Decisions Determine Your Destiny

Foreign welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on another episode. So glad to have you with us. And as always, the purpose of the Agent Leader podcast is to help you, the independent insurance agency leader, to gain clarity, to build consistency and to make a commitment to become your best version possible. And if you listen to our previous recording, my last podcast we, we had Roger Sitkins with us and I mentioned it was going to be part of a four part series that I'll be interviewing and having discussions with Roger Sitkins on major aspects of insurance agency. And you know, last week we talked about going deeper in your agency and the four R's focus. If you haven't listened to that podcast, make sure you take a chance or to take it, take some time to go back and listen to that podcast. And today's focus is going to be around selling sales agency improvement for producers. So if you are looking to boost your sales and your productivity in the agency, well, this is a great podcast for you to take a listen to. And as I mentioned, I have Roger Sitkins with me. So Roger, welcome again. Welcome back to session two or a part of this four session series of the Agent Leader podcast.

Brent, it's great to be back with you again and I hope everybody is having a great week so far. We're going to talk about selling more and you know, there's a saying I heard a long time ago that I absolutely love. Nothing happens until something is sold. And that's what we're going to talk about.

I love it. I love it. And just as a quick reminder as well, we had just, you know, as we were continue to just kind of barrel through, I don't have a better word to use, Roger of 2021. I don't want to be that person. Like I can't believe the time has gone, but we're already halfway through almost this year. We just wrapped up another producer camp very successfully this week. I've got another producer camp going. But if you want to be part of the transformation experience with our team at Sidkins and be part of our agency network to sell more, to retain more, to earn more in your agency, go check out our program sitkins.com programs sitkins.com programs and see how you and see if your agency is a fit for upcoming programs this summer as well as into the fall of 2021. So with that, Roger, let's talk about sales. You good with that?

Absolutely.

Well, I just want to ask, you know, these are some questions that were on my mind and things that I have thoughts about. But I know, I know in talking with you and sharing some ideas with you, you've got some great insight into this. But I just want to talk about selling overall. I guess holistically is the best word I could use. Where do you see agencies, just in general, that they missed the mark on their sales process? I mean, where do they go wrong?

Well, you know, I've always heard through the years when you talk to somebody, you'll say, well, how big is your agency now? In multiples of a million, Whether It's a million, 2 million, 5 million, 10 million, whatever. I'll say, where do you want to be in three or four years? And I always hear this, I want to be twice as big. So it might have taken you 20 years to get to where you are, but now I want to be twice as big. Same thing with a producer. I want to be twice as big. And I'll say, how are you going to do that? Well, going to sell insurance? Well, how are you going to do that? We're going to sell a lot more insurance. I said, yeah, but how are you going to do it? How are you going to do it? And it's always amazing to me, and it shouldn't be after all these years, but even talking to some large national brokers, large regional brokers, good sized local brokers and agents, when you say, what's your selling process? What do you do? And they give me a blank stare and then they just start talking about, well, you know, we meet with people and then we have a conversation, then we look at their policies and then we, you know, we might do a gap analysis and then we'll kind of give them a quote. And I said, that's not a process at all. But the key to it is that even not having a process, you can be semi successful. We talk about this all the time. This is a great business. You can be semi successful compared to the world, you're successful. But compared to your local neighbors, your peers, your siblings, whatever, they look at you, boy, that person's really successful. Nice house, nice car. Kids are in the best schools. They give to their church, they give to their community, whatever it may be. But at the end of the day, they're not really on track for financial freedom. So what happens, Brett, is I don't think there's a pain point. Maybe the pain point comes way too late when they realize, you know, I just kind of showed up and did stuff and I was winging it and we've talked about this before. Winging it versus winning. And they wing it. And they can be semi successful. And so they really don't have to have one to be semi successful. Now when we look at the super successful ones, the top 2% of agents and agencies, we talk about, you know, to a person, they have a unique selling process that they follow.

Yeah. As you were saying that, Roger, what hit me, and I've had many of these conversations as well, and certain learning from you is it seems like, you know, the agencies plateau out or level out, you know, quicker when they obviously don't have a plan or a process in place. And I think to your point, is that sometimes that plateau or the leveling out process is at least high enough to live a decent life. Right? Everything's okay. It's not great, but it's okay or good. And the, the bad analogy. And as you know, Roger, I love my sports analogies, but what it kind of got me to is like, you think about like a, a grade school or junior high basketball team and they could have like one player that's just really, really good, and you can get okay on one player that's really, really good. But at some point, as you tried to go higher, right, and you try to ascend a little bit, you realize that other teams have teams. First of all, they're a team, they have a playbook, they have a process, they have a strategy. And at some point, just because you have maybe one talented individual, which sometimes is the agency leader, you run out of capacity. And as you try to go higher and higher, you simply hit a wall and you're done. And I think that's what we see with agencies is they just, as you said, they try to wing it and they can do okay by it, but they're not able to perform anywhere close to the level they could. And I know from, from my vantage point, yours too, Roger, as coaches, it becomes frustrating to see agencies that you see have this great, here's the word potential. But they never, they never take that next step. You have any thoughts on that?

Well, the word potential has always bothered me ever since going all the way back to when I played football in college. And the only time they use the word potential is when someone didn't hit their potential. It's like that person really had potential. That person could have been great. And let's face it, every producer that's ever been hired in our industry had tremendous potential. Oh, boy, she's got great potential. He's got great potential. You never hire somebody where you go, they really have some pretty crappy potential. The chance and look at it. And so what happens is they get in the agencies, they realize that the bar is very, very low in our industry, which we've talked about before, and they wing it. And they do some look, copy, quote and pray, that old way of selling, and they give some quotes and 20% of the people buy and they kind of start committing to clicks, pings, rings and dings and a couple other buy and they do some order taking, but they're not really differentiating. And then they plateau. They plateau. That 350 to $400,000 range of gross commission as a producer and they do again, compared to the world, they're in the top 2%, if not 1% of earners in the world and certainly in the top 5% in America. And so they're doing pretty good. But they just leave so much potential out there. Every producer, every agency clearly should be growing by 25% or more. Now that's going to shock people. It's going to take discipline to do that. But the potential is there if they'll just make some decisions, which something you and I talked about before we got online here. When I think about the best agency principles. I had dinner with one of our great agencies last night. He and his family were in town and we went down to Fort Myers beach and I just looking at what they were doing and the growth that they've had and they're going to hit 7 million of commission income this year and they've had tremendous growth. Okay. But at the end of the day, I just realized that what that agency principal did and what his key people have done is they made a decision. And every great thing you've done has been based upon I finally made a decision to do this, which is the commitment we talk about. So when they get to that and once they get to that decision process, they say, no, I'm going to do it. And so people are either dabbling and being okay, or they've made a decision, then they actually do what they said they were going to do. So I think that's a huge differentiator. I don't think. I know it is.

Well, here's a question I'll ask the audience then, right, the podcast listeners is when it comes to a sales process, right. In particular a plan, are you going to be a dabbler? Are you going to make a decision to have one? I mean, that, that ultimately is one of the questions you have to ask yourself. The other visual I had is I think a big part of this is that, you know, team approach, obviously with individual producers, they're going to have some unique skill sets and backgrounds and ways they do things. But this idea that are we functioning as a team? It's like I'm just trying to imagine, you know, a bunch of a pretty decent musicians that all sit down and play their own piece of music versus playing one together. It's not going to sound very good, right? I mean, it's like, well, they're all pretty good, but they're not unified. And that's a big part of agencies. They don't have a unified planner playbook and everyone's off doing their own thing. And like you said, I love that. That is so powerful, is they're dabbling, they're not making a decision. So that's something that if you're not writing that down, that's. That's a writer downer. So make sure you do that. You know, one thing that I think of, Raj, I want to ask you next is around the area within a sales process of differentiation. And, you know, I've shared this story in some of our live trainings that we do that. One of my favorite conversations I had was a very successful producer or successful agency leader on the East Coast. I was out doing a speaking engagement a few years ago, and we were just having a conversation over dinner. I said, what's been one thing that your agency has done that's really helped you had the level of success that you've had? And he said, well, I'll simplify this. I just look around and look what every other agency does, and I just do the opposite. And, you know, we kind of laughed and it was tongue in cheek. But the point of it is, is that if you look around and if you're really honest, most agencies, they look the same, they talk the same stuff, they walk alike, and there isn't a clear differentiation. So why do you think, Roger, that most agencies look and sound like every other agency?

Because they can be semi successful doing that. You know, someone says, why should I do business with you? They give them the generic five, which we talk about all the time. That always starts with, we give great service. And then the last one is, we've got the best people. And everybody says the same thing. You know, think about this. If you've actually heard as an agency or as an individual producer, if you've heard a prospect, a suspect, certainly not a future ideal client, say, yeah, you insurance people are all the same. We're just trying to keep Our agent, honest. And yeah, we'd like a quote. We'd like a quote. And you may remember that I always say in our producer programs, when someone says, I'd like a quote, I say, now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. That's a quote. Okay, but if you want a presentation of solutions and best options, let's get together. But again, Brent, it just comes down to they haven't decided to be great. They haven't decided to differentiate. They haven't decided to be the best version possible. And so because they can, again, great business, because they can just do the basics, hold themselves to a pretty low standard, they'll do okay. But it just frustrates me for the 97th time, they're going to be semi successful, but end of it all, and everybody eventually leaves, whether they want to or not, they're going to have a bunch of regrets. Rather than saying, how can we differentiate? What is it that we can do that will raise the bar? What are the things that we can provide to our clients? Where do we add value that others aren't doing? And at the end of the day, it's not necessarily the product and price. I mean, those things kind of balance out. It's what's the additional value that you as an individual bring or you and your team bring to that client? Whether it's personal lines, small commercial, large commercial benefits, life, financial services, whatever. But what value do you bring them? Where they say, gee, I never got that before. I've never seen that before. No one's ever helped me measure that before. No one ever made me aware of how I could impact it. And it's, it's, it's sad in a way to me, because people are leaving so much. There's a potential work, so much potential success on the table doing okay. But, you know, the people we deal with decided a long time ago. It's, it's not okay to be okay. It's not okay to be average. Yeah.

You know, I don't know if what I'm going to say is controversial. I don't, I don't think it's controversial anymore. Maybe some people would think so, but I truly believe, and certainly, you know, if I were out hitting the market as a producer Today, I would 100 or a thousand percent specialize. I would be known for something. And you know, to me, whether it's an industry, a class of business, you know, certain demographic, but I think one of the, one of the things that we see why, to your Point, Roger, as you just said of why agencies and producers don't look and sound different is they have really nothing to look and sound different around. You know, they're stuck into. We're a full service agency that offers prompt service. Okay, save you money.

Save you money.

Yeah, and we'll save you money. Well, the frustrations if you don't really understand and code deep, there's the deep word, the acronym that many of you heard before, delivering excellence in every process in an industry or class of business where you know their business, right? You know, the things that they want, maybe in some cases even more than they do. If you really get deep into it, then you're not able to ask the questions or position yourself in the right way. So, you know, and we see stats all the time about, you know, the producers and agencies that win. They're specialists. So I.

What was the one we saw recently where it was the top 90, some producers under 40 years old?

Yeah, I think. Go ahead. I think it was 93%.

If I remember the number right, 93% were specialists. And they only had a few of them that said, you know, what do you do, General? All of them had, I'm a roofing, you know, I specialize in roofers. I specialize in manufacturing. I specialize in tech companies and something that we share all the time. And you look at any profession, any profession, specialists always make more money than general practitioners, period. Specialists always make more money than general practitioners. So what do you want to be now? In some of the markets out there, some of the towns, you might have to have two, three or four specialists, specialties, something that we've seen 80 to 90% of the time when we challenge agency leaders on this and say, you know, you already have some specialties. We talk to producers, you already have some specialties. And they'll say, well, no, we don't. I said, look, I'll tell you what. Go back and just do a survey of an individual producer's book of business or your agency overall, and tell me what, like, type of risks that you have, and they'll come back and go, wow, we didn't realize we already write 12 restaurants. Maybe that's not the best example right now. Or we write 12 tech firms, or we write 12 engineering firms, whatever it may be. But what they realize that is if they already have a foundation, number one, they must have a good program and product. Okay. And pricing, number two, they must be able to talk their language, at least know some things about it. Number three, they have a referral base to work off of. But they say, oh, no, we're just generalists. No, you are specialists. You just haven't. Here's the decide word again. You just didn't decide. Number one, identify what specialties you already have in your agency or your book of business. Number two, you didn't decide to go deep. As you know, Brent, I've been dealing with a major water damage claim in my condominium that I live in. And we were actually out for six months. The agent that had it, the association itself, got fired because of the way they reacted to the program. And what we did is we. And of course, I'm on the insurance committee. What a surprise. We brought in some people to look at the program, see what we had. And this young lady came in who knows the condo association business. I mean, she wowed me. And I'm pretty critical about things at times. I expect a lot from people. She wowed me with her knowledge. She wowed me with the gaps in her coverage. She wowed me with the services that we weren't receiving. And the previous agent had the account for a little over five years. It was 180 some thousand dollars of premium. So he was making good money. And we bill arted over to her right away based upon her expertise and what she knew. And the other guy just sounded like a general practitioner. I mean, when are people going to wake up and say, I can either be a general practitioner or I can decide to be a specialist? And again, in some areas, you might have to have two or three specialties. It's okay, just don't have. Don't look at the SIC code and say, I'm a specialist in everything. No, you're not. You're a general practitioner.

Yeah, Roger, just obviously the word decide has become a little bit of a theme in our conversation, but it's so powerful. I mean, it just listens to you there. They're going back. Are you going to decide to do this or decide or dabble in this? And what hit me is that, you know, dabbling is comfortable because you're not really making a commitment. You're just, oh, I'm dabbling a little this and dabble a little that and you know, we'll be all things and, you know, that's okay. And, and there isn't. You're not, you know, you're not claiming anything, so there's no commitment you have to keep. But when you decide, you know, that's, I think, where many people go, well, you know, I would decide, I really could see, I Mean, just think about this for a second. You just gave some or I gave 90, 93% of those producers are specialists. We see this in our elite 50 group. We see this with our best agencies. If you look at any reports, you look at some of the Reagan reports, it's right in front of you. Specialists do better, they have a competitive advantage, they make more money. Yet so many agencies and producers go, well, yeah, but I'm just gonna dabble. And I just, it blows my mind, but as I, as I'm sitting there going, why? Why is that? It's because it's comfortable. Do you agree with that?

Well, the word that jumps out when I was listening to you, there is, you know, there are certain agencies and certainly producers that are lifestyle, that's what they do, their lifestyle. I've got a pretty good lifestyle and I got a nice agency and it's more of a lifestyle. And I think you have to make a decision. By the way, if you don't make a decision, the decision is made for you, okay? But I think you've got to decide whether you want to just have a lifestyle where you float along and you make decent money or you have a professional career. And as we all know, professionals make more money than amateurs all the time. So when you decide that this is my career, I'm going to put the time in anyway. Why not be great at it? Why not just absolutely commit to doing the right things? Because the amount of time you spend is the same. It's just where you're spending it. And so to me, this is, it's another blinding flash of the obvious. Why in the heck wouldn't I finally decide what I want to be when I grow up and then grow up and then go do it and so I can dabble and I can finally decide and then I have to do what I said I was going to do? It's pretty simple. Something I was sharing with you this morning before we got started recording was that so many people have to do lists, okay? And they have way too many things on it. They're chasing way too many things. The trivial many versus the vital few. And so a blinding flash of the obvious for me this morning is rather than have a to do list, why don't you just have a do list and it becomes a non optional. I think that works.

Yeah, it's, it's, you know, we both have been fans of Tony Robbins and most people know that, but as you said that again, it just, you know, I listened to him a few weeks ago. I think you were listening to him this morning, you said. And one of the things he said that is so true is that, you know, how many softeners do you have of. Well, you know, I should do this. You know, we could do that. You know, I might do this. And those are called dabble words, right? That are. Well, there's no prep, you know, that would be a good idea versus I must. I must do this.

Well, I'll give you a good example of that. You know the story. But several years ago, like a couple of decades ago, my wife Stephanie and I went to a Tony Robbins event and we wound up walking on fire. Okay. And it wasn't. We didn't dabble, you know, when it was your turn, I must, I must, I must. And you walked across burning coals. Huh? Amazing. It worked. I used to be 6 4, by the way. But no, but it. It worked. And there was no dabbling that once you made that commitment and once you were, you know, your mindset was correct, you had the right beliefs, the right state you were in. You walked across burning coals. We didn't get burnt. Pretty cool.

Yeah, it's. There's. There's so many. There's so many analogies of just having this conversation of, you know, in fact, if you dabble, that's when you usually get hurt, right? Certain. That's true. In sports, different things, you either go all in or don't. Don't play the game that way. So here's the last thing I want to bring up to the audience for the time that we have, Roger, is you have mentioned in the last, last podcast, and certainly to me and some people that have been part of our trainings of a. Of a new, powerful Sitkins acronym, which is mba. And people imagine that another Sitkins acronym, but an mba, which is Mastering the basic activities. Mastering the basic activities. And so often the basics are overlooked or, well, you know, that's just the basics, but people aren't doing it. And so I guess if we're talking about sales. Right. Just selling overall, what are some of the basics? Some of the things that agencies simply aren't doing that they just overlook and take for granted, but quite honestly, it's been a stumbling block for them.

There's so many of them, and they go everywhere. But some of the basics, number one, we've already talked about, you've got to specialize. That's basic. Okay. Number two, you've got to start identifying what future ideal clients look like, not suspects or prospects, and know exactly what you're Going to have to go. Some people refer to it as your avatar. What are you going after? And not only the type of account, the size of account, etc. But who are the actual names that you can start using? You the basic. Understand the power of 8020 and use it because it's real simple. 20% of your customers are 80% of your revenue. God. But the top 5% are 50%. Top 20%, the next 15%, excuse me, are 30%. Okay, so you've got 20% of the customers giving you 80% of your revenue. What are you going to replicate? Bottom 50% of your customers are 10% of your revenue. What do you want to replicate? So use the power of it. You've got to get the high performance teams. Not high maintenance team, but high performance teams. In fact, something that we're talking about with our elite 50 sales mastery program in about three weeks from now is how do you turbocharge that high performance team? But just getting the high performance team that says, hey, the number one thing we've got to do is you as a producer have got to be in the green zone. Okay? Last night at dinner we were talking about this. And the agency has some incentive in place for their account managers so that when they write, when the producers write new business, they make some more money because now they're handling more business and they are at the point, and we have unfortunately, a smaller percent of this than I would like, of agencies, where the account managers literally say to the producers on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, if it's between 9 o' clock and 3 o', clock, what are you doing in the office? What are you doing in the office? You're better off just being out there in the public than sitting here causing problems. So it's that strong division between sales and service. And then I guess finally, as far as basic, basic, basic things, mastering basic activities, are you doing the things that earn and in fact generate referrals and introductions? We talk about this all the time. And people say, yeah, that's a pretty good idea. But then I'll say, well, you know what? Let me ambush you right now. Ask me for a referral. What? Ask me for a referral. You don't know anybody who wants to buy insurance, do you? That wasn't really very conversational and comfortable. That would not inspire me to give you a referral, okay? And people laugh about this and say, oh, that's basic. You know what? Prove to me you've mastered it. Prove to me you can ask for a referral. Prove to Me, you even know a 30 second commercial other than, oh, I'm in the insurance business, you want to get a quote? Okay. Or sitting there aggressively waiting for the clicks, pings, rings and dings to happen so you can give a practice quote. All right, and so these are some of the basic things or, you know, 20 others. But if people would just decide, not dabble, but decide, hey, those are four or five things we're going to master. You mentioned we had the group finish yesterday. We had over 100 producers in the program. It was their eighth session and it was so amazing to get the feedback forms from them electronically, of course, and all the things they're saying and the ratings and just blew them away. But what's interesting to me is so many of them decided to do the right thing. So many of them decided to master the basic activities. And to me, mastery is number one, you could survive an ambush. Number two, you know it so well. You could teach it to others. You could be the disciple, if you will, that talks about that system, that process, that procedure, and you become a role model for everybody on your team. As an agency leader, you can actually do what you're asking others to do. So you could never get blamed. Like sort of when I'd say to my kids, hey, you know, your room is a little messy. And they'd say, yeah, go look at the garage. Yours isn't so good. The garage doesn't look so good either. You know, we've got to do what we said we were going to do. But again, this theme, Brent, of you decide what you're going to do, start dabbling, start identifying the vital few things that you are going to do exceedingly well that will become part of your agency's DNA or your own DNA and then do them at levels others will never do it, period.

As. Just listen to there, Roger, Some of these things you mentioned, but I guess three questions I would ask the listeners from everything that you said and the notes that I was taking is, you know, when it comes to you and your, your sales process, your selling system as, as just being a sales organization, number one is are you going to be a result agency or an activity based agency? You know, you just mentioned on there that you know, the agency that you, you talked with last night, well, they're results based agency and that goes for their entire agency. They, they all want to focus on results, not just, boy, we did a bunch of stuff. Was it effective? No, but we did a bunch of stuff. You mentioned earlier. Are you an agency that's going to commit to being a professional agency or are you going to be an amateur agency? And you know, it's not to, to take a shot at. You mentioned a lifestyle agency. If that's what you want to do, hey, good for you. And again, that's, that's fine. But as far as if you really want to step up your game to be a professional agency, you've got to commit to it. And of course, I think the theme, Roger, that I've got out of this conversation with you is are you going to decide or are you going to dabble? Are you going to make a decision or are you going to dabble? And you know, the Sitkins 101, you know, people said, well, you know, what are some of the Sitkins basics of selling, right, Of a selling process or selling philosophy? Well, one of the big ones of Sitkin, maybe this is sickens 100, Roger, is we've got to change the conversation. We've got to change the conversation from quotes and transactions, which most agencies, that's really where they spend the majority of their time in conversations. It's quotes and transactions. You mentioned we've got to change that conversation from quotes and transactions to risk advice and relationships. You got to change it to risk advice and relationships. And guess what to do that for. What Roger said is you got to make a decision to do that. So what's going to be your decision? What's going to be your decision? Roger, any final closing thoughts from you to add to the audience.

As a leader, it's all about the culture. And last night at dinner, the agency principal was saying, well, you know, we don't really have a lot of rules and things. And I looked at him, I said, you most certainly do. And his wife was sitting next to him and she said, what was that? And I said, well, he just said he doesn't have a lot of rules. And she said, well, yeah, you do because you lead by example. And he never asked people to do something he won't do. The culture is exceedingly clear. And the thing I love about his agency and so many of our private clients is that when the culture gets that clear, management becomes a lot easier because people know exactly what's expected of them. And in his agency, he decided what his model was going to be. He decided what type of people he wanted. And when people vary from that, he has a conversation with them. Either one of his leaders does or he does. And then people are given an opportunity to either buy in or buy out. You know, they self select. And so it Comes down again to decisions. And because this one's all about selling, decide that you're going to be a sales machine, not a service machine. And when you make that decision, like you've said, the bar so darn low, you just start blowing away the competition. And as I always say, you know, somebody in your marketplace is going to be the agency. It's going to be the category of one. Why don't you decide? That's you.

Well said. Well, as I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, this is part two of four parts that Roger agreed to be with me and kind of share his insights. Next week we're going to get into retention. So my guess is, Roger, we may talk about what decision are you making? Are you going to have a renewal process or continuation process?

Process.

Just, just something, just something to consider. And what does that mean for you and your agency? So make sure you stay tuned and listen to the next podcast we release after this one. I'll just close with this. And I mentioned the beginning. You know, if you're an agency that really does want to make a decision in certain areas, there are three ways that you can work with us at Sitkins and we make these as simple as we can, but certainly as intentional focus as we can as well. Number one is you can attend one of our individual programs and we have producer programs, we have sales leader, and we have agency leader programs that you can attend and just see, hey, what is this all about? We also have our all inclusive membership which allows you as an agency to have every client facing member of your team, whether it's sales, service, leadership, to all attend and be part of our training and coaching programs on an ongoing basis. And we've already seen incredible results with agencies in that. And then last, as Roger just mentioned with his conversation last night, you could also become, if it's the right fit for you to become part of our private client program, which is a very close relationship, we get to work with your agency very closely to make sure that you are doing the right things and we can hold you accountable and continue that conversation at a deep, deep level. So thanks so much for being a listener. If this podcast has added value to you, please give us a subscribe and a rating and review. We'd appreciate that. And of course you can visit our programs@sitkins.com podcast programs sitkins.com programs Roger, thanks so much for being with me today and we will see you next time on the Agent Leader podcast. Thanks for listening.