8 Actions of Elite Producers

Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on a brand new episode. And as I'm recording this in a brand new year, this is the first week of January, as I'm recording this. So happy New Year to you and to all of your team members and your family and everyone you're associated with. Happy New Year. I know that many of us have been ready to turn that page of 2020 for a while into 2021. And, you know, although we love that you turn the page and all of a sudden this new year, it's just magical things begin to happen. We know that's not the truth, but I do hope that you had some time to reflect and rejuvenate over the holiday season and just kind of think about the things that you went through in 2020, because I do believe that, you know, all those challenges that we faced in different ways, many of them and most of them that we did not expect, have made us stronger. Hopefully have made you stronger in different areas, certainly life. And as always, the purpose of the Agent Leader podcast is to help you gain clarity, build consistency, and to make that commitment to become your best version possible. So as you go into 2021, your best version possible, I'm going to start off by sharing with you some content around the eight actions of elite producers. And I use that word on purpose. Action. I was going to use characteristics or traits, but I really want it to be the eight actions of elite producers. And here's why. As they kind of talk about the start of a year, you know, one of the things that is very common, and I've been guilty of this as well, is that we have New Year's resolutions, and sometimes they're more of New Year's thoughts or New Year's wishes. You know, this year I'm gonna do this better. You know, this year I'm gonna try this. This is gonna be the year I'm gonna do this. And so they're just really more of a passing thought than a. A true goal with definition behind it. Purpose. As I talk about the eight actions of elite producers, the reason I'm using action is these aren't the eight hopes of elite producers or eight things that elite producers talk and think about. These are the eight things that elite producers. When I say elite, these are the best of the best. These are the eight things that I see that elite producers do consistently. Consistently. Because day one, and I'm not sure when you're listening to this, right, it's most likely January 2021. You could be listening later in the year. But whenever you're listening to this, if you decide to do something, day one is pretty easy. We have that, you know, day one up. Here we go. I'm excited. This is going to be great. But we don't think about or really plan out what's going to happen on day three. Day seven, day 30, day 60, day 90, day 100, day 365. How am I going to be accountable to what I've set out to do? How will I make sure that these habits become true, consistent habits, that these behaviors become normal? Right. Because after the excitement wears off, you know, it comes down to true self discipline. And so I see that with elite producers is it's not a passing thought, it's these are the actions that I must take to be successful. Now I've had the fortune of, you know, we hosted many, many producer camps both in person last year, virtual. We're going to continue to do it this year. In fact, our next producer begins on January 20th. So if you want to be part of our next Producer Fit program, professional fitness for producers, it starts January 20th. There's eight sessions. They are all live virtual sessions. We're going to have breakout rooms, Q and A and just a lot of results based action stuff that we're going to work with you on. Now obviously I've mentioned in previous podcasts you can also join our all inclusive model, which part of the all inclusive is the producer camp? So your entire agency would have access to that. And just to give you some perspective, our producer camp is 997. For all eight sessions. You have an app that we're going to give you a download. You get tools and resources for the producer program. You'll get a workbook. All that is 997 and you will 10x your results. We see it time in and time out. However, as an agency, if you want to get multiple people into our program or certainly also find ways to get sales leadership and leadership programs that we offer as well as our account manager program. Our all inclusive model starts at 497amonth. So it's a great value, a great opportunity to get your entire team involved and certainly your producers. So with that being said, you can go to sitkins.com profit to learn about our producer program. Go to sitkins.com aim for all inclusive model and again you can check those out and decide what works best for you and your agency. So without further ado, let me get into the specific eight Things the eight actions of elite producers. And there's probably more than eight, right? If you start to break things down in different ways, you know, and you could probably take these down to four or five that stand out, but there were eight. As I was preparing for this content and thinking through what can I share that provides the most value to you as an agency leader? And again, if your role is a specific producer directly, or if you're a leading producer, here are eight things that your producer should be focused in doing and acting upon every single work week, right outside of the vacation time, but every single work week. So here's the number one thing. The first action of an elite producer is that they create a plan, right? They create a plan starting with the end in mind. That comes from Stephen Covey, right, in his book Start with the End in Mind. But you've got to have an idea of where you really want to go. And elite producers, if you say, hey, what's your goal this year? What do you want to accomplish? They know. Because when you know what it is that you want, you begin to build that into your daily habits. This is what I want. And we reinforce it day in and day out. One of my favorite books, an absolute classic you may have read, it is called Think and Grow Rich. It doesn't just say grow rich, it's think and grow rich, right? And the elite producers take the action of thinking through their desired outcome, designing their future. That may seem like a simple step. And you go, oh, well, you know, yeah, I kind of do that. I don't mean a passing thought or an idea. I'm talking about really writing out your plan for 2021 and of course, working yourself backwards. And I'm going to talk about some of these other ones in these next actions. So, number one, the first action is they truly create a plan. Number two, the action is this. It's three letters. Tss. Time spent selling. Of all the metrics that we see with producers, certainly elite level producers, they understand the number one thing most important to them that they must act upon is they must spend 80% of their week at best, or not at best, at worst. Really, 80% is the goal, the model to spend selling. Now, that could be actual sales conversations. That could be a proactive relationship that they're building. That certainly is pipeline development. And it could be proactive continuation. So obviously working ahead of time proactively that many people call renewals, we call continuation to Sitkins. So that time spent selling, we've got to make sure that we're Doing that. Now to do that we also must have a high performance team. So there's, you know, multiple actions within this one action. But the idea is as a producer, am I spending, am I investing? Right? Just like money, am I investing the majority of my week in these activities and am I proactive in my calendar? If I looked at a producer next week, I would say my calendar is already set up, that 80% of the week is proactive actions, not blank. And I hope things happen. That's where producers get in trouble. This is what I want, this is how I'm going to get it. And you may say, well, I'm only about 20%. Well obviously make progress. Say, how can I double that next week to get 40%? Who do I need to get involved? What do I need to change? But they know at the end of the day, for them to have success, elite level producers must spend 80% in their time spent selling. That is where we see the results happen. And truthfully, most producers, if you're honest with yourself, most producers are part time producers trying to fill a full time role. The definition of producer is one who produces. So we've got to make sure that we're spending our time spent selling wisely. The next action is this. It's leveraging the power of Pareto. Now I've talked about Pareto and the 8020 before, so I'm not going to go deep into this. But as far as what do actions, what do they do? Well, here's what the best producers do. Certainly those to have a book of business. They round out, they retain and they replicate the top 20% of their clients. And they do that every single year. In fact, many of the best ones look at that. Every six months. What is that top 20% of my clients that generates 80% of my results and am I investing enough time in those areas? Right. You can either be in hysterical activity or focused results action. And the best producers, the elite producers understand they live 80 20. I mean they breathe 80 20. In fact, we have a producer in our elite program and this is the truth. She wrote a book on 80 20. She's incredible. And by the way, she's a $3 million commission revenue producer. Do you think there's something to that? Right. Understanding the power and leveraging a Pareto. And again Pareto, 20% of our input leads to 80% of our output in the right areas. And certainly with clientele. We see it time and time again with producers that 20% of their CL. The top 20% produce 80% of revenue. So you've got to leverage that. And the elite producers know that. So that's number three. Number four is consistent pipeline development. And you go, well, duh. Consistent pipeline development. I already talked about time spent selling that. One of those activities and action should be pipeline. But here's what I want to talk about with pipeline. Do you truly have and the best do the elite do future ideal clients that you have really thought through? And okay, this is where I'm at. These the clients that I want and I am now creating, there's an action step, a plan to acquire them. This isn't just a suspect or a prospect. I don't just have a database of hope, right? Oh, I have a bunch of names in my database. No, I'm talking like specific future ideal clients. And the best ones that we have, they actually visualize it. They put it right in front of them. They actually put, if you're writing commercial insurance or benefits, they put the company logos and they track it. Where are they at in the process? So this target account strategy plan on their future ideal client is an action that the elite level producers do. Do you have an action plan for your future ideal clients, or are you just hoping good things happen? And if you want to be elite, you got to do the things that the elite producers do? That's number. That's number four. Number five is positioning. Is positioning. Now, I've talked about points of differentiation in other episodes, but here's just the basic of this. The elite level producers, if I came up to elite level producer and said, what are your points of differentiation? What makes you different than your competitors? And the elite producers can immediately say, well, this is one area. This is another area. This is another area. And they have five. We challenge producers to have five true points of differentiation. The elite, do they know specifically the value of what that means to the client? Because it's not about your point of differentiation in terms of you, what does that mean to your client? How do they win? That's what they care about. Right. And can they be able to tell stories and share resources and ideas around that? And do they have evidence to back it up? And then of course, ultimately, are they able to ask questions to unlock these points of differentiation? And I'll talk more about that just in a minute. So number five is positioning, which leads me to action items number six and number seven, respectively, as far as these eight actions of elite insurance producers. So I'm going to put number six and number seven together because they're both around the idea of having A defined and unique process. And number six is going to be the sales process. Number seven is going to be the continuation process. So I'll take them one at a time. Now, see, the elite level producers, their action around a sales process is that their sales process is not just defined, but in most cases named. Right. Truly differentiated. And they can explain it at a very deep level to those that have not yet heard the message. See the average insurance producer or even the semi successful insurance producer, their sales process usually looks and sounds something like this. Hey, Mr. Or Ms. Prospect, can I look at your current policies? Can I take a look? And then can I copy what you currently have? And maybe I'll make a few tweaks, maybe not. And then I'm going to go get some quotes from my top insurance carriers and then I'm going to come back to you and I'm going to pray that you don't take this back to your current agent. I'm also going to pray that I have the lowest or at least a lower price to give me a chance to earn your business this year. And here's the thing, you can do that. And if you do it enough, you're going to have enough wins to be, I said semi successful. But if you want to be elite, right? And what we see in our elite program, the elite producers and those that I talk with and see these amazing results they're getting, their sales process is certainly defined and they can repeat it and they understand it and it's truly differentiated. Is that how your process looks today? In fact, what we teach in our private client group and we actually give examples of this and an entire playbook is our risk concierge program. We have agencies that tweak it and make some adjustments to it to fit their agency. But really it's about this idea of do you have a strong executive briefing? How do you open conversations? How do you open relationships? See, most people talk about closing relationships, but you first have to open the relationship in the right way to make sure there's a mutual fit, to understand and explain how we're different, to ask engaging questions from the get go, to really engage and to intrigue and to hopefully motivate your future ideal clients to say, this is different, this is unique, this is something, this is someone that's worth talking to again. And these are your future ideal clients. And then we have a workshop that we do that we can go through and explain that that's the next part of our sales program. And then of course, it's a presentation. How do we present differently to really understand our two points of differentiation at the highest levels to make it easy for them to make a decision? In fact, one of the things that we teach and train on is ultimately we want to ask the right questions and position ourselves that our best future ideal clients, they design their insurance program and risk management program that they buy from us. See, it's a unique idea, but it works, right? Guess what? Because the future ideal client has say they're like, how did you know I wanted that? Well, in the back of your mind, the elite producers go, because that's exactly what you told me. So that's a sales process, then it's the continuation process. I've mentioned this before, but at Sitkins we don't talk about renewals. What does your renewal process look like? That may come up because people understand the vernacular, but I want you to think and act around a continuation process and a continuation strategy. And that continuation process and strategy starts the day you first write the piece of business, right. That we've defined specifically what that client wants and we have it in writing, it's documented. And then we can go out and deliver at the highest level where we're not just meeting expectations. We can define, document and then deliver to exceed those expectations. And one of the phrases that we talk about and then we have actions around for elite producers is to make the renewal a non event. See, if you set it up right and there's a lot of different things that you can do and some of it is talking to your future ideal clients and then clients about a three year strategy. What does that look like? Making sure that not only are you meeting and exceeding those, but you're talking about what's going on in the marketplace and what you're doing to address it ahead of time. The sooner that we can get ahead of it, they feel secure and confident and comfortable that you're doing the things that of course they want to continue the relationship. We want to make that renewal a non event so that we're continuing the relationship. And those are actions of elite level producers. So again, 6 and 7 is a sales and a continuation process, which leads me. That was me making a drum noise to the eighth and final action that I want to share with you today of what makes an elite level producer. Now our entire program at Sitkins and what we run, whether it's through our ongoing all inclusive model, whether it's through our private client group, is an experience. It's called the professional fitness experience. And so one of the questions that people ask as they should, is what does professional fitness mean? And there's a lot of different things around professional fitness. You know, the best thing I can tell you for an agency is like to relate it to physical fitness to make you understand is it kind of moves you from a little bit flabby and out of shape to lean, mean, ready to go, full of energy. Right? And professional fitness involves several things. But one of the things that's foundational professional fitness is the fact that your ultimate competitive advantage that we teach and train on as an insurance producer and the actions that elite level producers take is ongoing preparation and practice. They are always investing, not spending, investing their most precious asset, which is time into getting better. Right. They're preparing for the key questions, they're preparing on the risk exposures, they're practicing how they're going to present themselves, whether it be a 30 second commercial and executive briefing. They're practicing how to ask really good open ended questions. They're practicing how to earn, how to ask for a referral at a very high level that it becomes very conversational and comfortable. You know, I've used this reference before, this analogy, but could you imagine, you know, that the top level sports teams going onto the field or the court or the rink before a really big game and not practicing, not practicing their skills. I mean, could the elite level people get away with it for a while against and fear competition? You can. But if you want to step up and be that elite of elite, you have got to spend time. And I said invest time in preparation and practice. That is your ultimate competitive advantage. And what the elite do, their action they take is they make that part of their calendar each week, what part of the week. And some of them do maybe it's 5, 10, 15 minutes a day, certainly when they're commuting in their car, working on their presentation skills, again, how to ask questions. But they're putting time on their calendar ahead of time proactively to say when and how and where am I going to practice this week? What am I going to do to become a better producer this week than what I was last week? I truly believe that if you are a professional and this professional fitness, what do professionals do and how do professionals perform? Well, you owe it to yourself and you owe it to your agency team and you owe it to your clients and you owe it to your centers of influence, you owe it to your future clients to be that best version of yourself, to be professionally fit and to do that, be as prepared and rehearse with practice as you possibly can be. And this comes through consistency. You're not going to just suddenly I'm going to spend the entire day practicing. I guess you could do that if you really wanted to. But just take some time each week, invest your time each week and say I'm going to practice here and here. What am I going to practice on? I'm going to practice on xyz. And I could already give you a couple examples of that, but that is professional fitness. And that is the eighth and final action that I want to share with you today of elite insurance producers. Again, are there more than that? Yeah, there's some other things that you could do. Right. But these are things that just jump off the page to me of not just characteristics or traits. I mean those are good things. But I'm talking about specific actions that when we see those elite level producers that are a million, dollar 2 million, 3 million, we have a $4 million commission revenue producer that we work with. What makes the elite the elite? Now maybe for you, maybe a million dollars in commission revenue. Sounds like that's crazy talk. But I tell you what, you start doing the right actions, good things happen, right? It's no shock. But are you willing to do these actions? So let me just give it a quick review of what they are. Number one action item was creating a definitive plan. Where it is they want to go and start to figure out how to get there. Right. It's creating a plan starting with the end in mind. Seems obvious but I'll tell you, most producers if I said what is your specific plan to get the result? Well, I don't know, I haven't quite figured it out yet. You've got to be very specific. Elite level producers take that action. The second action that they take is they ensure that they spend 80% of their week in sales and sales related activity. They understand that they have a unique ability to create relationships, build relationships, engage in relationships, ask risk advice questions, understand the marketplace. But they've got to be in the game. They've got to be doing the relationship building, the risk advice pipeline building, of course having these conversations 80% of their week. And the metric and the the acronym I gave you was tss. Time spent selling. That is a key measure. They know they have to be in the game. You cannot score points from the bench. Okay. So that is something that is mandatory for elite level producers. Number three is leveraging that power of Pareto, the 8020 rule. And again I ask you go read some books in 80 20. They're everywhere. But the basic idea Is that we know that 20% of clients, of your clients in your book of business produce 80% of your revenue. So there's two things you want to do. We want to make sure that we are retaining those at a very high level, also rounding them out. And number two is we're replicating them. How do we find more like them? Success leaves clues, and we find success leaves clues in the top 20% of your clients that produces 80% of your revenue. All of a sudden you can grow your book at a very high level. In fact, we use a term called vertical acceleration that you can grow at a higher rate without the idea of plateau because you're putting your time and energy in the right place. The next action is pipeline development. Again, sounds obvious, but most producers don't really invest this idea of defining, understanding, not suspects or prospects, future ideal clients, understanding that you've got a pipeline and the value of that pipeline is going to be the difference between you winning, losing every single week. Elite level producers take action in the pipeline development. Number five, action is continuing to work on their positioning, the points of differentiation, understanding specifically what they are, how they relate to their client, evidence to show around that and of course, asking engaging questions to unlock those points of differentiation. Number six and number seven again was around this idea of both a sales point process and a continuation process. Is it named, is it defined, is it differentiated? Again, this takes some work, but when you do it, it completely sets you apart. Imagine going to a future ideal client and saying, we have a unique process called X and it helps businesses like you that are frustrated with blank. And here's the result that you get, right? There's a difference. Now, of course, you've got to intertwine that with your agency and your points of differentiation. But that gives you a unique advantage. The same with the continuation process. We don't want to just walk into renewals and hope that we keep some. And guess what, this business is good enough and great enough that you will keep most of them. But what if you took that continuation process to the next level, right? Defining, documenting, delivering, not just to meet, but to exceed expectation. What would that mean? And for elite producers, they take the action on that and guess what? It gets them results. And of course, number eight that I just mentioned was idea of unleashing your ultimate competitive advantage, which is preparation and practice. It's defining professionally professional fitness elite level producers that we work with, that we see, they take actions to be professionally fit, be prepared to be engaged, to rehearse and to invest time on their calendar each and every week to become a better producer. That's how you win. So thanks for listening. This podcast is a reminder again, we've got a Producer Fit program that is coming up on January 20th and we're pretty close to sold out. So take a look at that right away. And if you go to sitkins.com profit p r o F I T you can learn more about that. These are eight live virtual interactive sessions that we're going to host. We have breakout rooms. We have Q and A. You have the resources and tools and workbook that will accompany that. Again, don't miss that. Those are by far our most popular and most successful program that we run. And if you're looking for your entire agency, and I've talked about this on previous podcasts, to get not just your producers fit, but your account managers and your sales leaders and the agency leaders and CEOs and have ongoing training and coaching and built in peer community, check out our all inclusive model. This is part of our Sitkins Network. You go to sitkins.com aim we would love, truly love to help you transform your agency to be that best version possible. We want to help you become that best version possible. We know it's something that you certainly can achieve in this new year. So I wish you and your agency all the best in your success. Thanks for listening.