Don't Let Part-Time Producers Slow Your Agency Growth

Quick question for you. How many part time producers does your insurance agency have today? How much time, money and the impact on culture is that costing your agency? We're going to unpack Part time Producers what that means, the impact and some solutions for your agency on today's Agent Leader Podcast. Welcome into the Agent Leader Podcast. This is the podcast for insurance agency leaders, insurance agency leadership teams to learn to grow, to develop and ultimately aspire to become your best version possible. My name is Brent Kelly. I am your host. It is a pleasure to be with you on this episode. And this episode today is a continuation of the Agency Deadly Trap series that I started a few episodes ago. We're going to be going through seven agency deadly traps and by the way, all of these traps are written about in our book Best version possible. If you want to get a copy of the book or if you want to listen to the book, you can go to Amazon or Audible to do that. Again, Best version Possible is the title of the book co authored by Roger Sitkins. Or you can go to our website sitkins.com BVP as we may give you a bit of a freebie or some additional value if you go through our website as well. But go check that out and we talk about these agency seven deadly traps in the book. And what I want to do in this podcast series is unpack these a bit further. So the first trap that I talked about was no strategic or financial modeling and you can go back and listen to any of these episodes, certainly any podcast platform. But I talked about how agencies often don't have a clear or compelling strategic and or financial model. I also talked about in trap number two that many agencies don't have a unique selling proposition or unique selling selling process. They don't have a named effective in many cases not repeatable process that they can rally behind in their agency. On today's episode I'm going to talk about a trap of part time producers and I'll unpack what that means in depth in today's episode. But Part time Producers is certainly one of the deadly traps that we see agencies fall into. And you know these are all parts, not only deadly traps, but I would say the good results trap that oftentimes agencies are getting some good results overall as an agency and because they're getting some good results, whether it's the fact that this is a great business and it is the fact that we do have high market rate conditions going on out there, that we do have inflation right, there's many of these things that are Challenges can also allow us to get good results. That's just the fact of what's going on in the business. But I want these traps to help give greater awareness or clarity of certain areas that maybe you've taken for granted or maybe you know about it, but we're not quite sure what some of the next steps are going to be. And as you listen to the trap today, or prior traps or future traps that I go through, I would just ask yourself, as an agency leader, leadership team, where do we fit in the spectrum? Are we in the danger zone or the red zone that we've got some serious issues here that we need to address right away? Maybe we're in the yellow zone, the caution zone. We do some things pretty well or decent, or we're sporadic but it's not consistent. We've got room for improvement. Or maybe as you go through these or you hear these from me, you may go, you know what, we're actually doing really well in this area, which I would say kudos, congratulations. But my question, as I would say to any of our members of the Sidkins network, is I'm really happy you're in the green zone here, but what's the next level? Right? What's the next level you can attain? Because there's always areas for improvement. That's what life and business is all about. How do we grow, how do we develop and as I said earlier, become that best version possible. Now, as a special offer for listeners of the Agent Leader podcast, and I mentioned this on prior episodes, we're doing something super special that we haven't done before in the past. And here's the opportunity for you and your agency. This is very easy. There's no cost, there's no obligation. If and when you go to Sitkins.com bookacall and that's it, go to sitkins.com bookacall s I t k I n s.com bookacall you'll have a very short call with one of our team members. We'll get to learn more about your agency. And at that point, if it makes sense, and many times it does, we will then set up an additional call where we will conduct a true best version possible assessment, a deeper dive with your agency to get to know you better. And when completed, we will then deliver a best version possible plan. Again, there's no cost other than time for this, but want to help your agency. At that point, you and your agency team can take this plan at no cost and determine what you want to do with it. Some People want to continue that journey with Sitkins, us as your guide and your coach. Some people don't. And we're not going to put any pressure on you, but we want to give you the opportunity to have as much awareness, as much clarity as possible about your agency, to make the best decisions for you and your agency as you move forward. So again, go to Sitkins and to get that process started super easy. And again, no obligation at all. All right, let's get into trap number three today. And I mentioned part time producers. I love all of these traps and I don't mean I love them because agencies are trapped. I love them because we love when agencies begin to escape these traps and we see that, oh my gosh, either I knew we were in this trap and we had to get out, or in many cases, I didn't even realize we were in it, but we are. And now that we've gotten out of it, I'm seeing clearly now, right? We're getting better results and our behaviors, our beliefs have improved as we move forward. So let's talk about trap number three, part time producers. Now, I've shared this story. I share this story, numerous speaking engagements, I've shared aspects of the story at some point in some of the podcasts, but I want to paint a scenario that's a pretty silly scenario, but it's true as far as the analogy goes. The analogy is true. So just imagine for a moment that it's game seven of the NBA championship. Now, maybe you're not a basketball fan, but just play with me here for a little bit. The NBA championship. Now, my favorite player of all time, his name is Michael Jordan. You may have heard the name, but just imagine for a minute that it's game seven, winner take all. This is it, right? Winner take all. And only a couple minutes into the NBA championship. Game 7, Michael Jordan, best player in the world. Who, by the way, his job mainly. He had other jobs, but his main job was to score points, right? They did better. The Bulls did better. Which by the way, is the team he played for. If you're not a basketball fan, they did better when he scored points. But imagine only a couple minutes into the game, Michael Jordan checks himself out of the game. He takes himself off the floor and he's not injured, he's not tired, he's not in foul trouble. He simply looked around and thought, you know what, I know that this is important, but I have some other things that maybe I should look into. Like it looks like there's some towels that aren't folded properly, it looks like there's some water cups that aren't filled up. It looks like there's some people that would like to get some photos and autographs from me. I might as well take care of that now. Now obviously that sounds ridiculous and there are other people, by the way, we probably know this, that are designed to do that job outside of maybe the autographs and photos. But there are other people that are responsible for that or certainly are the primary caretaker of those things. But Michael Jordan just thought, why not I should help out? Well, why do I share that story as silly as it is? Well, because every single day and insurance agencies across this great country and beyond have the same situation happening. They have producers who, their main role is to score points. They have these producers that aren't even in the game or on the floor right there on the bench. They are doing other trivial things the majority of their time or at least a significant amount of their time that isn't doing the one thing that they should be doing, which is produce. Our joke that also is true at the Sidkins Group when we talk to agency and member agencies and attendees of our programs is this. The definition of a producer is one who produces. That's it. We talk about this all the time. And it gets, it gets, it gets messed up. So this is the whole context around this trap. And the significance is that we have a significant portion of our production team in our agencies that don't even have a chance to score points because they're not in the game. You can't score points when you're not in the game. So I would ask you as an agency leader right away to say, hey listen, if I'm looking at my production team, whether I've got 1, 2, 3 producers or maybe I've got 30 or 50 of agencies have 100 producers, what percentage of the time are they in the game actually doing sales related activities? Now we talk about this as the green zone and we have talked about this in the podcast before, but I want to reference this in terms of the trap that we have part time producers trying to win a full time game. Now here's why this is a trap. Here's why this is a trap is because even part time producers can get decent results. This is another area of the good results trap. You might have producers that are only spending 30, 40, 50% for example, of their time, energy and effort doing sales related things. The Green zone. And by the way, I do want to define that for just a second. The green Zone, we believe there are four things a producer should be doing 80% of their time, 80% of the week. They should be doing one of these four things. Sales, sales conversations, sales calls. They should be doing relationship management, proactive relationship management. They should be leading a continuation process, which is another word for proactive renewal. So this isn't reactive. Proactive areas of continuing relationships and continuing the process with our clients. And then number four is pipeline development. We're doing proactive pipeline development. Those are the four things that producers should be doing 80% of the time. Now here's a shocking thing. When agencies get this right or move towards that, maybe they're not perfect at 80% yet. Maybe they were at 40% and they move to 60%, guess what happens? They become more productive and write more business. Now there's going to be some other things I'm going to talk about in this podcast that happen as well. But the bottom line is this. I'll say it one more time. You and your agency can't score points when you're not in the game. And by the way, this often is a culture issue. This is a culture issue. Let me tell you why it's a culture issue. Many agencies, maybe yours, maybe not. I don't know your agency yet. Again, book a call. Okay, we can get to know you more. But many agencies, exceptional service agencies that do sales when it's convenient. Let me say that again. Exceptional service agencies. Oh, we provide exceptional service that do sales when it's convenient versus the culture of we are a dynamic growth minded sales agency. Sales organization that provides exceptional, excellent service. Right. There's a difference there. It's our focus is that we are a growth sales result based agency. And by the way, you can't grow, you can't pay your people, no one can get raises, we can't get back to the community. We can't do lots of things without growth, without significant growth, without consistent growth. And by the way, I'll say this again, because of the market conditions we've all been dealing with, which by the way, I know are challenging, also have provided great opportunities. They've also provided areas of complacency because hey, we're not doing much and we're still growing. Yes, because we're getting huge rate increases. Those are slowing down. So just understand this idea that we've got to spend more time in the game. By the way, not only is this a culture issue overall, it's also an opportunity for agencies to establish and install the world's greatest producer recruiting method. And this also, again, Evolves back into culture, revolves around culture. The world's greatest producer recruiting method is what? It's to get your current producers to do the thing they should already be doing, which is producing. Now I know that sounds cheeky, I get it. But just for a second think about this. We often have agencies who try to throw people at problems, right? So part of this is, well, we're not making enough sales. We're not, we need more producers yet we've got 5 or 10 or 15, whatever it is, producers, and half of those aren't producing or certainly aren't in the game enough. And they're not giving themselves opportunity. So we think we're going to bring someone new into our agency and guess what? They're going to see and witness other producers not really producing. They go, oh, I guess that's kind of the culture of the agency. Yes, you might get lucky and get someone who, no matter what the culture is, they're going to go out there and kill it. But that is the exception, not the rule. We can't just throw people at the problem. Let's address the actual problem. The problem is the fact that we have too many part time producers. So we've got to begin to change the culture. What is our agency all about? What are the expectations and roles of a producer? Well, to produce. So what are some things that we need to do? By the way, the most overlooked metric that we look at for many agencies across this great country and beyond is. Is a metric that most people don't even think about. The acronym that we talk about is tss. TSS stands for time spent selling. The amount of time that we're actually in the game. This is something that our best agencies, we look at, we talk about and don't over complicate the simple. I think it's where people fall into this trap. Oh, that's just too easy. I mean, just get people to get in the game more. Yep, yep. I mean, here's another sports analogy. It's hard to hit singles or doubles or triples or certainly you're not hitting home runs from the dugout. I got to get to the plate as much as possible. So let's just focus on what is the activity of getting ourselves in the game. Right? Get ourselves in the game. I had a recent conversation. This was really cool. Someone who I hadn't seen for years. So hopefully he's listening to this podcast because I had a great conversation at a birthday party. And someone who's retired, able to retire fairly young because of the success he had in the industry. And we were just having some talk, thinking about years ago and he was talking about his career and he said, you know, here's what I did, here's what I did. I made sure that during selling hours. And again, we'll just talk about, let's just say 9am to 3pm, although it could be beyond that. But when businesses were open, he was in commercial, commercial insurance, commercial PNC when business were open, where people around, when I could network, when I could have conversations, when I get in the game, I was in the game. And guess what? Before and after I would do some of the paperwork and some of that thing that goes, you know, those things that go hand in hand, some of the red zone activities we talk about that are going to happen, it's just when they happen. And again, this is another producer who built a million dollar plus book of revenue and beyond that. And part of it was one of the secrets to success. And I've heard this from many other producers says, what did you do? What was so magical? And listen, let's face it, there's other factors that go into this. I don't discount that. But bottom line is one of the things they always say is I'm in the game. I was always in the game. I was consistently in the game, right? In the game. And I talk about this, I've mentioned this story before. One of our great partner agency for years, EHD Insurance in Pennsylvania, you know, they really took this to heart. Not only do they have the mirror that says best version possible or is this your best version possible? But, but at the bottom of the mirror it says producers, if it's between 9am and 3pm, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, we will talk about this as our prime selling time, right? If it's between 9am and 3pm on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, you should not be reading this mirror. Now that's funny, right? Aha. That's neat. That's catchy. But here's the thing that sends a message to the culture of the agency. That sends a message to the culture of the agency. Now by the way, this requires teamwork. This is where many agencies get stuck and go, oh yeah, that must be nice. But you don't understand all the work we have to do. Now I also understand that every agency is at a different place. For some of you listening to me right now, you're going to go, this is going to take some work and a drastic change in how we do things in our culture to, to have our salespeople doing production sales stuff the majority of the time and have our service people be great and do the service stuff. And there is a true marriage between sales and service. Guess what? Sales and service skills are different. Are they both important? Yes, super important. This is not to discount one or the other. It's to understand that we have unique abilities, as Dan Sullivan would talk about, that we have certain strengths that we need to leverage at the highest level. This requires the formation and implementation of high performance teams that we have. Teams that understand that we have the same goal, which is to retain and obtain ideal clients with an appreciation and a respect and a trust for the different roles that we have. Because guess what, time is our only diminishing asset. That's the one thing that you, me, anybody else, we cannot get back. We cannot get back time. We can earn back money, we can build new buildings, we can do all these things, but we can't get back our time. So this matters. Why does this trap of part time producers. Well, I'm already beating it up a little bit here, but why does it matter so much? Well, let's talk about some other areas to think about. Number one, we have the wrong person doing the wrong thing. This comes back to unique abilities and the mistakes that we make. We jokingly ask producers, we jokingly ask service team members if a producer were to do some form of service change. Now, there could be lots of things here, right, but some type of reactive service. What percent of the time, out of how many out of 10 times, how many times would a producer have complete, total and accurate information that was done right? 100% the first time. And the numbers we get back are usually maybe 1 or 2 out of 10, in some cases way lower than that. So why does this matter of getting our producers to do producer stuff? Not only because we need them to go sell, it's the growth, it's the aspect of the agency we need, but they also mess things up. Up. They're oftentimes not very good at that. And they don't necessarily love to. Well, I have to, I don't love it. I'm not great at it, but I have to do it. And then what happens? They don't get complete or total information. The client gets frustrated, the service team member gets frustrated. We're duplicating conversations, replicating things we shouldn't have replicated, or we have to fix things we thought we replicated that aren't correct. You get the picture? It's a mess. It's a mess. It doesn't make any sense. By the way it's energy sucking, so it drains everyone's energy. And at the end of the day, guess who suffers the most? Our clients. Because you have the wrong people doing the wrong things. Here's the other thing that happens oftentimes when we get producers involved and they're part time producers, they become not only stuck in service, becomes part of the culture, they often hide behind it, right? Instead of making that proactive call, instead of going and having that meeting, instead of earning, asking for referrals. Just to give a few examples, I've got so much service stuff I need to work on, that's oftentimes a cop out or an excuse. And when producers either get stuck and the culture of the agency is, well, you know, you need to do a bunch of service too. By the way, I also understand some of you thinking, well, there are, there are times that it happens. Yes, there are certain aspects we have to be be be aware. Maybe we lost a service team member, there's something going on the agency, yes. Not everything is perfect, we understand that. But what often happen is that turns in not just to a short term event, but a long term way of doing business. We get stuck or we hide behind service. And by the way, this causes producers to plateau for way too early. Most producers plateau. They flatten out their growth way before they ever should. The term that we talk about is horizontal stagnation. Horizontal stagnation. And part of that is because once they start to do service work, and maybe you've seen this in your agency, once you get involved in service work or too much service work, even if you begin to technically transfer some of that, it never really changes in terms of how much time and energy a producer is spending in there, in the service. They get stuck in the service trap and it causes horizontal stagnation versus to understand, hey listen, I'm going to have some level of service work, red zone as we call it. And I'm going to try to do that in off production times, right? My focus to do that non production times, non sales times. I also want to make sure that educate, empower and equipment, my service team and the agency does that and they do the highest level work at a higher amount, they're going to take care of that. And if I can get that balance pretty well, right, or certainly work on that balance over a period of time, I'm going to be able to grow at much, much higher levels. Why? Because I'm not restricted by service. Because I've done the right things up front. Last thing that I Want to talk about here is going back to the culture because I talk about this as a deadly trap. One of the agency seven deadly traps. This again comes back to culture. The language and behaviors that are normal in your agency. Right? The language and behaviors that are normal. So I would ask you as an agency leader, what is your team talking about? What are your producers talking about? What are the behaviors that we actually see? Are producers out doing these things or are you? Oh, well, they're in the office. I know it's Tuesday and Wednesday, but they're catching up on emails and work. No, like our culture is we've got to have our salespeople in the green zone doing sales stuff. We've got to have Michael Jordan's on the floor. We can't grow and thrive without it. We can't have our sales team interrupting our service team all the time. And by the way, every time they interrupt a service team. I've talked about this before. The studies show that there is a significant amount of time that is wasted that takes a service team or any person to get back at the same level of production they were at before they were interrupted. So we want to understand and we want to appreciate and respect and then trust each other in these roles. Are we a sales organization with full time producers or are we a service organization with part time producers? And by the way, I'll say this one more time, having exceptional service does not mean you can't sell. It means we need to understand the balance. And this is a deadly trap. So often I see agencies that are doing pretty well, they're getting good results, good results and the producers are spending 20, 30, 40, 50%, maybe 60% of the time actually in this green zone or in the sales zone. And once they realize, oh my gosh, I am missing huge opportunities, I need a better empower. Equip our team needs a better empower. Equip our service team to do what they do best. And by the way, when I talk to service teams, they love when the sales people, the producers get out of their way. They do, they don't like people hovering around. They are hired for a reason to do their job at a high level. That's important to understand. But we have to make sure that our beliefs and our behaviors align with the results that we want. We can't talk about we're going to grow X amount as an agency, alright? We're going to do these great things. Here's all the numbers, here's the financial things, here are the results. We're going to get yet our behaviors aren't consistent with that. And going back even further, our beliefs aren't congruent with our behaviors. We talk about these things, but what do we really believe? Do we believe that our producers need to be full time producers? Do we believe that our service team needs to be empowered and equipped to do the job at the highest level? Do we believe there should be appreciation, respect and trust around accountability there? These are things to think about and then to our behaviors and ultimately the results. And again from a results perspective. When you're in the game more often, I'll go back to my opening comment and wrap it up here. When you're in the game more often, producing the game, guess what happens. This is aside from skill improvement, progress, process improvement, which are all things we talk about. Take those out of the equation for a moment because those things are important. But just take it to the side for a second and let's talk 100% about productivity and production. This isn't shocking, but when you raise your TSS time spent selling and you move from part time clients to above part time client or part time producers, excuse me, part time producers to above part time producers to full time producers to to 20 to 30, to 40 to 50 to 60 to 70 to 80%, guess what happens to your results? They go up, right? They go up. So this is a critical one. Again, ask yourself as an agency, are we in the red zone here? Are we in the yellow zone here? That sometimes we have some that do, some that don't. Maybe it's back and forth or maybe you're doing a really good job on this and I would say how do we make sure we replicate that success right at the highest level? As a reminder, said it earlier, if you want to get your own best version possible assessment, it starts by booking a call, a quick qualification call with one of our team members. Again, super easy and painless. Want to get to know more about you and your agency. We then want to conduct an assessment and deliver you a plan that you can take and do it what you want. We want to help you, the hero, your agency, you're the leader to become that best version possible. So go to sitkins.com book a call with that. I look forward to talking about traps 4, 5, 6 and 7. Yes, we got four more coming up on this series and with that I wish you all the best and your success. Thanks for listening.