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 the 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 of 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 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, 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 Carrie 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. 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, Carrie, are you ready to dive into this and have a great conversation? 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 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, 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.

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 will ask a team. If I ask 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 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 opening because it's a, it's a little bit of a myth. Oh, yeah, we're, we're really aligned, but you're really not if you can't. And, and I'm not saying it has to be exact, but are you even, are you even in the same ballpark when you write that, do that lesson or write that down? So I, I think that there's a lot of work to be done on, on leadership team communication and making sure that you could do an exercise and even get close to one another when you're, when you're not in the same room?

Yeah, I want to get Roger's perspective on this, but I just have to chuckle because I know, Carrie, you've had some of these and I've done these and you know, one of our, our first steps.

Right.

A potential member of the Sitkins network and working Them as having some discovery calls and conversations and we do an assessment and I very, I can distinctly remember one of the calls where the CFO said yeah, we're like a two in this area. And someone else is like, oh, I'm glad you went first because I was going to give us a seven or eight, you know, like total different. And obviously think about that. What is the message depending on who and how we're communicating to the team. And you know my joke on this and you've heard me say this before, but you know, in my family if mom and dad are on totally different pages, the kids know and they will go to the point of least resistance. And oftentimes you see that in agencies as well. So Roger, what are your thoughts in this particular area?

Well, it's so crucial to get everybody communicating. What a surprise. And get everybody on the same page. We're running the same plays, however you want to say it. And I remember one of our best agencies, a long term private client, when we started talking more and more about mission statement, vision statement, critical success factors, et cetera, you know, the few basic things we do exceedingly well all the time. He committed as well as anybody to having a monthly state of the agency meeting. Now that's a lot monthly and some people prefer to do it every 90 days like you know, the SC Security Exchange Commission. But he committed to doing it and I'll never forget him saying to me and we gave him of course a suggested agenda for it. He kept fine tuning it and one day on a coaching call he said man, those, those stated agency meetings are really working because I'm repeating the message again and again and they know I'm serious. And I said well how much prep do you do? He said I spent three hours getting ready for a one hour meeting. He said it's the most important meeting I have every month now and we are on the same page. So it's really exciting when it happens. But Carrie's example, you know, that everybody's different. We used to do one. We should probably start this again coaches but we would. It's very similar cares but say draw a picture of your agency. If it were an airplane, okay. And some people would. And then I'd say and by the way, where are you in the plane. But just the planes itself we get, you know, the hard driving agency leader. It'd be a private jet and somebody else would be like a cargo plane. It was unbelievable the difference. But just that whole the vision of everybody being on the same page and then getting to the point of what are the few basic things we have to do? Exceedingly well, critical success factors. And when you build that into it now, it's, you know, one of my favorite topics certainly is it comes down to what's your business model. And, and if anybody's listened to the podcast at all, they've heard us talk about this, that your current business model is perfectly designed for you to achieve your current results. Duh. Well, then let's get a new business model. So back to you, Brad.

Yeah, and just a few of the thoughts on this, because it's so important, you know, I think about this, and we talk about this as coaches, that how many insurance agency leaders started off selling insurance and now they're running an agency? And that's very typical, right? Because they were successful and stuff. But it's interesting, your, your client doesn't mean that, you know, some of these leaders don't have books of business. We know they do. We have a lot of player coaches. But oftentimes they often forget their most important client are those people that are on their team. And it becomes the last thing that they often think about and do versus the first thing. And, you know, for an agency to really grow and multiply, you've got to develop people and you have to develop leaders. And to do that, you have to be intentional. And so this idea, and again, the myth of communication that, well, if I'm just around, if I do certain things, it'll just magically happen. It doesn't. And I can tell you, and we all know this, case in point, our highest growing organizations and members that we have the pleasure of working with, and many of them you've heard on this podcast during interviews. If you listen to their interviews closely, they're very intentional in how they communicate with their team. They're very deliberate. So don't overlook that. Agency leaders just start to think about, you know, your new year in 2025. What's my cadence? What does my internal relationship calendar look like with my team members? How often am I clear with my message? Or am I just hoping that all the stuff in my head is going to just magically appear to everyone on my team? So it's a super, super important discussion. All right, let's talk about internal communication in terms of sales leaders with producers. Another big issue that we see, certainly internal communication. Carrie, you spent just a few years as a sales leader. You had just a few producers. Is it safe to say that communication and intentional communication with your production team is very important? And what lessons have you learned in this area?

Yeah. So important. Something that I've learned that's very important when it comes to a sales leader communicating with their production team is, I think you use the word very well, Brent, is intentionality. There has to be a very intentional cadence of communication that producers can rely on. I've heard in 2024, I actually heard from more than one agency. They use the term. Well, we have an open door policy. I'm always available to producers. They can come to me anytime. That's not a communication plan. Just because somebody feels that they are available doesn't mean that you are or that they are really coaching their team. It doesn't mean that they're setting the, the example of intentional communication. It's great to have an open door policy. It's great for your producers to know that you're available. But without an intentional plan, an agenda, topics that you know and, and they know they need to discuss things that they need to be held accountable to. And again, accountability isn't, I say this often. Accountability isn't a dirty word. Your best performers want to be held accountable. They know they, they, they perform better in an environment where they're having these conversations where they're, where they're thinking about, okay, where am I percent to goal? What am I doing in regards to pipeline? And most importantly, as the sales leader, when you are communicating on a regular basis, you're very intentional and you have agendas. When you meet with your team, offering to your team, what do you need from me? And leave that very open. Every person needs something different because they're at a different point in their career. They're, they're handling different types of things in their day to day or their week to week. So making sure that you have an intentional cadence of meetings with your producers so that they are getting coaching from, from you, the leader, as well as, as well as making sure that you're there to support them and asking them, what, what is it you need from me? You'll learn some very interesting things. You'll get, you'll get all different kinds of answers. What do you need from me? I mean, I've jokingly had people say, well, can you put a couch in your office? Because I feel like this is a, a psychological session, right? This is a therapy session with you. But hey, sometimes people need that. We know that there are highs and lows when you're in sales. You have, you have peaks and valleys, and sometimes people just need that ear and that's okay for you to be that person sometimes but if you're not really specifically reaching out or scheduling time that people can count on, you're missing the boat and, and, and the communication plan just isn't happening. It's not in place. If you just think I'm here, they can, they can reach me whenever. So that's a big, a big lesson learned. And I, and I still see it happening. Brad.

Yeah, and I think one comment on that, Carrie, is, I mean, I don't know if you use this word, but like part of this and that communication shows that you care. You know, just think about this idea again, if you come from the production background of, hey, if you need anything, call me or email me to your clients, like, I guess it's better than not responding, but that's kind of what you're saying. Again, it's, the intent's okay, but what does it really communicate? And the fact that what you need from me shows that you care. Like I care about you. I care about your success, I care about helping you where I can best help you. And to do that, I'm going to be intentional in how I communicate with you. So I think, Carrie, you sum that up really, really well because I think, you know, sometimes as leaders, oh, carrying such a touchy feely word, guess what? Good we live. We're emotional human beings. And I don't know about you, but I respect people that care about me. I do. So really important that you touched on that, Carrie. Roger, what's your feedback from this topic?

Well, amen on what Kerry just said, first of all. And one of the things that Kerry has brought to the team and brought to our members, our clients, this whole concept of cohort management. And you alluded to it a little bit, but it's basically, you have to figure out that you've got to treat them differently. I think all too often it's one size fits all. So you've got a producer that's doing 2, 3, 4, $500,000 a year, a million dollars a year new commission income, and you another one that's struggling to even meet their goals. And they try to treat them the same and they're not the same. And they don't all, quite frankly, deserve as much time from you. And one of the biggest issues we see is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The person that's really struggling, that's not doing what they're not doing their part of it. And, and then they, they suck up the energy from sales leadership. And studies have proven forever that you go to your best producer the one that you think you need to make, you just leave them alone and put some time in with them. They'll, they'll do an extra 100 or 200,000 of commission income just because you stroked them. And so I remember this long time ago in some leadership training, a psychologist said that people will always protect their stroke source, whoever stroke, they're going to protect them and they're going to keep their promises. And that's one of the big things that happened this year. And it's not 100%, it's never 100%. But the vast majority of our members from a sales leadership perspective have moved towards the concept of a promise based culture. And it's a two way promise. And the fact that it's not a legal contract, it's a memo of understanding, it's a letter between you and me, it's documenting what we talked about because we all know if it's wasn't put in writing, if it wasn't documented, it never happened. But to have a discussion whereby we say, hey, it's a two way street here as an agency. Here are the promises we're going to make to you, here are the things we'll do to support you so you can be successful. Conversely, we want you as a producer to report back to us, what will you do? And the big thing here is when they get it in writing. Sales and leadership, truly leadership and getting better results is easier, as we know, because the leader can say to the producer, well, you know, you're really struggling. You haven't been getting referrals, have you been asking what's been going on? And the producer says no. And then the classic line that people seem to fall in love with, please help me understand why you're not doing what you said you were going to do. And the people that are following that, first of all, it's a great coaching rather than going, you know, work on your numbers. And we all know they have to work on the behaviors. So that to me has been so crucial in it, I think another big thing from a pure leadership perspective, I'm always shocked at the low amount of practice that happens. If you golf, you spend time practicing, you play any sport, you practice, if you play music, you practice, you practice, practice, practice. And then when we, we ask agencies what percent of your A and B presentations to future ideal clients are rehearsed, Hardly any of them. What sort of low risk practices do you on soft skills during your sales meetings? Hardly any of them. And then we wonder why people are not truly improving their results because they don't have the skill set to do a great job presenting, to do a great job asking questions, to do a great job making phone calls. And so the, but, but not surprisingly, success leaves clues. The ones that are doing it are getting phenomenal results because they're practicing. Crucial.

Roger, hearing you say that reminds me, and you've heard me say this in sessions. There's, there was a, a famous baseball player, Lou Brock, and his quote, I love his quote. And I'm, I'm going to state it here. Show me a guy who's afraid to look bad, and I'll show you a guy I can beat every time. And, and it's amazing to me because we talk in sessions about would you go to a, a concert where the musicians didn't practice? Do baseball teams make it to the World Series by not practicing? If anybody played an instrument, played a sport, they were in a, a dance group or in a, in some sort of onstage production. Practice, practice, practice. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. This is what we do to get better, to, to be at the top of our game. I don't understand why in business people think that practice is something you don't have to do. And that, that quote to me is it, it, it's just, it, it epitomizes what, what. And I, you just want to shake people and say it's okay to, to practice because in the, within the four walls of your business, this is the safe place to do it. That's why it's called low risk practice, because you're doing it in front of people who want to help you get better. That feedback is a gift. So if we're not creating the time to do it, guess what? There's somebody out there and they're going to beat you every time because they're better. Like Lou Brock said.

Absolutely. And I, you know the whole thing about. Are you practicing enough? Come on. It just, it's crazy. We've talked about this in the podcast before, but it's worth restating here. Pre Covid in one of our in person events, I think it was the third session and we said the producer, so you know, what did you, what did you get out of here? What was your feed? Because we always want to hear that feedback and we want to know what's working and not working. And the young producer said, well, the number one thing I learned, Coach, is I will no longer practice my presentations during the actual presentation. Okay. By the way, let me ask the two of you, Brett, all those events we had this year. Did we practice?

100.

Yeah, 100. And what did we do afterwards?

We debrief every event.

Absolutely. And I'm not bragging.

Yeah.

I'm just saying we do it because we will outwork everybody else as coaches, you know. Yeah.

I just mean to cut you, as you said that it did highlight because, I mean, it's interesting because I was going to talk about is just understanding the culture of your agency. And we know that our. Our highest agencies, the culture is. Yeah. We're a culture that practices. We're a culture that is about development. Right. It's just. That's just. It isn't like whether we do it. It's who we are now. There's different levels of, you know, we practice this or that or whatever. But it hit me as you said that, like, I don't think anything. And this isn't about us, but it's understanding the concept that pre brief and debrief is just part of what we do. But what's interesting is that as much as we do it and we repeat a lot of sessions, I still learned something like, oh, I missed that. I could have done that better. I improve. And you look back and you go, gosh, there are some major improvements that we had this year. But that doesn't happen if you're not consistent.

I have to jump on that one. Okay. Because the reality is, and this is a lesson that I hope people are learning. Why should you practice? Because you owe it to who? Well, you owe it to your own family so you can get. Because you're going to get better. You owe it to your team so the team gets better results. You owe it to your community and your church because now you can help them more. Again, you owe everybody in your team. You're on the service side. They can't make more money if the agency doesn't make more money. And so to me, it's a personal responsibility that I'm going to be at my best version possible when I do this event. And it's the mindset of the great ones. Here's the other problem we all know is you don't have to do any of this. And you'll do okay by most standards, but okay is no longer good enough. So back to you, Brian.

And I'm one of those weird individuals. I know I'm not the only one on this call in particular. But in fact, we know what the best agencies like. We believe that, like, growth is inherent. If you don't grow, you just feel miserable outside of the results. You know, the results are one thing, but just the fact of, am I a better version of myself today than I was yesterday? And if you could just be stagnant for years and be okay with that.

Like.

There'S a problem. There's a problem there. So I think. Let me summarize the internal communication part of this, because we went a lot of directions, which, by the way, is great. But it just. It's just the idea that, you know, Carrie used the word intentional. Intentional communication. Intentional how we do things. Intentional about our performance. And one thing that we learned this year and we started in 2024, and we're going to go much deeper in 2025, is to have a true leadership program discussing these very topics. Right. The first thing that our members do before some other things in some of the core programs and we talk about that is understanding leadership, clarity, leadership communication. Because if the leaders. Back to carry what you said earlier, if our leaders aren't aligned and communicated in the same way we have, we have a disjointed agency, and we'll never be our best version possible if we're disjointed. So it's super, super important and a super, super important part of the conversation. All right, I'm going to tie the last part of internal communication coaches, if that's okay, into point number two, because correlate it. All right? One of the key parts of internal communication is sales versus service, or sales and service. In fact, it shouldn't be sales versus service, but in too many agencies, it is. And agencies will smile and almost kind of look away when I say not only are sales and service not performing well together, but is there resentment? Yeah, sometimes there's resentment. So this blends in with leadership and intentional communication into topic number two, which is the power of the zones. The zones for any athlete out there. And this could be in music, too. Could be anything. Like when. When you're in the zone, you sometimes don't even know it, but you're in it. It's like you feel it. You're performing at the highest level. Right. I mean, if you're a musician, like, you're in your. You're just in it so much, you don't even know what's going on around you. You're just in your zone. If you're playing sports, again, it could be anything. If you're a basketball player, like, you're just knocking down shots. You don't hear anything else. You're just performing at the highest level you can perform at. And Obviously, in terms of agency performance, we want that for our agency members, for leaders, for sir, for service professionals and for our producers. And Roger, I'm going to start this with you because you've said this before and think we'll lead into it. You've been doing the coaching consulting thing for a little while. Yeah, a little while. And you've said something that of all the things that you've talked about, this might be the stickiest one. I think we've gone deeper in 2024 and learned even more about the power of these zones. So I'm going to kick it to you, Roger, what are these zones that I'm talking about? And then Carrie will keep going deeper. I want to hear your perspective on this as well.

Of course, I do have to laugh because of all the stuff, you know, my legacy here it is. There are zones. There's a red zone, a green zone, a blue zone, blue zone, and sometimes a platinum zone that we talk about. And one day it hit me as I was doing my morning thought process, you know, getting my morning ritual, thinking through things and trying to clarify that the biggest issue, and this is not a new thing, the biggest issue is the vast majority of producers spend more time doing service work than they do sales related activities. And you even hear them, it's an excuse. I'm too busy to get out and sell. I'm too busy to go visit clients. Busy doing what? This is your job. So we had to divide it, define it much better. So I said, okay, let's just start with the basics. There's a red zone and a green zone. And the red zone, if you're football, it's a good thing to be on offense getting into the red zone. But this is not good. When you're a producer, the red zone is when you're in the service trap. You're in the office doing service related issues, getting involved in the middle of things. Now, if it's an emergency in flight, as we've talked about before, producer's job, takeoffs, landings, emergencies in flight, takeoffs, sell it, landings, continue the relationship. Emergency and flight, deal with it. It's an emergency in flight. Yeah, you're in the middle of it. But for day to day service issues that happen, they have to be handled by the service professional. But most producers spend more time in the red zone than they do the green zone. And by the way, when they're in the red zone, they screw things up. And we've talked about this before that, you know, when we deal with the service professionals that say, you know, do your producers get involved in service? Yes. If they took 10 changes today, how many would have complete, accurate, total information where you could process the change without going back to the client or back to the producer? One or two. So eight or nine times out of 10, they make an error. And tongue in cheek, we say, if you had a service professional that made errors or a processing person that made errors, eight or nine times out of 10, what would you do? Fire or make them a producer. Okay. But you couldn't leave them as a. As a processor. So we've identified that there really are only four things a producer should do, only four things. In the end, these are the four green zone activities. Make sales, manage relationships, continue relationships, don't renew insurance policies, and build your pipeline. That's it. Four things. And the goal is to get the producer, producers, and in the green zone available for those four things. 80% of the time. The vast majority of producers, when they start with us, they're more like 80% in the red zone because they haven't defined it. And one of the things, Kerry, when we worked together, when you had your own agency and everything, and I remember you talked about that, and you still do now, it's, it's. It's not the division of sales and service, Brent, alerted to it, as you call. It's the marriage of sales and service. It's the marriage of sales and service working together on the same things. So when we look at this, we say, all right, the goal is producer in the green zone 80% of the time. But what about the service professional? Well, there's a blue zone, and the blue zone is, you know, blue is a very calming, wonderful color. And we realize that what we have to do is allow them to work uninterrupted. And one of the biggest issues I still see, and it shows up in revenue per employee, is there's a tremendous amount of excess capacity on both the sales and service side. If we get them in the right zone, if we can take a producer that's spending 40% of their time in the green zone, get them to 80, we have a dramatically improved capacity. Now, they've got to do the stuff while they're there, but they've got to get the capacity up. And we somewhat, tongue in cheek, say, well, that's the world's greatest producer recruiting program. Get your producers in the green zone and then make sure you're doing what they're doing. Conversely, we've got to get to service people in a situation where they can work Uninterrupted. And that's one of the biggest issues. I remember in one of our sessions, it wasn't this year, it was last year with our account manager program. Account manager FIT had the service professionals and we had a lot of really high powered agencies so we deal with in the program. And at the end I said, well, what did you get out of this? One of these service leaders, she was manager of the department, she said, I'll tell you right now, the number one thing I want you to do is make sure the producers stop interrupting us during the day. And let's define what an emergency is. Remember I said emergency in flight. And we know the best agencies now done something really cool. Number one, they defined what an emergency was because if there's an emergency in flight, we're going to deal with it. Okay, then secondly, they gave the service professionals the power. They enabled them to say to a producer, I'm sorry, that's not an emergency in flight. I'll get it done. It'll probably be tomorrow, but it's not an emergency in flight. What I'm working on right now is going to be more impactful for our results. And so the service professionals, when you get them to define an emergency, give them the power and then give them the right to say that to the producer. And now they work uninterrupted. We've referred to this several times, Brent. I always get the number wrong. Is it 23 or 24 minutes? 23 was in the study that when you get interrupted to get back to that same zone, that Same productivity is 23 minutes. Well, how many 23 minutes are wasted because of those type of interruptions? So we look at that and we say, wow, producers in the green zone, 80% of the time, service professionals in the blue zone, 80% of the time working uninterrupted. Right there, we have dramatically improve, not just the capacity, but actually start measuring productivity based upon revenue per employee. It skyrockets and we haven't added a staff. Carrie, from your perspective.

Yeah, Kerry, go ahead. I have a silly sports analogy when you're done, Carrie, that I think is funny.

Okay.

All right, Roger, I think you articulated that so well. I don't have a lot to add, but here's the one thing that I will add. When we work with agencies and we define the green zone, the blue zone and the red zone, it creates group accountability for the leadership team. So for your service and operations leader and your sales leader, when you have two teams of people who are speaking the same language, they Understand that they all have a very similar goal, but they have different roles and how the agents is or, or what they do in the agency to achieve those goals. It creates group accountability. Because when a producer slips out of the green zone and they try to interrupt to your point, Roger, interrupt a service professional's blue zone time, they can say, right, this is, this is what I'm doing, what I'm supposed to be doing. You need to go do what you are supposed to be doing. It's a natural group accountability, which is a beautiful thing and it makes it so that your service team is empowered to do what their, what, what, what their unique abilities drive them to do. Roger, you mentioned it. We don't want producers doing service work because that's not their unique ability. They are not a detail oriented bunch, the majority of them at least. And you have service professionals who are. So let's get out of each other's way. Let's make sure that we are staying in our zone and, and, and we're going to, like you said, create capacity both on the service and sales side and our teams are going to be much more harmonious and working together to make that marriage of sales and service happen. And that's really key to the success of an agency. So that was the one point I wanted to make. Brent.

No, 100% agree with all that. And I mean, it does come back to a culture issue, right? And this, this takes a while. There's a process to this. You've both experienced that some of the best agencies, if a producer were just to wander in at, you know, 11:00am on a Tuesday or a Wednesday or Thursday, the empowered service staff through the agency would go, what are you doing here? You need to go do your job. And everyone goes, you're right. Like, there isn't like a, what do you mean? It's like, no, like this is our culture. And you know, one of the things that we've learned as coaches and, you know, been able to establish and this has been, been hugely successful and you know, Roger, you know this Carrie, back in your day, both, you know, as a member and working with Sitkins, if a producer hears the message, which is a powerful message of the green zone, but they can't articulate that message well to their service team. It sometimes comes out the wrong way. It sometimes comes out, hey, I need to go sell more. So you need to do all the crap that is not what we say or believe in and it's not anywhere close to what a great high performance team is about. So Being able to have our programs now where the producers, the service team, the coaches, the sales leaders are all hearing a similar message and now can better communicate back to. That is a game changer. And we see very quickly and why this is such a big issue in 2024 is those agencies that haven't been able to articulate it, they can't get out of their own way. And that's where the frustration is. Why is it such a challenge? Because you're not singing from the same hymn book and you know, just as far as the power of the green zone. This is my silly analogy, but Carrie, you're. You're a Seattle Seahawks fan and it is football season.

Yeah, I am.

This could be anyone.

This is what, what hit me as Roger was, was saying, I was thinking about, you know, thinking about sports or music. I'm just imagine like it's fourth quarter and the quarterback, you know, this like, game is tied or it's close or whatever, and the quarterback just slinging darts, right? Like 8 yard pass, 12 yard pass. Calling a great game, Settle the team down. Another pass, another pass. They cross midfield and the coach is like, get out of the game. Why don't you get out of the game? And why don't you go interrupt the defense that's preparing for their side of the ball? Go interrupt them too. Don't just get out of the game, but go mess with the people on def. That's what happens in agencies all the time.

You've got.

You've got people in the zone. And by the way, they don't get yanked out. They take themselves out in many cases.

Yeah.

I've been really having some good calls today, good conversations, really working on the pipeline. Think I'll go back and spend a few hours checking emails and ask my service team if they need anything from me. Three or four times in a row, like, that's getting out of the zone. So I was trying to have a little fun. I don't know. You were, you were at least sort of laughing. I don't know if that works or not.

Just.

I just had this mental image and. Carrie, even the 12th man in Seattle can't fix that problem if they don't correct it.

Right.

As good as the crowd is. So.

All right.

Such an important thing in the power of the zones. I would just ask agency leaders listening. And again, certainly for producers that are listening this as well, just ask yourself, are you in the zone enough? What is your zone and are you in it? And do you sometimes sabotage your own success by taking Yourself out. And Roger, back to your point of emergencies. Do you sometimes sabotage others? Not only are getting out of your zone, but you're messing other people's zones up. And you think about the power and the time and the cost of that. It's incredible. So it's a huge, a huge point. All right, number three, you ready for our third big takeaway? This is my favorite because I think most people know it. And I want to talk to coaches because it's amazing how something can be so known, so reinforced, yet so underutilized. And here's number three, the continued reinforcement and deeper learning of the power of the 8020 rule. And I know there are some of you right now are going. Are you really going to talk about 8020 again? Yes. Yes. Because I will tell you in initial conversations what we learned. And I'm going to kick this right over to Carrie because Kerry's got some great thoughts and stories on this from 2024. Is that even really good, if not great? Agencies still miss it. And because they miss it, they are missing lost time and opportunity and leverage and capacity. We'll probably get to all those things some way or another. So, Carrie, I'm just going to turn it right over to you because what's been your learning, your takeaway from 80:20 and 20:24.

If there's one thing I have to say, if there's one thing that we could get every single one of our members to harness is the 8020 rule. And not just to look at it and say, this is the way that my block of business or my books of business business, they live up to the 8020 rule. It's alive and well. But if they would apply it, if they would actually work in a way that they, you know, grow their book smart, grow their agency smart profitably with 8020 would be fantastic. Here was a big, big learning opportunity that came up in 2024 on this. I was a keynote speaker and a trainer for an agency. And at the time, they were $123 million revenue agencies. They were big, right? I think they had 17 different states they were in at the time. I think by now they're over 150 million. They've had some acquisitions. So 8020 was something we really wanted to. To chat with them about. And so we ran 8020 report for every single one of their top hundred producers. We had them all in a room. And what's amazing to me is as an agency, they had never done it. They'd never even considered it. I mean, That's a huge agency to not have applied or even considered 80 20. And so I have this huge group of people in this ballroom at this beautiful hotel. And so on the tables there's envelopes. And so at one point in the presentation when I had explained 80:20, everybody got to rip open their envelope and look at their report, their own book of business. And at the break after everybody did that, one of the sales leaders came up to me and said, I know you couldn't hear it, but in the room you could hear so many people saying, oh, holy. Right, Holy smoke. We'll just say holy smokes. But you get it. You know what they said? She said there were so many people who just couldn't believe it when they saw the numbers in front of them that, oh my gosh, look at how many clients I have in my book that produces such little amount of revenue. And, and, and at the, at the same time, look at how much risk I have at the top of my book if I'm not providing more. Brent, you say it all the time. It doesn't take a lot more, but it does take more. You have to treat those top clients differently. They require more, you have to give them more because they're driving the bulk of your revenue. So it's, it's very eye opening. And if agencies would Simply apply the 8020 rule and really focus on replicating A's and B's and, and, and, and growing, that way you stop propping up these unprofitable accounts with your profitable ones. And it, I know that there's some fear wrapped up in PR for producers because they think, oh my gosh, it's going to affect my cash flow. But if you look at the small amount of money that those bottom, the bottom accounts drive, it's, it's, it's nothing. And it frees up to the point that we talked about earlier, it frees up capacity, it frees up time, gives them the opportunity to go and pursue larger, profitable, more sophisticated accounts. And your service team, oh my gosh, think about it. They're not just stuck in this transaction, transaction, transaction type of accounts. They actually get to provide proactive service to these larger, sophisticated accounts. So 80 20, if you can't tell, I'm so passionate about it. I have worked with producers, some of the most successful producers that I've worked with, they feel the same way about it. And they have left a legacy. Some of them are now retired, left a legacy that, that will continue on because it's how they grew a book they built a team of people, and it's just natural practice now. It's part of the culture. So I'll hand it back to you, Brent, to summarize anything on that, but 80 20. Yes, let's get everybody in our membership working 80 20.

Well, I know Roger's got probably four hours of content on this, but I'm going to make him get it down to maybe just a few. But I do want to share one. One thing you said there, Carrie, that really jumped out at me, and I think sometimes I even overlook this. You know, Roger, you've indicated this many times in the past year is that we talk about 8020 for agency and we run thousands of reports. And, you know, Carrie talked about the producers books, and they usually go, oh, my gosh, I, I can't believe this. But I think that gets overlooked a lot is the, the, the weight and the work of the service team. And I know the first time I talked about 80 20, and it's a little different context with service professionals. I thought, well, they're not really going to care. Get this as much or it doesn't matter, maybe as much. And I'll tell you what, they were like, oh, if, if I could work more with these clients and go deeper with these clients, that would be awesome because I got all these other things. And Roger always joke about this. When the phone rings, we go, oh, my gosh. And these are typically the clients. There's too many of them that pay you too little money. But we don't do anything.

Yeah.

It's just the way it is, I guess. That's the way it's always going to be. That's just how it's going to be. And that's what happens at agencies. If they can't change their mindset, shift. They can't shift their mindset, and they can't ship some of the behaviors. So, Roger, hope I didn't steal any of your thunder because I know you got a ton of thoughts on this, so I'll turn it to you.

Well, you said four hours. It could probably be five. As we were sitting here, I was thinking about the. After you joined the firm and it was the third or fourth producer program we ran, and you, you walked up to me at one of the breaks and you said, don't all the other coaches in our industry talk about this, too? I said, not really. Yeah, not really. It's, it's so, so, so, so powerful. But it's one of those ones, like you said. Well, I know, I know. Knowing doesn't mean anything. Are you doing something about it? You know, through the years I've been criticized the same that I don't like small accounts and I don't like personal commercial accounts or personal lines. That's not true. I actually love all the accounts. What I don't like are unprofitable accounts. And unfortunately, if you're not aware of 8020 guaranteed and carry, you alluded to it. You guarantee yourself that you have profitable customers. Subsidizing, unprofitable. It's one of those Sitkins rules. Don't do that. So, like, don't have profitable producers. Subsidizing, unprofitable producers. You're in business to make a profit so that you increase the value of your agency. It's pretty simple. Pretty simple, okay. It's just not easy. It's easy. Everybody do it. So the 8020, we look at it, we start realizing, okay, do we have certain accounts that are unprofitable? Maybe, maybe. All right, we carry. You also alluded to the top accounts when we look at this. And if I'm sure everybody's familiar, but just in case, top 5% of the customers are 50% of the revenue, next 15% of the customers are 30% of the revenue, thus the top 20 or 80%. But when you look at the eight customers, the top 5%, you actually have Super A's, and that's the top 2%. And the top 2% are about a third of the revenue in an average agency, an average producer's book of business. So if we lost 2% of our customers, would we become unprofitable? I mean, how many expenses could you cut if you lost top 2% of your customers? Well, the only expense you'd be able to eliminate immediately is producer compensation because there's no revenue on it.

Right?

So it's, it's a real problem. And when I look at this and I realize that it's so powerful when done properly is the concept of the ultimate growth strategy. Carrie, you alluded to it. You didn't name it, but you alluded to it. All right? It's round out, retain and replicate your A's and B's and something. We always say, look, you're going to replicate something. What do you want to replicate? I want to replicate my A's and B's. It doesn't mean I don't have C's. It may mean the individual producer doesn't. That we have an in house unit that handles select commercial lines, small benefits accounts, personal lines, accounts Maybe, maybe. We certainly look at the option of a service center. It's not for everybody, but for agents, certain agencies, it absolutely makes sense because we can get rid of the transaction but keep the revenue, which I think is really cool. Get rid of the transaction, keep the revenue. And now we've increased capacity with the fact that our service, we have service people available to take on greater duties. And again, this capacity is such a key issue here. So round out, retain and replicate, round out their full time clients, which means they buy everything from us. And it's the number one exit barrier. They round out, retain, have a continuation process, not a renewing policy process. And on the A and B accounts it includes a stewardship reporter promise report. And that's at the six month anniversary. And when it's done, guess what? Because we remind them what we do and then we ask for the referral and we get a referral. Referral 80 to 90% of the time. And with those referrals we have an 80 or 90% closing ratio. Okay, so round out, retain and replicate the A's and B's, the producers that have done it. And unfortunately it's a small percent because it takes pigheaded discipline, it takes that culture of accountability. But the ones that have done it are growing their books of business by 20% plus a year. 20% plus a year. Why wouldn't I want to do that? Well, maybe I'm not as committed as I should be. And we talk about how committed you really are to being the best you can be, to be the best version possible. Is it lip service or is it feet service? Or you just go yapping about it, but then you go back to the old way because you're still doing okay later in life. You're going to have a lot of regrets because you're leaving personally hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table as a producer and as an agency, million of dollars of value. So when we look at this and say, all right, let's at least know our numbers. And that's the key. That's what happened with that. That agency. They finally knew their numbers and they were saying holy smokes. When they looked at their numbers. It was pretty prevalent what they were saying. And because it's such a great business, you're going to do okay if you never do this, but eventually it's going to catch up to you and you're going to under service your best customers and over service your worst customers. We just see that all the time. So Brett, it's, it's so Powerful when done properly. At a minimum, it should be part of everybody's annual business plan. We see the best producers we work with literally, like ones in our elite 50th Sales Mastery Program. Several of them, not all of them literally. And I love it because it's laminated. They have a laminated sheet they carry around with them that has their. They're 80, 20 on it. They're always looking at it. Always looking at it. So that's a starting point, Brad.

Yeah, it is. And there's, there's a lot there. And by the way, for the listeners right now, if you like this discussion. I like this discussion, although I'm a bit, you know, you know, it's kind of self serving. But this is one of the things that we want to bring our coaches on and have some of these discussions more often in 2025. Because Rogers, you're sitting there talking. I'm like, man, there's so much more. We could, we, we could help and help serve agency and agency leaders out there. So I certainly want to do this. Coaches, I know we, we wanted to keep this to 45 minutes to an hour, about to an hour. So I'm going to, I'm going to do my best to land the plane the best that I can on this. And, and I want to share a couple things, actually, before I get to that, I'm going to do a little bit of a tease because, Roger, you're doing some deeper learning in 80 20. So I don't want to miss the point. I know you brought that up, so I want to make sure we highlight that as well.

Okay. Well, this is the first time we're talking about this in public other than to some of our private clients. Brent and Carrie both heard me say for years, there's nothing that we can learn about 80, 20. And the minute I say that, something new comes up. Because you think, well, they can just, you know, it is what it is. But then when you start really dissecting it, it's amazing. So I've been doing reading, as I do on a regular basis, to attempt to get better all the time. And I was looking, I received a book that talked more about analyzing businesses as a whole. And it wasn't primarily service business. It was more manufacturing. But I was looking for some analogy. And they said people that have products need to break them down into four quarters, 25% each. So look at the top 25% of your products. What do they sell? Next, Next, Next. And I thought, you know what? We've never Looked at an agency that way. So we've just started a study, and we don't have solid numbers yet because we're just getting the reports back from our private clients. But I'm basically. And I challenge all of our listeners. Viewers, listeners. To do this. Go ahead and take your book of business and break it down into four tiers. Tier 1, the top 25% of your customers. Tier 2, the next 25. Tier 3, the next 25. Tier 4, the bottom 25%. And take a look at what's happening. So as coaches, when we started talking about this, I said, okay, if the top 20% of the customers are 80% of the revenue, what are the top 25%? And then what happens at the bottom? So this is the first time we're giving some initial on it. Here's what we found so far. And the numbers are new, so they're not worth publishing yet, but they're tracking the ones we've received. The top 25% of the customers are 88% of the revenue. The top 25 or 88% of the revenue. Okay. Excuse me. The top 50. I said that wrong. The top 25 plus the next 25. See, it's so new, I don't even have it right. So the. The top.

Roger, you got my attention, so I'm leaning in. No, it's great. All right.

That's why I did it. So get your attention.

That's right.

The top, the tier one and two combined are 88% of the revenue. Okay. That means the bottom 50% are 12% of the revenue. And we'll update these numbers, et cetera. The whole key is it's shocking what we're seeing already. It's shocking what we're seeing already. So the bottom line is that let's really understand, do we have profitable customers, subsidizing, unprofitable. Are we in a situation whereby we're under servicing our most important relationships? Here's a question to ask for everybody and should send us the results and we'll publish your name. No, but what percent of the top 25% of your customers received some form of a stewardship report or promise report, saying, here's what we promised to do for you, here's what we did, here's how it impacted you, and if the number's low, you're vulnerable on that account. So, Brent, there's a lot more, and I would hope that in a month or two we can do a whole podcast just on the results of the 425s. No one's ever done it. We're the first ones. We're excited about it and the, the private clients of ours that are looking at it already will carry us another. Holy smokes.

A lot of holy smokes. Yeah, we'll, we'll as we'll get more numbers back in, we'll come back into a podcast, kind of share some updates as we go along the way. So I'm going to wrap this up by, by saying a few things. You know, this has been, it's been a really interesting year, a lot of learning and thank you Roger and Carrie for coming on and sharing some of the things that, you know, we joke that we could, we could probably do, probably could, we could do an 8 hour, 10 hour podcast and just talk about other stuff and all the learnings want to bring the things that really jump to the top of the page. And I've had the pleasure this year, not only just like Carrie and Roger, of working with great members and great, and working with great attendees of our programs, but also having some really cool interviews with a lot of our members. And I've, I've gotten some feedback already which is terrific. Of, hey, thanks for doing these interviews. I learned a lot and a lot of people say I really like the results that those agencies are getting and so do we. It's all about results. However, results come from the right behaviors. And here's the thing about behaviors. You typically don't have the right behaviors until you get the right beliefs. And one of the things that we have talked about as coaches, I think one of the greatest impacts that we have with agencies certainly is the end. The end impact is results. But the beginning is to change how they think. Results are how you get paid. Right? That's the scoreboard. Beliefs are how you act. I mean the behaviors are how you act, the beliefs are how you think. And one of the things we've noticed and just for example of 8020 oftentimes are these paradigms shifts that you've always thought this way for a long period of time. Well, I thought this was kind of the way it was and this is the way other agencies do it. So I figure that's how I should do it versus going, oh my gosh, I've never thought about it that way before. So I'm just going to challenge you as an agency leader listening of what paradigm shifts do you need to be more aware of? Because even 80, 20, what we're really talking about is when you're aware of the right areas, you take the right Action. Right. The right awareness leads to actions and it changes how you think about things. And I know the, the agency leaders that I've had the pleasure of interviewing. The start of all the results came from how they think. I even think back to one particular interview. Roger with longtime relationship with Mark Shipp, who was on the podcast not long ago, talked about how he had clicks. He started to think different about himself. Right. Eliminating self limiting beliefs, changing how he thinks about certain things he needs to do and actually starting to change to think about what's possible. So if you're an agency leader, you're looking to up level your mindset. You're looking for a model to pave the way to true results of growth and profit and agency value in team culture. Some of the things that we talked about today and I would also say avoid the three of brothers. I introduced the three of brothers in a different conversation as it should have, could have and would have. I should have done this this year. I could have done this this year. I wish we would have done these things this year. This is an opportunity and by the way, in a relationship with our organization, it's not for everybody. It's not. There are certain agencies that you're good but if you're a good or even a great agency and you go, you know what? There's a best version possible waiting, I'd like to learn more, reach out and start a conversation. That's all we ask. Start a conversation. We get to know you, you get to know us. And from there we can see there's a potential fit. Be like, I hope you can tell through this whether you're watching or you're listening that we don't do this because it's just something to show up and do this. We do this because we have a passion for helping agencies and their people within the agencies become best version possible. They don't ever live with regrets. It's the best decision that they can make. So that's, that's my, that's my call and plea to you because we certainly, we certainly want to help the best agency. So Roger Kerry, final goodbyes. You can just wave or say goodbye or whatever. There it is.

Happy holidays.

Yeah, yeah.

Have a wonderful end of the year and can't wait to see what 2025 brings.

I have to say one thing, Brent, on what you just talked about and the mindset.

Okay.

And changing the thought process and all too often we see where people go, yeah, yeah, the of brothers, which I absolutely love that one. But just they go, yeah, we really can't do that. Here's a great mindset. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Can you round out, retain and replicate your A and B accounts? Yes, you can. Okay. Could you work on referrals only? Yes, you can. Okay. Can you get your producers in the green zone 80% of the time? Yes, you can. It takes the different mindset, it takes the different behaviors to get the right results, but we know it works because it's working with our members now. So I wish all of you happy holidays also, and thank you for listening and Brent, great job leading us today.

Hey, we did. We did pretty well. We were looking for about an hour. We just went a little over. But you know what, that was fun. So hopefully you all enjoyed it. We'll talk to you soon. And best wishes and your success and have a happy, safe and healthy 2025. Wait, you're still here? Hey, Agent Leader podcast listeners. Brent Kelly, again, I want to, first of all, thank you for listening to the Agent Leader podcast and your continued support. If you would like to have more content come your way, please help us by sharing the podcast, subscribing to the podcast podcast, telling people about the podcast. And if you as an agent leader are truly ready to take that next step in your agency, you're committed and want to be that best version possible. Agency, don't wait. Go to sitkins.com bookacall sitkins.com bookacall we want to provide the blueprint for your agency to help you create more impact with less effort. And it all starts by going to sitkins.com/bookacall. All right, now you can actually go. Thanks.