Episode 115: Coach ‘Em Up Or Coach ‘Em Out

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or are well on your way to the success you desire, with the right people, processes and promotions in place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromso. Greetings. Welcome to the next episode, the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. This is Mike Stromso and I am pumped and I am excited to bring you this episode because we're continuing on our journey to help you with your excellent people. And the title of this, Coach them up or coach them out. I want to share with you the details because ultimately, at the end of the day, as we've talked about over time, if you've been listening, it's a progression in growing up your people in your organization. And you've got to be strategic. You have to be smart. You have to be planned. Because Ben Franklin said, if you're failing to plan, you're planning to fail. And that's not what we ever want. Failure is not an option. All we want is your success. So let me share with you some thoughts. Make sure you have something to write with and something to write on. If you don't have that, go grab it right now so we can get started. So let me take you through the whole thought process of bringing somebody onto your team and getting them to the point that's going to ultimately give you the freedom that you're looking for. Because ultimately it starts with recruiting. And I'm going to say it again, because I have to continue to say it to help people understand the magnitude and the importance of always be recruiting. You must always be recruiting because at the end of the day, you just never know. So your recruiting journey is recruiting. So you recruit somebody, they raise their hand. It starts with the interviewing stage. After the interviewing stage, you decide that you want to make them an offer. You make them an offer. Then you have the onboarding stage. You onboard them onto your team and at that point starts the training stage. And that training stage is often about one to three months. And we're going to talk about that specifically today in just a couple of minutes. After the training phase, you encounter the motivation phase. So vitally important after the motivation phase to motivate them, to really get them excited about what you're trying to build here. After the motivation phase, you have the accountability page phase. Accountability is so vitally important because accountability breeds responsibility. And so that's the next step. And after that, your goal is to grow up leaders around you. That is your ultimate goal, to grow up people who ultimately are leaders in your organization all around you. That's the end goal. So all the way from recruiting to leaders, recruiting to leaders and everything in between. Today I'm going to cover the phase that has continually come up over the last couple of weeks within Unstoppable Nation, within our unstoppable profit producer coaching programs. It's been a constant conversation. So I wanted to make sure I brought that to you today so that you can learn as well the most important things that are going on right now in the trenches in the insurance agency business. Vitally, vitally important. Let me give you another quick 10,000 foot view of all of this as well. Because it starts from day one. In week zero, you teach them your way. The SIA way in our agency, some of our most successful longtime coaching members, the McLean way, the CSIS way, the A Lara's way. It's your way of running an organization, of growing an organization. But you have to, you get to, you don't have to do anything. You, you get to teach them your way, including your operational platforms like the intranet. Meet the teammates on the first day we talked about that in an onboarding podcast. Check it out. It's out there. Just other miscellaneous info. I'm going to dive into those details in just a minute. And then the internal checklist again. We're going to dive into that just a minute. On to week one through three. Week one through three. We in our agency use total CSR a lot every time to make sure that they are understanding of the way that we do things consistently all the time. And a lot of our agent people, agencies on our membership also use that particular platform. Okay. So the great thing about that is it really helps them identify the nuts and bolts nuances of the insurance agency business. It offers it from personal lines to commercial lines to group health and benefits. Nowadays it's fantastic. Then we have other internal training features or from agency management system, both personal and commercial lines, the rating systems, renewal system, technology systems for renewals, premium financing if they're in commercial marketing. Other digital tools that they use for comparative rating for say workers comp. As an example client segmentation, the operations and the sourcing between commercial lines and personal lines for cross selling. All of that we go into the next week which is brokerage business. If we broker it out to another MGA and commercial lines as an example versus the direct relationships with the carriers as an example. All about coverages that's covered for eight weeks. We have segments about coverages, we talk about policy forms, we talk about other nuances concerning endorsements onto policies, the specializations and all of that. That's all covered within the first five to eight weeks. Onto client training in the following weeks, you know, all about specific client situations. We've created all of that. Certificates and evidences of insurance, billing, how we handle billing, what we believe, audits, how we handle audits and what we believe there rewrites as an example, how we handle that and what we believe, renewals and all of that and how it works within our organization. So, you know, we give them a good 10,000 foot view of exactly what their day is going to look like. Now part of that training process once they get on board also includes a longer forecasted version. You know, what's your career position in our agency going to look like? Okay, one of our platinum coaching members has done a fabulous job in taking that to the next level. So I am looking at that. This particular coaching member created a short term, a midterm and a long term expectation document for a new team member. It really helps them, they get to see what their career is going to look like out to the end of the first year. It gives them something to work for, something to train for, something just to know that they're going to have an awesome experience in the insurance agency business executing it our way. And you know, what does that look like? What does that short term expectation look like? Well, again, it's back to the training systems that are in place. Basic operations, incoming and outgoing mail, letter and email templates, accessing carrier websites, following a daily schedule, a daily schedule that needs to be followed. A daily checklist, manage the phone system, task organizers within the organization. Daily email for the first 30 days to the agency team leader, which is also part of the first 30 days in our organization as well. Okay, what does the midterm expectations look like? And by the way, in this podcast you may hear a little bit of overlap in some of the things, but that's okay. We, we need to hear it up to seven times. Okay, so mid medium term expectations, that's really the 60 to 90 day thought process again for licensed people or unlicensed people. They are a different dynamic, a lot of the same things. One of the things that I had not mentioned previously is claims processing. Vitally important, a complete training for a specific desk, whether it be commercial lines or personal lines. Begin learning to make correct judgment calls as their day goes along, whether it be mail, phone, fax, email, texting, etc. How to create Clear communications with the insureds, with carriers, with vendors using the established agency protocol. Okay. Begin learning the agency management system, the agency referral program and how that works. Great point. Okay. Working with agency processes and social proof collection, whether it be testimonials or getting them to our link to leave this on online review. Time management, how to actually manage their time. By the way, I'm going to correct that and update that as well because there is no such time for thing is time management. What there is is choices that people make as to what they do with their time. Okay. And then the long term expectations. This takes them all the way from say 90 days to one year. Okay. Things like underwriting decisions so they can be free and on their own to make these decisions on their own. It takes time start to make these decisions with supervision on their own. The new business quoting on their own. Okay. The remarketing on their own. The rounding of existing accounts on their own with sourcing to other qualified teammates if they don't know how to handle that particular line of insurance and learning to be an independent decision maker on their own. Okay. Concerning claims cancellations and remarketing and rounding and new business quoting, etc. Increased and independent client communications, both verbal and written. Again, making sure they make the right choices with their time, giving them increased independence and you increase independence from having to train them. Working on certifications, that's part of your agency makeup. Again, learning to help create task organizers and building the processes within the agency and processing downloads and so much more. My friends, there is so much going on in the agency business as you know, and we want to make sure that we create.

A healthy, growing environment to be able to create all of that. So let's jump down to two different segments of the agency operational business that will help you coach them up or unfortunately coach them out if it's not a good fit for them, if you're not a good fit for them, you want to learn that as quickly as you can. Okay? So at the end of the day we have created training protocols for say, service people, salespeople. And the first thing I'm going to do, I'm going to run through the initial up to about 60 days, the checklists. Okay. Things that you need to be thinking about in the initial 60 days. We've got it all laid out. And I laid this out in 2016 when I really did a ton of study on figuring out what the best agency businesses and businesses period look like as far as their initial. After they finish the onboarding portion, the Real nuts and bolts training of a business. So you have a checklist. It really starts with a checklist. You have to inspect what you expect. You know, things like the pre hire checklist as they move to the onboarding day. You know, things like business cards ordered, computer ordered and, or setup, desktop desk items ordered, the phone, the agency management system logins, the intranet setup if you have one. You know, things like Roboform, DocuSign. All of that is something that's really, really important. The base phone extension assigned, workspace assigned, email created, HR protocol all over the place, payroll information, carrier training schedule, passwords requested, first day scheduled, daily, mentor assigned, and updates scheduled with leadership. All of that's critical to think about before they even start. Okay. This is all having to do with the training and the ongoing trading. You have all of your carrier logins that need to be considered and so much more just before, even before they start on their first day. So in a service position, a high performing, high achieving agency, what does that look like? Okay, so I'm going to rip off some of the things that will be done in the first week, week number one. And one of the things that's like super, super important in every week of the ongoing training is to make sure that there is a mentor assigned to that person every single day. And in case they say, hey, I'm stuck, I have a question, hey, I'm stuck, I have a question. Who is that mentor? And if you have the capability within your business to assign various people for specific days so one person's not locked down every single day to be responsible for the training, fantastic. If you don't have that latitude yet, that's okay. Make sure that they know. And one of the things you might be able to do is just, you know, schedule specific times during the day if they get stuck. Okay. If that is a good fit, it really depends on, you know, how good that person is. Okay. And then you just go in and you know. Right. So at the end of the day, the activities for the first week are, you know, spend time with somebody that they're shadowing, learning their role in the agency and the vision for the future of that particular chair, the agency. Discuss the training goals with leadership and review the training plan to make sure that they get clear and they can see if you will, where they are going. Get a tour and introduction of the office or if they're online, let them know how that's going to work, the building and everything else. I mean this is really eight hours a day, five days a Week, a lot of time. Their best eight hours of the day. They're going to be investing in growing with your business. Okay. Get logged into all the systems and make sure they can consistently log in time after time, day after day. Make sure their emails working and they know how to use it. Learn the email, the phone and the fax systems and the texting systems, whatever that looks like. Their daily voicemail greeting. If that's part of your agency business, we do it weekly. Okay. But it depends on what you want. Spend multiple days shadowing a person and then turn it around and have them start doing you. Watch them do it. As an example, what's the incoming in the outgoing mail process for stalemail? Learn about the company's website and what that looks like. Learn how to create and follow the task organizer systems and why they exist and what to do if for some reason they become outdated. Because that happens, you know, things are changing like every five minutes or sooner in the insurance agency business. Right. Okay. Begin working with a daily schedule checklist. Begin training on the agency management system as well. And the daily email to team leadership over the first 30 days, every single day. We call it our 30 Day Sprint. Vitally, vitally important. Why? Because that 30 Day Sprint email will tell you what's happening in their day and ultimately at the end of the day, how you can better train them. Okay, so that's the first week. Let's go to the second week. What does that look like? Okay, well, review previous week's achievements and accomplishments and this week's training plan with the leadership team person so they know where they're going. They have no doubt where they're going in their career with you. Get scheduled for insurance licensing if need be. And if they're already there, fantastic. Touch base with the mentor throughout the week and let them know. Begin training them on social proof, whether it be testimonials, online reviews or what have you. Be in the training on the referral rewards program. Continue familiarization with Peter and Paula Perfect. Within the agency management system. By the way, you might wonder what the heck is he talking about? It's a fake file in the agency management system that shows them what a perfect file looks like. And it said, and we basically tell people every file in the agency should look just like this. And it's a way to say, hey, the file's not set up correctly in the agency management system. See Peter, Paul or per Pete and Paula Perfect. And go look at the file and that shows you how the file should look. And get it up to Date. It's really that simple. You're done. Okay. And you're not investing a lot of time explaining to them nuances. They've got to figure it out on their own and they gotta be self starters and self learners. Practice training from comparative rating systems or other systems. Okay. Working on creating task organizers as part of the training with a mentor for at least an hour of the day. Shadow, a minimum of three half days, another team member, and as they continue to learn, they need to hear it again and again and again. Okay? Begin basic scanning and attaching within the agency management system. Start the insurance company. Familiarize familiarization systems with regard to claims and billing. Work on a daily schedule with the mentor assigned to you. Follow the daily checklist. Learn to use the internal software systems, the hubs that we built within the agency, whether it be any custom hubs that you built or an intranet as an example. Continue to learn the phone, the fax, the email systems, welcome kit training, the welcome kit checklist, and why it exists. Not that they're necessarily going to be doing it, but it's part of their daily regime. If you will, begin working with the correspondence in the client files, the letters, the emails, the faxes and the templates and the texting systems. Review the daily progress with leadership. Continue the first 30 day email. Okay. And report to your mentors in addition to that. I didn't mention this after the first week, but it applies after the first week, the second week and the third week. You know, score them, score them at the end of every week and maybe even have a debriefing meeting with them on how they did. And so listen, any questions that they've got about what they experienced that particular week and what can we be doing better in the next week in their training and development within your agency business. So what does week three look like for a service person in a high achieving agency? By the way, we're going to cut it off at three weeks for this particular podcast because there's a lot more than I remembered there was. So anyway, I want to get it all in for you, to be helpful to you. Okay. And by the way, once you get through the first three to four weeks in an agency, career evolvement and evolution, you're going to start identifying what the rest looks like in conjunction with that particular person. Okay, so what are the goals for week three? Continuing to learn the blank SIA way, the McLean way, the Casel way, the CSIS way, the ALRS way, et cetera. Right, okay. Review previous week's accomplishments and this week's training schedule with the leadership team. Continue to train with your mento mentor as part of your daily schedule. One hour updating task organizers and continuing to learn them so they can learn to function on their own. Training with the established task organizers. Continue to learn the software systems within the agency that they're going to be using on a daily basis. Follow the daily checklist that been set out before them. Continue to work more independently. Continue insurance carrier familiarization and training, maybe some videos from a carrier and then you do a debriefing Q and A afterwards. Continue to build on the scanning and documentation systems within the agency. Build on client correspondence. Continue to learn the claims task organizers, how to send letters, how to make out the how to make the initial call up within 48 hours after a claim is recorded and how that back and forth works. Continue to work on the welcome kit and the development from within and a daily check in with the mentor every day within the first 30 days and again at the end of the week, you score that person and how they did and you continue to develop and add necessary tasks based on how they're making progress and their accomplishments on an ongoing basis. My friends, ultimately at the end of the day, it's critical that you have a plan. It's critical that you have a plan. So that's for a service person. Let's talk of a salesperson, okay? And I'm not going to go into as much detail with the salesperson as I did the service people just because of time. But at the end of the day, having a plan, laying out a plan for them and their future success within your business is the critical key. Is the critical key. So in addition to the pre hire stuff, in addition to all the logins and everything else that they'll need in the sales chair, the first goal on week one is simply learn the company purpose, the message, the materials and the services that are offered and help them.

Create a foundation for their success. I'll suggest that the activities that I've got on this particular Checklist are probably 20 activities long in just the first week. Now my also recommendation is you're always going to want to customize your training list for your organization to make it the best that it can be. You know, this is everything from, you know, making sure they have their bio and their photo submitted to marketing for the website, to spending a half day with the various departments to learn more about the agency and how it works for the salesperson. Pipeline management, review sales process the activity logs, develop a marketing plan, how they should market how often they should market. Discuss training goals Touch base with mentors throughout the week. Read and review your marketing plan with leadership. Okay? Have lunch with each day with the appropriate person as schedules allow to continue to develop. Read three past proposals and appropriate sales letters. Review the marketing and the process documents. Master and learn email, phone, fax and computer systems within the agency. Learn how to use the sales tools that we've developed for you and the related material. Observe another salesperson Sell the company. Make a minimum of 15 phone calls to lower level target accounts just to begin learning process right out of the gate. Perform a sales presentation to a selected team member with a simple explanation, not a major explanation to begin to learn how we operate. Again, there's a mentor for every day and you go ahead and rate them at the end of the week and you debrief and you answer them. Get all their questions, thoughts or comments about how the week went and build off of that in to week two. The overall goal for week two is simply Learn to sell the company. Learn to sell the company or your agency critically. Critically important by reviewing last week Touching base with the mentors. Perform your sales presentation on practices and procedures and to leadership. Okay, have another sales team member give you a PowerPoint presentation. Make a minimum of five phone calls to prospects. Add account information to the database. Learn how to start those nuts and bolts and documenting their files. Learn to use the internal software systems. Perform company sales presentations to another team member for ongoing practice. By the way, how often should people be practicing? Practicing and training is like bathing. It's recommended daily right now, in time the Olympics are coming up. How often do you think Olympic athletes practice? I asked that question to somebody in the last couple days. They said probably multiple times a day. Dang straight. Why are they the best in the world? Because they practice multiple times a day to hone their craft to get better every single day. That's the kind of environment that you want to build within your organization as well. Attend client status meetings with company personnel. Attend appropriate sales presentations. Perform territory analysis and build a 25 account database. Review progress daily via email with leadership with Reveal, sales process, et cetera. We have also found that the 30 day sprint email doesn't always work as well with salespeople because they have not as great ability to focus. It's just their personality. So you're gonna have to make a decision or maybe use a hybrid version of that. Let's jump on to week number three as we begin to move towards the end of this podcast. By the way, I hope this is helping you in a great way. Get a lot of clarity on the critical nature of training out of the gate with an excellent team member. Not the best, the best available. And we have been talking a lot about this in the most recent podcast. Ok, so the goal for the third week and beyond as you continue to train them is to get them and help them leave the nest. You want to get them to the point where they're leaving the nest and getting out there and really, you know, they're going to have wins, they're going to have lessons, they're going to have wins, they're going to have lessons. If you just started watching and or listening to this podcast, in our world, the lesson is a failure. Nobody died. We're good. Move on. Okay. Review the previous week's accomplishments and what can you build on from that? Read competitive information. If none available, talk to your mentor or leadership and get some so you understand what's going on. Start sending snail mail letters of introduction with any other material. Of course the thing to always include is testimonials and a guarantee complete risk removal. It changes everything and I Learned that over 20 years ago when I started using it. And when I started using it, I was doing it via this thing, you may have heard of it, called a fax machine. Again 20 years ago when I added testimonials and a guarantee to outgoing proposals. Increase my response and closing percentage by 31%. Nobody cares about what you say you've done for other people. It's what other people say you've already done for them that makes all of the difference, my friends. So help them to learn monthly and quarterly forecasting of everything that they're doing. Make four telephone calls and contacts with accounts. Alright and we have a complete sales growth system that we have designed in UPP specifically for sales people that lays it all out for them. Describe and sell all the products to another team member. Make a sales presentation to a comp to the company president or the president of another company. Learn and update the forecasting system and sales database. Develop training plans for the fourth and fifth weeks and beyond with your mentor. Set up activity goals for the next three weeks. Update the sales people on your daily progress via email. Report into your mentors every day and don't forget the all important accountability at the end of each week. Make sure you assess and grade them at the end of each week and discuss it with them on how their week went. My friends, there's so much more that we've got. I hope that's Given you a quick overview of once they get onboarded, exactly what needs to happen to get them out of the gate fast and more importantly, to get them out of the gate, right? And remember this, and I learned this some of the toughest lessons that I've ever learned in my career, ok? Because many, many years ago I believed, and I believe this with all of my heart, that I could change people. If they came in and I thought they were a good person, a good person of character, etc. Etc. And they had these little things that need to be changed, I felt I could change them. What I learned, my friends, I can't. I can't change people. I can only lead them. So at the end of the day, what they got in their first 18 years of being brought up and the DNA they possess, it is who they are. Okay? So if you start going through the first 30, 60 days and you identify that they are not the best or a good culture fit, or you start identifying things that are not right and not good for the organization, unfortunately you might have to send them back to the marketplace or terminate them. It is what it is. Some people make it through the recruiting and interviewing process. By the way, that leads me to the one other thing. During the interviewing process, they're going to give you all the answers that they think you want to hear. Why? Because they want the job. Of course. They're going to tell you everything you want to hear. Why wouldn't they? If they didn't, they wouldn't get the job. Think about that for a minute. Lessons brought that to my mind. Ok? So I hope this helps you create a great training environment for your organization. If there's anything more that we can do for you, please let us know. And remember this. I learned this from the late, great Zig Ziglar. The only thing worse than training a person and losing them is keeping them and not training them at all. Remember, training is like bathing. It is recommended daily. Motivation is like bathing. It is recommended daily. Accountability is like bathing. It is recommended daily. Leading people is like bathing. It is recommended daily. My friends, I hope this has helped you. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. This is Mike Stromsol, by the way. I'm widely recognized as a leading author, speaker and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can find me@unstoppableprofitproducer.com if you're interested in attending a virtual or live event to learn to grow your business, create wealth, and to have more freedom to live life on your own terms, please visit us. You can join us at a virtual event@uppfaststart.com that's upfaststart.com or join us at our live events beunstoppablebootcamp.com that's beunstoppablebootcamp.Com everything that we do is backed by our ironclad 100% customer satisfaction guarantee. All we want is your success. Both of these events, whether it be virtual or live, are designed to share with you some of my best money making strategies proven over 35 years of research in our industry to help you grow your business, create wealth so you too can have more freedom to live life on your own terms. I just got a text this morning from one of our platinum coaching members who's living life on his terms. He's out there doing what he loves to do outside the business, leading our youth to become better people in their journeys in life. So proud of him. So grateful that he is able to live life on his own terms. And I am grateful that he let me know because that fuels me like nothing else in helping people. Helping you. If there is anything more that we can do for you, please let us know. Remember, starts with just two things, a decision and action. A decision and action will lead you to your next win or your next lesson. Until our next podcast, Make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets. I'll see you on the next episode. Until then, be unstoppable. Thank you for listening. If you would like to listen to more episodes or share this podcast with someone you care about, please visit www.unstoppableprofitpodcast.com now go out and make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets.