The A.I. apocalypse comes after insurance business

On August 29th, 1997 at exactly 2:14 AM Eastern Time was when Skynet became self-aware…

Luckily it was stopped by an overhyped Austrian, the T-800, also known as “The Terminator”. You’ve probably seen the movie. If not, you should. It’s a perfect Christmas movie to complement Die Hard, of course.

Happy ending right…wrong.

Skynet reared its ugly head this week, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Here’s what happened.

I was doing to shopping at The Price Club (otherwise known as Costco) and reversed out. Then I went to drive, I kept reversing. No drive. I tried to put it in park. It wouldn’t let me.

I was terrified. Had AI taken over my car?

Somehow I got it home. As I got out of the car, my doors locked, then immediately unlocked, then locked again.

Then I got out and didn’t lock my doors. 30 seconds later (without me touching anything), the doors locked. Then turned on the screen inside my car.

Then my lights turned on.

I did none of this.

I called dealership, “I’m on my way” I announced.

They’d never seen anything like this.

The next day they looked it over. Couldn’t find anything. It’s like it vanished. They reset something or the other. Back to normal.

But the real questions is:

Is it really gone? Or just waiting for some other inopportune time to rear its ugly head?

Is this how the robot revolution starts? Testing ground until it takes over the world.

Take this email as patient zero on the robot apocalypse. Don’t say you weren’t warned in all do this stuff.

As unprobable as that story is, it happened to me.

There’s another myth that I want to try to clear up this morning.

It involves getting referrals. It could be from existing clients or COIs or both. Same thing applies.

There’s this idea that you need to ask for referrals, but I don’t think you do.

Now, before you jump down my throat. Let me first clarify what I mean by referral.

Here’s what a referral is:

When someone expresses a problem or pain and you know someone who can help take that pain away.

Essentially, it is you helping solve this persons issues by connecting them with someone who can help.

So when asking do referrals, you are trying to force an organic process and it doesn’t work.

Because a referral is simply one person trying to help another person who is in some sort of pain. And, if they can refer them to someone who can take that pain away, why wouldn’t they do that.

If you commit to getting more referrals this year. You have to have a plan to get them organically and not force them.

It isn’t having a meeting with your clients or COIs and tell them you’re looking for more and that you should refer people over.

They should do that naturally if they meet people who might need your services.

Think about it:

If one of your clients meets with someone who could use your skills and they don’t refer you over, that’s a bigger problem.

Why didn’t they think of you immediately?

Now don’t fret too much. Most people don’t refer. Even if they meet someone who needs your services. It’s just not in them naturally.

Only about 20-30% of your clients or COIs will ever refer you. It’s your job to identify that small group and put together a plan to up their numbers.

Here’s a strategy that you can use to start planting seeds:

What’s the most common question you get?

I’ll bet it’s some version of the following:

“How’s business?”

And what’s your probably answer?

“It’s going great” or “I’m crazy busy this time of year”, yada yada.

Even if it’s not necessarily true.

But I want you to tweak it just a bit and say this:

“I’ve been so busy this year with all the referrals I’ve been getting. I’m so thankful that I have many great clients and partners that trust me enough to refer their friends and family. So it’s been a great year. How about you?”

Most people don’t take advantage of this question. It’s not polite or nice to talk about yourself all the time. But, this question is the one time you can drop some bombs.

Now, what did we do with that answer:

1. We told them people are referring clients to you. This is social proof.

2. You told them more than one person is referring business.

3. You told them you are busy.

4. You told them you value these referrals.

This is all about planting seeds. Now in the persons mind, you are a bit more referrable.

I’m not saying that you are all of a sudden going to start getting a mountain of referrals. But planting seeds is one of the important steps in the plan.

I’ll be back next week with ideas on how to nurture these relationships to start getting these referrals.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays all!

In the McKeown household, it’s about to go down on Christmas morning. We kept Santa busy this year.

All the best,

Andrew