Today's episode is on breaking out in a competitive marketing place. Richard Weylman is a highly sought-after marketing consultant in the financial services industry. Learn more at MarkMiletello.com. Note: “Where The Insurance Pros Meet” is an audio podcast and is meant for the ear. A transcript of the audio is provided for referencing a particular section or for you to follow along. Listen to the episode to get the most out of our show. We use both speech recognition software and human transcribers to create the transcripts so they may contain errors. If you’re going to quote us in print, please be sure to check the corresponding audio. TRANSCRIPT Announcer Where The Insurance Pros Meet, Episode 3. Richard Weylman Remember, relationships drive revenue, and if you want to grow a practice today, they want you to relate. Announcer Where The Insurance Pros Meet is a podcast that brings the greatest talent in the world together: managers, coaches, and producers; the very best experts the insurance and financial services industry has to offer. Get ready to change the way you do business to have your most successful year ever. Now, here's Mark Miletello, a top 1% producer, manager, and your host of Where The Insurance Pros Meet. Mark Miletello Today we're going to discuss breaking out in a competitive marketing place. We have a very, very special guest on the show today. He's a highly sought-after marketing consultant in the financial services industry. He's the author of two best-selling books, Opening Closed Doors: Keys To Reaching Hard-To-Reach People, and a recent read of mine, The Power of Why: Breaking Out in a Competitive Marketplace. This book has been endorsed with names like Donald J. Trump, yes, that's now President Trump, Christopher Forbes, Richard S. Bernstein, Milton Pedraza, founder of an online university, the Weylman Center for Excellence in Practice Management. By the way, his work has been described by Christopher Forbes of Forbes magazine as brilliant, and I personally agree. I've been following and learning from our guest for a decade now, and I'm honored and excited to welcome Richard C. Weylman to the show. Welcome, Richard. Richard Weylman Thank you, Mark. Great to be with you. I appreciate the privilege of being part of the programming Where The Insurance Pros Meet. Thank you. Mark Miletello And thank you. Richard, were you able to catch the Mayweather/McGregor fight? Richard Weylman Oh, absolutely. I'm a huge boxing fan. Although a lot of people thought it was going to be for show only, I thought it was very interesting. I thought that McGregor handled himself well given the fact it was way outside of his, how shall we say, his sweet spot. But it was really an interesting fight. I think that it was truly once in a lifetime. Mark Miletello Yeah, it's neat. I love the way the announcers even were questioning in the early rounds. It's funny. I like to start my show with a Mayweather jab, followed by a straight overhand right, which he implemented so well, but knock out information that will immediately help our listeners win in the arena of marketing and sales in the insurance and financial industry. Now, Richard, I know someone who paid $5,000 for a ticket. I personally paid $100 to see the fight. And others that I've talked to cannot even believe people were paying this much to see this fight. So, I think there's a lesson here. As a marketing coach, I can't help but relate this to consumers of our products. I guess the question is, regarding our products in the insurance and financial industry, products that may do the same thing but are priced differently, how is it that agents or reps stay in business unless they're the lowest price? I think you're the perfect person to ask that question too. Richard Weylman Wonderful question. It's a perfect analogy. Why would somebody pay $5,000 or $100 to be able to see that fight? In the end, there are a couple of things to always consider. Why do people, and why are people willing to pay more? If they can afford it, why are they willing to pay more than, let's say, the low-cost provider. It really gets down to a couple of very fundamental things. Number one, it's the value that they place, in the case of insurance, on the recommendations that are being made. If you do a great discovery and really uncover, hear me clearly now, the emotional issues they're dealing with, not just, "I need more life insurance to protect my family," but really be able to tell a story of delivering a death benefit, to tell the story of why disability insurance is important, to be able to tell the story from your own perspective, that engages people emotionally, and when people are emotionally engaged, the value is far beyond just the product, but it also brings value to the relationships they have. The important thing here is value is created. Cost is a function of value. If you expand the value, cost becomes a minimal or a minor issue. That's one. Two, the second piece of that puzzle is they really want to feel that their life insurance agent, or advisor, use any phrase you want, is really a resource for people like them. What do I mean by that? I mean, they want to feel comfortable. You're not just there to create a transaction, but you're there to be able to help them, more holistically, if you will, with all their financial issues. Now, you may not be cross-licensed. You may not be able to sell investments, but you certainly can be the individual that they can call when they have a financial question, and through strategic partnerships you can then place yourself in their mind as a resource to them so that they see the value you bring is not just the product, not just the platform, but the insight that you have and the specialist in your firm that you can deliver to them to help them to get their financial life in balance. Is that helpful? Mark Miletello Absolutely. I mean, I want to say, "If we could bottle that up and sell it, or give it away," but you really have. You have in everything you've done, in your books, in the classes that I've studied for 10 years, and you've done it with the Weylman Institute, so you really have bottled it up. But there are so many nuggets in what you just said. What I think, Richard, is I think people can afford what they want to afford as well. When you think about the value the promoters built in the right marketing campaign, it's numbers that they calculate, and they feel is their worth, not the cheapest that they could do it for. Right? I guess from the south I have a different perspective. I've seen a $5,000 pickup truck driving down the road with a $20,000 ATV in the back, so it reminds me that when you want something bad enough you find a way to afford it. It becomes part of your budget. Richard Weylman That's right. As I said, the cost is a function of value. I think it's important too for insurance, particularly with DOL and all the things, you know, there's all this noise out there. And people are like, "Oh, fee disclosure, or commission disclosure." Part of the problem, frankly, Mark, is that insurance agents and advisors, even on the financial advisory side, when they're asked ... and I asked an insurance agent recently who is a friend of my wife, and I said, "So, how do you get paid?" "Oh, I get paid on commission." Wow. And I ask advisors all the time, "So, what kind of a practice do you run?" "Oh, I run a fee-based practice." Well, either one of those statements, if you say you run a fee-based practice, my first question must be, "What's the fee?" If I say, "How do you get paid?" And you say, "I get paid in commission." I'll say, "So what's your commission?" My advice to everyone listening to this discussion today is very simple. If somebody says, "So, how do you get paid?" "Well, I get paid for the recommendations that I make that you accept to protect your family." Mark Miletello Love it. Absolutely. Well, you know, like I said, it seems like everything that you say, and when I'm reading your book, and listening to you, you add one little twist to things that people say that brings so much value. You're right. If someone asked me today how I got paid I would have said the same thing, because that's ... But that makes a lot of sense, and thank you for sharing that. Richard Weylman You're welcome. Mark Miletello We've kind of talked about the pinnacle of boxing, so as one of the leading minds, I believe, in professional marketing, Richard, right off the bat let's give the listener a professional tip or tool. Is there a tip or tool or a piece of technology that you can share with the listener that is either transforming your business or could help transform theirs? Richard Weylman Well, not a self-promotion. Obviously, I've been producing coursework for many years. We're a research-based consulting firm first. We've done a lot of discovery of what's going on with the consumer, and that's really our sweet spot, it is understanding how to engage the consumer, and, more importantly, convert them into a client. Our online platform The Weylman Center has allowed us now to bring 41 courses that used to be on DVD, et cetera, it's allowed me to upgrade all of that and put that in the marketplace. It's WeylmanCenter.com, and an agent or an advisor can sign up for $27 a month, have access to 41 different courses, hot links to every single market in the United States right at the local level. But setting that aside for the moment, because we've really designed that for people that really want to build a practice of distinction. I think the large picture here is this. We've just concluded doing research with 350 affluent individuals. What does that mean? Well, we have about 7,000 agents and advisors that belong to our online university. We do a lot of webinars, we have masterminds, it's a very interactive site with a lot of people, they're taking courses, they have all the tools they need to execute. I do a lot of webinars
