Episode 271: T-E-A-M (Encore)

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. This podcast will give independent insurance agents all of the tools to grow your business and live life on your terms. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or 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 Stromsol.

Greetings and welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. I want to bring to you something today which, after we implemented the task organizer system in our agency business, that became the glue that not only held our organization together, but guided our organization together to heights that I, I never dreamed of. And it's still incredible to me this day that we were able to grow to those heights and beyond. And I want to make sure that I share it with you and I want to guide you through how we did it. And I'm going to take you through is some of the basic steps on this podcast on how we did it and I'm going to bring you, take you back to some nuances that I did because I wasn't quite sure how to do it back then. But you know, now that I've figured all this out and I want to share and guide agents everywhere to be able to do this. It's the glue that holds your team together and it's all about the team meetings, the huddles, the collaborative team sessions that are so vitally important to your culture to keep everybody on the same page, to make sure that everybody's rowing in the same direction and well beyond. So I bring this to you today to guide you, because I've talked to a number of agents within the last week or two weeks who either one still are not doing a great job with their consistent team meetings or they don't have them at all. I encountered one of the new members of our unstoppable platinum coaching and mastermind programs who are not doing team meetings. And I will compare a little bit to those that have implemented team meetings over a period of years within our coaching programs who are doing phenomenal, phenomenal things. And that's all we want for you. We want to help agents everywhere to achieve these big steps and to guide them along the way to be able to take the big steps into the future. And, and, or, you know, back to one of my friends, Tim Gaspar, he calls it the biggest leap. We want to help them to take big leaps into the future. That is our goal. That is why we do this. Let's get into it today so I can help give you some thought processes on team meetings. All right, so why should you have team meetings? Great question. Team meetings are the glue that binds the consistency and the synchronicity within your organization. Everybody's on the same page when you get together in that forum. And my best recommendation, this is how we did it for years and years. It was face to face, elbow to elbow, shoulder to shoulder. Is that reality in today's world? No. If it's not reality, don't worry about it because worry brings fear and fear is crippling. Just get the team meetings going and most importantly, lead your team. If you're an agency owner or leader, lead your team. I'm going to drop this and share this with you because it's one of the greatest thought processes that I've heard from leadership and I'm going to probably give it to you a couple times during this podcast today. Answer this question. If you're a leader.

Would I follow me?

Would I follow me? That is at the core of running and leading team meetings. You've got to be the leader that everybody not only wants to follow, but will run after will go to war. 4. We'll step in front of everybody else. 4. We need to get them to be able to have that thought process, to have that built within.

Because we want patriots on our team, not mercenaries. Keep that in mind as you're out there recruiting and prospecting for your next great team member. By the way, all of this is within the first P of the three P's Excellent people, world class processes and systems and we simply get to promote the heck out of it. So team meetings, number one, are the glue that binds the consistency and the synchronicity within your organization. They keep your team cohesive, they keep your team feeling that everything is good. We want to work hard for this. Or even if you've encountered some obstacles in the road, no big deal. We can overcome this together because together everybody achieves more. That is the definition of team. Together everybody achieves more. We've got to have that mentality at all times. And your team has to feel that and want to be able to execute that at all times. And these team meetings with excellent leadership are at the core. That's where all these things come out in the open. And you have to encourage. You get to encourage your team and you should encourage your team and to feel free to throw out an idea even if it's not popular, even if it may not become reality. Encourage the collaboration Encourage them to bring into the table. That's something that you need to always be doing on an ongoing basis. Right? So that's why you should have team meetings. Now let's talk a little bit about the preparation and the inner workings of a team meeting. Okay, so generally there's four weeks in a month.

Some months, two months of the year, have five. Our best experience with team meetings was having a team meeting once a week. So the question is, if you have it once a week, what day of the week is best? It's different for everybody. Ours became Wednesday, Wednesday, first thing in the morning before the phones went on, 30 minutes. And I was prepared, or one of the persons on our leadership team was prepared for the meeting every single week. We talked about it, we prepared for it, et cetera, et cetera. Before Wednesday, not Wednesday morning, before Wednesday. We knew what was going to happen. If we needed to rehearse something, if we need to role play something, we did it before the meeting. It was not last minute, it was ready to go. We were prepared for the team. Your number one customer is your team. So you've got to prepare for them like you would any other customer. Okay, so it was around, it was at 8:30 on Wednesday, no phones on all team meeting. Okay, so that was our team meeting. And each week of the month we had a certain topic that we focused on primarily during that team meeting. So week one was our client service report cards, our Google reviews, our, our testimonials, our case studies and similar items, everything about our clients, what's going on with our clients. And we read testimonials, we read Google reviews, we read client service report cards that had come back in the office allowed in the team meeting, we had team members read them aloud. Oh, by the way, one more thing. Before every team meeting, regardless of the week before, before every team function, regardless of when it was, we always read our promise to our clients.

To our team, to our communities, our client, our promise, AKA a mission statement if you will, for the external.

People and internal. And then we had another team member read our core values. Every single team function, every single team meeting. We read those aloud. We read those aloud. We read those aloud. That's how it becomes part of your culture. That's how it becomes part of your DNA. Vitally, vitally important. Okay, so week one, we read all of those out loud. We remind our team who is our ideal client. Because part of our vision organizer, who is our ideal client might be personal, might be commercial, might be acquisition, but we remind them who is our Ideal client, they all know. And then first week we do the team member of the month award. Absolutely phenomenal. Absolutely game changing. And the team is right there every single time with the team member of the month award. And they went on their inspiring happiness plaque within the agency business that hung on their wall. And we are super grateful and thankful for the people that receive those awards. So. And everybody would vote for who they, for who they thought the team member of the month was. And we would read the responses from everybody aloud in the team meeting. Talk about social proof for team members on steroids. Absolutely incredible. So number one, that's week one. Week two was our bind, hit ratio team meeting and our numbers powwow. Week two meeting was all about the numbers. All about the numbers. Because by the time week two rolled around, we had all the numbers for the prior month ready to go. We knew where we were at. We had the month end closed, etc. Etc. We knew where we're at. That was everything. Numbers buying, hit ratio is if we do 100 quotes and we close 40 of them, we talk about great. We close 40 of them. Why did we close 40 of them? And, and bigger than that, why did we not close the other 60? All the team is hearing this all at the same time. All of the time we're all working together. Together, everybody achieves more. That is the definition of team. Week three, agency goals and status update and our lost souls report. This is something that takes a little bit more preparation. So, so candidly and transparently we lose bit. We lost business. Just like every agency loses some business. It's a rare day that I encounter an agency that has 100% retention ratio unless it's a very specific small niche. Okay, so with that being said, we bring to the table, we would run a list of the business that we lost. We would give it to the specific account manager or CSR about a week before the meeting. Somebody on my team was responsible for this or they quote, owned it. And they would start researching why we lost the business and they would be responsible to come to the team meeting and report to the entire team together as a whole why we lost the business. I can't share with you how insightful.

How cohesive, how valuable those times were when we came together and reported together. We lost this client because it was very common that another teammate would pop up and say, hey, if that ever happens to you again, this is what I did to prevent that from happening. Things like that, they start supporting each other, they start working for each other, they start helping Each other, protect the business and keep the business and continue continuing to win more. This masterminding of team is just electric and magical. Absolutely phenomenal. Week three, that's where all this comes together. A reminder, okay? The leader of the of the team meeting, whether it's you, if you're the owner or another team leader, and we've done it both ways, must be there leading the meeting. And remember, would I follow me. If you're the leader, you've got to be prepared to be the leader of the organization leading them along. Okay? And remember, at the beginning of every team meeting, we read our promise and we read our core values. Two different people. One reads the promise, one reads the core values. It's not me, the leader reading it. It's team members getting engaged, getting interacted, reading those to start the meeting. Okay? Week four, Training oriented. Okay, so we train our team. The late, great Zig Ziglar said the only thing worse than training a team member and losing them is keeping team members and not training them. Training is like bathing. It's recommended daily. Think about world champion athletes, Olympic athletes, how often do they train.

Exactly daily. If you want a world class organization, the mentality of training must be built into your culture on a daily basis. Training oriented is week four. Procedures, marketing, product, policy changes, we would bring in company reps and other things to train the team, etc. Etc. Etc. Training oriented. If you don't know how your train, your team needs to be trained. It is super simple. Ask them. If you do not ask, you do not get. Period.

So that's week four and then on the week five, when it happens twice a year, come up with something unique, come up with something different and most importantly, make it count. So identify those two. Identify those two days early on in the year so you can make sure that you make those two count. Speaking of bringing in other people, I've done that in the past. I would bring in other people who are extremely influential in our community. I brought in a client one time to tell the team how their experience has been with the agency. I brought in a client and they didn't know the client was coming. I intentionally brought that client and I said, would you come in? Of course. It was one of my triple A clients that I had a good relationship with. I said, would you come in and just share with the team about your experience with our organization? I'm not going to name names and I don't want to name names in this situation. I just want that you them to hear from you in a Transparent way. All with the essence of growing and getting better. Because that's our culture. We want to get better every day. And I want you to come in and share with them what you see and hear and everything else. And there were a lot of things that were positive. There was a couple things they needed to hear that were improvement items. But it was awesome. It was just awesome. So keep in mind that other team leadership people can be part of this as well. Again, stay on time. If you set the meeting for a certain amount of time, do your best to stay on time. Set the tone for the meeting. Start the meeting on time. End the meeting on time. This is not a social hour. This is a business meeting period. Okay? And feel free to add additional discussion items. One of the little strategies that I did that will help guide you and be keep you organized for this is we use Microsoft Outlook for email and for calendars, et cetera, et cetera. I would go into and of course all the team meetings were calendar on my Outlook calendar. So if I had something that I thought of on, you know, Thursday, Friday, over the weekend, whatever, whatever that I wanted to bring up in the team meeting, I would just go into the calendar appointment on my Outlook and I would start placing 1, 2, 3 bullets in that appointment. That way, when I went to prepare for the team meeting, I saw it on my calendar, say Monday or Tuesday and I started to prepare. I would go into the team meeting and see if there's anything that I had put there. And I go, oh, I need to make sure I get this on the agenda. This on the agenda, this on the agenda. And yes, every team meeting had an agenda.

Third bullet point for you today. Let me just recrap. We talked about why you should have team meetings. We talk about, number two, you coming prepared. Prepare the day before or prior. Always with a teammate if you need to. Number three, lead your team. People are silently waiting to be led.

Motivate your team if you need to. From time to time. Don't do this too often, but from time to time I showed a mode an inspirational video as well. Make sure it's the right video and it's appropriate. And don't, don't do this. If you wanted a time frame, maybe once every two months and make sure it's no more than two, three minutes. Use it strategically and situationally. Okay? Inspire them. The definition of inspiration to encourage somebody to greater effort, enthusiastic or creativity. To awaken a particular feeling in somebody. Motivate them, inspire them. Number and next bullet point, teach them to collaborate Together as a team. Give them permission to collaborate together as a team. Ask great pointing questions. Don't be afraid to challenge them and shut the heck up. Have each teammate give the answers. Don't preach, teach. Don't preach, teach. It's so vitally important. If you have an uncomfortable or unpleasant subject to bring up, get it out there and work through it as a team. Let them know, team, we're in this together through thick and thin. Always. And here's another one super important. Always praise publicly. Always reprimand privately. Vitally. Vitally important. The great John Maxwell said, leaders become great not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others.

Empowering others. Vitally, Vitally important. And once you've implemented team meetings within your organization, you will start to experience amazing changes within your team. This is what you have to look forward to. Attitudes will be better. Yes, attitudes will be better. Team members will take ownership of the things that they're doing within their duties and their roles. They'll take ownership. It won't need to involve you anymore. Team collaboration will strengthen. You'll start seeing little pockets of them doing things together without you. And you'll kind of feel like I did. Wait a minute. They don't need me anymore. Oh, that's awesome, right? Yes. Team meetings. The culture will become better within your team.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast every single day. Culture eats strategy for breakfast every single time. How would it feel for you if you walked in your agency and your team is smiling, they're high fiving, they're working with each other, they're producing results together without you? And like happened to me one day, I was walking up the path to the office. It was a Monday. I remember it, it was probably 10am I was working on the business at my house. Finally got around to going into the office. One of our clients, who I knew by face and name comes out the door. I said, chris, how's it going? He goes, great. I said, is my team taking excellent care of you or they're providing service of unequaled excellence? And the most important thing I could do at that point was shut up. And I did. And he said, mike, your agency is awesome. I can't tell you how incredible they are. They take excellent care of me all the time. And then I did the most important thing I could do at that point. I said, chris, hang on just a second. I put my backpack down, put pulled my phone out of my pocket and I said, chris, would you be willing to share a few words about your experience that you just had in there. In case anybody else asks about our clients experience with our agency that might be thinking about doing business with us, he goes, I'd be happy to. What do you want me to say? I said, I want you to say what you just said. No right or wrong answer. He goes, let's do it. I said, stand right here. When I hold up two fingers, that means it's rolling.

Boom. Recorded the video right there on the spot. It's one of the best video testimonials we've ever gotten. Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. Always be prepared. That's what happens when your team is firing on all cylinders because you are leading them and you are giving them permission to collaborate through team meetings and having a great culture. That's all we want, is to have our agency healthier than it's ever been. This is one of the key glues that holds the team together. And of course, we all have good days and we all have bad days, especially when it comes to the first p, the people, right? But at the end of the day, it is our responsibility to lead our team. And I'll say it again, if you're a leader, an owner, and you lead any kind of business organization out there, the best leadership question I've ever heard and I hope your answer is.

Absolutely, I would. And that question is, would I follow me. What's your answer? Would I follow me. Think about that for a minute. And I hope your answer is absolutely, I would. If it's not, that's okay. You need to work within getting better as a leader. There's lots of tools and strategies out there on how to get better as a leader. My great encouragement is go find some of them. John Maxwell is a great leadership mind. Just search John Maxwell Leadership Strategies. Jim Collins is another one. Darren Hardy's Heroes Journey is a great leadership training forum.

Howard Schultz from Starbucks. The book Onward was an incredible study for me. There's so many more out there. But you know, just work on your leadership. Learn to get better every single day in every single way. Gino Wickman, who created EOS Entrepreneurial Organizing Systems is another great leadership study. There's so much out there. Patrick Flinccioni, okay, the five dysfunctions of a team. They're all great leadership people. They're all great studies and there's no excuse except the one that you make for yourself. So don't let that happen because I want to guide you and to getting there and to getting this stuff done. And I hope this has helped you today. And if this is your first time to the podcast. Welcome. My name is Mike Stromsel. I'm widely recognized as a leading author, speaker and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can learn more about everything that we're doing for agents out there @unstoppable profit producer.com if you're interested in joining us in one of our live trainings or one of our virtual trainings, you can learn more about our live trainings at be unstoppable boot camp.com that's be unstoppable boot camp.com there's one coming up in about.

A little less than 100 days from now. So go check that out. And if you want to join us on one of our virtual trainings, please go to upfaststart.com all of our trainings are designed with some of our best money making strategies developed over 35 years of research in our industry, all operating 100% of the time as a proud independent insurance agent for more than 35 years. And we're just here to share it all with you and the results of those strategies. It will allow you to grow your business, create wealth so you too can have more freedom to live life on your own terms. And team meetings is just one of the first strategies that we teach which is within the first p. The people. Okay. And if this is your first time, please go to unstoppable profit podcast.com go up to the top and make sure you hit subscribe. And if you haven't subscribed yet, please do so. So you didn't miss one valuable episode of everything that we share here on the podcast. We're excited to bring this to you. It's out there on all the channels. Apple, Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, our YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube, search Unstoppable Profit Producer, click on the videos. It's now on Amazon. We're not hard to find. You just need to make the effort to go get better. If you want to have more, you've got to become more because you attract exactly what you are every single day. That's an encouragement for all of you out there. That's if talking about guiding you, that's my best encouragement for people. You've got to become more. Think about the airline flight attendant. What do they. Who do they teach you to take care of first when they're doing the safety training? When you get on a plane.

Yourself. Exactly. You can't help anybody else unless you prepare yourself and get better every single day. I hope this has helped you. And if you had something that was a breakthrough for you, please share it in the comments below. I'd love to read your takeaways and your breakthroughs as a result of this podcast that just keeps us bringing even better content for you every single time. Thanks for joining us. I'll see you in the next episode. And until then, get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable and leave no regrets. I will see you on the next episode.

Do you love the podcast but don't know where or how to get started? Visit www.upplife.com that's up.

To learn more about our coaching and mastermind programs and how you can join our community of growth oriented agency owners today.