Culture and Cadence

Foreign welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me. And yes, if you are a regular listener, you know that I've been on a little bit of a hiatus. I love to provide weekly podcasts but took a break basically from the month of July. Kind of took July off and I can't say I took it off. I did a couple things working on some really important projects for our Sitkins Group team. Some things that are upcoming and I'll mention that later in the show as well as I took a family vacation which was always great to do and hopefully you had some time this summer to either get away or just get away from work, even if you couldn't get away away and just kind of spend some time on yourself and your family and some things that you want to do. And I would love to say that I came back from my family vacation refreshed, but as some of you know, I have five kids. So expectedly I came back from that vacation saying, okay, I'm ready for a vacation or I'm ready to get back to work. So I'm excited to be doing these podcast podcast again with you. I heard from several of you that reached out to me and said, hey, are you still going to be doing podcasts? Because it's been a few weeks since I released one. And yes, the answer is yes. I've got some exciting content planned for the second half of 2020. Excited to share some important information with you today as well on this podcast. So again, thanks for being patient with me and with us on this podcast and we'll continue to deliver quality content to you. So I want to start today and talk about where this particular podcast came from. And it's something that we've talked in different ways before, but it was reaffirmed this week when I had a coaching call one of our private clients had mentioned. We're, you know, with the Sitkins Group, we've got a private client network of agencies as well as some other things that we do. And this is by far one of our top level agencies. In fact, they were featured in Rough Notes the last month. I think it was December of 2019. So you could go on there if you're curious about who they are. But just a great agency and more importantly, fantastic leadership. And not perfect leadership, they'd be the first to tell you that. But leadership that understands their purpose is to help others get to where they want to go. And that was really the focus of our conversation on our call and it really reaffirmed this idea that. And we talk about with all of our agency partners, whether it's an online type of camp or, you know, a private coaching call, or when we have in person events, whenever those happen again. But this idea that for you to be a great agency, for you to be a great agency leader, we have to understand there's a culture and cadence of accountability. And you probably have heard us or Roger Sitkins, who's been on this call or on this podcast before, mention those terms. But a culture and a cadence of accountability, and what does that really mean? Well, there's two parts to that. I mean, the back end of it is accountability. And accountability simply is, do people do what they said they were going to do? And Roger has a great saying that he mentioned at our last live in person event in March, which was this, that if everybody on your agency did what they said they were going to do, how great would your agency be? And it's basic, but it's true. I mean, if everybody in your agency did what they said they were going to do, how great would your agency be? And that ultimately is accountability, doing what you said you were going to do. But I want to focus on these two words and just break them down. I guess what I would ask you as an agency leader, and I know we've got agency principals that listen and sales managers and producers, service people. Again, I believe leadership is influence, but this certainly is really more for the agency overall. But culture and cadence of accountability, what does that really mean? Well, let's start with culture. And as I talk about culture, just think about your own agency. Where do you fit? Where do you side on some of this? And if I hit a nerve, good, hopefully it creates awareness and go, maybe that's something we need to address. Maybe that's something we should talk about. Maybe that's something that we need to communicate at a higher level, whatever it may be. Okay, so the first part is culture. Which culture to me means the language and behaviors that are normal. So culture, what are the normal language and behaviors your agency, what do people talk about? What do people do? So again, just some very basic examples. What do people talk about? Well, does your agency, if you would walk around your agency, if you were just, you know, a, you know, you were a secret person, so to speak, walking around your agency. Now I know you may be virtual now, so maybe you can overhear what people are talking and thinking about. Kind of creepy, but just you get where I'm going here. Would people talk about solutions or problems which One would be more prevalent. Hey, you know what? Here's some things we can do or should do. Here's some things that we need to think about. Here's some things that we need to work on. Here are some solutions that might help some of the problems. Or is it, this is broke, this will never work. This is no good. I'm so tired of this. I'm so frustrated with that. Right? Whatever it may be, right? What do people talk about? And that's so important. And again, part of it is, are you solution minded or problem minded? Are you. Here's a second question. Are you abundant in thinking for an agency for your culture, or are you scarcity thinking for your culture? What do I mean by that? Well, again, it kind of goes back to problems and solutions. But you know, abundance thinkers can take things like COVID 19, which is real, right? Which has caused issues, which will continue to cause issues, and they go, okay, what is this going to do to cause us to up our game to maybe make the improvements that we've been avoiding, Right? It's an abundance. And I believe that every problem is an opportunity in disguise. And you could say, well, that's cliche, Brent. Well, maybe. But abundant thinkers, abundant agencies address and acknowledge real issues but don't dwell on them. They go, how can we rise above this as abundance thinker, fixed thinkers, fixed agencies go, well, this is the way we've always done it and now things have changed, I guess we're in trouble. Hopefully we can just survive through this. And that's a fixed mindset. So when you think of culture, first of all, the question is, what do your people in your agency talk about again, is it solutions or problems? Are you abundant or, or are you scarcity thinkers? The second thing with culture, I said the normal language and behaviors is behavior. So you could talk a good game, right? That's part of it. But are you walking the walk? So what do your people do? What actions are they taking? And just some very basic things. And of course we dive very deep into this, certain areas of this either in our boot camps that we do, our producer programs, obviously with private coaching. But here's the first thing I would ask you. Are you a results based agency? Are you an activity based agency? Meaning this is busy, a badge of honor for your agency. If people are busy, are we proud of that or are we focused on, I don't really care how busy you are, what's the result, right to me is I would rather have you work two hours and get a result than work 20 hours and go. I was so busy this week. Oh, you won't believe how busy. I'm so covered up, right? And a lot of agencies, we're busy as a badge of honor. So talking about culture, is your normal culture? Is the normal culture of your agency activity driven, busy, busy, busy? Or is it, hey, let's, you know, busy might be part of a result, but the focus is the result. The second thing is, are you focused more on just throwing out ideas? And by the way, ideas are great. We should be having idea sharing. But are we focused on ideas or are we focused on execution of the ideas? One of the things that I loved about this call today or this call that I had this week with this great agency was that, you know, I addressed it, but they addressed it first. And the idea of, hey, we can sit and talk about these things. We've addressed some important things, but what's our next action step that we are going to do together to make this happen and when are we going to do it and how will be accountable to each other to do that? Right? So that is not just ideas. Anybody can put ideas down a piece of paper or think ideas in the car or in the shower or wherever you are, but it's the idea to filter through the important ideas and say, this is how and where we're going to execute. Right? So that's such an important thing. The last thing that I would ask, and I could go on forever, but just to kind of keep this simplified, what do your people do for Coltry? Are you risk advice based or are you transactional and quote based on? Most agencies we use the term at, Sitkins are called quoters and floaters. We quote around and we float. We float and we quote, we quote and we float. And by the way, you can do okay by quoting and floating if you do enough of it. But it kind of leads back to the activity base, right? If we just do enough activities, we'll get by great agencies. The great cultures that we see, they're saying, listen, our focus isn't transactions and quotes. Our focus is, is risk advice and relationships. Risk advice and relationships. We are professionals. We are a professional agency. We are a professional team. And to be a professional, to act professional, we need to be risk advisors. And by the way, that term gets thrown out a lot. Oh, risk advisors. But what do we really do? What are the questions that we're asking? How are we diving deeper? Are we understanding what true cost of risk or true cost of benefits means? We go deeper into that. But the idea is Are we based around that? Earning, Asking for referrals with our best relationships? You know, we say this. If your agency doesn't ask for referrals, the first question I ask is, well, why don't they? Well, we don't ask, well, there's a deeper question. Why don't you ask? Well, maybe we felt like we haven't earned them. And if you can't earn or ask referrals from your best clients, you probably are struggling with the relationship, whether we want to admit it or not. I love the phrase all progress starts by telling the truth. So we have to be honest. Are we being truthful with ourselves? So culture, again, risk, advice or transactions, A lot of things there that I share. But I just want you to, as I was going through that, hopefully something touched. You know what? We're probably more of this. And if you believe your culture is more about problems and solutions, you're more of a fixed mindset agency. This is the way we've always done it. You're more based on activities and results. You're more based on ideas than execution. You're more based on transactions and quotes versus risk, advice and relationship. My question would be, is that where you want to be? Is that where you want to go? And I'm hoping, if you're listening, the answer is, well, no, we don't want to be these things. So then I would ask you tactically, what's the next step? What do you need to do? Right? What do you need to do? Now, selfishly, I would tell you, hey, attend one of our upcoming virtual boot camps, because we're going to talk about those areas and help you get clarity around it. But just right now, in listening to me, what do you need to do? Is there a conversation you need to have? Do you need to have a sit down with yourself and go, okay, where are we really going with this insanity? We all know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. What do you need to change? So that is the culture side of it. Culture of accountability, language and behaviors. The next part is cadence. Cadence is consistency. It's how frequently are we going to do this? And by the way, you can't have this big. I mean, here's what happens too. You could have the biggest rah, rah. Here's our culture. Here's who we're going to be. This is what we're going to do. This is so exciting. This is the new agency of 2020 and 2021 in the future. And you've got to Be part of it and then we don't talk about it again for a year or longer. Is that going to work? Well, the answer is obviously no, of course it's not going to work. We have to have a cadence of accountability. Are we doing things frequently? Are we doing things consistently? Because if it's a big deal to improve our culture, we have to have a cadence to support it. Right? So just a few things to think about. How often do you or one of your agency leaders, if you're not, you know, if you're not actually the principal of the agency, but how often do agency leaders or you as an agency leader, do you communicate the mission and the vision of the agency? Is it written down somewhere that got stuck in a drawer or this long thing that no one knows or is it the heartbeat that we're going to continue to talk about this? This is who we are, this is why we do what we do. These are non optional behaviors or critical success factors or whatever term you want to use. But we are going to say this again and again and again and again. And the agency we talked to today and they're well aware of it and they're a great agency, they struggle with this. You can't over communicate. If it's important enough to put the work and the time and the effort to do it well, it's important enough to do it consistently. So how often is leadership communicating the results, the vision, the mission that we really want to accomplish? Secondly, for sales teams and if you're a sales leader, this will be talking directly to you. How often do we have true sales teams meetings? We joke at Sitkins all the time is you can have weekly meetings or weekly meetings. And by the way, the difference is spelling. One is two E's and one is an E and an A. Most agencies have weak sales meetings. Either they don't do them or don't do them consistently or if they do them, it's a check a box. Yeah, we had our sales meeting this week and we had to show up and no one wanted to be there. And we said the same things we always say and we complained about some things, then we all left. Right? That's the sales meeting of a lot of agencies versus what are we trying to accomplish now here's the bottom line. And we would tell any type of sales leader, your job of a sales leader, your job in a producer meeting, your job in a weekly meeting or if he did it bi weekly or monthly, I don't care. But I mean hopefully it's at least Weekly. But your job is that producer, whether it's three minutes or 30 minutes or three hours, shouldn't be three hours. But your job is to. You should leave that producer, should leave that meeting. A better producer when they arrived. That's called growth and coaching. Now, the cadence of it is how often we going to do it. But if you're doing your meetings right, we are doing some type of skill practice. We're debriefing lost sales of won sales. And not a complain fest, not a complain session, a solution session. Right. But we're doing this on an ongoing basis that we see value what we're doing. So sales meetings, how about your sales and service communicating together? Are we doing ongoing sales and service communication meetings? We call it Sitkins. And we dive really deep into this high performance team meetings. If we're going to be a high performance agency, we got to have a cadence of accountability around sales and service actually having discussions. Probably one of the biggest divides we see in agency, maybe this is true in your agency, is that sales and service not only do they not communicate, they oftentimes don't even like each other. Right. Or they, you know, service is mad at sales because they get to do all the sales stuff and you know, whatever it may be. And sales is mad at service because they don't do the stuff. Right. All these little petty things. Now there can be real issues there. We get that. But at the heartbeat, how much would a cadence of accountability where salespeople would come weekly to the service people and vice versa, right. We have a meeting together and the salespeople would say, hey, here's what I have going on this week. What do you need from me? How do I need to be accountable to you? And the service team says, here's what I've got going on this week. Here's some big issues. Here's where I can be accountable to you. We'll be accountable to each other. Your job is to go sell, build relationships and stop interrupting me. My job as a service is to handle incoming stuff at a high level and continue to be that relationship manager. Again, we could dive deeper in that. But the bottom line is, are we having a cadence of those meetings? And the last thing I would say is this. The producer agreements. Now this is something we talked about today with this agency. It's why it's fresh in my mind. But do you have an ongoing meeting with your sales team? Obviously sales, we all know is so critical to any insurance agency. But are we helping the producers have an occasion of accountability? Not Just to constantly micromanage or check up, but to help them be a better version of who they want to be by having these ongoing meetings, these communications, this cadence of, hey, listen, I need to know what you're doing. Hopefully we spell some of this out ahead of time. Right? This is not something we just make up, but we have an ongoing cadence of accountability that a producer and a sales manager, agency leader, whoever it is, that we are helping each other get better. Right? Get better. So these ongoing producer meetings are so impactful. So those are the two sides there. And again, I mentioned the bottom line is and cadence of accountability. And if we would just do these things, the first part is a culture. Just understanding, are we building? Do we have maybe the first question, do we have the culture that we really want today? And if the answer is no, and by the way, no culture is perfect, right? There's always going to be issues, there's always going to be problems. But are you taking active steps to improve upon it? Because it's not going to be better by just hoping it gets better. Hope is not a strategy. So we've got to actually define the culture that we want and begin to implement behaviors, what we talk about and what we do to help improve the culture. And the next part is cadence. If we're going to be accountable, we have to have consistency in accountability. Otherwise, it's a really good idea for a week and we never hear from it again. And by the way, one of the things we see from most agencies that they deal with is this idea of this too shall pass. This too shall pass. Well, they have a new idea today. This too shall pass. Don't worry. If we just stop paying attention long enough, they'll forget, and then we can go back to doing the stupid stuff we've been doing forever. Right? So this idea, culture, and cadence of accountability, how would you define the culture and cadence of accountability in your agency today? If you had to give yourself a scale, 1 through 10, how would you rate it? And then again, I would ask you, what's the next thing that you could do to improve upon it? So, thanks so much for listening. I do want to throw out a few things that we do have exciting since my hiatus and things we've been working on and we continue to adapt to what's going on with COVID and how we can help agencies get better and improve and help them get the results they want. And so we've got a couple things coming up. We've got our Producer FIT program, our virtual Producer FIT program, which we have now just completed two full sessions and it has gone extremely well. I've said this before, we love in person sessions. We can high five and laugh together and all that. But I think we've done about as good as we could do for now. We'll continue to get better to make that experience as entertaining, enjoyable, interactive as possible and still most importantly, help transfer the learning into actionable steps. So our producer fit the next one is coming up September 10th. And then we also have just announced a CEO bootcamp. So if you are an agency leader, you're the CEO of your agency. We have a boot camp that is a five week, five session boot camp and we go through five key areas with your agency to help you with that. Something you can hop on from your office or, you know, at your work, whatever it is. No travel for this. Just to help you as an agency leader take some of these things that are so impactful and to avoid some of the mistakes that we see many insurance agency CEOs make and help you get some clarity, build consistency and really just make that commitment. Right? Commitment that I'm not going to settle for being good enough. I'm not going to settle for being an average agency because I owe it to myself, I owe it to my team, I owe it to my clients. And that's really what we want to help you do. So to learn more about that, go to sitkins.com and you can click on programs sitkins.com programs and you'll see all the stuff that we have going on. We also have a sales leadership program. So we have really spent the last six to eight weeks going deeper in some of the things that we can offer to really impact the agency system out there. Independent insurance agencies. Our passion is to serve you at the highest level. So as always, if you enjoy this podcast, this particular I'd love for you to give me a review or rating on itunes or wherever you listen. And with that, I wish you all the best in your success. I'll talk to you soon.