Click #3 for Insurance Professionals - Activity vs. Results

Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode. And this is part three of an eight part series on the clicks. And to remind the listeners, if you haven't listened to prior episodes and why wouldn't you? We've got two clicks already out there and obviously a number of other prior episodes. But on this series, the idea of a click is a breakthrough. It is a new way of thinking, it is a new way of maybe a new strategy or maybe it is, maybe it is going back to doing something that you should have been doing a long time ago, but it is these, these shifts that we see. And so I've got my very special guest on with me again today, Roger Sitkins. And Roger, I'll just go ahead and let you say hello to the audience. Roger, hello.

Hello, Brett. Hello, audience. It's great to be here. This is of all of our topics, this is certainly one of the sticky ones, one of my most favorite ones because it's a big breakthrough. It's a huge click when people finally go, oh, oh, I get it. Activity versus results. So you're sharing a lot.

Yeah. And we're going to dive deep into this today about again, what's activities, what's results? I know Roger and I are both going to share some examples of things that we see, but to illustrate what Roger said, like, I mean, this really is something that is extremely powerful in agencies when it's going, wait, are we an activity based agency or. Or we are results based agency, what does that look like? What can we do and what is that going to mean for us as an agency? If we can make this click and make this shift in different ways and you as an agency leader may be way down the activity area or maybe you are somewhere in the middle, but we are going to help you get a click and help you break through today in our conversation. As always, I want to remind the leaders of the purpose of the Agent Leader podcast is to help you gain clarity, build consistency and, and make a commitment to become your best version possible. And you're going to hear a lot more about Best Version Possible, the book, which is available if you go to sitkins.com bvp to get a copy of the best version possible book. And you're also going to be hearing upcoming about the best version possible process, the experience, what that's going to mean for you as an agency. So keep your eyes and ears on the lookout. There's some really important things coming from Sitkins and what we're going to be able to offer agencies out there in the marketplace. So, Roger, I want to dive in today's topic. Are you ready?

Oh, yeah.

All right, so activities versus results. What does that look like? What does that mean? I want to start off and get your perspective, your vantage point on what does an activity based agency look like? What does it sound like? What's the culture? If I'm an agent leader, agency leader, and I go, well, I don't really know what I am. Give me some examples of maybe some things that you hear or see, Roger.

Well, language, as we always talk about, or excuse me, the culture is the language and behaviors that are normal. Okay? And so we look at this and just listen to what's going on in your agency and do you even speak this language as a leader? You know, you go up to people, hey, how are you doing? You busy? Oh, yeah, I'm busy. How about you? Yeah, I'm real busy too. Go to the next person. What's going on? Oh, man, I am covered up. I'm so busy. You get home at the end of the day and your significant other says, how was your day? Oh, I was just so busy today. What did you get done? I don't know, but I just know I was busy. I'm so busy. So we hear this all the time. In fact, I'll never forget one of our first CEO boot camps. An agency principal. You could just see he had this blinding flash of the obvious. I think we might have talked about this before, but it's such a great true story in that he's sitting there and we have this discussion. And he went, well, you know what? I said, what's going on? He said, well, I just realized that for years I've sanctioned activities and I've never demanded results. And boy, you could see every CEO, every agency leader in the group is going, yeah, that's right. And so just listen to what's talked about. What's going on? I'm busy. Where are you going? I'm just really busy. And if you just start asking different, better questions. I'm really busy. Really? What are your results? What are the results? And create a results based organization. And I think the biggest thing is what's the outcome? Everything's about an outcome. Okay, well, in an activity based agency, every year looks the same. And we write some new business, comes in the front door, goes out the back. We do okay, you know, we're having average growth 3, 4, 5, 6%, 7%, whatever it may be. Profit's not really growing, but we're really busy, so busy. And people start confusing the activity with results. And the producers specifically go through three things where they're, you know, okay, I'm going to start selling, so I'll do some prospecting. You prospect, you start selling, you sell. You got to service the new business plus the old business. They're in the service trap. And when all of these converge on each other, prospecting, selling and servicing, the first thing that stops with the producer or for the agency overall is well, we're too busy to prospect. The minute you're too busy to prospect, you are an activity based agency. In fact, you start hearing that ITB excuse, I'm too busy, I'm too busy. That should be a red flag for every agency leader.

Yeah, and you alluded to this a little bit, Roger. So if you've already answered this question to a degree, that's fine. But I just thinking about, you know, where do you see agencies and of course producers, where do they get caught? I mean, like you mentioned that, you know, the kind of those three things collide, but how does it happen? I mean, like what does it look like in your world?

Well, the biggest thing is the service trap. The producers spend their time in the, you know, we've talked about this, the red zone versus the green zone. And the red zone is all the stuff that has nothing to do with selling an account or retaining an account. Okay. And the green zone are those four key activities of sales and relationship management, a continuation process and pipeline building. And in our model, as we've said before, probably the stickiest thing we've ever talked about is the green zone. And the fact that looking at this and saying we've got to be in a situation where we take our producers from 80% in the red zone to 80% in the green zone. And when they can do that and we say there's only four things and this, this is, there's only four things a producer should do. And that's again sales, relationship management, the continuation process and pipeline building. And when we get organizations to really transform into that, agencies into that now they realize that, wow, every year is not going to look the same. We're not just going to Keep growing by 3, 4, 5, 6%. We're start growing by 2, 3, 4 times what we used to simply because our producers are now producing, they're doing the right stuff. And it just, it's so exciting when people get this going and they say, wow, wow, green. So plus it's what the producers do best. The Service trap is where they mess things up. So it's Green Zone.

It. I mean, we, and I know we've referenced this briefly on a couple of the first two clicks because it really is part of, really of all the clicks to a degree. It's just getting people to do the things that they should be doing as the role. I mean, Roger, you said it. I mean, it's like, you know, what's the definition of a producer? Well, one who produces. So it's one of those things that we see that the producers oftentimes do everything but their role of what they're supposed to do. And you've led me into this, Roger. I was at an event a few weeks ago with one of our carrier partners and Reagan Consulting, and I shared this story. So I'm going to share it on this podcast because it's my podcast and I get to share stories. Right? But it's all about the Green Zone. And the analogy that I used, I said, just imagine. And for the agency listeners listening right now, obviously, Whether you've got one producer or 30 producers on your team, right? But go back to the. What is the definition of a producer? One who produces. Now, I don't know if you're a basketball fan or not if you're listening to this, but my guess is you probably have heard of Steph Curry, who would be, if not the best player right now, certainly one of the top who's a dynamic scorer in my generation. Roger. Not seems like not that long ago, but it is. Michael Jordan was the guy in my entire team, teens, who was the best player in the world. And, you know, I'll just ask you, Roger, what's, what's one of the main roles of Steph Curry or Michael Jordan? These top players on these teams, these.

Basketball teams score points.

It helps when they score points or their team seems to do better for, for whatever reason. Maybe it's because it's their role and they're really good at it, Right? At least that's where they put their time, effort and energy. So just imagine for a second that it's the NBA Finals, okay? Whether you're a Steph fan or Michael fan, it's the NBA final. This is the championship series. In fact, let's just go to game seven, right? This is the game that decides who the champion is going to be. And the game starts. Roger. Okay? And agency leader listeners here, the game starts and I don't know how long into the game. Maybe it's five, six minutes into the game. Michael or Steph they check themselves out of the game. And here's the thing, they're not injured. They didn't get to, they didn't get a bunch of fouls or not in foul trouble. They just had some other things on their mind that they needed to go do. So they go to the bench. And you know, Roger, what they see on the bench is that some of those warm up jerseys that the team threw, I mean, they've got equipment managers, but they missed a few. So Steph or Michael go over and they fold a few that, you know, put the, put the, you know, put the jerseys back in the right place. And in the midst of this, they also noticed that some of the players kind of tossed some towels to the side. They weren't in the proper order. So, I mean, you got to tidy up. They, they folded some of the towels and in fact, they noticed that some of the players were a little bit thirsty. So they went ahead and they, they started filling up some of the water cups. You know, they had the Gatorade, the big orange jug over there, and they started filling those up, right, and handing those out because they want to be helpful, right? I mean, they want to make sure they're taking care of the team. And then they noticed up in the stands that there were some fans up there that were waving, hey, Michael, hey Steph. You know, so, whoa, it's easy. I mean, we might as well just go up there. So they walked up in the stands and just chatted with them a little bit, took a few pictures that shirts and popcorn. Because why not, right? You got a reputation to uphold and you want to look good out there in the public eye. So they did all these things and all of a sudden they realized it was halftime. Oh my gosh, it's half time. So they went to the locker room and they, you know, they talked about plays and strategy and they fired the team up a little bit, went back onto the court. The game started the second half and after a few minutes, again they went to the bench to stretch and do some other things. I think you get the point, right? You get the point. This is the idea, is that here's the bottom line of this. You can't score points if you're not in the game. And we talk about green zone, green zone, green zone. And it's very simple. But it's not always easy because just like, you know, again, you couldn't imagine the best player on a team or the person to score points not being in the game. Could you imagine your producers not doing Green zone or producer stuff for the majority of the week and weeks and months and. And then we wonder why we're not hitting our sales goals. Well, our producers aren't even in the game. So Roger, I just had to chime in and share my story there because hopefully it relates. I mean, I don't know if you can relate to that, Roger, and stuff that you've seen with producers that hit home to you.

Well, absolutely, absolutely. They get caught in the service trap and they don't realize the importance of the service handoff. And there truly is a marriage. It's not a division. It's a marriage of sales and service and aimed at which we talk about all the time now. And agencies are really buying into it. We're working with, we have the same goal but different roles. And the goal is to retain and obtain ideal clients. The roles, there's, there's an acknowledgement and an appreciation of sales and service have to be married. They have to work together with that common goal. And when they get that, the first thing that starts happening, which we've talked about already, is that they educate the clients to deal with with the service team. Little cough here. Sorry.

Gotcha.

Until it's a live event, they to deal with the service team on day to day basis. So we get the producers are only in service related activities 20% of the time. Okay. And 80% of the time they're doing those things where they're either in the game or doing the prep it takes to be in the game. So the producer, when we do the service handoff, this marriage between the two is now freed up for that 80%. They won't get there overnight. And if they just got 80% of 80% pretty quickly, it would make a huge difference. One of the things we've talked about before is the world's greatest producer recruiting program. Get your current producers producing. So once we get them out of day to day service, the service trap, that's an activity we eliminate. Now we can start a new activity of consistent prospecting activities where the producers are always out there building their pipeline, knowing what a future ideal client looks like, having a reverse referral process that we talk about proactively marketing to these people and get their opportunities filled up. So when we say going from activity based service trap to results based green zone, we've got the service handoff. We've got producers that are actually consistently prospecting. Think of the greatest life insurance salesperson any of our listeners have ever met. Maybe there's one in their own agency, but Certainly they've met some. What do they do literally every day? They prospect. They prospect. Okay, so if we can now spend 80% green zone and our pipeline gets overflowing with more opportunities in time with future ideal clients. And we have a differentiated selling process based upon points of differentiation. That's why we call it differentiated. And I always love what you always say, Brett. You can't have a differentiated selling system if you don't know how you're different. So once those happen, now everything in the agency is about results. Leaders talk about results. They're very open. They have a rhythm of internal communication where they're constantly talking about results. Yeah, activities are problems, and those are tactical but strategic. It's everything strategic in the organization is about a results based organization. We know exactly what our business plan is, our business model, and we have a laser focus on it. And again, I have to say, everybody knows their roles and there's that and I think two important words which I've already said, acknowledgement and appreciation of. We all play a different position. We all play a different position, but we're in this to win the game. We're in this to get great results. Right. And that's how everybody wins individually.

Yeah, it's. I mean, Roger, and he said that so well, describing what a results culture looks like. And to go back to my silly analogy, you know, of the basketball team, that's again, that there, there are important roles for that entire team to win the championship. Right. I mean, there are certain things. You've got a PA announcer and the, you know, and the vendors and all that. I mean, there are roles within the whole organization. But again, what you hit on is that you've got to know what your primary role is. And if we're talking about green zone, I've got to be in those four money making activities 80% of the time. If I'm not, I'm not fulfilling my role. And I don't know, you know, Roger, we, you know, one of the things at least I'll see to add to this is with producers in particular and agency leaders, you know, I'm sure you can relate to this is that typically, you know, why are producers caught up in service? Well, one is because maybe they really are, right? It hasn't been a clear definition or distinction of a service hand off or I have to say, a service hand up. Right. Which is a better client experience. And the second part of it is they're kidding themselves and they're hiding behind it. Right. That, that's the other part and that, you know, to my analogy, that's, you know, Michael Jordan or Steph Curry getting in the fourth quarter and going, I don't really want that pressure. I think I'll go ahead and sit over here. Right. So I think just acknowledge what that is. And I think the big thing, Roger, you said is understand that we are a results based agency. We can't grow, we can't serve our clients, we can't serve our team members if we don't grow. And to grow, shockingly, we got to have results. Right? So I appreciate you sharing that you mentioned a little bit, but could you go, you know, the agency leaders listening right now are going, okay, I mean, hopefully I get it. And we want to head that way. What's the impact? What's the financial success? What's the relationships that build when we begin to move to results based agency?

Well, number one, whatever growth you're having currently, one of the things we talk about all the time and it hits home with people so much when we talk about it, your current business model is perfectly designed for you to achieve the results you're currently achieving. I'll say it again, your current business model is perfectly designed to achieve the results you're currently achieving. Well, I don't know that most people really have an intentional business model that says, hey, let's have our salespeople spend 80% of their time in the red zone and let's have a team that's totally out of line. They're actually, rather than a marriage of sales and service, there's a conflict between sales and service. So when we look at this, we say, what we need here is an organization that says, first of all, what is our best version possible? And then what is the business model that gets us there? You know, you talk all the time and so do I about clarity, consistency and commitment. And clarity is, as we've already said, clarity is, where am I today? Where do I want to go? How will I get there? And so in our model as we're refining it, we're saying, number one, where are you today? Let's do an assessment, let's find out where you are. Because all progress starts by telling yourself the truth. And then number two, not only where do I want to go, I change the question and say, what is the best version possible of my agency look like? And then what is my best version possible? Business model that gets me there. And then we get everybody to understand we are results based organization. And those results are going to be driven by, fueled by our best version possible plan that at the core of it, has a culture and a cadence of accountability. And again, everyone knows their role. Everyone knows what's going on. Everyone says, I'm going to do what I said I was going to do. Something you and I were talking about yesterday, that really hit home. I think a lot of times when people listen to us or others and they say, well, we can't do all that. We can't do all that. And the reality is, nobody can. First of all, you want to agree with 100% of what we talk about. We've never had one single person execute 100% of what they said they were going to do. And I think people get paralyzed by this. Or there's the fear of, well, there's just too much. Well, there is. And so if the attitude could become, you know, what if, as a culture of accountability, what if 80% of our staff did 80% of what they said they were going to do? How cool would that be?

Yeah.

What if 80% of our salespeople following the plan, then turn around and actually meet and exceed their sales goals? Because in the average agency, it's less than 40% of salespeople hit their goals. Although we had a new chief revenue officer we were dealing with a few months ago, and we asked the question, polling on our Zoom call, what percent of your producer hit their sales goals? The One guy said, 100%. I asked. I say, Lee, 100%. He said, yeah, we don't have any, so I'll hit them.

Yeah, it makes it easy to achieve. They just don't exist.

That's right. But when we start looking at this and saying, don't beat yourself up. You won't do 100%. Design your business model, know what your best version possible looks like, and let's just get 80% execution. 80% execution. Can't say the word 80%. Execution leads the pack. That's industry leading.

Right, Right.

But people. People just. They get so overwhelmed, I guess is the right word. They get overwhelmed with, there's too much to do. They're right. It is too much.

Yeah.

Well, simple plan.

I love that, Roger. And it is. I mean, part of it is. I think. I think one of the huge powers of the Green Zone is that it is so simple. I mean, like, it. There's not a complication behind it. The problem is, is that agencies fall or slide into that and sometimes don't even know it. Or it becomes. Again, like I said, it wasn't. Like I said, I love when you said that. It's like, you know, I think what we should do this year is we should spend 80% of our time not doing the things we should do. Like, no one's saying that, right? I mean, that's right. But it just all of a sudden, well, it just kind of happened. I mean, you could use this analogy for, you know, again, physical fitness. I mean, no one goes, you know, I think I want to gain £100 this year. Right. I mean, no, it's just, it's like one of those things where one habit leads to the next, the next, and all of a sudden you look back and go, how did I get here? I think that happens a lot with agencies. It's like, well, I didn't intend to have the majority of my producers be part time producers who aren't doing the things they should be doing and not be accountable. But we kind of fell there. So I think it's. Yeah. Rod, did you want to add to that?

Well, a big part of this, something we again, we preach and I hope people are hearing it. It's the semi successful trap. Yeah, it's because, so the more you're in the red zone, you're accepting that trap. Maybe we should even call it the red zone trap instead of the service trap. Because producers get in there, they're not spending their time doing their primary job. And here's another blinding flash of the obvious. What do producers love to do?

Get out, love to do.

They love being out there, whether it's in person or zoom, whatever, but they love being out there talking to clients, future ideal clients, centered of influence, networking in their community, networking in their niche, whatever it may be, they love doing that. And so when we look at this and we say, okay, as an agency or as a producer, I can be activity based or results based, what do I want to be? Well, I don't want to be in the service trap. Here's a blinding flash of the obvious. Fire yourself from service. Fire yourself from that role. Because first of all, you're not good at it. You don't love doing it. You don't at the end of the day go, what a great day. I spent the whole day doing service stuff. Yet our service partners, the marriage of sales and service, again, the service team loves doing this. That's what they do. That's their unique abilities, their God given skills and talents as Dan Sullivan talks about. Then let's all do what we do best in a true results based agency. I'll use the 80% factor again. 80% of the people are spending 80% of their time doing those things they are uniquely qualified to do. And they really like doing it and it gives them energy and it gets great results and the clients have great experience and guess what? Everybody wins.

You're getting me fired up, Roger, on this because, I mean, again, it's one of those things where when you say it, this is a lot of our coaching calls and our training, you're like, oh, well, yeah, exactly. Right. But let's, you know, one of the things, and I wrote these words down because my last official question to you, I want you to think about this is, you know, for the agency leaders out there listening, you know, what's, what's an initial step or a next step that they could take. So I want you to think about that. And as you're thinking about it, what hit me, Roger, is I think a big part of why we love to do what we do is I think we can help to get those. And that's why we're talking about clicks, right? These shifts where maybe an agency or production team has kind of slid into a rut or some bad habits. And we can help you refocus, recalibrate, reignite whatever word it is to go, wait a second. We're too good and too talented to be getting the results that we're getting because we're doing activity stuff. And so I'm going to give a very unshameless plug because I believe so much in what we do is the fact that, listen, the next step, that if you're an agency, an agency leader, and you're going, why are we caught in this activity trap? Well, we'd love to have a conversation with you because we've helped agencies, so many agencies, and one of the key indicators is just saying, get in the game, let's increase sales capacity. And we are going to show you and give you a process of how to do that, because it is a process. We can all go, rah, rah, get in the game, get in the game. But there's got to be a process and you've got to be able to get buy in from your producers and your service team. And Roger, one of the things that you talked about, I mean, that relationship of sales and service, what this isn't is this is not a, hey, producers, you sell and give all the really bad stuff and present it in a really bad way to your service team so they get really mad. That is in no way what happens or what we teach and talk about. In fact, I get the opportunity to work with so many Service teams. And with the service teams, when this is done the right way and we talk about a high performance team, they become empowered and they become equipped and there is a better education with them and their clients where they go, listen, I get to finally do what I love to do and not feel like I have someone looking over my shoulder every minute, that's going to get in the way. And as you said, Roger, oftentimes cause more problems than solve more of the problems. So a little bit of my soapbox rant there, but it's just important because I think what we do is such a huge part. It's one of the critical areas of what we do is help agencies do that. So now that I've led that up, Roger, what would be a first step or next action? You would tell an agency to move away from activities into results.

Probably a reality checkup for themselves. And if nothing else, just start observing what's being said, what's being focused on in the agency. If people are always talking about being busy, then you know you've got an activity based culture. If you're hearing people, primarily the producers or anybody, to say, I'm too busy to do my main job, wait a minute, that's like Steph Curry not being in the game, too busy helping out, folding towels and stuff. But it's every function in the agency. Are they too busy to do their core function? And this comes back to the fact that after all these years of working with agencies and learning so much as we go and working with over 5,000 producers and over 500 agencies, we look at this and the reality is that people simply always confuse activity with results versus saying, wait a minute, what's the simplified, proven process we should go through as an agency to become our best version possible? Ask your team, ask your producer, how much time are you spending in sales and sales related activities? Tell them about the green zone and the red zone and just, just that litmus test right there, what are people talking about and what's your red zone versus green zone ratio? That TSS, as we call it, time spent selling in the, in the green zone. And that's a reality, that's a reality checkup. And once you get that, then you say, okay, where to go? And obviously we would love to have a talk with them. We're not for everybody, we know that. But when an agency finally says, okay, best version possible, what does it look like? Let's go get it. How do we compress time, accelerate results, period? That's mine, Brent.

I mean, listen, I love It, Because I was going to say earlier, and then you just hit on it. I mean, one thing that I would ask an agency, an agency leader, if your agency could talk, what would it say? And what you asked, Roger, and I think it's a great next step is for the next week, the next 30 days, whatever time period you want, just listen, really listen to what people in your agency are talking about and of course, what they're doing, but just understand the language of what's really happening. And is it a language of busy or activities, or is it a language of results and how we're growing and what we can do to solve problems or all those kind of things? There's a distinct difference in that. And you know, Roger, part of that is there is depth to this. There is. It's simple, it's green zone. But understanding what does a high performance team look like, what agreements need to be in place, what other roles and responsibilities are, what does a producer's perfect schedule look like and how can they get there? Right. Are we running meetings? And that are about improvement, not meetings of complaints. Right. So these are part of the things that agencies go through, and we'll help you accelerate that. And again, I don't say these things because, I mean, yes, I do. I believe what we do. Heck, yeah, I do. I would love agencies that want help in this area for us to be part of their success. But we're not for everybody. But those that we are that really want to take it serious will find themselves truly moving towards that best version possible. So that's my last thoughts. Roger, any last words for you before we wrap up?

Well, you made me think of something which is nice, by the way. What are you celebrating as an agency leader? What are you celebrating? I remember saying to somebody, this was at a speech I gave. It wasn't a client and by the way, never became a client because they weren't committed to getting better. All right. But I said, what do you celebrate in your agency? I was again speaking at a state association, and a gentleman in the second or third row raised his hand and he said nothing. I said, why? He said, we don't have much to celebrate. We're just kind of putting in our time, sort of like the old time, to make the donuts thing, rather than saying, what do you celebrate? Do you celebrate the continuation? There was a renewal of the top 20% of your accounts. You go, oh, well. Do you have a bell that you ring when you continue an account? Do you have a bell that you ring? And as goofy as that sounds. People love that to celebrate. Everybody looks for a reason to celebrate. And I don't think they go, hey, can we celebrate? But they like that. Where's the excitement? So if you're celebrating activity, you better start celebrating results.

Now, I've got to say one more thing because I got to go back my last time to my silly analogy, but I just had this vision, as you said. I love it. What are you celebrating? I also like, you got one team celebrating the championship trophy, right? They won the finals and we got the other one. Steph Curry is over there pointing to his nicely folded towels going, look at that baby. Let's celebrate that. So anyway, Roger, thank you again for being on this session. We've got five more clicks and we're going to get into. I mean, these are all important clicks, but really get into some of the ideas of what's the vital few, what's the trivial many. That's a huge click and we're going to get into that and we're going to talk. Also got upcoming clicks about is it a renewal or is it about referrals and some of the clicks that come with that and what that really means? These are huge clicks coming up that we're going to be sharing. So stay tuned. More episodes coming. They're all delivered through the summer of 2022 or whenever you listen. So thanks for being a listener. We'll talk to you soon.