7 Ways to Empower Your Insurance Agency to Success

What does a truly empowered insurance agency look like? Well, it has strong culture and more confidence and creates a world class experience for their clients and for company partners. On today's Agent Leader Podcast, I'm going to discuss the seven ways you can empower your agency to success. The Agent Leader podcast is brought to you by the Agency Leadership masterclass. Go to brentmkelly.commasterclass to learn more. Well, hello there everyone. This is Brent Kelly with another episode of the Agent Leader Podcast. I'm so honored and excited that you're with me here today. Well, I want to talk today about empowering your agency to success and I'm going to discuss seven ways that every leader of an agency and again, leadership is influence, not position, but how every leader in an agency can empower others to have a more successful insurance agency agency. You know, when you think of customer experiences that you've had with, let's say, for example, a cable company or a phone company, or maybe even services run by a governmental entity, what are your typical feelings? Be honest, if you're like many, not all the time, but many times the words frustrated, right? Annoyed or maybe even dreadful come to mind. Now, I recently had a conversation with my cable company in regards to our Internet as we had our debit card attached to her automated monthly billing and our debit card was compromised. It happened at the great restaurant of Chipotle. But it's true, our debit card was compromised and I wanted to contact the cable company to let them know that, hey, our old card is no longer effective. It won't work, so I need to switch over the billing to this new card. I figured this would be maybe a 2, 3, 4 minute conversation with the customer service person. I called him up and I said, hey, my name is Brent, update her automated payment information. Because our current debit card was compromised. And I thought they would say, hey, no problem, Brent, let's get the new information and get you squared away. Well, I was calling a large cable company. Maybe I should have known better. Now, Instead of a three minute simple phone call, this turned into a 30 minute fiasco. I was frustrated, I was annoyed, it was dreadful. I was told that I could not update the information from the phone. I couldn't do it on the phone. And then I needed to go and log into my account. The problem was is that this was a Internet cable company and I had never logged into my account. I just pay each month they send me a bill, so I didn't know what it was. And when I dug a little deeper I found out the email that was attached to my account, which they said they would send to me, was from a previous employer that I no longer had access to that email. And I said, listen, you can send me the email, but I'm not going to get it because I don't have access to that email. Is there anything else that we could do? And I was told, not so politely, that this is our policy and that you have to make this change online and we can't accept monthly automated payments unless you do it online. And I said, yep, you told me that. But I can't go online unless you give me some more information. Right? It was our policy, it was our process. And remember, guys, the goal of this was that I wanted to give them my money. I was saying, hey, please take my money every month. Now finally, after many minutes, 15, 20 minutes or so, I said, okay, is there anybody else who I can talk to? Because obviously we're not getting anywhere. And finally, after about another 10 minutes, I got to speak to a supervisor. And after explaining my entire situation again, I was finally told that I could indeed make this change via the phone. I said what? I was told 30 minutes ago that I couldn't do that. Now you're telling me I can? After all this time, now you tell me you can collect my new payment information on the phone? Well, what was the reasoning behind that? Because the person I spoke with was not empowered to make these basic changes or decisions on the phone, only the supervisor was. Even though it was a very basic, simple thing, that was their policy. And here's the point of today's podcast when it comes to insurance agencies is that when people aren't empowered to make decisions, particularly basic decisions, right, it leaves everyone frustrated. It creates a poor experience across the board. So let me ask you a question. Is your agency fundamentally based in people or policies? People or policies? Look, policies are important. Don't get me wrong. There's got to be some form of policy or process in place. I'm fully aware of that. But if you direct your actions based on policies alone and not people first, you run into some very serious problems. See, the problem with the leadership of the cable company, which again also occurs in insurance companies, is that they're focused on policies and not people. See, policy, I'm sorry, processes and policies are important, but they're never more important than the people needed to carry out the process. It's a mindset, it's an attitude, and it's culture built within an agency. See, high achieving insurance agencies, the high achieving Producing agencies understand that the emphasis should always be on their people, not policies or procedures. And when I say people, this is external and certainly internal. Successful insurance agencies believe in their people. They encourage them to achieve excellence, and they release them to go do it. Author and leadership expert Tom Peters says this. He says techniques don't produce quality products or pick up the garbage on time. People do. People who care, people who are treated as creative, contributing adults. So what does it mean to empower others? What does it really mean? My mentor and leadership expert John C. Maxwell states this. He says people under the influence of an empowering person are like paper in the hands of a talented artist. No matter what they're made of, they can become treasures. See, an agency that understands the effectiveness of empowering others realizes that true leadership is about working with and through people. Growth agencies. Growth agencies focus on helping their entire team reach the highest levels of their personal and professional development. Often, agency leaders are hesitant to give away their power to others on their team. They have fears. If I. If I give away my power, what power do I have left? Right? It could be the fear of them making a mistake, or maybe it's just simply the fear of losing their power and authority. But here's the thing. Hear this. If you hear anything else, when you do not lose anything, giving away your authority to someone else that you're trying to empower, you only empower them to rise higher. Let me give you a quick visualization now. Again, you have to imagine this. So close your eyes. Or if you're driving the car, don't close your eyes, but think about what I'm saying here. Imagine if you're a person of authority or power, whatever that may look or feel like, and you feel like the best way for you to stay in power is to kind of keep people down. There's a lot of leaders out there that do that. I don't want anybody to rise because, gosh darn it, they may pass me. But here's the reality. Imagine that I'm standing next to you and I generally am taller than most people, not everyone. I'm about 6 3. But I'm standing next to you and I have my hand on your shoulder and I begin to push you down. I begin to push you down because I want to keep you down. Guess what happens at a certain period of time as I continue to push you down, I go down, too. A team can never rise if leadership is trying to hold back and, and not empower their team. Right? Think of lighting a candle when you light another Candle with a lit candle, right? Your candle doesn't go out, it simply creates another lit candle. And that's the magic of empowering others. So how do you effectively empower others on your team? I want to go through seven ways, seven ideas, seven steps, whatever you want to call them, how you can effectively empower your entire team. And again, leadership is influence, not position. So this can hold true for an agency principal. This can hold true for a producer and the people they work with. It can hold true for a csr, any team. But let me be clear, Empowering others in your agency is not quick or easy. Nothing happens overnight. And you've got to be selective in who and where you're going to pour your time and energy. Because let's face it, I go through a four step process in a masterclass that I do every month with insurance leaders. We talk about modeling, motivating, mentoring and multiplying. And all this takes time and effort. And so when you get to the mentorship part, which is the third part, you have to be selective because you can't, you don't have the time or capacity to mentor everyone. So here's a seven step checklist to help you empower others on your team to reach greater levels of personal and agency success. Number one, and I just spoke on this is you got to evaluate them. I truly believe that all people have the potential to succeed. I really do. I like to look at everyone and say, I see a 10 on your head, but your job is to evaluate that potential of who those people are that really are going to want to grow, because not everyone wants to grow. And you got to understand their strengths and weaknesses and you got to begin to equip them with what they need. But that requires evaluating the knowledge, their skill, and most importantly, their desire. I think all of us can have the knowledge and skill, but not everybody has the desire. And that's how you got to evaluate of where you're going to pour the majority of your time and energy to empower people on your team. Number two, you got to be a model model for them. You know, even if people that you want to empower have the necessary knowledge, skills and desires, you still have to be a model and show them the way. You've got to grow yourself to grow your team. And as a father of four children, I can clearly attest that people do what people see. If I tell my children to remain calm while I'm acting like a crazy dad, nervous and upset, my words are meaningless. The same is true with your team. See you can't lead people effectively without first modeling the way you desire them to lead. You see in sports all the time that teams often will take the presence, the Persona of their coach. If the coach is crazy, the players sometimes are crazy. If the coach is calm, the players are calm. I'm not saying it's a right or wrong thing. We all have our own personalities. But modeling is important. Important. And I learned this firsthand. As a young agent, I had been through numerous sales and product training classes. But it wasn't until I went on appointment and I went on appointments with other high performing sales producers that I truly began to grow and develop as a producer. Here's why. It wasn't about people telling me what to do or how to do things. When I would go on appointments with these sales mentors, I just simply would watch. I would watch firsthand from other leaders who were modeling success. What did I learn? Well, I learned about work ethic, I learned how to communicate with prospects and clients. I learned about service, and I learned about persistence. And these first 10 lessons empowered me to become a better agent in my own career. Number three, Give people permission to succeed. Give people permission to succeed. As a speaker, trainer and coach, I realize firsthand that not everyone wants to succeed at the same level I do. And I know that's true for agency leaders where you want to pour into someone or you see potential in someone and they just don't take the wheel. I know that's true. However, I think one of the problems with this and one of the keys in empowering others is to first give them permission to have success. Because listen, we all have self limiting beliefs, don't we? We all self sabotage. And oftentimes people don't see the potential in themselves until you give them permission to succeed. See, great leaders transfer their confidence to others through their attitude, through their words and through their actions. When you truly believe in others, they will begin to sense it. And over time they will. They will begin to accomplish more than they ever thought possible themselves. That's what leadership's all about. Number four, transfer authority to them. Management expert Peter Drucker said this. He said no executive has ever suffered because his subordinates were strong and effective. Your agency will only become strong and effective when you give others the opportunity to make decisions, initiate action, solve problems, meet important challenges. I think this is especially true today as we think of emerging leaders. And this includes the huge millennial target market and more outside of just millennials, that's overused. But that market, that young emerging leader market because here's the thing, these young emerging leaders are continuously looking for ways to make their mark, to make a difference. And at some point, you've got to transfer some authority to them. Again, you got to be selective, but you've got to be able to transfer authority to them. As your team becomes more effective in certain areas, start to look for more difficult assignments for emerging leaders. I was once told that if someone can do a job about 80% as well as you do it, it may be time to delegate it. So think about that in your own life, your own business, your own agency. Number five, publicly show confidence in those that you want to empower. Belief drives behavior. When you publicly show confidence in others, you are building their belief, which in turn produces more profitable actions. I recall vividly as a very young insurance producer being at an insurance client meeting with my agency principal. And during the meeting, the agency principal edified me several times. During the meeting in front of the client, it wasn't just, here's Brent, he's going to be your new agent, or he's our new hire. It was, here's Brent. He's awesome and fabulous and brilliant, and he's young and he's talented. Now, not only did that raise the confidence level of the client in my ability was certainly as important in relationships, but internally, my confidence level skyrocketed because my boss would consistently praise me in public. I wanted to prove even more that I would live up to those expectations. Imagine this, right? Just think about this for a second. And public is showing confidence in them. Imagine basketball. And I know you use a lot of sports analogies, but imagine it's the end of the game and the game is tied and you've got someone on your team who's going to go, who has a chance to shoot a free throw to win the game. And one aspect, a coach could say, well, you know, not likely. Or. Or they could say, listen, you were made for this moment. Publicly showing confidence in people, it doesn't, you know, doesn't create. The empowering part of this is that it lifts them up. Now. It doesn't mean they're going to make the shot. It doesn't mean they're going to make the shot, but it does give them confidence to do more and be more. And when you show confidence in your future leaders and their followers, you will find they will quickly become empowered to succeed. Number six, supply them with feedback. Empowering others doesn't mean just telling people, this is what you want to hear. I'm going to give you what you Want to hear leadership. Leadership is about telling the truth while still allowing for grace. Right? It's like with your family, your kids, you hear about tough love. There's a sense of tough love and empowerment, empowering others. See, making new mistakes should be encouraged. It's okay to make new mistakes, but repeating mistakes is a sign that you're not supplying them with honest and positive feedback. I've been a part of organizations and I've certainly seen in working with agencies where someone doesn't know they're screwing up, they don't know where they're falling short, not because they're stupid, because they don't know. And as an empowering leader, it's your job to supply them with feedback. Here's where I see a gap. Here's how we can fill that gap to get you where you want to go. So supply them with feedback. Alright, number seven, last one. Release them. Release them to continue on their own. One of the biggest responsibilities I feel as a parent, I've got four children, the fifth on the way. But one of the biggest responsibilities I feel as a parent is to equip and empower my children to become fully functional adults who at some point will no longer need me to make decisions on their behalf. That's the part of growing from infancy, through youth, to teen, to the end. I know there's parents that are listening to this, going, oh my gosh, my child's grown and we still do that. I get that parenting is a tough job and I'm not through all that process yet. But I can tell you now that one of my goals is how do I teach to release my children to start making more and more important decisions and not feed them. Think about this in the business world for a second. As a leader or as a person who has answers, it makes us feel good, doesn't it? When people come to us with what do I do? What do you think I should do? Right? And there's value in that. But if you're always the problem solver, what are they doing? How are you helping them to think and be challenged and to grow and to change? When every monkey on their back, right, every problem they have, they just hand it off and give it to you and you take care of it. One of the things I like to do with my kids and I like to challenge insurance agency leaders to do, is if someone comes to you with a problem is you say, listen, I'll hear your problem before you give me your problem. You got to give me two possible solutions, good or bad. Just give me something. As an agency leader, your goal should be to equip members of your team to a level where they no longer require your input in every decision. Decision doesn't mean you're not going to be there to assist them and help them in whatever they need, but they should be able to make the majority of the decision. That's true empowerment, and it frees you up to do the things that are in your strength zone and do the things that really help your agency grow. So what are the results of empowerment for your agency? Listen, insurance agencies, for the most part, they talk and walk the same, don't they? Maybe there's some differences here and there, but many of them walk and talk the same. And many leaders ask me, well, how do I differentiate myself in today's marketplace? I truly believe this. I truly believe that empowering leadership is often the primary advantage of your agency. It's a great way to separate you from other agencies in today's competitive marketplace. Because an empowering agency, an empowering agency of leadership grows better people. People that are equipped and resourced and confident to make important decisions. And because they're empowered to do that, they want to add more value to the team, to the prospects, to their clients, to the company partners. Right? Everyone grows. I talked in a previous podcast about moving from maintenance to multiplication. This is part of the process. When you empower people and you grow more leaders, your agency automatically will grow. Not because of some fancy system, but because you develop people to be better. Stronger people, better leaders. When you empower your agency team, you will improve agency culture, you will build confidence throughout your team, and most importantly, you're going to create a world class experience for your clients and your company partners. I want to wrap up this podcast with a really powerful quote says this we need leaders who empower people to create other leaders. It's no longer good enough for a manager to make sure that everyone has something to do and is producing. Today, all employees must buy in and take ownership of everything they are doing. To foster this. It's important that employees should make decisions that most directly affect them. That's how the best decisions are made. That's a sense of empowerment. Empower your agency. Grow your people. Grow your agency. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly and you can find me online@brentmkelly.com you can sign up for my weekly newsletter, read blog posts, learn more about my products and services, and how I can help your agency grow and develop and multiply your results. Also, check out my Agency Leader masterclass. Go to brentmkelly.commasterclass to learn more and sign up today.