phones this year because people had tried to convince me that tele-sales is hard and I'm like this is kind of an easy game if you do it the right way. So I've been tracking mine this year and in the first quarter I made like 6,000 phone calls, sold like 150K in life insurance, and it came out to like 26 bucks a phone call this year for me personally.
Alex Branning
Incredible. One of the things that I'm seeing a lot in this space — and you hinted at this in your presentation — the pickup rate sucks right now.
John Wetmore
Sure.
Alex Branning
Like you were saying it's like 7% for you. And you have an established name and reputation. The person buying life insurance doesn't know who you are, they don't care that it's John Wetmore calling. So you know, you're a guy who people look at and they're like, well, if John's getting 7% and I'm getting 7%, then I'm getting what John's getting. I'm curious — as the game has changed for tele-sales and Apple's making it harder to get on the phone, why not text more than call?
John Wetmore
I don't have a perfect answer. I know that there's been said if you text them first there's like a maybe thing, but dude, I don't think they care if it's John calling or not. I also can always go back to — with a 7% pickup rate I sold 160K in 3 months. And I can always typically go back to the agent that's complaining about the pickup rate — they ain't making as many phone calls as I am, and to be clear I'm only doing it part time, 20 hours a week. I feel like if I go back to the core problem, if the average agent sent more texts, my honest opinion is I think most of them will still be broke. They're not prospecting and not presenting enough. And I think if you did it in the masses — now I will say I am a fan of taking a bunch of my aged leads and throwing them into a CRM and drip texting on them. I like that. I do that. I close a couple apps a week doing that. Two or three apps a week doing that. I don't think — no one's convinced me yet that on a brand new lead it helps any. I just feel like again, can you put it into an automation and do it? Sure. Do some of them click the text and text me first? That happens some. I just I don't know, man. I like simple. I like duplicatable. I like to show that I can do it with my cell phone and nothing else. And I've not had someone sit next to me and make more money texting than I do dialing. So I kind of do it with the aged leads. I just don't think I need to with a new lead. I think I can call them enough that I can get 50 or 60% of them to pick up. I know 40% are never going to pick up my phone call ever. And then from an agency building standpoint, I take those leads and give them to other agents and they call them from a new number and they get pickups on the ones I wasn't getting pickups on.
Alex Branning
Yeah. For sure. One of the things that we're doing is we're working on tracking our numbers better and what we realized, which I think you'll find really interesting John, is when we reached out to people in our list and just called them, our pickup rate was about the same as what you're getting, like 7%. Nobody would answer the phone. When we sent the contact card, our pickup rate jumped to almost 25%. Which was a crazy difference. Now that doesn't mean it's going to be that way for every agent, but that's what we're seeing on our side. But FaceTime audio — reaching out to leads or reaching out to your audience for your product — most of what we do is we reach out to people that are a lead, interested in your product.
John Wetmore
Yeah. They've reached out whether it's a podcast download or something. They're in our list. They know my name at some point. Yeah, that's a no-brainer. But FaceTime audio is a unique thing. Unfortunately you can't use a CRM to do FaceTime audio, but we're seeing some really good pickup rates on FaceTime audio.
Alex Branning
What are you seeing?
John Wetmore
Great pickup rates. For sure. My style is triple dial people. I always triple dial a lead. It just is what it is. Some people love it. The ones that do it have a better pickup rate, it's not even close. So I'm a big triple dial guy and then on the fourth one we do FaceTime audio. Some of my guys skip FaceTime audio now and just go straight FaceTime video. I got a couple guys that close like a handful of apps a week going straight to video. Do people answer with no teeth in and in their pajamas? Yeah. I mean it's working, dude. Now there are pros and cons to everything. I have some guys on their third iPhone because they keep getting in Apple jail. But if you're going to do it that way — you can afford a phone a month. It is what it is. And so we have some guys that buy two, three, four phones sometimes just to keep getting through it. And eventually you get on and I think it's standing out from the crowd and doing more than what most agents do that tends to continue to work. I think they'll continue to make it harder and systems will try to make it easier. But I think — no different than, pick a sport — why do professional baseball players still hit off a tee in practice when they have pitching equipment? Because the basics work too. So I'm not an all or nothing kind of guy. I see where texting first and the maybe thing works. Sure. I just — it doesn't come from my cell phone, it doesn't do the maybe thing. So to hand do it I'm like I can make more phone calls than I can texting. I can just get to more people, especially over the course of time. But I love the FaceTime audio and video thing. We're getting a way bigger pickup rate from that. And if you do it, it skips the DND a lot of times. Because a lot of times people are mad about low pickup rates and I'm like they don't even see you called. They just — if it's an unknown number it's getting screened all the time.
Alex Branning
Correct. So for those of you listening, you can send a contact card with your cell phone number in it from your CRM. Just in case you're like oh you can't do that. So don't listen to this guy — I'm clueless.
John Wetmore
Yeah I just want to clear up any — oh it'll have your cell number in it. So if they save it, do they have to save it for it to do the maybe thing or even if they don't save it, is it smart enough?
Alex Branning
Yeah. I ain't mad at that. So it helps a little bit. Yeah I love it.
John Wetmore
One thing I want to ask about — we're in a trust recession. People just don't trust anybody. And one of the ways that some agency owners are getting around that is by creating more content on social media that their leads will find when they look them up. Are you advising your agents to create content around themselves to help with that or how do you encourage the agents on your team with social media? I know you're very active, but what do your agents do?
Alex Branning
I'm more of a — to be honest, most of them don't do it when it comes to social media, for the same reason why they don't make enough phone calls. But I certainly encourage people to do it. I don't know that I've had any agents go hey I've done a bunch of social media so now suddenly I sell more insurance. Not saying that doesn't work, I just don't have that use case. For me I certainly use it more to build credibility on the agency development side. And there are some agents that do want to market to the world, which I think you should. I'm more of a give me leads kind of guy. I'm not like a let me tell the world I sell insurance kind of guy. But that does work too. And so the agents that do want to do that — their hesitation is I don't know what to put on social. I just go dude, your clients ask you questions every day, don't they? Yes. All right. Take one question a day, make a video answering that question and post it every day. And eventually when you build it up — it's really simple. Same on the agency side. An agent asks you a question every day. Take one question from an agent, answer their question, post it on social. And with time, scale, and reps you'll get better at it. I didn't have a strategy five, six, seven, eight years ago. I was like post every day on every platform. That was my strategy. Now today we're a little more intentional with social. But it takes time and reps. I think everything takes time and reps. And same for an agent posting on social — if they don't do a lot of reps of it, there's no one magic video that's going to suddenly get you to sell a whole bunch of insurance. Rarely. I will say I do have a dude on my team that did it and he popped and suddenly he got 500 IUL leads a day. Like that is a real life thing for the occasional anomaly. But it's just not the most common thing. So I stick to the foundational, what's most duplicatable at scale. Everything I look at is what can I duplicate the most over and over again. It can be like Gary Vee's way or it doesn't have to be John's way or Alex's way — they both work. It's like who are you and what feels the most comfortable, what's the most you. I just choose what's the most me because it works, but it doesn't exclude everybody else's stuff from working.
Alex Branning
Yeah for sure. Let's end this. Tell people about your tracker because it's dope. How they can get it. And we'll add this to the playbook.
John Wetmore
Yeah. So tracker.jwetmore.com. There is a free version. I allow agents to track their basic numbers — phone calls, presentations, dials, pickups, all that stuff and sales every day. There's a paid version that lets you do a lot more stuff, a lot more tracking, deeper into business and analytics. And there's a team version where you can manage your whole team, leaderboards, issue paid and all that stuff. But it's just the system I use to build my agency. As I built it I made it an app instead of spreadsheets because why not. And then the world saw it because we started sharing it on social and people were like what CRM is that? I'm like it's not a CRM. It's what I used to manage my company. And enough people asked — my DMs were getting blown up when I started sharing it. People asked if they could pay me for it. I'm like well I'm no dummy, I'll create a way. And we developed a way to help because at the end of the day I don't want to do anything if it's not helping people have success in the space. And I know it works because it's what I've used internally for 10 years. And now we're just kind of giving that process to the world. It allows agents to track all their basic stuff and it allows managers and agencies to see all that management. And then from a higher level it's what we use to manage our issue paid and our debt as well to prevent problems in the future on the debt side. So just a full agency management system in a sense. I'm not a CRM — thankfully you and I are having some cool conversations. I'm not trying to be in that world. I'm not trying to do drip campaigns. It doesn't do any of that stuff. It's just track the basic, look at your analytics.
Alex Branning
I still have the spreadsheet that you used to give away. And so now the spreadsheet has become the app. So that's literally how it happened.
John Wetmore
Yeah exactly.
Alex Branning
I love it. John, thank you so much for being on the lab, man. I really appreciate you. Love following you. Love what you're doing. I'll see you at the next event, man. Everyone, thank you for watching. Please take notes. Please take action and subscribe. You will not get any value from the lesson you just got unless you implement it in your business.