Agency Growth Insights from 2024

Well, 2024 is in the rearview mirror and 2025 is here. On today's Agent Leader podcast, I have a fantastic roundtable year end conversation with Roger Sitkins, founder and CEO of the Sitkins Group. Carrie Glennon, our senior consultant, and we talk about our three biggest takeaways before we get into next year or if you're already into next year, in 2025, it's important to diagnose what we learn and what it means for you and your agency. So enjoy this roundtable discussion with the Sitkins coaches. Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. This is the podcast for insurance agency leaders to learn, to grow, to develop, to become best version possible agency leaders who lead best version possible insurance agencies. My name is Brent Kelly. I'm your host. It's my pleasure to be with you today. And today is a very, very special episode. If you've got video and you're watching on one of our video channels, you can see that I have a couple great guests with me. I have some of my colleagues on the Sitkins team. I have Roger Sitkins, the founder and CEO of the Sitkins Group. Roger, say hello. Hello, everybody. And let's make this the best year ever coming into 2025. And I have Carrie Glennon, our senior consultant. Kerry, say hello.

Hi, everybody. Thanks for tuning in today.

So why this is a special episode is not only because I have some amazing minds with me today, discuss some really important topics, but as coaches, we've talked about what have been our biggest takeaways from 2024. You know, 2024 now, depending on when you're listening to this, was this podcast comes out, it might be the end of 24, maybe it's the beginning of 25. Or whenever you're listening to this, there's going to be some great takeaways. So, by the way, we're whether you're cozying up to the fireplace with your eggnog or maybe you're on a long road trip on the holiday season, find a way to either pull over if you're driving to take some notes, or certainly if you're cozied up, have your notebook ready to go. We're going to share some really important observations. And the coaches don't even know some of this, but I was taking notes of some of the overall sessions and programs that we've run in 2024. And the reason why I share this is that we have a super opportunity as coaches to have multiple conversations with multiple agencies across this country. In fact, we now have agencies that are not in this country and to learn from agencies of what's working, what's not working. You know, oftentimes I know Kerry and Roger will probably nod when I say this, will be speaking to an agency leader and they'll say something like, I know I'm probably the only one dealing with this, or I know this might be a stupid question. And the reality of it is that we see these trends throughout. So we're going to highlight three key trends and to give some, some, some numbers to our learning. This year we've run 118 sessions. As an organization, that's a lot of sessions and learning lots of things. In different programs, we've had over a thousand participants. It's hard to give an exact number because we've done some things off site and on site and virtual. And then we've got, of course, multiple coaching calls with our Sipkins network members. So we're going to take all this knowledge and information and we're going to package it into three of the biggest takeaways. I would like to say, Roger and Carrie, these are the only takeaways. That's not true. There are a lot of takeaways. But looking at what really jumped out, these three became the top of our list. So we're going to share those and go through those. So, Roger Carey, are you ready to dive into this and have a great conversation? I'm ready. All right, let's go. So number one, are you ready? Number one biggest takeaway from 2024 is the myth of internal communication. The myth of internal communication. Now, why do I say the myth of internal. Well, we talk about this in the program. The greatest myth of communication is that it actually occurred. So I want you to think for a minute, as an agency leader, have you ever thought you said something? You, you really thought you said something. And maybe you did say something. You only said it once, but you realized that no one was listening or no one ever executed on the thing that you talked about. That's one thing that we see time and time again with agencies is there's this myth of internal communication. And my belief, and certainly I want to go deeper here with Roger and Carrie is that to have great external communication, right? Most agencies come to us and go, hey, we want to make more sales, we want to grow revenue, we want to increase profit. Amen. Amen. Amen. Those are all parts of external communication, but sometimes they overlook the impact, the importance and the intentionality of great internal communication. So I want to highlight three areas and we'll open this up for conversation that I see. And there's more than this. Coaches let me know. But one of the things that we see in internal communication is communication between leaders or leadership team, leadership teams and their entire team. We see issues in sales leaders and managers and their producers and we'll see issues between sales teams and service teams. So I'm going to highlight three areas there and open this up. And we'll just start with leadership and teams. And Carrie, I want to go to you first. Do you think about the myth of communication in terms of leaders communicating well and clearly with their overall teams? What are some observations you've had in the past year? And you can go further in your past if needed. But what jumps out of me? Sure.

You know, one, one thing I hear often when we're going through assessments with, with future members is the leadership team feels they're very aligned. But when I ask this question and you really, you really peel back some layers. So I, I, well ask a team. If I asked each of you to go in a separate room and write down on a piece of paper, here's where we are today, here's where we want to be in three years and here is how we're going to get there. And then I asked you to all come back in the same room, would you have written down the same thing on that piece of paper? How well aligned are you if you had to do that exercise? And that's when the conversation really opens up. Oh, I, I think we can all say where we are. I think high level, we know where we want to go. I don't think any of us have the same idea of how we're going to get there. And that's really very eye openening because it's a, it's a little bit.