Holiday Wish List for Agencies

Foreign welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. The podcast to help you, the independent insurance agency leader, gain clarity, build consistency and to make a commitment to become your best version possible. And this is going to be the last recorded podcast of 2022. And I want to first of all, thank you, the agents Agent Leader podcast listeners. We've had a great growth in subscribers and comments and feedback and just want to say appreciate, appreciate you being a listener. You know, it's a mission, it's a passion of mine and the Sitkins Group to continue to add value to agency leaders. And so I just want to thank you for that. Certainly, depending on when you're listening to this, wish you a Merry Christmas, a happy New Year, happy Holidays, and just again as a thank you for being a listener. And by the way, side note here, if, if you have enjoyed the podcast and you haven't given a rating or you haven't shared it with another agency leader, well, that would be my ask for a Christmas present for me for, for this year. So again, thanks again for being a listener. Also want to mention that as we go into 2023 and we're going to have some conversation today, you may have heard a laugh there from Roger Sitkins, who's going to be joining me on today's podcast. Excited to share some really important thoughts for 2023 and beyond with Roger Sitkins. But we're looking at the Sitkins Group for committed agency leaders, committed agencies that are truly looking for a strategic growth partner. We're getting very selective on who we want, who we work with and to go very deep with agency. So if you're interested in learning more about what that means, if it even be a fit for you as an agency, go to sitkins.com experience sitkins.com experience to learn more about on what that means for you as an agency leader. I mentioned Roger Sitkins. I don't want to put him on hold any longer. I've got a very special guest who's been on many podcasts with me in 2022, but I think it's been a while, Roger, I believe since you've been on with me. So Roger, welcome back to the Agent Leader podcast.

Well, thanks, Brent. I'm really excited about the topic today because it goes along almost like it's a Christmas list. If you were a kid, but now you're a grown up and what would you really want? So that's what we're going to be talking about.

Yeah, we, we were having some fun with this. There's going to be some Great substance and strategies we're going to get into. But yeah, we were thinking about, you know, what do we really want this podcast to be about for you, the listener? And we're thinking, you know, you think about Christmas, you think about New Year's, and, you know, all the things that I want to do, we should do or things that I want.

And we want to.

To take a bunch of those things that we hear from agencies that we would desire as an agency to say, just imagine. Just imagine if you had that. And, you know, this really stems back. And I've mentioned this in the podcast before, but it's been a few years ago, Roger. Now, when I asked you the question, you know, what would the best version possible of an agency look like? And there was a. As you did your research, when I asked that question, I'll let you. You share this. There was a. You stumbled upon someone via the Internet that asked this question to you or at least got you to think about. Just imagine. So do you want to share that again with the audience?

Yeah, when you asked the question, it got me pontific, if you will. I went, well, they would do this, they would do this, they would do this. And it's all the core strategies we talk about. And when agencies bring that all together, it's amazing what happens. But for some reason, that question about best version possible kept ringing in my head and I couldn't go to sleep. And I was kind of thinking I was going to call your room and wake you up so that you knew that you had me up. But it was literally right exactly at 3:00am Because I rolled over, grabbed my cell phone, 3:00am I said, okay, I can't sleep. So I got up and googled best version possible. And hopefully most of your listeners here have heard this before, but I came across these lyrics from a Canadian songwriter, Chris Assad. He says, close your eyes and imagine the best version possible of you. That's who you really are. And you have to eliminate anything that stands in your way. So that just became so powerful. It eventually became the name of our book. It's what we do with agencies. Now we're saying, hey, what's the best version possible? And how do we work towards that? So that's really how it all started.

Yeah. And thanks again. I know for. I don't assume that everyone's listening this podcast. We've shared that a little bit before, but it is really important. And I think, you know, what you hit on, Roger, that I want to get into today. And we're going to we're going to go deeper on some of these areas is that you said it's self limiting beliefs. You know, oftentimes agents say, you know, wouldn't it be neat if, wouldn't it be great if. And as I've shared before and we share in our trainings with our member groups is the fact there's this evil Dr. Yabba that comes out and it's like well that would be great. Yeah, yeah but, but you don't understand. Yeah, but I'm so busy. Yeah, but it's, you know, I'm too old, I'm too young. You don't understand. We're in a rural area. You know, you name it, you get the yeah buts. And as you always say, Roger, I love this and Dr. Yeah but lives on the worst island in the world someday aisle. Yeah, but someday I'll. And so what I wanted to do. And Roger, you created a really great list that I want you to go through. Sure, I'll make some comments. Maybe we can share some, some, some experiences. I'm sure we will. Of some of the agencies that have, have addressed some of these. And then at the end, you know, for any of you that go well. Yeah, but still I'm gonna share what some of our members have actually experienced this past year and, and before that possibly as well when they've made a commitment or they've gone past some of the self limiting beliefs and actually committed to one or several of these items that we're going to get to on this list. So Roger, this is your Christmas list or Christmas wish I guess so to speak to all the agency listeners.

So I'm going to turn.

Yes, for agencies. Right. So these are these. Just imagine this. So I'm going to allow you, you got, you got the list that you shared. I love it. I'm excited when you go through it. So it's all yours.

Thanks. Well, as you're thinking about the planning of your agency and hopefully by the time you listen to this, you really do have a 2023 plan in place. But certainly these are some things that we would suggest you hard look at. So I want you to imagine your agency accomplishing the following things in 2023, 24, 25, 26. So let's start with the first one. But could you imagine all of your team members having them 100% aligned around a common goal? So imagine that all of your team members align. In other words, we're going in the same direction around a common goal. And the common goal we talk about is Retaining and obtaining ideal clients. But then probably the most important part of it from an alignment is the fact there's an appreciation, respect and trust of the various roles we play. What is the role of the producer? What is the role of the service partner or partners, what's the role of leadership? But getting them all aligned, going in the same direction because when they do it, it's really, really amazing. And I know we've talked before and it's in our book that we've all seen a car or truck going down the road that's not in alignment and it's shaking, rattling and rolling. So when, when, when agencies come together and we have sales and service working together like this, it's amazing how the productivity, the culture, the fun of working there really becomes so much better when we get aligned.

Yeah, and just feedback on that, Roger. And again, like all of these, we'll say it's, you know, simple to understand, it's not always easy to execute. There's a lot of work in this. But this to me is all about leadership and leadership is hard and, and you know, but, but it's, it's so important. And I know as I, you know, get the opportunity to work with different departments, whether it's producers, service reps or when I travel, Roger. And go to events and talk to different people. You know, oftentimes you'll hear people within an agency and they'll say this like, you know, I, I'd love to do more. I don't really know what, what they really want or what's really expected or where we're really going. And guess what? That creates confusion, that creates a bit of chaos. And so we continue to see is when we can rally around something. Right? When you as a leader say this is what it's all about, this is why this is important, this is what we're going to do. Now again, there's different roles for that same goal. It's amazing how over communicating or at least clarity and communication can be so, so important.

Roger, again, it's something everybody rallies around. What's it all about here? It's about retaining and obtaining ideal clients. So there's a lot of things behind that, but that's the first one going with this. Can you imagine, just imagine all of your client facing team members having ongoing personal development programs, training around a common sales based platform where they literally are quote, speaking the same language. I mean, how cool would that be? And this comes back to alignment. But it's even more because the key phrase here, Brett, is personal Development. And it's not just, and we've talked about this before, we talked about the lessons learned from the best practices. It's not just about the continuing education to keep your license or to keep your designation. This is about personal development skills, processes and attitudes that make a big difference. So if we could get everybody being developed, and to me, this is the number one role of management. It's to develop their players, develop their team. So could just imagine that if that was happening. Yeah.

And I, I just, I'm gonna just add one thought to this because you, you hit it, Roger and I, if they've listened to my podcast, I've said it I don't know how many times. Now, the number one job of an agency leader is to develop your people. But I would just ask you this as an agency leader, and here's a question to truly consider. What is your current training and development program for your people today? You know, what is your current training development program? And you know, it's not, it's just something to consider because when I have enough conversations and I do with agency leaders, they go, well, it's, I don't know, you know, we do a little of this. We little of this. And so this to me is just, if that's the number one rule, it's something to really think about as you go into 23. So just, just imagine, just imagine your entire team is getting this consistent personal and professional development, as Roger mentioned. So, Roger, keep going. This is good.

Well, thank you. I'm glad you like it. The next thing is just imagine the marriage of sales and service. Now, we always talk about the division of sales and service, okay, Same goal, different roles, identify those. What are we supposed do? But the reality, it's a marriage of sales and service working together. And we have high performance teams, not high maintenance teams. And our ultimate litmus test, and I know we've talked about this several times when I've been on with you and other guests you've had on our ultimate litmus test here is do we have the producers available for green zone time? There's the red zone and the green zone. And hopefully everybody understands that now it's become very sticky in our industry. And the producers are doing four things and four things only. These are the things they do in the green zone. They make sales. Gee, that's what a surprise. You know, producer one, who actually produces number two, relationship management, because it's still a relationship game. In fact, it's because I think it's becoming even more a relationship game. On the accounts that you really should be pursuing. Next, it's the continuation process, a proactive continuation process, not a renewal process, because renewing policies is the easy thing. It's continuing the relationship. And then finally it's pipeline development. So our goal is to get the producers in the green zone 80% of the time. Now here's the reality. Average producer, based on some discussions we've had with people that are asking if they can join what we do, we say, what percent of your time are your producers in the green zone? Once we explain it, if they didn't understand it, we continue to hear things, oh, you know, 25% of the time, baby, maybe. So what they have, and our whole system, quite frankly, is loaded with it. Our system is loaded with part time producers versus let's get them to at least 80% producers because it's never perfect. But just imagine that, Brent, and we've seen it so often now.

Well, I have to share my analogy because I know you like it and I've shared it on this podcast before, but it's just, it's one of those things, whenever I say it, whether I'm at a, a live training event or, you know, something that people hear me talk about this, they go, oh my gosh. But it's. You talk about 80 is the goal. A lot of the agencies, maybe 20, 30%, you know, of actually being in the green zone, you know, say, just imagine, right? Just imagine this. It's the NBA championship this year and the Golden State warriors who keep winning are back in it. And Steph Curry, their best player who scores a lot of points, that's his job, to score points. We get to game seven of the NBA championship, Roger, here it is on the line. Are you going to win the championship or not? The game is tipped off. Steph Curry runs around after a minute or two, checks himself out and goes to the bench. Not because he's hurt, not because he's tired, not because he's in foul trouble, but because he's got other things he needs to do as well, I guess, right? And so the game ends and Steph Curry was maybe on the court a quarter or maybe two of the entire game. And you go, why didn't we win? Why didn't we score more points? Well, our player whose job is to score points is on the bench. And my question, I always say to agency leaders, is, how many of your best players, or certainly those that should be outscoring points, are spending the majority of the time on your bench?

It's scary it's the part time producer again, part time. We just get up to 80%. It's amazing what happens.

Yeah, it's all about the high performance team. Continue.

Yeah, absolutely. Again, green zone, red zone, Next one. Just imagine that you were able to dramatically improve your sales and your service capacity. The concept of capacity is not talked about very much in our industry. We've been talking about it with our private clients now quite a bit lately. It was part of a recent Rough notes article I wrote. Also, when I'm talking about capacity from the service perspective, how much revenue are they handling? How many transactions are they handling? What's the capacity to do that? With the producers? Again, getting them in the green zone, what's their capacity to do it? And we start looking at this and we can measure capacity a bunch of different ways. What I've already mentioned is how much revenue are the service people handling each. And even in the best practices, I think it's very low for where it should be. What's our revenue per employee? What's our revenue per validated producer? What's our revenue per relationship? All these things we talk about, but in the best practices, right in front. And again, we had talked about this previously, all in capital letters, it says it's all about the people. It's all about the people. That's the number one concern everyone seems to have. All the great agency leaders that we talk to are saying we've got to get our people doing more. And so just imagine that right now. What if you found out you were actually overstaffed to your workload? Now that's going to create some people go, I don't believe that.

What? Overstaffed? That's not possible, Roger.

Well, if your revenue per employee is way less than $200,000, you are overstaffed for your workload. And if your revenue per validated producer is less than a half a million, which is really the low end, then you've got a lot of capacity left. So we look at it, we say we've got to understand that because there's going to be this continued challenge on getting staff and keeping staff and all the things that are going on out there. You better be able to do more with less, do more with less. And it comes back to use of the technology, their agency automation system, so many things. But just imagine dramatically increasing sales capacity. Producers actually produce dramatically increasing the service capacity because of the way we work and the way our high performance teams work together. And 80 to 90% of all transactions go to the service person first. Not the salesperson. All of these things, one and done that we wind up with increased capacity, which of course means increased profitability. It also means the ability to pay your internal people more money so it's easier to keep them. Okay. Because there's so many people getting lifted out now. But just imagine that where you say, wow, look at this. Last year we had 22 employees. This year we have 20, but our revenue's up a million bucks. Sounds like a good plan to me. So just imagine. And this is not la la land. This is real world stuff we're seeing with our clients.

Yeah, I was just as you're saying that I'm thinking of, you know, and these are challenging questions. These are questions we're asking ourselves, Roger, as an organization. But it's like one thing is, you know, well, how busy are you? What answer are you going to get? Oh, so busy, right? Everybody's busy. The question, how effective are you? And that, that's, that's a. You got to think that, okay, effective, Gosh, we're busy. But how effective are we? And it comes back to the impact you're making. So that's a great, that's a great. Just imagine, hopefully you're sitting there as agency. They're going, ah, that would be pretty cool. That'd be pretty cool. All right, what's the, what's the next one, Roger?

Next one is maybe a shorter one, but maybe one of the most impactful. Just imagine having weekly, as in every week, a sales improvement meeting. Not a sales meeting. And Brent, you did a podcast on this recently about the effectiveness of sales improvement meetings. And the attitude is very simple. And this is what we work with, the CROs chief revenue officers we work with is every producer leaves that meeting better in some way every week. Every week. Okay, but then let's take it to the next level. And this is the highest performers do, and not many do it. Okay? But it's not only having this sales meeting. It's all the content, which you've talked about, but it's also a quarterly sales retreat where one day a quarter, you take all the producers, you go off site and you do deep dives on things and you hold each other accountable. You report to your peers. One of our best clients ever at an agency that went from basically about a million of revenue to over 10 million of revenue. And one of the things they did for 17 and a half years before he retired. 17 and a half years. Every quarter they had a retreat. They never missed a single quarter in 17 and a half years. Their producers loved it because they all got better. They all got better. It was a cultural thing. Just imagine that. I mean, how can you be a sales organization if you're not doing, like, an offense? Wouldn't you have an offensive meeting every week in football? I did way back when, you know, and just getting together, saying, let's get better together. No interruptions, accordingly. And that's one of the things we're doing now with our best clients.

Yep, yep. And I feel like every time you do this, I just keep thinking of questions to ask. So here, I'll go. You know, I've said this before in different ways, but ask yourself, as an agency, you know, are we a true sales organization that provides excellent service, or are we a great service organization that does sales when it's possible? When possible. When it. When convenient. Yeah, I mean that, you know, like, oh, yeah, we should be doing some sales, too. And I mean, it's just because people always say, well, it's either. No, it's not. It's not either or, it's both. And, and, and by the way, if you're not having sales improvement meetings, as Roger mentioned, I did do a podcast on that. Here's a note. Go back and listen to it if you want to know more about that or your quarterly retreats with focus. Are you really a sales organization? All right, Roger, we're cooking now. Give me the next one.

Okay, well, this is one of my favorite points of contention. Complaining or maybe I bitch about this a little bit. Okay, It's. Can you imagine being in a situation where 90% plus of your producers meet or exceed their sales goals every year? This is one of the things. The goal setting is a joke in most agencies. Okay? It's done one or two ways. Everybody's going to do 100,000 new revenue this year, or it's, well, we'll lower the bar. If everybody does 50, we're fine. Or they might do an individual goal setting, but then they're not held accountable. And I've told this story before, but it's worth repeating and probably most people didn't hear it. It's okay. But about four years ago, I did a session. I was asked to do some surveys with a large group, a larger agent, 19 agencies, average agency, 21 million of revenue. And one of the questions I asked is, what percent of your producers met or exceeded their goals last year? The answer was 43%. And again, average agency, 21 million of revenue. A lot of our listeners are going, that's a really big agency. Okay. And so one of our singular focus when we work with agencies is we. What do we do to get that upward? 75, 80, 85. 90% of our producers meet and exceed their goals. Now, you may remember one of our CRO sessions recently, actually about six months ago now, we talked about this, and there were two funny things that happened. First question I asked is, how many of your producers hit their goals? And the one guy in the chat room on Zoom went, 100%. And I called him, I said, 100%. He said, yeah, they hit them because we don't have any. Okay. And then someone else commented and said, well, I know how we can get all of our producers to hit their goals, lower them. I said, no, that's not the way we do it. So getting to the point where there's a culture and cadence of accountability, there's an expectation. You hit your goals. And by the way, everybody knows whether or not you're hitting your goals because it's up on the wall or it's up on a digital chart. Okay? But just imagine how much better an agency would be. And this is one of the things we talk about too, is producer recruitment starts at home. Don't go hire a whole bunch of more producers right now. Additional producers. Now, if you. 43%, only 43% of your current producers are hitting their goals, it's a huge challenge. But just imagine 90% hitting their goals.

Yeah, yeah, just imagine. It wasn't treated like most New Year's resolutions, which people are going to be talking about right now, Right? Which is typically they're forgotten. Not only are they not done, but they're almost forgotten by February. And I will tell you, and you hear this too, Roger, that not only are a lot of sales goals by producers forgotten, they don't. I mean, they don't remember what they were. I mean, honestly, like, I don't know. I mean, or they make numbers up and it's just. It's just imagine, you know, it's like, just imagine actually, as you said, having a. A goal that is realistic but will stretch you, there's coaching around it, and guess what? There's accountability to achieve it. So I love it, love it, love it, love it. All right, let's get to the next one.

All right, well, just imagine that you achieved a 99% effective retention on your clients and those that you wanted to keep that you could keep. And that's important to understand that I say effective retention. Certain customers you can't keep. Why? Well, they might go out of business. They Might sell to somebody much bigger. They might merge with someone much bigger, personal inside. They may move out of town, they may pass away. That kind of like happens. Okay, so getting into situations and identifying who are the clients. This goes back to future ideal client, making sure that we're working towards that. Who are the clients that we could retain that we wanted to retake? Because there are certain clients, quite frankly, your staff doesn't enjoy looking, looking at an email coming in from them or caller ID in their phone. They go, oh, crap. You know, they're just. You got to get rid of those caustic relationships, if you have any. But imagine 99% effective retention on the people that you wanted to retain. It's one of the beauties of the business is the recurring revenue model. But when we talk to people about, well, what are your exit barriers you put in place? How do you make sure that you keep them? Well, we give good service. That's not it. But imagine that. That.

Yeah. And one of the things we obviously talk about in our program, maybe not obviously the listener, but obviously to us, is the fact that, you know, is there a continuation process? You mentioned exit barriers, but one of the questions that we ask Roger, I love it, is, you know, what is it? What does it truly take? What does it truly mean to earn the right to continue that relationship? And it's amazing when you start to understand what that really is and you can follow a plan, you become really hard to fire, you know, as you just said. So. All right, I've got your bullet points in front of me. I love the next one. You know how much I love the next one. So please share, Roger.

Well, something people have probably never heard of before, but it's the 8020 rule. It's never been around since 1897, so some may not have read about it yet in some archives someplace. Okay. Tongue in cheek, but using the power of 80 20. In other words, understanding that 20% of your customers are 80% of your revenue, you. We've done thousands and thousands and thousands of surveys. It's very rare that it's not almost exactly right on it, maybe a little bit off, but right there, that's what it is. Okay, and so what if you were able to use that and say, what we're going to do is identify the top 20% of our customers that are 80% of our revenue, and we're going to round out, retain and replicate them. We're going to round them out. So full time client only, vip, personal, commercial benefits, life insurance, whatever you may do some do financial services. You retain them because your continuation process is so powerful. The exit barriers are in place. You're doing stewardship reports with them. They would never think of leaving you. You're an indispensable partner to them. Okay. And then you replicate them because you go to your top 20% and following the reverse referral process we have, which it's cumbersome to get it set up, you know, we talk about it, you mentioned this earlier, it's simple, it's just not easy because it takes that discipline. But we go to the top 20%, we follow our reverse referral process, we get a referral from 80% plus of the clients, and then what's our closing ratio on a referral? Okay, so we look at this and what's really cool, and this is what we refer to of course, as the ultimate marketing strategy. The producers that have done it and followed it, and it's rare that they can take it all the way through, but the ones that have the discipline, imagine the discipline of having this. Here's what we see. On average, over a three year timeframe, the average producer grows his or her book by 60%. But the second part of Round out, retain and replicate is systematically trading down the bottom 80% of your customers because they're only 20% of your revenue. In fact, the bottom 50 are only 10% of your revenue. Don't agree. Go ahead and run your numbers. But imagine that, that in three years your average producer grows by 60% as far as the account, the revenue they handle, which means they get a 60% raise and they have 60% fewer clients. Now, some of those go to newer producers, some of those go to an sbu, some of those go to Service center. But we realize we can't service everybody. So one of the things we ask ourselves, Vic, we just did in our own planning session about a month ago, one of the big questions we asked, and I would ask everybody to listen to this. Who do you serve best? Who do you serve best? Okay. And so it's the same thing here. Imagine you identify. These are the people we serve best. These are the people that appreciate what we do. These are the people that are raving fans for us. And if we would just get in front of them, put the exit barriers in place, always keep them, and then have a process behind it where we get a referral. You don't spend any money on marketing. Maybe brand marketing, but not marketing marketing.

Not in traditional sense. I know, Roger, you're a fan of Genius Network and Joe Polish Some of the stuff that he always talks about, elf marketing, you know, effective, lucrative and fun.

Yeah.

And as you said that I'm sitting there going, so. Yeah. So the downfall of really not just understanding 80 20, but applying it in the way that you just described it is that it's extremely effective because your best clients do want to help you down the right way. It's lucrative because they're the majority of your money. So you do really well financially and it's fun. Meaning that you get to have better, deeper conversations with better clients that really appreciate the relationship, really appreciate the risk advice. But outside of that, I think it's a terrible idea.

Yeah. Because it takes work. It takes that big headed discipline.

All right, all right.

Got another one tied to this one. Just imagine having pipelines that are no longer suspects or prospects. Just imagine having future ideal client pipelines only that are overflowing with more opportunities than time and you actually had walk away power. If you didn't like what they were doing, they came up and something happened, you could walk away. Too often we see with younger producers before we really get them to understand it, okay. They'll work on just about any account because you know, you never know, you might get lucky. And if they fogged up a mirror, they paid American dollars we can probably work on. But we want to have the walkaway power. We want the ability to super qualify them up front. Because as we've said before, the best thing to lose a sale is the first day. So the first conversation. Even though you've got them identified as a future ideal, you might even get referred to them. But in your first conversation you might say no. Or your first meeting you might say no. Okay, but just imagine having a pipeline that had more opportunities than time. Everybody that did pop up was a future ideal client you've identified and that's all you worked on. By the way, it doesn't happen overnight. Nothing does. That's great. Okay. But having the discipline to say that's our process, that's how we work. It's so cool when I hear people say, yeah, we, you know, I had three new prospects. Future ideal clients came up this month. Two of my talk to is pretty obvious. They only wanted on price only when I went up and met with and quite frankly they just not someone I want to do business with. How cool is that?

I always get a chuckle when we have our producer programs and we talk a little bit about that. Right. Leverage and having to be able to walk away. And the smile. Have you ever said you don't qualify like, yeah, it's so cool, right? It is. And it's, it's setting the rules of engagement because you've earned the right because you have a full pipeline. So. All right, Roger, this next one is one that I ask agents all the time in a question. So let us have, let us have it.

Well, I'm going to admit this is going to be self serving. I hope that's okay.

Good, great. Appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you. So just imagine being the only agency in your marketing territory where you work that has a unique, repeatable, named sales process. I'm going to say that again. Unique, repeatable, name sales process. Now, with the members of our private client group, they have the risk cashier program. Okay. And that totally differentiates them from all their me to competitors. And it's one of the reasons, as we've been redoing, what we're looking at here is we're saying, hey, we need to work with agencies that have territorial exclusivity and we want to be able to get that risk concierge program in their hands so that when they go out there and sell, people are going, I've never seen anything like this before. And so just imagine having that so that you don't hear, you never again hear, well, you insurance people are all the same. Yeah, we bid it every year, every three years. Go ahead, give us a quote. No, what we want is a system, a repeatable system that we get in front of them, we have an executive briefing, etc. Where the future ideal client says, wow, I've never seen that before. I've never seen anything like that before. No one ever brought that up to me before. That's what's really fun. That makes it first fun, but it's also easier because you're totally differentiated. So imagine that.

Yeah, well, obviously I love it. And yes, it is self serving, but good. Thanks for bringing that up. I am going to skip ahead on one of your bullet points. Not that we can't come back to it because this one ties into it directly. And I say this all the time. And I want you to get your thoughts on just imagine because I, I say this all the time. You can't have a differentiated selling process, Roger, if you don't know how you're different. So part of this is obviously we want to help you with the selling process and having a name and effective unique, all those things you mentioned. But just imagine what, Roger, if you're actually. What?

Well, just imagine having specific points of differentiation that are actually different and they give you an unfair competitive advantage against your competition. Okay? Because the reality is that most agencies, not all, but most, play the same game. Why should I do business with you? I already mentioned we give good service, we represent all the markets. We can save you money, we're local. And of course, my least favorite tongue in cheek is. And we have the best people. Okay, I'm sure you have good people, but the best in the whole industry, I don't know. Versus And I know we've talked about this before, but have you really listened to it? Have you done it in your agency having at least five specific points of differentiation? So we know, here's what we do that's different. Wiifm, the radio station you all listen to. What's in it for this future ideal client? What's a piece of evidence we actually show them. Okay? So it's not just us yapping. And then finally, the producers are so prepared that they always know the two or three questions they can ask about each point of differentiation. Where the prospect, the future ideal client, winds up saying, don't get that. Don't get that. Never heard of that before. Wonder why my current agent's not doing that. You know, so getting to that point. And Bren, it's one of those ones that it's simple to do, or I should say simple to do. It's not easy again, but when we look at the agencies that are just having tremendous, tremendous growth with us, one of the things they absolutely got a handle on right up front. Green zone, red zone, everything else. It's why, how are we different? How is our story different? Versus. Yeah, I'm in the insurance business. You want to quote?

Yeah, well, it. It again, I know I kind of went a little out of order on your bullet points there.

So we can go back to the one we.

We skipped over because it. It leads right back into that ties back to it. I mean, it's this idea of, oh, yeah, we should have. Yeah, we should be different. I mean, I think we're different. And then you go, well, tell me how you do that. Well, I don't know. Why? Because the next bullet point, just imagine.

What? Well, just imagine being relentlessly prepared for every opportunity. A mindset. Mindset so important with the agency's agency overall and really the producer that's going out there. But what if their attitude was, every event deserves my very best? Okay. Any sport you played, in, any theater you did, any music you did growing up, you probably practiced, you rehearsed, and you really were ready to play, you know, My days of football in college and everything. You practiced way more than you actually played the game to get ready to play the game at a very high rate. So what if the attitude was, every event deserves our very best. Every time we're going out with an opportunity, whether it's with a client, to do some sort of roundup, whatever it may be. Stewardship report with a future ideal client. Executive briefing presentations. Okay. Centers of influence. Meeting with them and sharing with them how you're different, how you can help their clients become better. That we were so prepared that we were literally in the zone all the time. We didn't have to think about it anymore because we were so prepared. And yet the average agency. I know you've talked about this before the podcast, and hopefully people don't remember it, so I can say it's new. But the time one of the young producers at our camp, this was pre Covid. We were in person and at the end of the day, I said, hey, what did you get out of the session today? Anybody? When a young guy raised his hand, he said, I got it, coach. I will no longer rehearse my presentation during the actual presentation. And they laugh. But agency leaders and producers that are leading their own Me Inc. There should do a pre brief and pretty brief indeed, brief. Before every opportunity, are we prepared to play? And then after it's done, did we win? And again, something we mentioned a lot. But learn from your losses, replicate your victories. If you didn't get it, why didn't you? Let's not make that mistake again. If you did get it, what did you do? And how do we do that five more times? It takes the discipline.

It's either preparation or, Roger, it's skill development. And you know, you hear that term a lot. And you know, I know I've used it, whether it's, you know, college athletics or anything like that, where it's like, hey, these. These coaches, these leaders do a really good job of developing. There's that term again. They're people. There are certain skills. And I think, unfortunately, it's just either taken for granted or not deemed with importance, which I can't understand. Why of are you working on your skill development? And a big part of that is being relentlessly prepared, as you said. All right, Roger, I'm going to take these. These last three. These are all as part of this. As an agency leader, hopefully you're thinking, oh, that would be pretty cool. I like this. I want to take these last three because they're financial things. Part of this is what's it for me? What does this mean, Roger? If, if I begin to do again, some of these, all of these, heck, even if you took one of these things that Roger just mentioned and said, I'm going to turn this into it from a just imagine to a just do it as Nike says, right? But I'm actually going to execute this. What are some things that happen? So give me some financial just imagines, Roger, and how this correlates.

Well, two things. We'll do a little imagining and then we'll share some things that we just did a survey with our perfect. With our clients. So just imagine having organic growth rates that are two times the best practice numbers. And again, if you. We talked about best practice several times here and we did a whole podcast on it. If you haven't looked at it, first of all, I hope you are a best practice agency, okay? Because that's the type of agency we serve best. Okay? But if you're not, take a look at it and compare your agency. But just imagine having true organic growth rates of two times the best practice study. And a lot of agencies in Florida, unfortunately right now they're getting a lot of increased rate. They're not selling it if you know, they're having to renew them. And it's tough. But imagine that. Imagine earning an operating profit, no interest income, investment, income contingency, profit sharing income, pure operations. Imagine earning an operating profit of over 30%. Okay? Imagine increasing your agency value every year by substantial number. For most agency owners, not all, but for most, the agency is one of their largest, if not their largest, personal asset. And we look at this and we say, what's happened to the value of your agency? And so we did a survey and you and I just looked at this last week for the first time and we asked our larger members, our private clients, we said, what's the value of doing these things? What's the value of actually executing? And I got a whole bunch of numbers here. I won't go through all of them, but it was interesting to me that the average agency from the beginning of 20 to the end of 22, our average private client, larger ones, went from 10.3 million of revenue to 13.7 million of revenue. So over a million dollars a year growth, net new revenue, okay. And then I said, okay, how much? What about the profit? How profitable are they? And then more importantly, what's the value of their agency? And I mentioned this a little earlier on the podcast, looking at the value and saying, just take 10 times, 10 times profit and it's really 10 times. Even if we just play a game here, 10 times. What's the value of the agency? Well, this is the one that got me really excited because at the end of the day, the agencies we work with, agency valuation is one of the biggest concerns with that even came out in the best practices. We talked about that when we did that podcast. So the average agency we work with went from a value of 16.8 million to 30.3 million in that time frame. Okay, it is all because of us. No, it is not. It is because of the strategies we teach and people actually do to the coaching sessions we have with them. But it was just exciting for me to see this and say, okay. And we haven't looked at this enough in the past, but we just started looking, okay, what is the value of doing this? Because we talk about it, we get together and we hold hands and sing Kumbaya, but what are the results? That's what matters. So when I look at this and I say, you know, at the end of the day, if it is about developing your people and getting better results, having a set offense, you know, the selling system and having high perform, all the things we talk about, and then you say, okay, but if. At the end of the day, as an agency owner, what I care about, because everybody eventually leaves their agency, some die at their desk. Okay, Some go early, some go late, but everybody eventually leaves. So you look at this and you say, all right, what's the value to me? Have I increased my personal asset? Yes or no? And if you have, congratulations. And if you haven't, if you go back and look at your numbers now and say, maybe we're not doing so well, I think it's time you jump on it, because these are just a few of the things to start imagining. And I would just hope that you do listen to this maybe during the holiday break and you identify some things that you're saying. This is something that needs to be part of our agency, our business model. And we talk about this all the time.

Now.

Your current business model is perfectly designed for you to achieve the results you're currently achieving. So whatever. And some people say, well, I don't have a model. I say, no, I. That's your. That's your model is to not have a model. What are you doing? So to me, it starts with imagining it, filtering to say, okay, what things really make sense for our firm? And they get to the point where you put the plan together and then you actually execute. You hold people accountable. So it's so exciting when people get these type of results and that's what we do.

Yeah, Roger, I mean, listen, I didn't count them all. There's about 10 on there. And I love how you put that together at the end because again, if you're listening here, maybe you're doing some of these. Okay, maybe you're not doing any of them real well. But you know, begin to filter and think about what Roger said and the notes that you took of areas of improvement. You know, one of the things, you know, Roger, you mentioned this, I mentioned this at the beginning of the call is, you know, we do have a mission, a passion to work with agencies that are truly growth committed agencies. And we mean that. Not, not that they say it, that they really are going to do it and they want to do it. None of us are perfect, but they're willing to take that next step. And for us, as we look AT members into 2023, the first step, and I gave you the website earlier, sitkins.com experience is to set up a strategy call. There's no obligation to this. It's an idea to say where is my agency really today? And having a real conversation about that and determine what's next, what's right. We want to be a navigator for you in this. So again, if you're looking to take that next step, because these things, as Roger said, and I said it too, they're simple, but admittedly they're not all easy. They're not easy. It does take pigheaded discipline. It does take relentless approach to this. It does take coaching accountability in different ways. And we want to be that growth partner with you. I, I had one last thought here, Roger, and I want to, I want to turn it to you. And I don't know if I should be saying this or not, but I'm going to because as you were talking about this, we were talking about, you know, the, the, the doctor. Yeah, but in someday aisle, here's what I wrote down. I said stop the fake bs, which most of us know what that really stands for, right? All the BS that people talk about by embracing the real bs, right? Which is belief systems, which is the bright behaviors and strategies. Get rid of all that stuff and say, listen, what does our belief system really need to be and what are the behaviors and strategies needed to fulfill that? So Roger, last word to you as we wrap up here.

Well, it's real simple. You don't have to figure it out by yourself. For the right agencies, there's a fit. And for a lot of agencies, there's not a fit. But if there's an interest, as we move forward with territorial exclusivity, let's at least have a conversation to see. Number one, is the area open where you are? And number two, if there's a fit, there may not be, but at least it's worth the conversation.

Well, thank you Roger. Thank you to listeners again. We appreciate you wishing you a very prosperous for a successful 2023. And again, thanks again for being part of this podcast. We appreciate the opportunity to share this with you. So with that I wish you all the best in your success. The Agent Leader Podcast is brought to you by the fine folks of the Rough Notes Company. They are 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.