From Stuck to Soaring: Transformative Strategies for Insurance Agencies

On this episode of the Agent Leader Podcast, I have a fantastic conversation with Roger Sitkins. And I will tell you, both Roger and myself, we will challenge your thinking. In fact, we're gonna help you move your BS to a PS and yes, we'll talk about what that means on the podcast. So be ready to challenge and change your thinking. Enjoy this episode. Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. This is the podcast for insurance agency leaders to learn to grow, to develop, and ultimately aspire to become their best version possible. My name is Brent Kelly. I am your host. It's a pleasure to be with you on this episode. And I have a returning guest, a regular guest, a special guest. Always excited to have this guest on with me. Roger Sitkins, CEO and founder of the Sitkins Group, vast experience in working with agencies over many, many years, is joining us today. So, Roger, first and foremost, welcome to the podcast again.

Well, thank you, Brett, as always, it's great to be here. And as always, I've got a topic I'm really excited about, want to share with people.

I always tell Roger, I said, listen, if you can keep bringing great value, we'll have you back on. But no, excited to have Roger back on. And, you know, one of the things that we talk about all the time, and I'm sure we've talked about this podc I have, our guests have mentioned, is this idea of, of transformation. What does that mean? And, you know, Raj and I were talking before we officially started recording here and said, you know, transformation is a big word. It's a, almost a buzzword, but there is serious impact when you dive into it. So we're going to talk during this podcast about some of the keys or secrets to transformation. What does it look like? What does it mean? And I'm just going to start with the broad overall question, Roger. Maybe there are people out there listening and agency leaders going, what the heck? Really is transformation? I hear it. Why does it matter? Why should I care? So let's just start there.

Well, why you should care is that you want better results, that you're, you're worried about organic growth, you're worried about operating profit, you're certainly worried about valuation. But the more we, we work with great agencies, and you and I've had this discussion recently with several clients. It's not really just profit anymore. Profit. I mean, you're going to make profit anyway. You look at the Reagan GPS study, growth profit, profitability study, agencies are doing pretty good as far as profit. But the number one thing we hear from existing clients that we're working with and the people that are contacting us on a regular basis. We've got some people issues here that we're concerned about. So I think a huge part of this is saying what's most important to us? What are the things that will have the greatest impact on us? And to me, transformation. I always like to keep things basic, as you know, and hopefully the listeners know, it's pretty simple. We want to go from where we are to where we really want to be. And that's a transformational process. You don't just say you do it. You've got a lot of things you've got to work through. And a huge part of it is the beliefs, the mindset, which is something that drives all of us, how we think what was a great book as a man thinketh. So we look at our mindset, our beliefs, and then we have to tie behaviors and strategies to that. And then we're looking at our results. We're getting great results. Guess what? Our behaviors and strategies match up with our beliefs or our vision that we have. And if we're not getting great results, then we've got to go back and say, okay, have we really transformed from the old way of doing things to the new way of doing things? And that's a challenge for everybody. So to me, that's a starting point. Brent.

Yeah. And Roger, to add to that, in fact, we were just recently on a call together and we joke about this and someone says, know what's the, what's the end in mind or transformation? Oftentimes you'll hear something like, well, want to sell more insurance? And of course. Right, yeah, of course. Hey, we're with you. And you know, we, we jokingly but also truthfully say that, you know, net new revenue doesn't fix all your problems, just most of them. Haha. And it's true. But you think about it and there really is layers to this. And you talk about sell more insurance, sell more insurance. That's what should we do? But you break it down and go, okay, well how do we do that besides saying we're going to sell more insurance? Well, we got to have better processes, we got to have better systems, better strategies. Agreed. And then to take it even a deeper level, I'm like, well, who does that? And there's the underlying question. Well, I guess that would be the people. The people do that. Of course we leverage technologies and different things. But I love what you said there, Roger, because it's like there's the result, of course, but now we Got to get back in, like, well, what are the behaviors that even before that, how do we need to begin to transfer, transform the minds, so to speak? And I don't mean that in a cryptic way, but like, get people to think differently. And I'm going to say this, Roger, I don't know if you want to comment this or not, but. But change their BS to a bs. A BS which is beliefs and strategies. Right, Roger? Not the other one. Beliefs and strategies to a PS which is a paradigm shift that. I haven't thought about it that way. So I'm not really asking you a question other than just laying this out there. Do you agree? And how do you move from a B.S. to a P.S.

Well, I guess the first part is you better define what BS is and see if you're caught in that trap or not. Okay, but the paradigm shifts, to me, they're, they're fun to talk about because you get a lot of freedom in your, in your thought process. And I remember one of the times when you and I were talking about it before the end of 2024, and we started laughing because I, you know, one of my things is rope referral only production explosion. Can you do that? Yes, you can. Yes, you can. But things have to change. So all of the things where you think, well, we couldn't do that, the reality is, yes, you can. If you're willing to make the right changes and if you're willing to hold yourself accountable to the right behaviors and strategies, and if you're holding everybody on the team accountable to follow their rule, their role in the organization, it's crucial. All of this leads to. I think the overriding for me is on transformation is how do you take an organization that's getting good results because it's a great business, you're going to get good results even if you don't do much. But how do you go from good results to best version possible and then within that to have a bigger vision of saying what it's really all about is freedom. And we preach this all the time and we help our clients achieve this to make that transformation, that paradigm shift to number one, financial freedom. Well, again, agencies already have pretty good financial freedom. But as we talk about all the time, and we've proven they're leaving hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands, our larger agencies, millions of dollars of profit on the table because they're doing pretty good anyway. So getting to financial freedom, where you as a leader can do exactly what you want to do when you want to do it, how you want to do it as a producer who should be running their own business. Their ME Inc. Which you and I talk about a lot. What's your financial freedom? Are you getting there or are you stuck? The second part is time freedom. Time as we preach. And I know you've talked about on your podcast a lot. It's the only diminishing asset we have as human beings. We whether I'm a producer, whether I'm a high end account manager or service professional, whether I'm some sort of a leader in the C suite, I've got to understand where I spend my time and am I getting a respectable ROT return on time. And then finally, it's relationship freedom, doing business with people you want to do business with. A call that you and I had this morning that you mentioned already with a great agency, a new member that's just coming on. We talked about relationship freedom and sometimes you've got these accounts that drive everybody crazy. We kind of kidded around saying, well, how big are they? But the reality, I don't think there's any account worth keeping if it disrupts your organization. I know in my own agency, a long time ago, one of the joys I had, in fact, I get goosebumps even thinking about it now from a long time ago is when I fired my largest client. And back then in the stone ages, it was a $50,000 revenue account that was huge for me. Okay, but we fired him. He was too disruptive to the team. Too disruptive to the team. So to me it comes down to what are the things I'm doing now, which we talk about all the time. Your current business model is perfectly designed for you to achieve the results you're currently achieving. What am I doing now that's getting me my current results? And are those results really what I want? Or do I have to change my mindset and truly say it's time for a paradigm shift? There's a different way to view it, there's a different strategy to follow, different beliefs to follow, et cetera. So getting to those freedoms is crucial. It takes a big paradigm shift. A P.S.

So, Roger, as you were saying those things, I think I wrote a few things down. I don't know if these will hit home, but with the audience and maybe with you, but I think about these paradigm shifts and the best way to think about paradigm shifts for your agency is just think about paradigm shifts maybe you've already encountered.

Right.

Or experience at some point. And I remember, Roger, you know the story very well. One of our longtime Members, we're having a conversation. I can't remember which event it was. It might have been one of our networking events or a CEO event. I can't remember which one, honestly. But we're sitting there and we were overlooking the beautiful harbor and looking at the million dollar yacht sitting there, and I was talking to him and I live in the Midwest, flying, flying in, and you see these homes and you're like, wow. And I was just talking about different stuff and he's asking where I want to live and different things. And he just basically said to me, he's like, well, Brent, someone lives in those homes, someone owns those boats. Is there a reason that it couldn't be you? And, you know, I was just thinking about this. This is a paradigm shift of just the idea of, well, gosh, I guess, I guess it could be. And it's not that I haven't individually thought about that and trying to increase and grow and all those things. It's just, it's interesting even talking to agency leaders where, and maybe in a different capacity, it's, well, we're an X dollar agency and they can't even imagine or fathom that. Yeah, it's possible there are agencies that have done this. And the truth of it is, without demeaning other agency leaders, is that oftentimes what we find is like, they're not incredibly brilliant, although they're smart. Sometimes they are. They're not incredibly talented, though. Sometimes they are. They just actually believed that they could do it and they did it. I mean, literally, like, yeah, why not me? Why not us? And I don't know if you want to comment. I hear you see a nod in there, Roger, but thoughts?

Well, you reminded me I have my desk here in the office was actually my father's desk from a long time ago. Classic big old oak desk. And on the glass of the desk, he always had something underneath it. And the favorite thing I ever saw. And I have it on my desk now. The person who says it can't be done is liable to be interrupted by somebody doing it. It's the Henry Ford thing of if you think you can or if you think you can't, you're right. And anything can be accomplished within reason. But you've just got to change your mindset, change your beliefs. And we've talked about the story of Grande Gringo and the click that he got when he and I were talking and saying, well, you know, I see a multimillion dollar producer in you. And he l went click. You could hear it in his brain. We challenged people in our producer program, get some clicks going here. And he's multi, multi, multi million dollar producer now. But he changed his mindset and he started believing in it. And the bottom line is someone's going to do it. Someone owns that house, someone owns that boat, someone has that financial freedom. Someone works on referrals only. Why not you? You got to start believing in yourself.

Yeah, it's. And that'd be my message to the audience. Roger, you said that so well. I mean, I think it's one of the, to me, one of the most exciting things in working with newer agencies and newer producers, new, newer service team members when they come on and begin to work with us is yes, there's a long term outcome and those things are cool. And Roger, you have tons of those stories of like, you know, and it is, it's amazing. It's the best part of being a coach and working with agencies. But the initial part where they, you can see their, their heads kind of shift or spin and they go, I've never thought about it that way before. It's never really occurred to me that that's possible and that is true. The first step, I know it sounds mundane or maybe even obvious, but I was thinking Roger too, to some other examples. I know we're going to get into some of the behavioral secrets, so to speak, on some of these things of transformation, but you know, relationship freedom. And you were talking about that like I don't have to work on every account, I don't have to quote on every account. You know, based on a conversation recently with another agency. It's like we can write and focus on larger accounts. We're capable of that. And you know, obviously there's, there's strategies and behaviors to do it, but the first part is, oh my gosh, we can do this. So I think it's, it's, it's super impactful in what you said there.

And it's in the producer program. We talk about the power of 80, 20 and leveraging that which is so important. Most people miss it, but it's so important. And we say, look, the top 5% of your customers that are 50% of your revenue, most producers and most agencies, certainly not all, but most of them, look at them go, I got lucky on a couple of big ones. And then they go back and they pursue mid sized to small accounts to keep busy versus saying, wait a minute, if you wrote one of those, you can write another one and you can write another one and you can write another one. We always talk about this. You're going to replicate something. What do you want to replicate? Do a paradigm shift. I'm going to replicate my best customers. It's a strategy. Just people see it and they go, yeah, but that's not me. Well, you're right. That's not you until you say, that can be me. And how do I have to think differently? How do I have to arrange my team differently, Strategically, behaviorally, What do I need to do differently? And then a huge part, a huge part of it is, who am I going to tell this to? Who's going to keep me accountable? Because, you know, left to our own accord, most of us will do stupid stuff. I'll be the first to raise my hand, so.

Well, I, I just. One more thought when I get into some of these things, but it, it just reminds me, I can't, I can't overstate this, but we talk a lot about value proposition, and it is important we talk about that. But it hit me as you said that, Raj, like the most important value proposition, at least the first value proposition, is the value place on yourself. And it is, again, sounds cliche and simple, but there's that click of oh, my gosh. And however they want to say it's something, the effect of, oh, my gosh, I really am worth it. And one of my favorite quotes, you know, I, I'm worth to do this. My agency's worth to do this. My people are worth to do this. Like it, it makes sense. And my favorite quote, one of my favorite quotes is that if you don't raise or if you don't value yourself, rest assured, the world's not going to raise the price if you don't place a high value on yourself. And. Right, so that does start with then. So now that we've set all that up and I'm hoping, you know, listeners are like, oh, my gosh. And my challenge to you as a listener is be really honest with yourself. Maybe this isn't something you're going to just openly start sharing with people right away. But take in consideration of yourself, of what are your limiting beliefs? Because we all have them. I don't care who you are, whatever level we have them. And go, what. What areas is my greatest, you know, my greatest barrier to success is my own brain. And, and why do I believe that? And what needs to change in that?

Right?

What is the paradigm shift? So, Roger, I really appreciate you setting that up. All right, in, in a recent article you wrote, we talked about transformation. You talked about some secrets and things. And so I'm going to leave this wide open because you have so many different things. And I want to, want to have open discussion here and get into this. But what are some of these things, right, that agencies really can and should be doing to unlock some of these transformational opportunities?

These secrets are secrets. If you don't execute them, reality is they're not secret. They're just like, well, yes, someday I'll get to them and I'll do this and do that. Some of these things. A lot of our listeners have already heard your listeners quote our listeners, but they've heard them. It reminds me of the time, Brent, that you were at a meeting and an agency came in. I can't remember who it was, one of the carriers, I believe, but this gentleman had built an agency a little over 10 million of revenue in a relatively short time and it was organic growth. And he showed up and he said, I've got my playbook right here. I'll give it a copy of it to anybody in the room. But guess what? You won't execute it. So the key to the secrets is knowing them, buying into them, and then executing them. What a surprise. Executing them. So one of the ones that has hit home more with anybody in the last four or five years than anything I've talked about in decades. It's about as simple and basic as you get. It's the concept of do your job, know your job. It's the great football coach Nick Saban where he said, do your job, just do your job. Well, that's where the producer has to know their role, the service professional has to know their role. And working together, we create these high performance teams of sales and service. The marriage of it, which I've probably not said, I think if I count corrected, that was the 10,000th time I've said that in my career, maybe a hundred thousand. But getting them to work together. So there's an absolute, as we talk about, there's an art of this high performance team is the appreciation, respect and trust of the different roles we play and getting to the point where we literally identify zones. And this is the really sticky thing, and I know we've talked about it at least five or six times that I've been on the podcast, but getting to the point where you say, as a producer, my job, doing my job consists of only four things. If you've listened to this before, I hope you could rattle them off. But the number one producer's job is to produce. So sales number two, very proactively managing relationships. And there are five types of relationships we talk about. Number three, knowing the leverage of 80, 20 and making sure that we don't renew policies. We continue relationships. We talk about relationships already and then finally saying, okay, I want to be a rope producer. Referral only. Production explosion. So that's earning and generating referrals. And it's not random referrals, it's not reactive where someone calls you. It's where you're running the process that our producers that go through our training and our agencies in the network, when the producers follow it, again, when it works 80% of the time, minimum. We also find if you don't follow it, it doesn't work. Or if you say you get a referral for me versus a very specific process. So we can get the producers in that green zone 80% of the time right now, if producers were honest with themselves, they're, they've not transformed, they're actually in the red zone 80% of the time getting caught in a service trap or hiding behind activities. And when they start transforming, maybe they go from 20 to 40, then maybe they go from 40 to 60, maybe two or three months from now, four, five, six months from now, they're getting close to 80% of their time in the green zone. But the key is making sure that you're aware of it. And when you're reviewing getting ready for the week, we talk about the Sunday evening review. Do it Saturday if you want to, I don't care when, just don't wait till Monday to do it because it's too late. But get to the point where you debrief last week, pre brief this week, and be honest with yourself. What percent of the time was I in the green zone? What was my return on time? Or was I doing things that I didn't earn money for? As a matter of fact, I'm doing things that I've already paid the agency to do because they get most of the commission anyway. So getting to the point where I'm in the green zone. And then for the service professionals, getting them transformed from constantly being interrupted by producers, little things like, hey, do you need anything from me? Or you know, texting, hey, how you doing? Or interrupting producers with something that's not an emergency in flight, as we call it, day to day service goes to the service professional and many of them elevate to account executives that and do more. But service is everything in between the renewal dates other than that truly emergency. And I know we've talked about this before, the service professionals always share with us after they go through the account manager program and they're create, they've really transformed from sales and service fighting to sales and service marriage married towards the whole concept of retaining and obtaining ideal clients. That's what we do. So once they've made that transformation, one thing we always hear from the account managers, please remind our producers to number one, don't interrupt me and number two, don't interrupt me with an emergency that's not an emergency. In other words, respect their time. So define an emergency and give the account manager. We talked about this in the last podcast. Give the account manager the right to say to the producer, I'm sorry, that's not what we agreed to be an emergency. I'll get it done by the end of the day today or first thing tomorrow. But I can't stop what I'm working on right now because it's more important. So the first thing is transformation of sales and service fighting versus knowing their roles, playing, playing in their roles at a very high level and really holding each other accountable. Saying, were you in the greens? What percent of the time were you in the green zone? How did we do in keeping you in the blue zone? If I interrupted you for non emergencies, call me out please because this is how we transform from really a. Well we, we talk about sales and service capacity and what we're really dealing with is underutilized capacity because the producers books of business are not big enough because they're not spending enough time selling, they're not, they're not, their full time job's not green zone and the service people can't handle enough items. They're capacity, they're underutilized in their capacity because they're handling everything more than once. So when we say make a huge transformation or a paradigm shift to the old model versus the new model. Because so much of this, Brent, it always comes back to what is your agency's way of doing business. In other words, what's your business model? And if we're not holding ourselves accountable to a paradigm shift, saying that was the old way, this is the new way. We've kidded around saying maybe we should start running some marketing for what we do. And it's the before and after model, you know. Yeah. It's so crucial to get that going and then it's wow, if we can get the producers in the green zone 80% of the time, not only are we increasing their capacity now, but they're growing their books dramatically.

Yeah.

Study we did right at year end our private clients have a 49% higher organic growth rate than the agencies reported in the GPS study by Reagan at the end of the year. Pretty proud of that big part of it. They're full time in the right job. Yeah. So starting point.

No, that's, it's great. And I want to hear more. I, I, as you're saying this, my brain thinks in stories and pictures. I know for me, I don't know if some of the listeners this way. When I, when I hear what you just said, and it may be a, a different, even if it's kind of a silly perspective, I'm like, oh, my gosh, is that what we're doing? And you know, you talk so much about, you know, the idea, the role of a, of a producer is much like an airline pilot, right? You take the plane off, you land the plane, you deal with emergencies and flight. And it just got me thinking. I know we joke about this, but just think about this, all right? Agency leaders that are listening to me right now, like, imagine when you fly, of course, you know, Roger and I do this quite a bit, right? But you get there and like, imagine like, I'm getting there and I see the pilot, like, trying to, to check me in and deal with some of the situations before the flight begins, right? And then, and then right before the flight, the pilots kind of rush in and they're disheveled and they're disjointed because they were doing something else like, oh, yeah, I got to take this plane off. And then they get the plane off. It's a little shaky. It gets in the air, and pretty soon you see him kind of bust out the door and they're coming in and, you know, you got the attendants sitting there trying to do stuff, and they kind of bump them out of the way and like, hey, I got this.

Let me.

You need a cookie? I got it for you. Hold on. They're. They're doing that. Of course, they're probably messing things up and bumping into people because they're not very good at it. And of course they're causing interruptions and maybe causing emergencies. Then they come back, try to land the plane. At that point, they're just trying to survive. And I know that's a ridiculous analogy, but if you think about what happens day to day in insurance agencies, it's not that far off. Yeah, Roger, agree or disagree?

Actually flashback to a flight my wife and I were on from a small island in the Bahamas back to the mainland of Florida. And it actually looked just like that. I was really I'm just thinking I better say a prayer of thanks again to God that we made it on.

Sure.

Yeah. I mean, absolutely. It's again, do your job well, you better know your job and then you better hold yourself accountable to it. So that, that's a big part of transformation. And it's, it's sounds pretty simple. It's just not easy to do because it takes, as we always talk about that pigheaded discipline to do what you said you're going to do and be open enough to ask people to hold you accountable. So when, when this, when sales and service has their weekly meeting, the high performance team meeting of the producer and their service professionals. Okay. And they have the agenda and they're really something on there. Should. The producer should be open enough to say, how did we do on interruptions last week? Did I bother you? Did I drive you crazy? Did I give you incomplete stuff? And be open with each other, have that discussion. So it's crucial.

Yeah. I just wanted to, to, to state something. I know this is a generalistic statement, but there is a lot of truth to it. And you see this with some of the studies of agencies as you go up. And I know there are differences. Agencies are different growth patterns. Right. And where they're at. But you know, you start thinking about the higher the agency climbs and obviously some of that's revenue agencies. What we find and see is the less amount of things that people actually do. Now that doesn't mean that they're not, you know, intense in what they're doing. What I mean by they're not doing 57 different things. And, and there is a growth pattern to that. And you see this, it's like, well, I only do these few things, but I do them exceptionally well. So it, they may do less things overall, but the things they do, they do it way, way better. And guess what? It gives them a huge competitive advantage in the marketplace. And there's this fear of letting go. I've got to do all this stuff and, and I don't know the exact stat. I have to pull it up. I should know it. But I know again, for this isn't shocking. Agencies that are 1.25 million and smaller, and again, everybody's in different places, they do a ton of sales and service and they get stuck there. And you go, why is that? Well, because I can't ever get on my own way. And, and one of my favorite phrases, and it's true. And this is hard. You got to give up to go up.

Yeah.

Got to unload some of that. So. All right, my rant's over. Roger.

Well, but I mean, the reality is that, you know, as individuals, way back when in our lineage, we, we were rugged individualists. You had to do everything. That's how you survived. Yeah, and it's the area of specialization. It's not just specializing what your job is, but also as a producer. Specialists always make more money than general practitioners in any profession out there. So the more you can specialize, the better you are. You don't try to write every account. Now, in some smaller markets, you might have three, four or five specialties, I don't know. But just don't be a general practitioner. So.

Hey there, agent leader Brent Kelly here want to take just a few seconds to remind you that now is the time to create your true, best version possible agency. If you go to sitkins.com bookacall sitkins.com bookacall we'll get to know more about your agency, conduct an agency assessment and, and provide your agency with a customized plan to help you avoid some of the pitfalls, frustrations, challenges and roadblocks to get your agency to true ultimate freedom and become its best version possible. It all starts by going to sitkins.com bookacall Agree.

Next area of transformation. And this is one when you know you have to have a lot of things in place like you're saying, but this is one that just drives me crazy. It's the concept of rather than winging it because you can get away with winging it occasionally. And I never forget the time at one of our in person events. Well, well, well, before COVID a gentleman who was probably just short of 60 years old, we got talking more about all this and we got into the very specific sales process. And he raised his hand, he said, coach, I just realized something. I realized I've been winging it all these years. Man, I could have really been good. Now, he was already right at a million of commission income. But winging it, you can't replicate it and you want to replicate your success. So a huge part of this is figuring out what is the unique selling proposition, the repeatable unique selling proposition an agency has and getting to the point where this is our set offense. You know, when you watch football, they have a set offense and they have a set defense. Basketball is the same thing. A lot of sports have that and you get it in place. But the one that drives me the crazy the most is a lack of relentless preparation. And when you can transform from an agency or an individual producer, that's winging it and doing okay versus saying no. Here's our three step or four step process we follow and it's a process based upon total differentiation. And as you always say, I love this saying from you. It's like you can't have a differentiated selling system if you don't know how you're different. And when producers first start with us, it's amazing how they just, they don't know their points of differentiation. Something that happened just this, this weekend. We'll do it again next week. A producer group that's finishing next week with us and we asked them to, first of all, we helped them draft, create a 30 second commercial. What do you do when we sell insurance? No, they really have a within 30 seconds they can tell their message. We had the highest percent of producers actually doing it in this last group from any group we've had and there were some. In fact, it's going to be hard to pick a winner for this coming week, but they were really good. Well, I just challenge everybody listening. If you go up to any of your producers or if you're a producer, do it yourself. If you got ambushed, what would you say? Well, if you haven't relentlessly prepared, you're going to stumble and bumble. To me, from a pure sales leadership perspective and by the way, producers, you're probably, you should be the best sales leader you have of your own ME company. Are you rehearsing every presentation before you go out? Are you relentlessly prepared? Have you practiced what you'll say on the phone? How many times have you made a phone call to a future ideal client and they pick up the phone, you go, oh crap, I didn't think they'd answer. Or you leave a voicemail and you say, man, I hope I've got an option to delete that and do it better. It's a lack of preparation. It's a lack of not even knowing the first three questions you'll ask somebody based upon the research you've done ahead of time. Using AI to develop questions to ask, it's such a leg up you have as a producer today if you will use it. So one of the mindsets we have talking about mindset, this is transformational, is every opportunity deserves my very best. Every opportunity deserves my very best. Something I started at the turn of the year in my holiday, my Christmas vacation time, is asking myself a question as part of my Sunday review and it's on every page in my planner. Is that the best you can do? Is that the best you can do? Man, I look at that and it just gets me. And then it's followed up. Was that your best version possible? And then another one that's really hit home with me. Is your why bigger than your excuses? Well, I know I should practice, but. Well, if your why was big enough, in other words, why you needed to make this sale or wanted to make it, the importance it would have, how it would transform your family, you know, is your why bigger than your excuses? So when I look at this and I say every opportunity deserves my very best, I'm never going to lose to somebody more prepared than I was. I'm going to lose sales. I hope not too many. I certainly would have a 80% closing ratio. And if I'm not there now, I got to look at it. But I would never lose because somebody was more prepared, did a better job of finding out the real issues on that account, finding out the hot buttons, find out what it would take for them to fire their current agent. And when I can do those things, it's amazing the difference. And, you know, worst case scenario, if I were a sales manager of any agency listening in, and you probably go right away, God, I hope not. But if I were, pretty simple, you're going out on any A and B potential account. You're going to rehearse in front of me. You're going to rehearse in front of me at least once, if not more. And secondly, before that's on the presentation part, when you're going on your first call, you're going to send me an email or a voicemail with the first three questions you've developed to ask them about their business. And one of them can't be, so tell me what you do here. You've got to show them how much research you've done. Well, that whole preaching I just did there, that's a huge transformation. We've gone from being underprepared and winging it and getting away with it to being relentlessly prepared. So we never lose an opportunity and we want everybody after they've had a first conversation with us to say, wow, wow, these guys are really good. And I love the thing. Our friend Joe Calloway that you had on the podcast recently says in his book a category of one where he says, it's really cool when your customers say things about you. Like, man, those guys always get it right. Yeah, well, they've been prepared to get it right. Transformational. Brent.

Yeah. All right. I have a mini breakthrough. As you were saying, I love when you share stuff because then My brain kind of goes in overdrive. I don't know. This is one of those. If this comes out wrong, well, we're on a podcast, so here we go. But all the things you talked about, you know, my passion around skill development and the number one skill that is underutilized is skill of communication. And I think one of the reasons why is I don't think most people think of it as a skill. I don't think most people think communication skill. I think people, that communication is just something you do and that is not true. It is something you do, but is absolutely a skill. And what hit me, Roger, I don't know if this is true or not. So you could challenge me here if it's not. But so often I would ask people, do you think insurance is a commodity? And they would say, well, if you, if you talk to insurance people, they'll say, well, no. I mean, they're. No. Well, why is it treated as a commodity? Well, I think the reason why insurance is most treated as a commodity is that we also think that communication is a commodity. Now let me say that again. We take. It's just. It's a commodity. Everybody communicates, everybody talks. Everything you shared there, Roger, you know, preparation, the practice, asking the questions, the listening portion of it, writing emails, I mean, all of that is communication. And I think there is a great barrier between high level communication and what everybody else does. And what hit me is it's done every day. It's taken for granted. Can you do okay? If you're an okay communicator? Yeah, you can. So I don't know, does that hit home at all?

It's home dramatically. It's transformational versus saying, well, I'll just do everything with a text message or I'll just send emails. Pick up the phone, pump. We talk about pick up the phone. It's a lost start saying thank you handwritten thank you notes. It's a lost art.

Yeah.

Yes, it is. So why don't you be the one that sends one? I'm always amazed when. And I'm not as good at it as I should be. I'm first to admit it, but I'm pretty good at writing handwritten thank you notes. It's always amazing when people go, man, thanks for the note. Yeah. Why?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Because it's a lost art. And I know it's easy for me to say because I'm the old guy, but don't send a text message saying thank you. Don't send an email saying thank you if it Deserves a big thank you because it was a big deal. Then give it a big thank you. So that's number one. And then within communication, the biggest part of this, it's transformational. The ability to ask great questions, not closed end questions. Is there anything else you want us to fix? Your insurance? No. We'll call it no. And it's like what's most important to you? Price. Okay, we'll give you price versus asking questions and going deeper and deeper and deeper. It's a skill that should be practiced at every single sales meeting. I'm gonna say it again, and I'm assuming you're having sales meetings. Every single sales meeting should have low risk practice. And it should be the first thing on the agenda, not the last. We talk about that all the time and get people just asking each other questions. Okay. And you can pretend they're on a phone call. You could pretend they met them at a networking event. Talk to them. Hey, tell me more about your business.

So Rogers to chime in. And I know I've talked about this and you've talked about this because I mean, we, it just, I. You talk about transfer. I mean that's what it is. Like it's. Oh, well, yeah, but it's the execution of doing this. But I know for this week you brought up the 30 sec commercials and we've got more coming in. And we did, we did receive many, which is great. Was funny on the last session that we did live, I asked every single person asking two questions, right? Number one, in practicing and delivering your 30 second commercial, did you die? And 100% of people lived. So that was the first step. Number two is I asked in this and submitting this, which knowing it's not the best it's ever going to be, did you get better? And every one of them says emphatically yes. Now here's a third question I said I was going to do too is when's the last time you practiced this? And the answer is usually never. Now think about that. We have people in the business for 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years. It doesn't mean they haven't done different stuff. Have you ever practiced this actual skill? No, I've just kind of always done it. Oh. And the difference and where transformation comes is not just doing the thing, but being intentional on how you're doing the thing. And there's a big difference.

Well, I flashback to some of the people that are in our sales mastery. One in particular who's been in the business a long time and has got almost a $5 million commission book now. And he practices more than rookies practice. And he doesn't need to, but he knows what he's going to say when he goes in there. And even if it's a thing he said a thousand times, he practices.

Yeah.

And he has a core. This is transformational, if you will, as far as getting ready, he has a core set of questions that he will ask, and he's probably got 12 or 15 of them. And then he goes through them and says, okay, which ones. Which ones will be appropriate for this prospect? I'm dealing with this future ideal client. But one that he always asks is, how's your agent helping you move your business forward? Because you know what I'm talking about, you know, and he said that. And now at least half the people in Sales Mastery in that class were using that same thing.

What do you mean?

Well, how they improved your business. What do you mean? Well, how have they helped you with this? And how have you helped with safety issues, whatever it may be? And getting to the point where you have transformed from somebody kind of checking a box and asking questions and checking another box, you're truly there, having a conversation. And we always talk about this, that your best presentation is a conversation from your heart. Your best conversations are always well planned out. You wouldn't stand up and give a speech if you were not prepared. In the, you know, 5 trillion speeches I've given around the country, I. I know that in the beginning because I'm pretty good on my feet. I probably winged it more than I should have. Okay. But I learned pretty quickly that I better not. I better get a lot better and I better rehearse and I better be standing in the mirror. Standing. Looking in the mirror in the hotel room the night before and the next morning. Because, number one, I want to do really well because I owe it to our team. And then, number two, I owe it to the sponsor to have an impact. Well, I would challenge you as a producer and agency leader. What do you owe other people? Do you in your mind say, I've got to transform from being good on my feet because I'm good to my best version possible through relentless preparation and knowing how I can. How can I craft my message so that it's a really cool conversation? Crucial.

Real quick. I know you said this before. I want to. And I've got some of my final transformation thoughts, and I want to give your final transformation thoughts. But you said something to me before. Like if you went up there and again, example. We speak, we're on our feet a lot and I feel the same way. I could get on my feet and probably go, that's pretty good. But you said something to me is like, they may not know, but I know. And that bothers me.

Yeah.

Because that's, I think part of the transformation starts within that we know, we know as humans when we've done the things that really have earned the right for some of these things and when we've just floated through so, you know, not so much a question, but thoughts around that mindset.

Well, I mean, and this, this is going to sound self serving or egotistical or something, but I'll ask you a question. Okay. What happens after every event? We. What happens before every event? What happens after every event?

We pre brief and practice every event and we debrief and refine after every event.

Yeah, yeah, we're going to do that after this. We've already talked about what we wanted to talk about, but after this we're going to critique each other. Why? Because we, our goal is to be the best version possible of ourselves and our company. That's what we owe our clients and our families and our team. So I hope that's a transformational thought for a lot of people.

Yeah, it is. So here, here's my recap and then Roger, yours on this. Because there's so many avenues we can go in transformation, but for me it's like to go back like, what are, what are some components? I don't want to say these are all the components or the only components, but to me, as simple as the sounds is first of all, do you believe that you can actually do the thing or want to do the thing? Like, is it possible? That's where it starts. So first of all, it's like first, is it worthy? Are you worthy of it? You have to believe that if you don't, you're doesn't matter what we say or do or you think you're not.

Going to do it.

Secondly is not talking about the thing but doing the thing. It's like you go back to set offense and I joke about this like, hey, here's the, here's the, the sheet we've got to talk about today. And for the entire week of football practice you never run a rep. But gosh darn it, we talked about stuff. Yeah, this is a big opponent. They're going to be good. Yeah, they are going to be good. We're going to have to play well. Yes, we are going to have to play well. You got it, coach. Let's go. Are you ready? I'm ready. Of course, that's ridiculous. But like, running deliberate reps and then the part you just hit on, then you run the reps and you go out and you play the game. You do the thing and then you debrief, you think about, you evaluate what happened. You go, what's the next level? What did we miss? And then you take the next step and guess what? Then you rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat. And like so many of our agencies and producers, this is, this is the boring part, is that they may look at a week and go, I don't know. And then all of a sudden it's one month, three months, six months. And we hear this with agencies all the time.

Wow.

I didn't realize how far we've come. It's a consistent process. So those are my thoughts on transformation, Roger. And thanks for setting it up. All of a sudden, you got me thinking a little differently on that. I had some transformation moments in this conversation.

Good. Well, you caused me another flashback here. College football Sunday, we had Sunday morning practice after the game to work out the kinks. Sunday evening, we had a team meeting. Then you went to your position meetings. And here's the one thing I hated hearing. Sitkins, right? And you could hear the old fashioned, you know, projectors back then go, click, click, click, click, Run. Let's run that back. What the hell happened? Well, coach, and you never wanted to hear that. What you wanted to hear was, hey, you know, because we got. You talk about accountability. We got graded on every single play, one to five. And then it was posted on the board. What everybody's, all the players. Here's what you did in that game. Yeah, that's, that was fun. But, and nowadays it's even more, I mean, they, they film every single practice.

They've.

I went to a game at Auburn and they had, I noticed in the game book they had 15 people in their video crew.

It, I say it is.

That must be important.

It's amazing. And again, all due respect, there's a lot of money, all right, in college football, sports. We get that and all that, and it is a business, but we're talking about college sports versus your career, your profession and industry. Like you should at least treat it equal. And I, I, you know, you said that, Roger. It's funny because I got, I did a speaking event last year on a college campus and where I was able to, you know, we had dinner at the stadium and all that. They took us to the practice facility and it just reminded me they had. I mean, you go out and you look at all this stuff, and I've seen this before, but, like, they've got all these. I don't know what you can call them. They're like almost like boom trucks. And they got this. The scaffolding, or not scaffold. It's better than that. But I mean, all these places of videos.

Yeah.

Yes. And. And then they had. Where the. Where their indoor facility was, which looked over the outdoor. They even said to us, like, right there, is that the head coach? And that window looks out over the field here, and over here, it looks over the. The weight room. He's always watching. And I was like, oh, wow. Like, you better be on it. I'm like, it. It's. It's pretty powerful. So, Roger, some final transformational words from you. No pressure.

Well, this is. This is a transformation that ties into something I've already talked about. And the best producers we're working with now have transformed from, yeah, you know, we're kind of doing good and winging it, to having the set offense, to being relentlessly prepared. But then the mindset they have, and I love this one, it's called Every. Every client from a referral, and then based upon the client experience they receive, within 18 months, every new client gives us a referral. But they're targeted referrals. So how do you transform to that? Well, you've got to do the stuff we've talked about, but every. Every again says, every new client we write comes from a referral. And then because the client gets such a great experience, which we have planned out ahead of time, they give us a referral. Wow. Your pipelines are overflowing with more opportunities than time. It sounds simple. It is. And as always, it's just not easy. You've got to have the process in place. You've got to practice it until you can do it without any. But you could be ambushed by your coach and say, ask me for a referral, and you could do it. And why wouldn't you want to do that? Because we all know referrals are 80% plus closing ratio when they're targeted, not random. Why would you do anything less than that? Why wouldn't you just say, you know what? We're going to make a ton of money. One more transformation, Brent. I've been challenging the agency principals we're working with, and these are the ones that are 15, 20, 30 million of revenue. And I asked a question. I said, when you execute what we've talked about here, the next $2 million of revenue you bring in, could we transform that to a 50% profit? What would your profit be? Oh, it wouldn't be 50. It would be, let's say they're at 30 now. It would be 30. So, no, it'd be 50. Why is that? I said, because you won't add another person. And they all go, oh. I said your only expense, truly new expense, would be producer compensation, maybe, and hopefully some bonus to a service professional, but you'd make 50% on it. You. We, we talk so much about the concept that it's people, people, people, but the transformation is we probably have enough people when we will execute the processes properly and when we start thinking differently. That's mine.

Yeah, I, I love it, Roger. And, you know, we could go much deeper, but we'll. We'll leave it at that. I'll just, you know, my final thing is just this whole thing of, like, transformation starts. And then, of course, there's processes of challenging your thinking. And I can think of so many times, and you've said it, and I say it as coaches, I think it just becomes natural. Someone says something and they just take it for what it is. You know, I challenge this for a second, and you do, and they go, oh. And, you know, some of the best people that challenge your thinking. And Roger, you'll probably get a kick out of this because I talk about it. Little kids, little kids, you know, why they don't, at this point, they don't have a. A set paradigm on things because they're still trying to figure out the whole world. So as you, as a parent, for example, say things and they go, well, why is that? You know, a lot of times the natural response is, well, just because. And if you actually stop and go, why? Why is that? You start to go, well, maybe I've been thinking about that wrong. So I just want to challenge you as agency leaders where maybe have you been thinking about it? And I want to say wrong, but thinking about it at too small of a level. You've been maybe playing too small for too long. And I'm not even just talking about revenue. I'm talking about what Roger said earlier about in terms of, yes, financially, but in the relationships and in your time, so stop playing small. And I will just say this for any agencies that are looking to take that next level. And we are very intentional and we are very selective on who we work with. It's quite frankly, the stuff that we talk about, Roger, and how we implement and help agencies execute if you're not a high level thinker, if you don't want that next level, it's probably not going to work very well. But for those agencies that go, I know there's another level and we've talked about this in different podcasts. We, we don't work with crappy agencies. Not to pick on crappy agencies. I don't know, I'm not trying to, you know, we work with really good agencies, sometimes great agencies that are like there's a whole nother spectrum that we want to take advantage of and we've got to be challenged in how we think about things. Please reach out to us. We'd love to have some initial conversations with you about that, learn more about what you're looking for for to see if there's a fit there. So if you go to sitkins.com podcast we'll put all of our links and tools and resources. So sitkins.com podcast again, anything we have on there and of course you can reach out to us at any time to initiate that conversation. So Roger, any final thing, final, final, final thing before we say goodbye, I.

Would say pick three of these transformations we've talked about and boil it down to one and make it happen.

There you go. Thanks Roger. Appreciate it always for your time. I know you got lots of things on your plate. We thank you for sharing your wisdom with our audience. So to you, the Agency Leader, wish you all the best your success. Thanks for listening. The Agent Leader Podcast is brought to you by the fine folks of the Rough Notes company. They're publishers of the insurance industry's leading magazine and technical insurance content. Rough Notes Magazine profile successful agencies plus keen insights from respected experts on a host of must know topics. Rough Notes Advantage plus provides the tools to help your agency grow, providing authoritative information on complex coverage issues. Visit them and learn more@roughnotes.com Wait, you're still here? Hey Agent Leader podcast listeners. Brent Kelly again I want to first of all thank you for listening to the Agent Leader podcast and your continued, continued support. If you would like to have more content come your way, please help us by sharing the podcast subscribing to the podcast, telling people about the podcast. And if you as an Agent leader are truly ready to take that next step in your agency, you're committed and want to be that best version possible. Agency don't wait. Go to sitkins.com bookacall sitkins.com bookacall we want to provide the blueprint for your agency to help you create more impact with less effort and it all starts by going to siskens.com bookacall all right. Now you can actually go. Thanks.