Best Practices for Insurance Agencies

Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. The podcast to help you, the agency leader, gain clarity, build consistency and to make a commitment to become your best version possible. Always want to remind the listeners that our book, the Best Version Possible is available. You can go to sitkins.com bvp and I happen to have the co author back with me as a special guest here today. Roger Sitkins is the co author of Best Version possible and again, sitkins.combvp you can also get the audible version or go to Amazon if you want to do that as well. But you get a couple perks if you go to our website, so make sure you check that out. So I wanted to bring our very special guest and we had a series just recently that Roger Sitkins and myself went through about the eight clicks and hopefully you had a chance to listen to those. A lot of breakthroughs and things that we discussed in that. But I want to bring Roger on with to get his reaction and his thoughts on something that just, just came out, just was published and it's an annual publication. I'm sure many of you listeners look forward to this. And read this. It's the best practice of study that's put out by Reagan Consulting, good friends of ours and the big I and a lot of great knowledge and information in there. And we what I wanted to do is bring Roger on not only to get his reaction, and by the way, I'm going to share some of my reactions too. There were some things that jumped out to me, but also what does it mean to you, right, as an agency leader and with your agency, like, how do you digest this information? What are some things that we have learned from this that I think will help you and move your agency forward to help you become that best version possible. So, Roger, first and foremost, welcome back to the Agent Leader podcast.

It's great to be back. I'm really excited about this with the best practices study because I've really spent a lot of probably four days now of really deep dive on it, including a conversation with our longtime friend Tom Doran, one of the senior partners at Reagan that actually heads up the practice. I just got off the phone with him about 20 minutes ago and just I wanted to share some things that were just absolutely jumping out at me, things that can really impact agency leaders. So let's go.

All right, we're going to get into that. I do want to just say thank you to many of you who are listeners I know that have reached out to Roger and our team. Now, Roger's not in Fort Myers right now. He's had his home outside of Atlanta, Northern Georgia there. We've had many of our team members impacted by Hurricane Ian. And, you know, I'm sure you've all seen the devastation there, and even my team tells me, which I can't imagine, I'm not down there, is that you see pictures, but you don't really get it until you're there and what people are going through. And so do want to make a note of just thank you to those that have reached out, to even reach out to me on behalf of my team. I know to you, Roger, you said it really is a great testament to the friends in this business. So anything that you want to share.

There, well, just be grateful for what you have. One of my favorite sayings in life is there but for the grace of God go I. And I know that I'm blessed, and most of our team is blessed. We've got quite a bit of damage at the office, but we'll get through this. We'll be strong. But just please keep people in your prayers, because there are some people there that have lost everything, and it's just. It's awful sad.

Yeah, it absolutely is. So, well, let's get to a more positive note. All right. I know everybody's dealing with that, but going back to the best practice study, and I'm going to leave this. This really is. You know, Roger and I didn't prepare any questions. We've had some conversations around this, but I said I just want to bring you on the podcast and let's just riff. I want to get your. Your initial feedback from what. What's jumping out of you. So I'm really just going to turn the ball over to your court, Roger, and say, let's go. Give me some of your big impressions on what you found in reading the study.

Well, first of all, the data is overwhelming. There's just so much there that you can take a look at. And what's surprising to me is the small number of agencies that really will go back and compare their numbers at all to find out what's really going on. And they've got the various categories. It starts with 1.25 million and below and then goes as high as 1 over 25 million. So I would just strongly suggest that, you know, if you're professional manager running a professional organization, you should know your numbers. There's no question in some of the narrative that it started off and it talked about the critical issues facing agencies, some things really jumped out at me. Brent And I've mentioned these to you, and I think it was probably one of the catalysts for us to do this. In the opening few pages, where it's talking about the critical issues, the term development, develop, or development was used at least eight times. Was used at least eight times. And they're saying the need to develop your people. Well, obviously that's something we talk about all the time, that great leaders, their job is not to make more revenues or more profit. Their job is to develop their people. And we've talked about this before, that will make more revenue and create more profits. But then later on after, it kept talking about the need for development. Then it said in all capital letters, which kind of jumps out at you, it says, it's all about the people. At the end of the day, they're saying, agencies that want to grow, agencies that want to prosper, it's all about the people. And then it said. I did write this one down. It said, agency owners and leaders must recognize that people are your number one strategic priority. And I want to repeat that. Agency owners and leaders must recognize that people are your number one strategic priority. Now, as we've been talking to agency leaders over the last few months and even some of our friends that are at the highest levels of the national insurance carriers, one of the things we keep hearing is staffing, staffing, staffing. We're concerned about staff, we're concerned about people recruiting our people. You know, a term that's used quite a bit in the report is lift out. Where they're going in there. You know, they're attacking or recruiting, if you will, producers and lifting them out. In fact, the analogy they use is the ncaa, the transfer portal where players can move from one team to another. Now, so they talk about the lift outs, but lift outs are also happening at the account manager level. So you look at this and you say, number one, our goal is to attract and retain great clients. We talk about this all the time. Well, it's the same thing with team members. What are you doing to attract and retain the best team members? And at the end of the day, it's not just compensation. There's a lot more, which we'll get into. But it's certainly about the culture, it's certainly about how people are growing and what's happening. But I look at this overall and I say, okay, it's all about the people. People should be our number one strategic priority. And then I say, okay, what are agencies investing in training and education? Well, historically, and we've talked about this A few times in our movie. We've talked about it on a couple of the podcasts. Historically, agencies spend 0.4%, not 4%, 0.4% on the training and development. In this study, the number came in at 0.24%, which is 0.16% less, which is really 40% less. Now, let's be realistic. A big part of that is the fact that Covid. So the live training events, all of the things people would normally go to, did not happen as much, but they still are investing some money in the training and education, the development of their people. Okay, the majority of that for the average agency. And by the way, remember, these are best practices agencies. You had to apply to get in, you had to send your numbers in, you had to get into it. Okay, the average agency, where they're doing the 0.24%. Again, a little bit less than a quarter of 1%. What's it for? What's continuing education? To keep your license or it's to maintain a designation. It's not so much about developing people. And this is something I would hope would come through on this. Yes, you want the technical knowledge. You need to know insurance. You need to know insurance. That applies to your job. But what about the development of all of the other areas that will make you, as an individual, a better team member, as a leader, you will build a better team. So we look at this and we say, well, you know, something we talk about all the time, another acronym, spa. What are the skills, what are the processes, and what are the attitudes that should be in place? So when you look at it and you say, okay, people are number one, developing. Your people use date, times, et cetera. And then you say, yeah, but you're spending 0.24%, by the way, Brent, the average agency spends more on miscellaneous than they do on education and training of their employees. Yeah.

Yeah, I didn't see that.

Miscellaneous. What is it? I don't know. Some crap. We'll just call it miscellaneous. They spend more on miscellaneous. I mean, I shouldn't even laugh. It's sad. They spend more on miscellaneous than training and development and education of their team.