Chip Ervin - Why You Absolutely Need to Use Testimonials in Your Selling

Chip Ervin is an accomplished poker player and insurance broker. As a professional poker player, he is an expert in trust and deception.

The problem is that deception is widely spread not just in poker, where it’s expected, but everywhere around us.

The public is lied to all the time. People no longer trust anybody, yet in business, trust is required for making sales. There can be no sale without trust.

If you are a business owner looking to increase sales, you should know that your prospects are disillusioned and distrustful. There is a good reason for that. Your prospects have received promises too many times that never come to life. 

The best, most straightforward path to providing your legitimacy to your prospects is to use testimonials from your past and existing clients.

Nothing that you can say about yourself can be as powerful and credible as what others say about you. You simply can’t overuse testimonials in business. If you have so many testimonials that no prospect will read or watch all of them, he or she will still be impressed with the number of people saying positive things about you. Testimonials are beneficial in every sales scenario, be it introducing a new product or responding to a negative situation.

A good testimonial should be similar to a pair of before and after pictures. The before part should touch on skepticism, mistrust, problems with no solutions. The after part needs to include a positive result, a solution, and a nice surprise. 

As a DJ and insurance broker, Chip Ervin knows that there is no better selling tool than presenting a collection of testimonials from his happy customers.

Chip Ervin - How to Make Your Image Work for You as a Broker

Chip Ervin is an insurance broker, a poker player, and a DJ. He knows how important it is to have an image in a professional career.

                                       
To be perceived as a successful broker you need to convey the image of a successful broker. Individual appearances should be subject to the same image concerns as your location of business and advertising.

Some insurance brokers brag about coming to work in flip flops and shorts but then are surprised that affluent clients and corporate customers are not treating them seriously. 

The difference between shorts, jeans, and a suit does matter. 

Is it fair? Of course, it is not fair at all. However, this is how life works. The saying “do not judge a book by its cover” exists because we all judge books all the time by their covers, people by their appearances, and places of business by their marketing. 

Do you want to be right, or do you want to be successful?

This is a defining question not just for insurance brokers, but for business people in any field. Answering this question is a challenge that requires total pragmatism, a realistic worldview, and giving up excuses. 

Notice that the above question does not suggest playing a game of being a political chameleon, changing what you say or do, minute by minute, client by client, and audience by audience. There has to be congruency to how you conduct business. There has to be a collection of beliefs and principles that do not change. At the same time there are many things that can be easily tweaked that will take you to success faster. 

Getting impressive results in sales is possible, and Chip Ervin is a great example of that.