How To Prepare Today To Produce Tomorrow

Foreign welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on today's episode and excited to have my special guest. He's become a regular guest for good reason. Roger Sitkins, CEO of the Sitkins Group, with us today. Roger, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks, Brian. It's great to be here. And I'm really excited about the information we're going to share with you, with people, as far as dealing in these tough times that we're in and how we can turn that into some great opportunities if we get focused on the right issues.

Well, the elephant in the room, depending on when you're listening to this podcast, and my guess is that we're recording this on April 2, that if you listen to this podcast anytime, probably the next 30 to 60 days, you're going to be in the same boat. That's my gut. But we can't predict the future. But obviously the elephant in the room is COVID 19. What agencies and producers are doing to really prepare to be intentional, and that's going to be the focus of the podcast today, is just to figure out how do I prepare today to produce tomorrow. And Roger, I know that you've had a lot of conversations with clients and producers, and before we even dive into specifics on things that I want to share and ask you about, just what are your general thoughts and impressions of what's happening today with COVID 19 and what you're seeing out there?

I think it's creating, personally, I'm experiencing it. It's creating much more of a laser focus on what are the important things we really should be doing. Something you and I talk about a lot is the someday aisle when people are so busy chasing the hysterical activity stuff all day long and they'll look at some of the strategies and things, whether it's out of our Producer Fit program or our chief revenue officer program, whatever it may be, and they go, you know, that's a really good idea. Someday I'll do that and someday I'll do it well, you know, someday isn't a day of the week, and maybe we should take some of these down times and just get back to the basics and make sure that all the things we said we would do eventually, we better start doing now so that we can differentiate in the marketplace.

We, you know, we talk all the time. And I've said it before, I'm sure, Roger, you've said it before, but, you know, it's important to work on your business versus just in your business. And we hear that all the time, and it sounds good. It makes sense when we get the principle behind it. But now really is the time, you know, we can work on our business. And the reality of it is, although there are some reactive things, I had a producer yesterday go, you let me know when I have all this free time. Well, again, everybody's situation's different and unique, and I appreciate that. But I know in the many conversations I've had with agency leaders and producers, we are in a different world where you're working from home or remotely, that all of a sudden we find ourselves with extra time in different ways and how do we use it? And it's about the idea of where and how can I work on my business to prepare today so that I can better produce tomorrow? And that really is the focus of what I want to share today. And I want to ask Roger some questions to get his thoughts today on how can we really prepare today to produce tomorrow. Because none of us knows when this Covid thing is going to end. You know, could it be a month or two? Well, I hope. But could it be longer? Yeah. And so we've got to do everything we can to do to position ourself today to be ready for when all things go, you know, change in the future. And by the way, we also need to find ways to survive and thrive today during all this. And one of the things that we teach is something called the producer's perfect schedule. And the producer's perfect schedule. The mindset behind this, the idea behind this, the execution behind this, is that we've got to be very intentional with our blocks of time each week and what we do, and without diving into all the details of the producer perfect schedule, because we go through this in our programs in depth. But. But the idea behind it is, can you have 10 appointments a week with clients, centers of influence and future ideal clients? Can you have a day of the week that's preparing, which we call Monday? Can you do a big relationship visit and a debrief, which we would call Friday? But a fair question that we often get from clients, from our private client members of the Sitkins Network is, well, that's great. And we love the producer's perfect schedule. And it's worked and it's working, but now we can't get face to face. What do we do? How do we have these client future ideal clients, center of influence meetings when we can't get face to face? Well, the simple answer is technology is a big helper today. And I think many of you have already been utilizing technology in different ways to do this, but can we have a more intentional type of plan? And so I want to share something with you and again, I want to get Roger's thoughts on this. I was thinking about this and again I had a lot of questions from Chris. Clients and producers have been through our camp and just kind of thinking through this of what kind of action plan can I provide? If, you know, I'm sitting there, what can you do? And to take the producer's perfect schedule and kind of go deeper into it in this time period that we're living in. And so I did a video earlier this week and it's actually gotten a lot of shares and comments and people talking about it was this five week action plan, this 20, 2010 action plan. And the idea behind it is in the course of five weeks, could you make 50 contacts to clients, Future Ideal Clients, and Centers of Influence, which is based around our producer Perfect schedule model. And now when I'm recording this, just to give you a time sensitivity here, because some of you may be listening a week or two or three weeks later than when I record this or beyond that. This can work at any time. In fact, it should be ongoing. But if you look at where we're at today and recording this, the month of April 2020, in the midst of the COVID 19 crisis, if you take couple days of March, March 30th and 31st into the first week of April, in the next four weeks, five weeks takes you to April 30th. Right. So I was looking at doing the math. Okay, five weeks is April 30th. What could you do in five weeks? And it came to me, if, if we're looking at these 10 appointments a week or 10 time blocks a week, could you have four time blocks each week focused around client development, client reach out, client preparation, you know, client overview, all kinds of things. And we're going to go deeper in each of these areas. With clients, could you have four blocks a week based around future Ideal clients? Whether it's identifying who they are, many of us don't even have that done yet. So we have time to work on that, thinking about values we can provide to future Ideal clients, what they're thinking, what they're wanting, understanding their business, all these things that people say, I wish I had more time, I just haven't been able to. And then how about Centers of Influence, the influencers? Could you make two blocks a week, two blocks each week based around Centers of Influence that either you need to reconnect with, to connect with, have conversations with, whatever it may be. So 4, 42 is 10 appointments a week. If you did that for five weeks, you would have 50 contacts by the end of April. And a lot of producers and clients were going, you know, that would be incredible if we did that. And my question is, well, why can't you do it right? Why can't you do it? So Roger, now that I've, I've done my pontification on this 202010 plan, which really again is expanse of our producer fit program, which by the way, before I bring Roger and I do want to make an announcement and I'll announce, give more detail at the end. We adapt at Sitkins as well. We have been virtual. Roger, how long has has Sitkins been a virtual company now?

A little over two decades.

So two decades we have been been virtual. In fact, I mean our clients, we do face to face meetings, but we sell our programs pretty much all online. I mean, you know, on the phone, on video conference. That's how we work. So you know, certainly it can be done. But we've got a lot of experience in this and we've talked for a while prior to Covid about doing our producer fit, our most popular program online. How would we deliver it? What would it look like? Well, like many of you, sometimes suggestions become real opportunities that we must execute on because the times that we live in and we've done that as well. So coming out in May, we're going to be having an online producer camp which we are really excited about and working through. It's going to be not Sitkins light, not Sitkins less. In fact, I think in many ways we can deliver more with how we can structure it. But that's going to be coming out in May, so look forward to that. So now that I've talked about that, let me go back into the action plan and bring Roger in. Roger, I talked about, you know, this 202010 plan just being proactive. The first area that I mentioned was being proactive with our clients. Um, so if we're looking at a five week action plan which can be repeated or you know, something where we're doing intentional actions with our clients. In today's world, with no face to face, what should agencies, what should producers be doing?

Well, I'm really concerned that I see a lot of producers that are just sending out volumes and volumes and volumes of information about COVID 19, excuse me, it's out there. I mean people are getting it anyway. And I think if you just send a If you're just forwarding an article that you've seen someplace else or that one of the carriers has put out, whatever it gets deleted pretty darn quickly. So I don't think it's about just sending information. I think it's about making a phone call. And by the way, if your best client, your top 20 clients, you don't have the cell phone number for the decision maker or makers in that account, then you don't know them well enough. I know that sounds trite, but I'll bet a lot of people don't. But I'm saying reach out to them and just let them know you're there. Talk to them about what's happening with their insurance program, if any changes are due, which probably not at this point, but then just ask them about their future. How do you see this impacting your business? What are the biggest concerns you have? Because most of these clients don't really have somebody they can talk to as a true trusted advisor. Now's the time, if you haven't been positioned as a trusted advisor, to get positioned as a trusted advisor. So I'd say, number one, reach out cell phone. And more important, if you can get them face to face, that's the way to do it. On the video conference, I saw a statistic that said over the weekend Zoom has gone up 70% usage on Zoom to 40 million people. Didn't surprise me, but pretty interesting. So just reach out and just talk to them about their business, what their concerns are, and see if there's anything you can help them with.

Yeah, the first thing you said there, Roger, and you know, sometimes simple just works and what you said is just pick up the phone and you know, again, I think many of you are probably doing that, but some are going well, you know, I don't want to interrupt or I know things are crazy and I understand that mindset, but it doesn't have to be anything, you know, at first that some major revelation. It's just, hey, wanted to reach out and make sure you're doing okay, your family's okay, your team's okay, and we're here for you. And then you can kind of think through that. But Roger, as you were talking there, I was making a note and this is something that we do go in and our camp, but we think about, certainly if you're working with business owners now, I know some of you are personal lines agents as well, or personal lines agencies. But you think about what do clients really care about? Well, typically we look at three things and there's maybe more than this, but these are certainly three at the top of the list. They care about their profits, they care about their clients, and they care about their employees. And so by you having some time to say, okay, what in these three areas, what are some value I can add, what are some things they may be needing? What are some things they may be feeling, maybe. What are some things they may be wanting? You're being proactive in being their true risk advisor and their advocate. So, as you said, that, Roger, that just came to my mind. Anything else you think again, you know, obviously picking up the phone, thinking through this, but, but what else comes to your mind that, that producers agencies can be and should be doing right now for their clients?

Well, it's just making sure that there's an awareness that there's probably going to be some return premiums coming. And this is a touchy subject, but the best producers we're working with that I've talked to in the last seven to 10 days are reaching out to their best clients and making them aware of it. Say, look, you know, I know you're going to be concerned about your profitability, et cetera. I'm going to be in front of this. The fact that if your payrolls are down, your sales are down, there's going to be some return premium coming. And I want you to know that right up front that I'm on it, I'm protecting you. And then just to constantly remind the clients that, look, we represent you to the marketplace, not the other way around, and just to get that positioning and deal with it up front, because it's going to happen. It's going to happen. So you might as well be the one that brings it up versus someone else bringing it up to them.

Well, that goes into this, this idea, Roger, as you were saying, that are you, as an agency, as a producer, are you going to play the long game or the short game? And you know, the best ones, the great ones, don't think about this as a month or two months or three months. It's how does this impact the career? Right. The whole, the life cycle of everything. And, you know, the short game is. I don't want to touch that. I don't want to. I don't want to, you know, move that Ro, because I may lose some commission dollars. Yeah, you're probably going to anyway, so be proactive and your client will go, wow, you were thinking about me, you were thinking about us in a different way. You were helping to provide a solution because guess what? We're hurting right now. And we appreciate that. And guess who's the long term advocate? You are. But it's just like you said, Roger, what about client service timelines in any type of thing? Cause I know in my experience, Roger, I'm sure you've had us as is that people ask, like, I'd like to have a better service timeline or be more proactive with my clients, but darn it, I just haven't had time. Would this be a good time for producers and agencies to look back and go, what could we do more for our clients and start to have more strategy around that?

Absolutely. It's one of those someday I'll think, someday I'll have a calendar follow my best clients. Someday I'll lay it all out, now is the time. Because everybody, I'll guarantee you, everybody's email volume is down dramatically. You're not interacting at the office. You're not caught up in that hysterical activity. And you sure can't go on any fake appointment appointments right now.

Right?

You've got some time where you can say, okay, what are those things? Coming all the way back to, what are those things I said I was going to do someday? And if having a true service calendar in place, if making sure that you're doing a risk survey, a true industry specific risk survey on the PNC site for your best clients is something you said you would do someday, just go look at all those someday aisles and say, maybe if we just take the concept of the one thing which you and I love, maybe look at every one, certainly the top 20% of your clients that are 80% of your revenue, you may want to go deeper and get to 90% of your revenue and just say, what's the one thing I could do for this client that I said I was going to do someday? I haven't been able to get to. And if they had just a one thing on each client and they actually did what they said they were going to do because you have time to do it now, it'll be amazing.

Roger, you just said it throughout there, throughout your last conversation, what you were mentioning there about 80, 20, and I've talked about it on this podcast before as well, but I think it bears repeating if you don't understand that, that your top 20% of your clients, in almost every scenario that we see, we do a lot of these reports, produces 80% of your revenue. And you know, just the plan that I talked about, the 20, 2010 plan. Well, maybe you've got 20 clients that in your top, you Know, if you've got a hundred clients, I suppose, but if you have more than that, repeat, repeat, repeat. But, you know, to me, I look at this as two ways. Number one, and we talk about this in our camp all the time, is that, you know, if 20% of your clients produce 80% of your results, there's vulnerability, there's. And Roger, as you share the top 5%, produces what?

50%.

50%, right. So if you're not doing proactive reach and thinking a little deeper with your clients in this time and again, hopefully you have some time to kind of look through their, look through their risk management plan and start to think about some of these things deeper and just be that risk advocate for them. Not only are you vulnerable, which you are in this, if we're not careful, but on the flip of it and the positive, there's great opportunity because you start to do these things today, again, when the world does become more normal, whatever that is, guess what? It will be easier to earn and ask for referrals as well. So to me, there's just those two sides of this that again, times are tough. There's no doubt about it for a lot of people. A lot of people are hurting, are going to be hurting. But if you're a true professional, if you really are that advocate, then this is your time to shine. So, great stuff around the clients. Roger, I appreciate you sharing that. What about future ideal clients? What are some things that agents and agencies, producers and agencies can do today around future ideal clients?

Well, again, I'm concerned that too many times agencies are just forwarding on information they receive from other people. Now there's some great information out there. If you have a really good piece, you may want to do that. But again, I fear they're seeing it from so many people. Well, first of all, and if you don't know who your future ideal clients are, now's a good time to start looking at that. What are the type of clients we really want to go after? Who are they specifically? And then assuming that you've got those and you've had some contact with them, are you calling them? Several of our very best producers, probably more than half of the ones in our elite 50 have reached out to the two of us in one way or another and jumping all over this. And what's really been interesting is everyone that's done it has reported back to me that in every single case, when they've done it, let's say they've got a hold of 10 people, the vast majority of them have responded, said, you know, I haven't heard from my own agent yet and you actually called me. So I think just reaching out and anything you can share with them and even if it's just a voicemail you wind up leaving and you've got a really good piece of information that you can share or just you want to check with them and just say, look, I understand. Understand now is not a time for us to talk about you moving your insurance to us, your program to us. But I will let you know we're here if you have any questions and when things settle down, let's get on top of it. But what's really been interesting, and this is especially with the people in the elite 50, as you know, we have one agency in particular that's our poster child, and they have five people in the Elite 55 that have qualified. And. And what's really cool is the first week when all this hit, was it three or five new broker records they got?

The first time it was three. Yeah, three.

And since then they've continued to get. Including yesterday, we got an email, they picked up another bor. And in this case it was an account that was going to be renewing in May, but the customer was just so dissatisfied with everything that the current agent was doing then on top of that, didn't really do anything as it relates to what's happening now that they got another BoR. It wasn't huge, but it was $8,000 of revenue that they handled in a video conference and got the account, went to bed. So I would just say reach out, make a phone call and just connect with them, let them know you're there. Because so many people you want, the average producer out there is just sitting around in hysterical activity worrying about stuff versus saying, hey, I'm going to be very purposeful. You know, the word you use all the time I love intentional. You know what be very intentional about? Get out there and make contact. And being out there means from your home office, of course.

Right. And I think some of the fears that I hear, whether it's online or people I've talked to, is, again, I don't want to disturb or bother people. They're going through a lot. And again, that's true if your methodology is to pick up the phone and say, hi, this is Brent from Sitkins Risk Group. Do you want to quote? Well, right, of course. I mean, that's stupid number one, and it's rude number two, maybe in reverse order at this point. But you know, what you said, Roger, is just to be able to, you know, have some type of value to provide. And the first thing is just to let you know that we're here for you and we're not here to go out and solicit something right now. We understand this is a difficult time, but we're just here for you. And I think the other thing you mentioned that I want to make note of this. You know, we talk a lot about future ideal clients having a at least a Dream20 list. We've really identified 20 future ideal clients. Well, if you have not done that, and my guess is most of you listeners have not, if you said, hey, show me your top 20 future ideal clients and your strategy around each one of them, my guess is most of you don't. What a great time to prepare today, to produce tomorrow. That when they're ready to have the conversation, you've identified who they are, you've thought about things that you may be able to offer as value tools and resources that you have the right questions to ask. So it's just again, this idea this time to do that. Roger, I want to move on. So we've talked about clients, future ideal clients, and we could probably spend hours talking about this. But what about centers of Influence? I think sometimes I hear this gets, you know, I didn't think about centers of influence. What could producers and agencies be doing today around this action plan to be intentional for Centers of Influence?

I think reaching out as a, quote, trusted advisor to other trusted advisors, you know, the people that are in your center of influence network, and just saying, look, it's really crazy times now, and I'd really like to ask you a few questions. What are you seeing with your clients? What are you seeing in business? What do you see happening in the future? What are the biggest challenges you see that people are going to be facing? Great. Centers of Influence love those type of discussions. People that are truly trusted advisors enjoy those conversations. Now, you may not get them, they may be dealing with their own stuff, but just the fact again, that you picked up the phone and called, and that's so much more important now than just sending one more email that gets buried in all the craziness that's going on there. So I think it's just the basics of pick up the phone and call. How's this impacting your business? What do you see happening? What are the things that we need to be aware of as we deal with joint customers, et cetera? Just make the call.

Great point. It goes back to what I just said before, too. I mean, with the future ideal clients. It's the same premise is that most times, most producers and agencies really haven't taken the time and energy to think about who are they first of all, if we don't have them or do I have the right ones and who are the people that do have impact, my future ideal clients and clients that I could reach out to, that what do they need from me, how can I add value to them? And that's that goes back to like Networking 101. It's not what you can get, it's what you can give. And I think this is a great opportunity to give, not to get something in return because it's the right thing to do. And again, if you truly are a professional, if you truly are a trusted advisor, you're an advocate, you're a risk professional, this is your time to shine as I said it before. So it's great points there, Roger. Anything again, going back to the 202010 plan, you could do whatever you want. My goal and objective doing this goes back to preparing today to produce tomorrow is just to give you some type of five week action plan. But let me just ask you a very general question here, Roger. If a producer or an agency team with a group of producers and you're listening to this and you would, in the next five weeks, whether it's the month of April or whenever you're listening to this, you would be intentional back to that word and have conversations and do preparation with clients, future ideal clients and centers of influence. And you have 50 of these. What would that mean short term and more importantly long term to a business?

Well, number one, it's going to force discipline of the schedule. The reality is that most of us do a terrible job of calendar blocking and be intentional on what things we're going to do and it's great and someday I'll do it. Someday I'll do it. It's going to force discipline of a calendar. I think all of the people are learning more about that and the importance of quite frankly getting off your computer and getting out there in some way talking to people again, phone or video conference, it's going to fill up your calendar in the future. It's going to have a lot of callbacks you can make. It's a lot of follow up you can do with people. And you've said it a few times and I absolutely love it because it's so true. Prepare today to produce tomorrow. What preparation are you doing now so that when we are able to come out of the gate again Your calendar should be absolutely slammed with great opportunities with your current clients, your future ideal clients, and your centers of influence. It's simple. It's really simple. It's not necessarily easy to do because it takes the discipline, but it's a simple approach that we know works, period.

Yeah. And I would just add one thing to that, you know, and again, everybody's situation is different. But I think what I'm finding, and I've worked remote for a long period of time I mentioned Sitkins is a virtual company. We've got offices all over. But, you know, you look at even producers and agencies today when I talked in the last few weeks, and what they're realizing is that meetings and things don't take as long. And right. They go, wait a second, I didn't. I had a call yesterday, Roger, and they were like, yeah, I've just shaved off two hours because I'm not driving there. We don't walk into the meeting and have coffee and talk about the game last night because a, there isn't a game and we're not there face to face. And then we kind of wander around. It's just like all of a sudden I realized what being intense with my time means. And so when I look at these blocks of time, whatever length that is in preparing for clients, future ideal clients and centers of influence, they may not necessarily take that long. And that's okay because my guess is you may have different responsibilities at home. I know I sure do. So it's just time to get laser focused in these areas so that when things do break loose, you know, at some point in the future that we're positioned, we're prepared. And, you know, one of the mentors said to me is that, you know, when you wait to prepare and an opportunity presents itself, it's too late. And, you know, I would just tell you, don't. Don't allow this to happen. You don't make it too late. You know, this. This is. This is your time. So, Roger, any final thoughts? We're getting close to a half hour here. This has been a fun discussion.

Something jumped in my mind when you were talking there that we haven't talked about in this one. And that's your own team meeting, your high performance team meeting. I want to come back to the calls, the conversations you do have with just take your best clients. Something that we teach and preach all the time is that every meeting you have should have an agenda and you should send it to your client in advance. Here are the things we're going to Talk about. Well, because people, so many that you're talking with are working from home and they may have their own family situation to deal with. They'll appreciate it if you say, look, I know time's limited. Here's an agenda of what we're going to talk about. Boom, boom, boom. And you get it done. It's a much more efficient meeting, as you've said. And just like with our service teams, our sales and service working together, they should still be having their Monday morning high performance team meeting. And if they haven't yet put an agenda together, here's a perfect example. Here are the seven things we've got to talk about. Let's go versus. Hey, what's going on? Isn't it crazy out there? So the, the intentionality. There you go again. Of an agenda becomes even more important. And believe me, your clients will really appreciate it.

Yeah, brilliant. I mean, it's so important. And that was, that was a huge discussion we had in our elite program. And it was like, oh, my gosh, you're right. It's like when I have an agenda. Do you like it better when someone gives you an agenda? You're like, yes. Well, why aren't we doing that for all those meetings that you just mentioned? So fantastic advice. Well, I want to wrap this up, and as I mentioned earlier, I do want to make an announcement that we are launching a virtual Producer Fit program. Now, Producer Fit is by far our most popular program at Sitkins. Roger, how many. You know them better than I will. How many producers would you guess you has gone. Have gone through Producer Fit in your lifetime?

It's a little over 3,500 now.

3,500 producers. Great success stories. You know, our claim to fame is we produce more million doll producers out there than anybody else, and we're proud of it. And it's a lot of the basics, but going deep. And I'll tell you that what we're excited about with this virtual producer program is that although we can't be face to face, and Roger, I love to be face to face and eyeball to eyeball and shake hands and all that energy of the room, you can't replace that. And we understand that. But you know what we can do is we can take our content, we can still deliver with energy. We can still have roundtable discussions, we can still dive deep in these areas. I think what's exciting to both of us is that we can take these important concepts that we teach and put them in kind of shorter nuggets where we can have action each and every week. So we're going to have 12 individual sessions because I know just like you sitting in front of a computer for four hours or six hours or in some cases two hours is too long. So these will be 60 to 90 minute sessions that we're going to dive deep in a certain topic, we're going to provide action, we're going to have round tables and bottom line is this, we want to help you get results and that's what we do. And so if you're interested in learning more about our Producer Fit program, which will be launched in May, go to sitkins.coms I t K-I-N s.com profit spells like profit. So sitkins.com profit or profit. And you can learn more about it and register today. It's really one of, I think, one of the neatest things that we've ever done and I'm excited to get started. So Roger, anything you want to add to that? I know, I'm excited.

Yeah, I just want to make, you know, you said roundtables and people are thinking, wait a minute, we're doing this online. Well, it's a virtual roundtable because of the software we have where we can put people to roundtable discussions. So during the session we'll be going through, we'll be sharing information. Each attendee gets their own binder, you know, the manual for the program, the 12 tabs, and we drop ship that to their house. But with the software we use, we can put you in virtual roundtables where once we've talked about a topic, then you go into a roundtable with five or six other producers and you're seeing each other on the cameras and then you come back to the, to the session. So it's really a cool approach for learning. Again, it's not the same as being there, but it's a way that we can get people to, you know, that thing, work on your business. Well, work on your May Inc. And that's how it's such a great program. I'm so excited about it because we've been doing parts of it for a long time with our monthly sales meeting with our members, etc. But now we've taken the time to get down to 12 specific teaching blocks and I'm very excited about how we can help producers get better during this time where it's crazy out there. Now's the time. Like you said, prepare today to produce tomorrow. Absolutely.

Well, it's about three things, Roger. It's about clarity, it's about consistency. It's about making a commitment and all that to help you, your agency, and your producers to be the best version possible. So, Roger, thanks for joining me on this episode. And, you know, I think we may have you back again. Is that okay with you?

I would love it.

All right. To everybody else, all the best, your success. Thanks for listening.