055 | Ernie Bray Bootstrapped His Way to $17 Million in Revenue

055 | Ernie Bray Bootstrapped His Way to $17 Million in Revenue

Ernie Bray is an award-winning Entrepreneur & CEO and expert on leadership, social media, entrepreneurship and business strategy. He led his company (AutoClaims Direct) to six annual rankings on the Inc. 5000, four years on Deloitte’s Technology Fast-500 and Entrepreneur’s “Best Entrepreneurial Companies In America". In addition to leading his insurance technology company, he is an author & speaker who believes in helping others build and drive their own success.

Does it ever feel like your prospecting efforts are going nowhere? That every time you reach out to someone you’d love to work with, they tell you they’re not interested, or you hear crickets?

Do you ever follow-up or do you just let things go?

This week’s guest, Ernie Bray’s company had been around for over 20 years, but his success wasn’t instantaneous. Ernie had to work hard for every client and advancement he made.

Ernie wasn’t interested in bringing on investors, so in the beginning he bootstrapped and would re-invest the money he made back into the business. For the first year in business, he personally made ZERO dollars!

In the beginning, insurance companies weren’t interested in working with Ernie and his company because he had no reputation. They had no idea what he would bring to the table, which led Ernie to quickly learn that in order to get the YES’s he wanted, he had to start following up!

It was with one of those consistent follow-ups that Ernie was able to eventually secure a large insurance carrier and has been working with them for over 7 years!

If you’re tired of feeling like your prospect pipeline is empty and you’re ready to learn how to effectively follow-up, this episode of Success Unfiltered is a MUST LISTEN!

Enjoy, and thank you for listening and tuning into Success Unfiltered!

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Special thanks goes out to Ernie Bray for taking the time to chat with Michelle. Be sure to join us next week for our next new episode!

P.S. How Do You Close More Deals And Make More Sales? It’s one of the easiest and most effective ways to close more deals, yet SO many business owners overlook it entirely. I’m talking about FOLLOW UP. Let me show you 7 ways that following up can explode your sales and change your business!

Here are a few key secrets we talked about in this episode:

• Michelle introduces Ernie.
• Ernie shares a 30 second look into what he does.
• Ernie shares a quick look into how the claim process works for his company.
• Can you imagine bootstrapping a company  from nothing to $17M in revenue? Ernie’s done exactly this with his company.
• Ernie shares why he started in inside sales versus going right to outside sales.
• As a competitive athlete, Ernie tried to get promoted within his company to do outside sales, but he was turned down a few times, before he was eventually fired (he shares the full story).
• After inside sales, Ernie tried to become an insurance adjuster and did not enjoy the cubicle job. He tried to move up in the company by taking the test to be income management, however he failed by 2 points. This was the turning point when he decided to start his own business.
• Ernie shares what he does instead of sitting around and moping, when he hears a NO.
• When Ernie started his business he had no reputation so he kept hearing NO after NO.
• With no reputation to his name, Ernie would go to insurance conferences and networking events and get small meetings with companies.
• Ernie had a meeting with an insurance carrier in San Diego, they hired him to take on the most difficult area to work claims, and this was Ernie’s in. The reputation of his company and their success started to spread and others started giving them claims to work.
• Ernie had resilience, despite being told NO many times he kept ignoring them and remaining persistent and following-up.
• Ernie shares how worn down he felt at times when he wasn’t experiencing success.
• Ernie turned to his competitive athletic background to lift himself up, when things weren’t going well.
• Ernie’s most accomplished NO came when he had little reputation. A large insurance carrier told him that his company had something that others did not. They were under contract and couldn’t work with him at the time, but they did eventually come around. (This NO was worth almost $2 Million)
• Ernie shares his tried and true method for following-up with clients.
• After not loving sales earlier in his career, Ernie now really enjoys the process.
• Ernie had to flip the script and let a needy, overbearing client go.
• Ernie shares what he would tell his younger self.

Connect with Ernie Bray:

• Facebook
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• ACD Twitter
• AutoClaims Direct

P.S. How Do You Close More Deals And Make More Sales? It’s one of the easiest and most effective ways to close more deals, yet SO many business owners overlook it entirely. I’m talking about FOLLOW UP. Let me show you 7 ways that following up can explode your sales and change your business!

Music produced by Deejay-O  www.iamdeejayo.com