The Desert of Arizona
Overcast and Wet 68 Degrees
It’s not hard to strike fear in the heart of a service provider with talk about the “commoditization” of his or her industry.
“Your entire industry is becoming a commodity! Watch out! Run for the hills! You’ll work for peanuts forever! Boo!”
Like most fears, this one is overblown. It’s not the trajectory of the industry service providers have to worry about, it’s themselves. They commoditize themselves.
Take this little email I received from an insurance agent. I didn’t really make any changes to this except that I took out his name, removed the name of the company and didn’t take the time to recreate the blue, teal and purple text combination he used.
This is what he sent:
As your ******* Agent it is my job to ask:
“Is your family prepared to be without you?”
“Do You Have Enough Saved For Retirement?” “Do you want to save?”
“Is your Retirement Protected from Loss?”Will you be ready if you need Long-Term Care?”
Income Replacement,
Income that you CANNOT outlive,
Tax-Free Lifetime Income,
Guarantee and Insure
Being cared for at Home……We would like you to know your options when it comes to protecting your family’s future with ********* Life and Retirement products. Please call our office today to schedule an appointment. It is a free service to all our clients……or email any questions or concerns you may have.
The first thing to notice about this email is that it would read exactly the same with any insurance agent’s name and company in there. This is a problem. It’s about as far as you can get from being an Incomparable Expert.
Take a look at your marketing. If you can slap someone else’s name and company on it and it still works, you have a problem!
There are lots of problems with the approach above. But the biggest one is this:
If you want to be perceived as an advisor, then you can’t lead with your solution!
If you are in the insurance business and you read this Client Letter, know that the bar is low. You have plenty of opportunity.
This guy is doing SOMETHING right. At least compared to the last guy. This one actually SENDS emails. The last one only sent the company prepared template newsletter full of information of no interest to its readers.
I always say you can’t really screw up the Platform model, but I guess I have to amend that. Clearly, you can.
Because if you put your readers to sleep, it’s game over!
If you want to see how to do this in a way that makes you an Incomparable Expert, The Platform Lab starts today.