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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.
Episode Transcript
Agency Acceleration Lab – Episode 6
Telesales died... the “Trusted Number” problem
Alex Branning:
Public sales, as we know, is dying because the phones are now in charge of whether or not a call goes through. This is Alex Branning with the bonus podcast episode of the Agency Acceleration Lab, where we spend 10 minutes breaking down actionable steps for agency owners.
And today we're going to talk about contact rate, because I'm getting a lot of messages from agency owners, and they're one of these, like Alex, my contact rate is dropping. Alex, do you know a good dialer? Our calls are going straight to voicemail. Alex, I need to switch my phone number in Agent CRM because calls aren't going through. I'm getting a lot of people who are asking the wrong questions.
The question should not be what dialer should I use, what area codes are working the best, like the software. No. Your question should be how do I make sure my number gets trusted.
What used to work is making sure that your number had all the shaken and stir stuff taken care of. It was registered with all the different carriers. It was put on the verified lists. That's what used to work. But now, now the phones are deciding whether or not the call goes through. It's not the carriers. Your number is probably good with the carriers, but if it's not trusted on the individual phone that's ringing, that call is going to go straight to voicemail in a lot of cases, or you're going to be talking to Siri because of the call screening feature.
So how do we get around this? Well, we need your number to be trusted, and the easiest way to do that is to send a digital contact card, which you can make online. I have a free tool that you can just generate your own and send it to the contact before you call them. When the recipient receives that contact card, what it's telling the phone is that I know this number, I'm interacting with this person. Even if they don't save the contact, just by having the contact card in, removes the spam likely and it increases the trust score of that phone number.
Now the very best case scenario is that you send the digital contact card and it is saved in their phone, so now you're in their database. That's the very best option.
So what do you have to do as the insurance agency owner, as the insurance agents making the dials? What do you have to do?
You have to do three things. Number one, you have to save a contact card on your computer and add it to your CRM. Number two, you need to send that contact card to every single contact that is in your database now, so that they have it stored, and when you call them now or in the future, the phone gets through. The third thing is you have to change your current flow for all new leads so that a contact card is sent.
So you can have the perfect script. You can generate hot leads. But if your phone number is not trusted by the person you are calling, that call will not go through.
Now that's a hard thing to hear, because that is completely different than what we've experienced as telesales agents for the last few years, but the rules have changed. The phones are now taking more power over what calls go through, so you have to make changes to your workflow, and you have to make changes to your processes so that your calls get through.
So I have a couple other notes here that were sent in from people. I want to go through some of the questions that we get.
So here's some false beliefs.
If I just triple dial, I'll break through. That used to work when the humans were in control of what phone calls go through right now. However, if your phone number is not trusted, you can dial and then you can immediately dial again, and you can immediately dial again, and you're going straight to voicemail three times in a row and you aren't making money. That's what's going to happen if you try the triple dialing thing, right, because your number is not trusted. It doesn't matter how many times you try to burst through that wall, it ain't going to happen. So triple dialing is pointless.
Now false belief number two, local presence and local numbers. Well, local presence used to trick some people into thinking that somebody local was calling them, but now that call just goes straight to voicemail because it is not a trusted number. They don't know who the heck you are, and because it's an unknown number, it's going to go straight to voicemail or the call screening feature is going to pick it up and ask you why you're calling. So local presence doesn't really do anything. I have seen zero impact on using the local presence strategy since the phones have started screening calls.
False belief number three, calling immediately is always the best speed to lead. No. That was when voice first outreach was the way to go. Now we are in a texting first society, so the best thing to do is not calling immediately. It is to text immediately. Text them, remind them of who you are, send your contact card right away, super important, and then ask them for the time to call, because you got to get on the phone. That's how you make the sale. You got to talk to them. But calling first is not the best move. You want to text first.
False belief number four is about changing the channel. You must stay on the channel that they reached out to you on. What do I mean by that? If they are on their phone and they're filling out a Facebook form and you text them, do not call them right away, even if they start responding over text. They have not said that they want to talk to you on the phone.
If I were to do a poll of the people that are watching this podcast episode right now and I were to ask you do you answer the phone when an unknown number calls, I'm going to guess that nine out of ten of you are going to be honest with me and say you do not answer the phone when an unknown number calls. And yet we expect the consumers, the people who are filling out our forms, the people whose leads that we are buying, we expect that they're going to somehow act differently. It's ridiculous, and that false belief is going to cost you time, which is going to cost you money.
So you should not be calling immediately. You should be texting first.
Which leads me to another false belief, which is if I want to make a sale today, I need to pick up the phone and dial. No. If you want to make a sale today, you pick up the phone and you text. You get into your CRM and you start sending text messages to people, engaging them that way.
And if you want to take it the extra mile, get on your phone or your computer, find their name on Facebook, find that Facebook profile and friend request them. This is something I learned from a very successful agent named Jerry. He gets a Facebook lead and his CRM immediately starts texting, trying to schedule a call. It also sends Jerry a text, you just got a Facebook lead, and it gives him their name and email. Jerry will then go on to Facebook, find that person and friend request them. Why? Because that is the channel that they were engaging with him on. He knows they have a Facebook profile, because that's where the lead came from.
Another false belief tied into this is that your online presence doesn't matter. If I were to sit down with you and say imagine you had a leaky toilet and you needed to call a plumber, you look up a plumber, what do you do before you call that plumber? I'm going to guess that you Google them, you go to their website, you try to make sure they're legitimate before you invite them into your home. Yes, of course you do. But it's the same thing for an insurance agent. But many insurance agents do not take the very small amount of time to set up a basic online presence so that the people who are doing their research on you can see that you're a professional, and believe me, they are doing the research on you.
So if your ghosting rate for your appointments is really high, that might be because when they Google you, they can't find anything that tells them that you are a professional.
So the good news inside of the Agent CRM branding bundles, we have a website built out for you, so you're good. There's no more excuses to not have a professional site. It's plug and play, ready to rock and roll.
The last thing I want to talk about is the action steps that you have to take right now. So we are in what I consider to be a communications crisis, and it's because we're trying to do things the old way. It's because we're trying to force ourselves to follow the same patterns of success that used to work before, which is calling as soon as the lead comes in, triple dialing when they don't answer. These things used to work. They don't anymore.
And so we need to make some changes as an insurance agency to make sure that our dials are going through, that our leads are talking to us, and that we're able to sell to as many people as possible that are raising their hand and asking for help.
So what you need to do is you need to follow the contact card rule, download your contact card, send it out to the people that are on your list, and make sure that all new leads get your contact card.
The third thing is you got to get good at texting. You just got to become really adept at texting people on the phone, making good conversation and getting them to schedule an appointment.
Now if you're like Alex, I don't want to learn how to do this, okay, that leads me to my last tip, which is to get the right tools in your tech stack. We live in a tech focused world right now. If you don't have a good AI powered CRM, if you don't have a good website, if you don't have a good system for managing all these leads, then you're going to have money just walk out the back door, which is a bummer, because you're really good at what you do, and the people that are raising their hand want to work with someone like you, and you're dropping the ball.
And so find a good CRM. Agent CRM is obviously one. I'm proud of it, but there's others out there. Find a good CRM, find a good system, find good tech support so that you can have a really good tech stack that will help you take the next step with your agency.
If you need any help with your contact rates, please reach out to us at Agent CRM. We're here to help you, even if you're not a client. We want to assist you. We want to be the nerds in your corner as you grow.
Hope you enjoyed this bonus podcast episode. If you have any additional questions for me that you'd like me to go over, go ahead and shoot me an email, and I will make more bonus podcast episodes, just doing some training on the tech and the AI that's out there now.
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. Please share this episode if you got value from it, and I'll see you online.