Four Traps to Success

Foreign welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. The podcast to help you, the independent insurance agency leader, to help you gain clarity, build consistency and to make a commitment, a commitment to become your best version possible. Our book, co authored by Roger Sitkins and myself, by the way, my name is Brent Kelly. If you don't know me, that book, best Version Possible is available. We continue to get some great feedback. Love to continue here that people are taking this book and beginning to execute on some of the ideas. And you can get your copy@sitkins.com bvp so go to sitkins.com bvp you also can find the audible versions if you like to listen to books, or the Kindle version if you go to Amazon as well. So check that out. And what I wanted to do on today's podcast, I want to give you, the agency leader, as much value as I possibly can. I really want to help you. I mean, our mission is really exactly what I just said. I mean, we want to empower you to achieve higher levels of success, whatever that means to you. And I know people can define success differently, but to help you move from wherever you are today, whether it's not so good, whether it's pretty good, maybe it's, maybe it's really good, but you know, there's a better version of you waiting. I want to take all the things that we have talked about, all the things that's in the book, all the things that we've learned from 40 plus years of organization and combine those and give you four, give you four practical things. I want to share with you today why these four things are so important, in fact, why agencies get hung up in these four things. I'm going to share some examples and of course, if you don't do anything, what it can cost you, but also some things that you can begin to implement and what you can gain by doing it right. So I want to give you an overview of those four things. And this is all in conjunction with things that we're going to be doing with our agencies. But I want to give you, the podcast listener, you know, some things right now that you can begin to think about now. And as I go through these four key areas and by the way, to take 40 years and put into four and is a challenge. But there's a reason why we're doing this. And in fact, I had a conversation yesterday. I was doing a training session with sales leaders and you know, I asked them, I said, have you ever had a professor or a teacher or someone I don't know in power that you could tell their main goal was not to help transfer their knowledge that you could actually execute, but to just make themselves sound really smart. Right. And they all nodded. Right. We've all had that. I've had that. I'm sure you have as well. And so my goal and our goal for as an agency is not to give you 75 things that sound really cool and go, wow, there's 75 things. But to say, listen, there's four things that have very great substance, that if you can commit and go deep and communicate, and I'm going to talk about these things today, that'll make a huge impact. And, and you've heard me say this before, whether I've had guests on before, certainly in some of the conversations I've had with Roger Sitkins, who's been a guest many times on this podcast before, these things aren't necessarily complicated. In fact, they're fairly simple. It's just there you have to go deep to execute in them. And the agencies that continue to do this and, you know, it's one of those things where you hear a few examples and you go, oh, that's really cool. And then all of a sudden you hear more and more and you get agencies that say, hey, we finally are gaining some focus and now look what's happened. In fact, I do want to share one example because it's very recent. I had a call recently with one of our agency members. In fact, this agency has been a featured guest on my podcast. I'll go ahead if you want to flip back. I don't on the podcast. His name is Paul Quarter, is the sales leader for Peel and Howell Insurance. I'm going to go ahead and give them a shout out. They've got a great team, great leadership, Roy and Keith Riley. Paul Quarter got some great producers on their team as well. Just a really fun team and a great team to work with. And as great as they are or were, they knew they were being a bit stagnant. And we started working with them officially about 18 months ago, got got, you know, kind of reinvolved and in going through some of the things we talk about, in fact, based around these four things, I'm going to share with you all today and had a conversation with Paul last week. We were doing a regular coaching call and he gave me an update on some things and he said, listen, I want to tell you that we're about nine months obviously into this year. If you're listening to this podcast now or getting almost to October here, but when we talk, he said, about, you know, nine months and some change into this year. He said a year ago at this time, we had written $600,000 year to date in new business revenue. And he said that's kind of the trend we had been on. And we'd been on that, you know, 3, 4, 5% growth over many years, but doing okay because we were fairly profitable. And he said this year we're at over $1.2 million in new business revenue. And my math isn't very good, but I can figure this one out, that that's 100% plus growth in, in, in new revenue production in one year. Now, here's the kicker to this. A lot of people will talk about growth, but maybe they acquired an agency, which by the way, is fine, or maybe they added two or three new producers or one new producer and they got some book of business that way, which is fine as well. But this was with the exact same production team, right? There were no changes, no acquisitions are involved in that. This is their producers actually producing. And I'll talk more about that a little bit today as well. So I want to share that with you mainly to give a shout out because it's a great agency that continues to impress me and again, reach out to them and just say, hey, how'd you do it? And I know they're an agency that wants to help and also an agency that deserves kudos. So here's the point of all of that. We've got multiple stories of agencies that are, that are achieving these levels of success. Why not you? And if you're listening to me right now, why not you? Now, whether you work directly with us, which we would love it, if it's a great fit, or whether you just get serious and make a decision, that's up to you. We want to provide you a roadmap that's a big part of what we do. To organize some of these thoughts to help keep agencies focused and accountable and to help be third party credibility for your agency and your entire team. But regardless of what you determine to do, you've got to make a decision. And here's the biggest hindrance for agencies to have success. Distraction, lack of focus, confusion. Right? All those things come into play. So let me get into these four areas, because what is actually holding you back as an agency? Well, there are four things. You can call these traps, you can call these gaps, you can call these challenges, you can call these roadblocks, give them whatever name you want. But there's four things that we see if you look at agencies and you ask questions of what is holding them back from their best version possible, and I'm going to start off by just giving an overall. So this might be a bonus. This is like before number one, or could be the fifth one, however you want to describe it, is this. I want to ask this by a question. What is your current training and development program personally and professionally for your agency team today? What is the model for training and development for your team today? And I talk about this all the time. The number one role, the number one focus for an agency leader, above all else, should be how do we develop our people? And I've talked about that in previous podcasts, but I just want you to think about that, because the more and more that, you know, I talk about it, the more and more that I, that I get to work with agencies, that I get to travel, that I share. If there's this, like, blinding flash of the obvious is that there's these outward struggles we may see in different areas, but at its very core, it's because we haven't really had a key focus of how we are going to actually develop our people. All right, so with that all being said, I want to get into these. These four key areas, and I'm going to go through the. The gaps, the traps that are holding agencies back. I want to talk a little bit about what's the cost of that? Like, what does that actually cost you? Not just in money, which is a big part, but in time and freedom and in relationships, whatever that is. And then. And then I'm going to get into the four areas and give you some ideas and things that you can begin to take grasp of right now. Right. I want to give you something you can do right now. And I know I'm not going to change anyone's life in 30 minutes, but if I can be a light bulb to kind of click on and go, okay, that particular area makes sense to me. What, we've got to get focused in it. Then I've done my job, right? Then I've done something. This is what I want to do on this podcast, is be a value to you. So what's holding you back? Number one, lack of clarity, communication and ongoing team development. I already set that one up. So again, maybe that's 1 and 1A, but it's lack of clarity. And this, this comes back to, like, if you talk to leadership, if you talk to sales, if you talk to service, and if you said, what's the mission and the purpose of our agency? What are we really all about? What do we stand for? What do we not stand for? What do we believe in? What moves us? What are the type of clients we really want to work with? Why? I mean those are, those are important questions. But oftentimes when you talk to different departments of an agency, there's a lack of clarity and communication around that area. So that's number one. That, that is a huge, that that is such an important thing because it's so easily overlooked. Ah, not a big deal. Oh, I disagree. It's a huge deal. And the agencies that we see that are having phenomenal success and yes, money success, but beyond that, culture success. Right. There's a success of having deeper purpose and meaning. Right. By the way, I think this business should not only be profitable, it should be a heck of a lot of fun. Doesn't mean it's always fun. There's going to be hard days, hard weeks. But this is a huge part of, of having fun. And I will tell you one of the things that I see right away with teams when we begin to work with them. As you realize very quickly there has been a lack of communication between departments, there's been a lack of alignment and because of that there's tension, there's friction, there's uncertainty, there's confusion, there's chaos. So all this comes back to how can we get greater clarity on what we really stand for? That's number one. Number two, part time producers trying to win a full time game. You have too many part time producers in your agency. That, that's the bottom line. Maybe you have an age, you have an, your agency has three producers, maybe you have 30 producers, maybe you got 50 producers. I don't care the number of how many producers you have. But we can see very clearly that the producers, which by the way, the definition of a producer is one who produces, that is the role. Now maybe you give them a different name. Fine, that's fine. But at the end of the day their job is to produce that. They're playing 30, 40, 50% of the game and wondering why they're not getting to 80, 90, 100% effectiveness. Right? So part time producers playing a full time game. Number three, what's the third trap gap that's holding agencies back? This is a, this is something that's fundamental, fundamental and fundamentally missed is this. Profitable accounts subsidizing unprofitable accounts. Profitable accounts subsidizing unprofitable accounts. Now there's a lot to this, this is what I'm talking about. There's depth. But at the very basis of this is the fact that there is a predictable imbalance in the universe. I've talked about this before, the power of 80 20. And it's one thing to know 8020 or go, oh yeah, I agree with 8020 or I get 80 20. It's another thing to apply the principles in your agencies of 80 20. Right. This is the idea of knowing versus doing. But this, this gap is that we have profitable accounts which are typically around the top 20% of our clients and they're subsidizing the rest of the entire book of the business. Now, what does that ultimately do? Well, if, if we're. We, what it's doing is it's, it's trapping our team and our capacity for growth because it sucks up time and energy. It causes more problems in many cases because we're not as focused. It. It sucks up our employees. Right. Our valuable resource to our agency. And it's really costly. It's expensive. Right. And so this idea of, wait a second, we need to look at this. So I'm going to, I'm going to spend a few minutes and talk about that. And then here's number four. No defined and. Or named and effective sales process or sales playbook like agencies still are in essence quoting and they're floating. They don't have a design and defined way of how they're going to obtain new clients, of saying, this is the exact type of client we want. This is the process. We walk through it. This is why it's different. It's named, it's owned, it's replicated, it's understood, it's practiced. Right. And, and so those are the four. And I'm going to get to this because this will become all part of everything that, that we, we teach and preach. And I will tell you if you've heard some of these things before from me. Good. Because one of the things that I want to continue to do and we want to continue to do is help agencies go deeper in the right things, not get spread thin in all the facts right now. Doesn't mean there's not going to be other things in your agency you're doing. Of course there are. But the question is, where's your focus? Where your focus goes, your energy flows, where your focus goes. I am focused. I am focused on the fact that we've got to get better clarity and alignment in the agency. I'm going to be more focused, that we've got to get our producers more in the game. I'm Going to be focused that we have a predictable imbalance in our book of business and we need to leverage and maximize that at a much higher level. I am focused on the fact that we're, we don't have a true set offense, or at least it's not named or effective as it should be. And it certainly isn't practice. Right. So those are the four areas. It's just those four. So I want to give an overview of each of these four because now it's like, okay, well, you know, maybe I, you, you've struck a nerve, Brent, or maybe I haven't, I don't know, but you struck a nerve or there's something there. Well, now what do I do? Well, what does that mean? Well, let's talk about each of these four and just talk about some practical things that we see. Because the first phase I talk about lack of clarity is solved by alignment. It's alignment. And, and you know, we talked about this in a previous podcast. If you've got a car or truck going down the road and you got a wheel that's out of alignment, it's noisy, it causes friction, it causes frustration. And if you don't fix, causes more money and frustration later. Right. Eventually, you know, problem left unattended becomes a crisis or, well, that's the problem with alignment. And you know, I talk so much again about, you know, the purpose of leadership and what it's all about. Well, a big part of leadership is influence and getting your people to understand where is it that you really want to go, why do you want to go there? And what's going to be the key principles of how you're going to do it? That may sound like such an easy thing to say, but if I ask a hundred agencies, hey, tell me exactly where it is that you want to go. Why is that so important to you, to your team, to your clients, to your community? Like, give me an emotional response, why should I care? And what is the key plan to get there? Now what will typically happen is you'll get like a 40 minute response like, guess what? Your team doesn't get that they want to get clarity. And of course, this also goes into retaining, attracting, developing your people. Is that the more clarity we can get around this, the better, better ability we have, right. To get the alignment. Right. It all starts with that, a clear vision, a common mission. Otherwise you're going to get stuck. Right? So my question to you is this. You look at this first question, this first pillar is, how is your agency aligned today? Are you speaking the same language. Are you engaged in a unified process? Now, again, there might be different departments, but do we have the same goal with different roles? Right, same goal, different roles. Football team, quarterback, offensive lineman, running back, receiver. Different roles, same goal. Touchdown. Right. There's a great quote. I'm going to wrap this section up by a great quote by Brian Tracy. He said this just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther, the wheels are in perfect alignment. You perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals and values are in balance. I, I'm going to say that last part. When your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, your goals, your values are in balance. And here's a trap that I hear oftentimes with agency leaders. We ain't got time for that. We're too busy doing other stuff. We got too much chaos going on. Listen, part of the reason you may have chaos or confusion is because you haven't taken the time or energy to really understand clarity and how we're aligned together and begin to develop a roadmap of how that looks. All right, so alignment is number one. Number two, we've done podcasts on this. I'm going to, I'm going to be a little, give some brevity to this, but I do want to go back to the importance of focus. The second area. Then remember I said that the bottom line is we have part time producers trying to win a full time game. The second phase is about green zone and that's a term that we use at Sitkins, but green zone, getting your producers to be in the green, which is money making stuff. As much as possible, right? As much as possible as they can be. And you know, I mentioned that the story earlier about Peel and Holland, our friends at Peel and Holland, you know, 100% increase. Now, they did a number of things, but above all, in talking to, to the sales leader, he said, listen, we got focus in green zone activities and there's four green zone activities. So here's four pillars and then there's four points within this. Four things. Sales and sales conversations. Relationship management. I am proactively as a producer. Proactively, let me say that word, proactively. Creating a relationship management calendar with my clients so that I'm proactively touching base as much as we should because sometimes good intentions don't always get it done right. A continuation process. So I've got a continuation process and we go deep with our clients on this. But just understanding, think about this, think about this as a proactive renewal process. If you're not familiar with continuation. And here's a kicker, pipeline development, like so. This, this agency said with the Green Zone, it's four areas. Sales activities, relationship management, continuations and pipeline development. And every week. That's the focus. That's the focus. That's the focus. That's the focus. That's the focus to where it obviously becomes part of the cultures is more that we get the producers in the Green Zone, the better likely it is we're going to win. What does it mean to you? Well, you may not get 100%. That sounds pretty crazy, right? But what if you got 25%?