A Culture of Excellence in Your Agency

Foreign welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode. Have a lot of really important content to share today about your agency's culture. And something that I want to talk about today is what is a culture of excellence? What does a culture of excellence mean to you as an agent leader to your agency, your team, your clients, your community? You name it, right? It's all about a culture of excellence. And you know, part of this topic came up because of some conversations we've had the last couple weeks with our private client members. And one of my favorite things I get an opportunity to do is to be a coach with some of top agency leaders across the country as part of our private client network. And in fact, if you want to learn more about that and what that might mean for your agency, just go to sidkins.comexperience sitkins.com experience to learn more about our network and the best version possible, experience. But in those coaching calls, you know, one of the things that come up over the past few weeks and through our programs that we run for all of our members as well, whether it's our producer development programs, our service development programs, our sales leadership development programs really has, if I could take one theme, it's been around excellence. And what is a culture of excellence? What does that actually mean for your agency? One of the illustrations that we, we show with agencies is an iceberg. It's something that's relevant. It's very visible. The fact that you think about an iceberg, that 10% of an iceberg is visible, it's above the waterline that you can see. That's what most people would notice. It's, it's stuff that's, it's shallow, it's trivial, it's there. But the depth, the important stuff is below the water line. That's where the excellence comes in. In fact, excellence is part of an acronym that we share all the time. I've mentioned it on this podcast, Deep Going Deep. Delivering excellence in every process. So what I want to do today a little bit and talk to you, the agent leader, is this idea of what does excellence mean to you? And, and to go a little bit deeper in one specific area. It's about the ultimate competitive advantage that your agency has. And it's something that we see all the time with agencies that I think can get overlooked. And the reason it can get overlooked is that you don't have to do a lot of the stuff that I'm going to talk about today. And you can still be okay. You can still be pretty good, quite honestly, but you'll never reach that level of that culture of excellence that, that best version possible that we teach and preach through processes and attitude and, and skill development. If this isn't part of the culture, and this is something that, in fact, we're going to be going through a program with our producers around this specific topic. But this is agency wide as well. So this topic today that I want to talk about can certainly apply to the agency holistically, and it should, but it certainly is something that you need to be discussing with your producers. Or if you're a producer listening to this, I would challenge you to say the same thing. What is your culture of excellence? And to me it starts and it centers around the ultimate competitive advantage that every agency, every producer has. The ultimate competitive advantage that you as an agency have, that your producer has, that you as an individual of an agency, an insurance professional has, doesn't depend on your level of experience. It doesn't depend on how many markets you have. It doesn't depend on every tool and resource that your agency has. Now, are those important? Yeah, of course they're important. But this doesn't matter about those things. This is about you and a culture of excellence. The ultimate competitive advantage is this. What is your level expectation and excellence around preparation, Preparation for every person in your agency? Now, certainly we get into producers. This is probably the most prevalent because they're on the front line, so to speak, right? Having these new conversations with future ideal clients. Current conversations with clients, centers of influence, right? They're the sales engine of the agency. And I say this to producers, same thing I just mentioned. For agencies that, you know, regardless of your experience, does that matter? Sure, it matters to a degree. And your markets and your tools, right? Maybe processes that we help teach. But you know, whatever those are, at the end of the day, this is what you have 100% control of. This is as an agency leader. What you have an agency leader have 100% control of in dictating the culture doesn't mean it's going to be perfect. We know that. But what if we can strive for 100%? Like this is with a vision of excellence in the agency based around our level of preparation and practice. Some things that we talk about all the time. What if we got 80% of that? I can tell you that's way ahead of most agencies, right, because you're never going to get 100%. We know perfection is not attainable, but as Vince Abarti said in the Chase of perfection, we can catch excellence, right? And that's what this is. Is really all about. So I want to talk about the ultimate competitive advantage. And, and a lot of this is. Is around three areas. I mean, to me, a culture of excellence and the ultimate competitive advantage around preparation. I think there's, there's three main points. Number one, there's a mindset, right? The mindset of this is who we are. This is how we do things, right? Every great organization, whether it's, you know, business, sports, right? You name it, the best performers, the best, you know, agencies, the best businesses, there is a set level of expectation. We're not going to settle to average. We are going to aspire to excellence. Maybe that's something you can think about, talking to your team about, hey, we're not going to settle for average. We're not going to settle for good enough. We're going to aspire for excellence. Because why not, right? I mean, why not? The late, great Jim Rohn always said, he said this. I love this quote. He goes, you know, how. How tall does an oak tree grow? How tall is an oak tree grow? Everybody kind of thinks about it like, well, it grows as tall as it possibly can. Yet, as humans and as organizations, businesses, insurance agencies, we sometimes go, that's pretty good, right? Why? Like, we are designed to be our best first. Let's aspire for that. So let me talk about some of these things that jump in. And part of this, you know, there's a. There, there's a mindset around the ultimate competitive advantage that I think if this becomes part of the culture, the DNA of your agency, you are definitely on the road to aspire for excellence. Let's. Let's search for that, let's reach for that, let's grow to this. So one of the things that hits me just in the marketplace overall is the fact that you are either gonna fear the competition that's out there. Oh, this agency's pretty good. They're pretty good, or you will be the competition that's feared. Now, this is all gonna come in preparation. I mentioned there's a mindset, then there's. There's the action, which is the second part of this. There's a mindset, then there's the action. And the third part I wanna talk about is accountability around that, right? Those, those three all become a culture of excellence around this, this idea of being relentlessly prepared and that, you know, listen, we are going to be the agency that when other producers and agencies compete against us in different ways, it doesn't mean we're always going to win, right? That happens. You're not going to win everyone, but they're going to go, wow, we're going against that group, we're going against that agency. That's going to be rough, right? That's going to be rough. How are we going to do that? So again, think about that. So these are some mindset things. Here's some other things that I think should be part of a culture of excellence in terms of your preparation, that ultimate competitive advantage. This should be this. I, as an agency leader will inspire my team and hold them accountable. I'll talk more about that in a minute. The fact that we will never lose to someone more prepared than we are. You'll never lose to someone more prepared than we are. I mean, right now, would that be part of the culture of the agency? Well, it might depend, Brent. You know, some do, some don't. Well, are we allowing that? Right. One of the things that, again, I said this earlier again, this doesn't depend on experience in markets and all these things that, that's the one thing that you have a hundred percent control of, of. Listen, we're not, we're not going to win every single time, but we will always be the most prepared. We will always put the time, energy, effort because we're focused on the right things to be the most prepared. We think about producers. How often do producers, and this can be true, right, in any, any many different departments, but certainly with insurance producers that they show up, they throw up and then they blow up, right? They show up. I should, I went to, I, I showed up, I'm here and then I just throw up, I just say things and then I come back and get mad because we didn't write the account. And typically it's more excuse based than debriefing where I made mistakes where I could have done better. Right. And, and this happens, you know, we had a, one of our producers in our, in our camp a few years ago, so it was funny and I appreciate his transparency. He said, we said, what did you learn from today's session? It was all about preparation and excellence. And he said, well, I, I, I learned today that I'm going to stop rehearsing my presentation during the presentation. I'm going to stop rehearsing my presentation during the presentation because let's face it, once you're there, it's too late, right? It's too late now. Can you get away with it in this business? And you've been doing it for a while. Yeah, you probably can guess what, the bar is really low. And that's where you and your agency want to compete. And I'm challenging you right here because listen, I talk to agencies. I just one thing that I believe in as a coach and as a leader, you know, the Sitkins Group network and working with agencies is a listen, I want to inspire you and help you to aspire to excellence so that you look back in your life as an agency or as a producer and say, listen, I don't have any regrets. I didn't win everything. I made mistakes, things happen. I don't have regrets, at least not in this area, because I showed up prepared. I delivered excellence in every process that I had. Right. And one of the things that you can just think about this is that every event and these are all mindset ideas, every event deserves my very best. Is that part of the culture of your agency? Culture of excellence? I mean, would your team right now say, hey, you know what? Every event, if we're going to show up, if we're going to go to a networking event, if we're going to have a meeting with our center of influence, certainly we're going to talk to one of our A and B future ideal clients, a target account that we really want in our agency, our current client has great importance. Are we showing up that every opportunity deserves our very best or are we going to say that was pretty good and we'll keep doing some more of that, Right? Which, which, which one is it going to be? Right? Every opportunity deserves your very best. So that's, that's the mindset part of a culture of excellence and part of this is as a leader challenger team. But you got to set the tone, challenge your team. What you can't do as a leader is ask your team for excellence and you deliver average. Now, obviously as a leader, you may have different roles and responsibilities than people on your team. Certainly. Now I know a lot of agency leaders are also in production, so this will apply in both, both areas. But bottom line is, is that if you're a modeling average and you expect excellence, well, what do you think is going to happen? Right? Culture of excellence. What does that mean? I think that's again, a great question to ask from a mindset perspective is what does that really mean for our agency? If we decide to be a culture of excellence? And I hope you do, what does that really mean for our agency? And I gave you some mindset ideas. This is who we are. This is how we live, this is how we breathe. This is our DNA I always think about that with sports teams. And I'm a sports fan. I know I use a lot of sports analogies, but they relate pretty well. And you think about, you know, even in professional franchises, people that get paid a lot of money to play sports that you'll have, people that maybe in other organizations have had kind of gotten complacent or lazy or got in trouble, whatever it is, and then they get moved to a different organization and suddenly it's like, oh, they've seen the light. Maybe individually they made some changes certainly. But I also believe that, that that organization had a culture of excellence a certain way they did things that, listen, if you're part of this organization, you're part of us, which gives you great opportunity personally and professionally for you to succeed. These are some non optional things, you know. And again, using my examples of mindset is that every opportunity deserves a very best. We will be relentlessly prepared, we will practice, we will work on skill development, we will debrief and learn from any losses that we have. Right? We're going to replicate victory. So I mean, just some of these things, this is who we are, this is how we do things, this is why we do it. So that was the mindset. I want to talk about actions and I could go very long and deep here. I want to keep this really simple. But one of the most simple yet not done actions at agencies is this one word called practice. Yes, I said it that way. If you're a basketball fan from Years ago, the 90s, you remember Allen Iverson? I'm talking about practice, man. Now listen, practice is incredibly important and I think it can be overlooked because I always tell producers this. Your number one skill, and I mentioned this on the podcast, is the ability to communicate. No different than a basketball player being able to dribble a basketball. Like, I've got to be able to ask questions and to listen and to be able to present. Present with influence. Be intriguing, be interesting, be compelling. This is all part of the preparation. But I got to have the skill and build and work and develop that skill of communication. It's vital for me. And producers will agree. This is true for the service team. Sales leaders, what's your skill? Communication with your team? What questions are you asking? Are you listening? Are you, Are you able to present with influence? Right? This is true. Like, I mean, you think about life and business, it's all sales. Sales is simply a transfer of an idea to another human being. That's what it is. Sometimes they're physical products, sometimes they're service products. Sometimes they're just emotional ideas that we're transferring that people buy in, that's a sale. So the skill of communication is absolutely critical. And you know, one of the basic things that we teach and we go very deep in this, in our program, but just for this podcast, just to help you understand, there are different types of practice. There's different types of practice. There's, there's high risk practice, which is that we show up and we practice. I mentioned this. I'm going to, I'm going to practice my presentation. During the presentation. That's high risk practice. You know, not only are you going in with a client or future client or center of influence and you're not prepared, you're not practiced, you're not rehearsed and you might get away with it, but if you don't and you're caught, not only may you lose money, like significant opportunities financially, but, but you also may lose credibility, Credibility to your team, credibility, the marketplace, credibility to a center of influence, credibility to a certain niche or specific type of area that you play in. Like, that's hard to get back. What happened? Well, I just, I just, I got so busy, I didn't practice. Too busy to practice. I didn't think I needed to. I've done it before. Okay. I mean, look at musicians or people that had. They've been singing their whole life, they've been performing their whole life and they still rehearse before the concert. Why? They owe it to themselves. They owe it to their, their fans. Right? And if you go to a concert and it just falls flat, you're probably not going back and the word gets out. You know, my gosh, I showed up and they were terrible. I thought they were going to be good. They were terrible, right? So you got to show up rehearsing practice and that, you know, high risk practice is dangerous. Medium risk practice as well. We're doing some practice in our agenc. Maybe it's small clients maybe get away. Maybe it's not a big deal. Eh. Still don't love it. What you need to be focused on as an agency and the questions and conversations you have is how much low risk practice are we having? How much low risk practice are we having? I say low risk practice. This is practice that we're doing when nobody gets hurt except maybe your pride or feelings. One of the things that we love to say, and I'll say it here, is that you're going to look stupid someplace. Where do you want that to be? You're going to look Stupid someplace. And let's face it, the first time that we do anything, we're not very good at it. If you've been selling insurance and working on, you know, an insurance game for 20 years, you didn't, you weren't born with that level of experience and knowledge, right? The first time you do anything, you're not very good at it. You know, with my kiddos, whether I've got my college age kids or college age kid right now or my five year old daughter, right? For either one of them, there's a first time for anything. And whether it's the first time riding a bike or the first time going to a job interview, you're not very good at it. But where do you want to do that? Do you want to do that in front of a crowd? Do you want to do that, you know, in front of a bunch of people? Do you want to do that when there's money in the line or do you want to do that when no one's looking? And you know one of the favorite things that I hear you think about sports performance performers, again, I'm using another analogy there, but you see them throw the touchdown pass or make the shot or hit the winning goal, I don't care what it is, and you go, wow, what a great time, what a great moment. They'd say, the reason why I had that moment is because I had thousands of moments when no one was watching. Now, does that guarantee you're going to win? Nope. But it certainly gives you the absolute best opportunity. And if I can't emphasize this enough for agencies, where we see agencies fall short is they don't require even oftentimes talk about practice. I, I just, I hope they're doing it. You know, some of them probably are doing it, some maybe aren't. Like I did a podcast a few weeks ago and so this kind of reemphasize this if we're doing sales meetings, and you should be not weak sales meetings, but strong weekly sales meetings, right? Every week. You know, part of that is low risk practice. Part of the sales meeting. If you're going out and your producer is going out to see a top client or a top future ideal client. Now again, there's variabilities in how long they've been around all this kind of stuff. But I think at a minimum, like should they not be doing a presentation or rehearsal or something either on camera, on video, on voice, in one to one, in person with someone, Sales leader, accountability partner. I'll talk more about that in a second before they go on the appointment. Like, do you run plays the week before the football game or you just show up and hope you get them right, because you did them the week before? Of course not. Right. But in the agency somehow, just like, no, I don't know. I'm just really, really busy. Busy doing what? Like, is there anything more important than showing up prepared when the opportunity presents itself? And I got to share a personal story here. This was an eye opener for me, and I was for a period of time, and I still do. I still do a significant amount of speaking and working with our partner agencies and do some outside events. But for a while there, I was doing a lot of outside public speaking and I was working with an organization, a leadership coaching development organization that had a bunch of resources and tools. They had a mentorship program, which was great. And I'd hop on a call about every week they had different mentors. And you could, you could listen in, they would share some things and you could just ask questions to mentors, people that have done stuff that you're trying to do. Right. Give you some experience on it. And I called in. This was the president of this entire company. This is a, you know, multi, multi million dollar operation. And the president. And so, you know, hey, I'm going to take my shot here. And I said, listen, I'm trying to build my speaking business. I want to get in front of larger crowds. I want to earn more income in this. Right? Charge higher fees. And he said, great, I love it. He's like, you know, what are you doing? I'm like, well, I'm doing this and I'm doing this. And I shared some things that I was working on. He said, let me ask you a question. He goes, what type of events are you speaking at mainly now? And I told him they were, you know, typically smaller events and they were growing, but they were still pretty small. And he said, type of event do you really want? I said, this, and I want to get paid this. He's like, fantastic. Because let me ask you a question. If that highest level event that you desire to speak at, to get paid for, if they called you right now and they said, I need you to drive down the street and show up and give me that value right now, Are you prepared to deliver at the highest level? I was gonna lie, but that's not good. So my, I stopped there, kind of, you know, made me maybe stop my tracks. I'm like, wow, that's a great question. I feel like I'm, I'm pretty good, but from what you just said, no. The answer is no. I would need some time, I would need more time to keep working at it. And he said, well, then it's too late. Because it's too late. If you're not preparing yourself for the highest level opportunity that you aspire to, then it's too late. And I'm like, wow. And it really hit me. It's like, you know, if you're going to, if your desire what your target is this, then prepare yourself for that target. Don't hope. Hope is great, but hope it is a strategy. Don't hope that someday you'll just stumble upon it. Could you get lucky? Yep. But try replicating luck. How do you replicate luck? You just hope, right? I want you to replicate stuff that works. So for your producers, for example, you know, we talk about target account strategies, target account size that the future ideal client you really want, that you've defined. Now it's going, okay, what specifically do I need to prepare for around that? What questions should I be asking? How do I make my materials really shine? You know, all these things, you would go very deep in the process. Now again, there's always going to be nuances. And as you get to know clients, I understand there's more questions and questions. But the point of it is right now, if you ask your producers or your producer listening, say, are you prepared for your highest level client at the level you should be right now, today, or is there more work to be done? My guess is most people would say there's more work to be done. A culture of excellence aspires to that. Let's talk about that. How do we get ourselves prepared right now to what is we really want to achieve? Are we going to be an organization or individuals that, gosh, I, I hope, I hope I hit my goal, I hope I make it, I hope I do this. Or is it we are going to make some luck this year, right? That, that, that's, that's a culture. Get a culture of excellence. So again, those are some, some action things. And by the way, in our programs and in our coaching, we get specific skill development areas to work.