Increasing Your Sales Capacity

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Kelly here of the Agent Leader podcast. Just so you know, this is part one of a two part series that I'll be having interviewing Roger Sitkins on sales and service capacity. So part one that you'll hear today will be on sales capacity and then we'll transition into service capacity for part number two. As always, thanks for listening. Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly. I am your host and thanks so much for joining me on another episode. Very excited. Today I have a guest with me. It's been a while since I've had a guest on the podcast. He's a guest that has been with me many times before. So if you've listened to this podcast, you've heard his voice and I'm sure you've taken some great information from him. But it's, it's been a while. So I've got Roger Sitkins, the founder and CEO of the Sitkins Group with me today on the podcast. Roger, welcome to the Agent Leader podcast again.

Well, thanks, Brent. It's great to be here and I'm really excited about the topic here because it's, it's becoming very transformational with the agencies we're working with. So it's going to be exciting to share it.

Yeah, we're, we've been talking and if you've been listening to the podcast over the past few episodes, I started a series, I guess we'll call it a series on agency capacity. And I've talked about, you know, personal professional capacity, what that means. The most recent episode I talked about sales leadership capacity. And Roger's going to take this today. This is something we've been, been talking about a lot internally. I know Roger has had probably many mornings and nights researching this and thinking about this. So he's got a whole list of things that we want to talk about today. Before I get to the specific conversation with Roger on capacity, make sure you've got your pen and papers ready to go. I always want to mention the mention the mission of this podcast is to help you, the agency leader, gain clarity, build consistency and make a commitment to become your best version possible. And not only is Roger my guest today, but co author of the book Best Version Possible. And as I mentioned before, if you want to get a copy of that book, just go to sitkins.com bvp so sitkins.com bvp and if you want to learn more about our experience, the process, what we do, how we partner with independent agencies that are looking for that next level of growth and by the Way as we're going to talk today, increase their capacity. You can go to sitkins.comexperience to learn more about the experience. So, Roger, you ready to talk about this important topic of capacity today?

Yeah, I sure am. I.

Well, I want to start off and give an intro to this. I mean, we've, this is a conversation that we've had internally for a long period of time that I've mentioned, but I think it was, I don't say highlighted or maybe reaffirmed in the best practice study, Roger, that recently came out and it was, I don't know if it was early this year, late last year, but recently the, the study came out and I know you went through the whole thing and reached out to me and said, wow, there's some major things here. So I want to start with that because I think it leads into what we're going to get into with capacity today. And just from the audience perspective, what jumped out at you from the best practice study that came out?

Well, first of all, I would hope that, that all the listeners are comparing, if they're not already a best practices agency, that they would be comparing their results against that because it is best practices. And I'm assuming you want to be best, sort of like best version possible. One of the things that jumped out at me right away, and we've talked about this a couple other times on the podcast, but I'm taking it even deeper now. In the beginning, you know, all the verbiage, three, four, five pages of words, whatever it was, in all caps that said it's all about the people. And that's one of the number one things we're hearing out there, is that we can't find people. People are getting lifted out. They're stealing our people, they're giving them big raises, letting them allow, allowing them to work from home. And there's all these things, it's just so disruptive. And I look at this and I say, well, if it's all about the people, what are we doing to help the people? But then there was something, Brent, that's brand new. I was reading a study over the weekend and it said that about half of the industry workforce is going to retire between now and 2036. Well, that's a long way off. Okay, 2036. But in the whole scheme of things, it's really not. And what it's basically saying is that half the workforce, just because of age, is going to retire and that's 400,000 jobs. 400,000 jobs. So that means we've got to find 400,000 more people and, you know, keep the ones we have, the ones that aren't going to be retiring in the next decade or so. We've got to keep them and then we've got to find 400,000 more. And to me, that number accelerates the fact that we darn well better start looking at the people we have now, can we? How will we increase their capacity to generate even greater results? So the key to this is, is what are we doing with what we have? How do we create a great culture overall that will keep our people, attract more people, and the people we have get a lot greater results, are accelerating their results. And as you know, the end of the day, everything's about results.

Yeah. You know, and something I've shared on previous episodes in different ways, but, I mean, you're so right, Roger. First of all, those numbers are staggering. And I think about 2036, oh, that's forever. And I go, well, how long ago Does 2010 really feel? Same distance. Right. Sometimes you gotta look back, realize how fast it's going to be here. And you're right. Like, is there going to be enough people for that? I don't know. So one of the things I talk about all the time and you do as well, Roger, is yes, you need to attract the best talent. I think that's something every agency should be looking at doing. But what are you doing to retain and what are you doing to develop, you know, with what you've got? And so maybe you could walk us through or some ideas you have and like, really, I guess the biggest thing is what agencies are really doing in those areas, good and bad, to retain and develop their people. Yeah.

And we talked about this a few months ago on the podcast, but it's worth repeating. When you look at the Best Practices study, you go across all of the ranges and take an average, you know what they're doing. Well, one of the line items is training and development. The average agency spends 0.3% of revenue on training and development.

Right. Could you say that one more time, Roger? Because I know you said it before, but I think people overlook three, not.

Even a third of 1%, 30% of 1%, you know, 3/10 however you want to look at it. And. And yet they spend point five percent on miscellaneous expenses. So what's more important? Miscellaneous expenses or the training and development of your people? And as you know, a lot of those training and development costs as a line item are either continuing education and maintain a license or continuing education to maintain A designation which is crucial. You should have those. If you're a professional, you do it. But I look at it and I think if people are important, we should be training them all the time. I just see all too often that people fall into this trap and it's one of the traps of which we've talked about before, why training fails. And they say that after 90 days, traditional training is kind of a one off training. That after 90 days, 84% of the information is gone. And people say that's a pretty good thing. But then they go back and they do the same thing they've always done, which means at best they'll maintain the same capacity that they've always done. So they've got some ideas and it goes away. But 84% of it later, oh, we went to training, we went to training. We've had this happen where people said, yeah, we've been through Sitkins. I said, really? What did you do? We went through a one hour webinar. No, no, that's, that's not it. So the challenge here becomes how much money am I willing to invest? And it is an investment. What's the best, best investment you can make as an individual is in yourself and as your agency. Overall, the best investment you can make is in your people. And at the end of the day saying, we're investing in our people to dramatically improve their ability, their capacity to handle more than they're currently handling today. So the study to me just pointed out, just jumped out at me that, holy smokes, what are we going to do to take care of that? And if we're, it's like joining a gym and not going or signing up for golf and not taking golf lessons. And yeah, I had, I had five, six lessons, but after two, I was so screwed up I couldn't go back and play anymore. Or it's somebody that, that's trying to play music and they say, well, you know, I guess I need to practice. And they practice once or twice and then they quit. You know, come on.

I was thinking about the training. You said there is like, not only is it not showing up, but for the, you know, the event versus the process which you were talking about. Like, I went to, I went to a train. It's like, yeah, I went and worked out in February, so I'm good.

Right.

Doesn't quite work that way. Also hit me too, as you were talking about the numbers there. It's like. And I know obviously there's a lot of different miscellaneous expenses, but the first one that Came to me is like paper. I'm like, you know, we're spending more on paper than we are on our people. And what's the return you get on the paper? You know, for example, you know, quote with miscellaneous expenses versus, you know, as you said, the greatest investment you can make is to into people because not only are you, you know, it's, it's, it's an investment. It really is because done the right way, it grows, you know, two, three, five, ten fold in the right way. So it's a great point there. I want to take this too, because one of the things that came up in the best practice study certainly was about people, but also how it impacted in many ways agency valuation, which is, you know, I, I think for any agency leader listening, I'm guessing you care a little bit about that. So Roger, talk about kind of your thoughts on the agency evaluation impact of this.

Well, first of all, it's, it's a great business. And the majority, vast majority of the people we work with are independent insurance agencies. Okay. So the owners of those agencies, their agency is probably certainly one of the largest, not the largest, individual asset they have. Okay. So in this best practices study, the second main point that jumped out for bigger for agencies that are really growing is that it's valuations top of mind. And today when you're looking at the multiples of 10 times 11 times, 12 times 13 times, plus two or three times more on earnouts, it's a lot of money. Okay? And we look at this and say, what's really happening? And as you know, we did a study about a month ago, we call it the value impact study with our platinum agencies, which is our larger agencies we work with, we said what's happened to them over the last, at the end of the last three fiscal years as far as the valuation of their agency, and I took the profit they were receiving, the bottom line, profit times 10. And even though the multiple is greater, but the study went back three years ago and then we looked at 2022 as the last year. But once again, I didn't use a multiple of 12 or 14 or 15. I use 10. So over that time frame, those agencies we work closely with that are really focused on, hey, this is our asset, we've got to invest in it, we've got to increase it. The average agency increased their valuation by 180%. Okay. By 180% over three years. And these are not small agencies. Okay? So think what happens when you invest. This is a self serving. Yeah, I guess. But the end of the day, what it comes down to is, are you getting the best results? And that comes back to capacity, which leads to valuation, which leads to financial freedom. Yeah.

And, you know, I was, I was writing down as you're saying that, Roger is, you know, I think this is a. I'm not trying to be smart alec here, but like, you know, the 180% increase evaluation, did they bring on 180% more people to do that?

No, as a matter of fact, every one of them dramatically improved their capacity with their producers. In other words, the producers books of business. Okay. But more importantly, one of the KPIs, which we'll talk about, that we all know we should measure is revenue per employee. So the valuation went up 180%. Revenue per employee went up dramatically. Also, again, it comes back to, we're having trouble with people. They better handle more than they're currently handling. How do we do that? Well, we'll talk about that today.

Yeah, yeah, well, let's, let's get into that because there's a lot of meat I know, that we can talk about. And I think, you know, I mentioned to the audience here that, you know, the last couple of weeks has been more about, you know, personal professional capacity, leadership, sales leadership capacity. I really wanted to pick your brain, Roger, and get your thoughts. We get into sales and service capacity because that's really where leaders run into this problem. I need more people, I need more of this. I need more of that. And what they're really saying is, I just, we got to get more. We just got to find some more producers. We just got to find more service team members. And by the way, again, that could be partially true. I don't doubt that there's a need for that, but I think sometimes the question you've asked so well, Roger, and again, I want to go deep with you is, well, what can we do with the capacity that we already have? And are we truly maximizing that? So if I want to talk about both sales and service capacity with you, and if it's okay with you, we'll start with sales. Seems to be a big deal.

Yes.

But just give me, again, without a specific question here, Roger, just some of your initial thoughts on what agencies have done, can do, and should do to help improve sales capacity.

Sure. Well, there's a couple of old sayings always jump to mind here. Nothing happens until something is sold. And then the other one is, net new revenue doesn't solve all your problems, just most of them. Okay, so we look at this and we said we need to have more producers, need to add more, to add more producers. And we somewhat tongue in cheek, say the world's greatest producer recruiting program is to get your current producers producing at industry leading levels. Because just adding more producers doesn't give you more capacity, gives you more potential. And I challenge agency owners, as you do all the time, say, look, if, if the majority of your profit comes from, in most cases, the top 20% of the producers are 80% of the revenue. Okay, so we're looking at the same. We want to add more people. But why would we add more producers if the producers we have now are not all successful? It comes down to, you know, what, what percent of your producers met or exceeded their sales goals last year. And in an average agency, it's quite frankly less than 50% if they're being honest with themselves. So do I want to add a whole bu more producers that have potential or do I want to take the ones that are already part of our team, part of our culture? We like. But maybe they're underperforming today because we're not doing a great enough job as sales leaders. We don't have the high performance teams, we don't have a set offense that, that, you know, separates us from everybody else. But we don't want to just throw people at it. So we look at this and as we've talked hundred times and you've maybe talked a thousand, is that it comes down to the green zone and the red zone. And you know, as we've laughed both internally on podcasts before, of everything we've ever developed, it's maybe the stickiest. We've got to get our producers in the green zone 80% of the time. And if this is the first time you're listening to Brent's podcast, the green zone is four activities. They do sales, relationship management, a continuation process, not a renewal process, and building their pipelines, future ideal clients only. We want the producers in that green zone 80% of the time. The other zone is the red zone. What? Service trap? That's still going to happen. It's not a perfect world, but our goal is to get those producers up to 80% of their time, energy and efforts in green zone activities. So there's a red zone and a green zone, but there's actually a third zone. It's called the comfort zone. It's the comfort zone. It's when the producers all of a sudden are making more money than they thought they'd ever make and they're in a situation where hey, they've got a few customers and they're doing pretty well and they're not held accountable, but they're making more money than they thought they'd make. And they start coasting. And you know, the law of gravity says you only coast in one direction. But we get these producers that are complacent, and we know that one of the absolute best things about our business is recurring revenue. But it also allows a producer to get complacent because they go, man, I never thought I'd make $150,000 a year. And I'm looking at the producer saying, yeah, but right now, at this point in your career, you should be making 300,000 a year if you do the right things and spend the majority of your time in the green zone. But they get complacent, they hide behind activities, they, they stay in the service trap. They, as we kid around, they go on fake appointments, they're having a tough day, I got an appointment, I'm leaving. And they're not held accountable to it. So the number one thing we've got to do is take those what we've say, part time producers and get them to be full time producers. Taking our sales team that, that less than 50% hit their sales goals to where 80 to 90% of them hit the sales goals. It's not a perfect world. We could get 100% of the producers to hit their sales goals if we lower. Okay? That's, that's not how it works. It, it's setting the bar much higher in your organization because the bar is pretty low in our industry. It's a great industry. You can do pretty darn well even when you go complacent because you're making high six figures, okay? But you're not really getting to financial freedom. So it's, it's just frustrating to me that we have these producers who are not producing, they're coasting, okay? And so why is it that the best producers we work with are all over a million of commission? Okay? And we, we say somewhat tongue in cheek, until you get to a million dollars of commission income, you're still a producer in training. You know, you're not, you're not allowed to quit the gym when you've only lost 10 pounds, but you need to lose 20. Okay? It's kind of the same thing. Why would you quit? Why would, why would you say, I'm happy? Because at the end of the day, if they don't do the right things as an agency or as individual producers, end of Their career is full of regrets, and that's a terrible place to be.

Yeah, my, my brain, as you know, Roger, goes to sports analogies often. And I, I told on this podcast before I. Somebody heard about it, I just, I just think about the, the idea, if you're not on the court example, is the best players. You can't just go sit in the bench. And as you're talking about this, I love that the phrase you had is, you know, adding more producers. Basically, I wrote it down. Doesn't guarantee more capacity, does give you more potential, but it's what you're doing with that. And all of a sudden I just had this image of a basketball team which, by the way, usually has what, 12, 14, 15 players on the team, and they just keep adding more people on the bench. All of sudden they have this roster of 40 people and they all play a quarter, you know. Right. So it's like, it's like, well, you know, all you're doing is just, you're adding a lot of times just more stuff versus you're not getting the results. So I think, again, just thinking about that, and I know there's a lot of work involved in that with agencies. There's no doubt. But you're right, the idea of green zone and red zone is one of the simplest things we've talked about. But I'd also say it's the most effective, at least one of the most effective things, because people just get it. Like, I'm only 20, 30, 40% even in the game, yet we're trying to get more people to play. We'll just get the people that are there that aren't playing to play more. And by the way, if they don't and won't, maybe that's time for another conversation. Right. Depending on. Depending on the situation that you're in. So go ahead, go ahead. Roger, you were going to.

I was just going to say maybe they're just an account exec hiding behind a producer, and that's fine. We've got, we've got to play the position we're fit to play. Okay, so that's a starting point. But, but getting to the, the point where the agency overall says, here's our business model. We've talked about this so many times now. It's so sticky with the producers and the agency leaders we talk to, we say, look, your current business model is perfectly designed for you to achieve the results you're currently achieving. And people will look at us when we first say that. And I'll say, well, if your business model is that only 60% of your producers hit their goal, that's your business model. And if your business model is pipelines are pretty empty, that's your business model. People go, wait a minute, that's not our model. I say, well, I know it's not intentional, but the reality is, look back, that's your model. You're allowing that. And the thing we see when people buy into this, and it's so cool to see that the platinum results we get when they buy in, all of a sudden they've raised the bar in every area of their agency. So now when we bring a new producer in and we say, look, you're going to be working with us as a sales leader, whoever that may be, but we're also going to have you look around because there are so many great role models. And this is something I would challenge every agency leader listening to this, watching it, is, what are the role models in your agency today? Is it a bunch of producers that are in the, the comfort zone, they're complacent where they are. And the young producers go, well, you know, four or five years, I could quit working too, versus the ones where boom, boom, boom, boom, boom every single time I saw a report, in fact, I haven't even shared with you yet, with largest individual privately owned agency and the producer goals for the top six or seven producers. Revenue this year is $500,000 new business. Okay. And what's really cool, two or three of them at the end of the first quarter were more than 50% of the way to their annual goal. Well, they've raised the bar. They have higher standards. So when I look at this and I say, well, if we're worried about capacity, I think a big part of capacity is what are the standards? What are you allowing to become normal? You know, we talk about this all the time. Another one of our acronyms, what is normal? What's normal? Empty pipelines, underperforming producers. Or is it normal that, wow, look at this high powered agency, look at these results we're getting because everything's about a result. And then it comes down to. And by the way, one of the reasons our producers do so well is they spend 70, 80, some of them, even 85% of their time in the green zone. And they have great high performance teams. As we always talk about sales and service. We'll get into that a little bit more today that work together to make sure the producers are in the green zone 80% of the time.

I, you know, I love these Conversations. And yeah, we've got some bullet points to talk about, but as we get into the conversation, it's just more ideas kind of my mind and some of this is mindset here and you nail it. Roger, I just listened to, and I forgot that actually the podcast I was listening to, listen to too many probably, probably. But it was talking about this far as with, you know, labor shortage, the talent gap, that, by the way, this is not a, an insurance industry thing. This is, this is across, you know, a lot of industries certainly. And it was just talking about, he said there's too many companies that because of a labor shortage or a challenge, they feel the pressure and they subdue or they allow themselves to go down towards mediocrity to say, well, I know they're not great, but at least it's a body versus saying this is our standard, this is what we do as excellence. Because what's amazing is that when you keep that standard of excellence, the culture of excellence, this is who we are, why we do it. He goes, those few people that are truly great tend to find you. Yeah, and, and you know, it's like, so what, where, where do you want to play? And you've talked about this for years, like, are you going to run your agency by design or by default? Default is allowing all the external things to determine your future versus saying no, this is who we are and what we do. That doesn't mean there's not external forces that affect you. I get that, but I just see too many people that bend down to, you know, well, it's just what it is. And I guess we'll just have to be average. And I mean, I know that's what's out there and at least we're better than some other people versus saying no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is who we are and why we do it and the type of people that are part of our organization. So I don't know if that hits home with you, Roger, but I just absolutely.

What do you, you know, when you think of what are you attracting? Are you attracting the best employees? Are you attracting the best clients, you know, or are you in a race to the bottom? On everything you do is about price, commodity based selling only. And your producers are order takers. Something that, that we just introduced this week actually is the fact there are three types of producers. There are order takers, there are general practitioners, and they're specialists that are known as subject matter experts. So the order takers wait for the click, ping, ring and ding to Happen they do a whole bunch of quoting and they're successful in 10, 20, 30, 40% sometimes, but it's all based on commodity. Now, unfortunately, in our business, you'll do okay with that. You know, you'll have a lot of washouts, but overall you'll do. Excuse me, just. Okay. The general practitioner producer, that's never specialized. We always say this, that in any profession, specialists always make more money than general practitioners, okay? So we look at this and we say, well, if you're a general practitioner, at least you make sure you're raising the bar and have a minimum account size and targeted account size you go after. Because if not as a general practitioner, you eventually have to plateau because you have that 22 syndrome. Too many accounts, paying too little money each, and you run out of time because you're stuck in the red zone way more than the green zone. Excuse me, what's cracking? And then the final one, the SME subject matter expert, it's somebody who's absolutely specialized. Like the, the largest individual producer we're working with now. Six million of commission income. Two classes of business. Two classes of business. By the way, he sells all over the country and so much of it's now, he could do easily because of this. Now that's not for everybody, but when we look at every one of the over million dollar producers we work with and ones we help develop, they always have a couple of specialties at least. That doesn't mean they don't do some general practitioner work for whatever reason. But the more they specialize, the more they do. So think of, think of your agency that's listening. Do we have a whole bunch of order takers or quoters and floaters? Do we have general practitioners or do we have SMEs? How good do you want to become?

Well, I'm going to take, I want to be careful because we could make this a whole separate podcast. Maybe we should. But it just hit me because you talk a lot about specialists and indispensable risk partners. To do that, you got to know your craft. You always say, you know, they expect, you know, insurance. Do you really understand them, their business, their needs, their frustrations, their wants, their desires?

Right?

You got to get really deep with people. But also hit me too, with capacity, you know, with the generalists. And some of you listening are going, oh yeah, it's like think about when you're writing 80. I don't know, I'm just making this up. But you got, you know, let's just say 50, 50 different classes or Types of business and all the accounts, like how much extra research and chasing and time you spend of all this stuff that you know, you don't know that well, you got to go find out. And you keep replicating things that you don't. I mean, it's, it takes a lot of time, energy and effort. And I'm, you know, I, I won't speak for the gentleman you're speaking of, although I know who you're referencing. But for 6 million dollar book of Business, my guess is he knows his stuff so deep, right, that it just comes out. He's not, you know, he's got those classes of business. His capacity in that area is pre darn incredible. I'll leave it at that, you know.

Well, and one of the other guys in our sales mastery program, who's almost as old as me, which is like old as dirt. Okay. But he's rated 4 million of commission income and has three classes of business, but he knows those classes so well. I think we've referenced this before. There was a study done by a major carrier at the middle market, accounts 100, 150,000 a premium, okay. And they, they were surveying the decision maker and say, you know, just about what do you like, what don't you like, et cetera. And there are two big frustrations that came out. The number one was my agent doesn't really understand my business. So that's. The general practitioner walks in. So tell me, what do you guys do here? Let me take a look at your policies, right? Copy some information. The old look, copy, quote and pray. So there's a frustration that there's not an understanding of the business, thus they can't really understand the risk factors. Okay? And the second thing was, quote, unquote, we hate the renewal process. And that's why we say it's not a renewal process, it's a continuation process. Whole different way that you talk with these people. But when you're stuck as a general practitioner, again, you'll do okay. Your, the average book of business is going to be at a general practitioner, going to be 3, 400,000 of commission income and they're going to make, you know, 30% blended, whatever it may be. And that's okay. But again, it's, it's not, it's not even close to best version possible. It's not close to potential. We've already used that word and it's a terrible word. Yeah. Because potential is always normal. Like, boy, he had a lot of potential. Yeah, she had a lot of potential. Which means you didn't do it. You didn't come close to it, so. And I know we can both pontificate on this forever.

Yeah, no, I just, it's, it's interesting because it just hits me some things that come up and because I, I wasn't even thinking capacity in that way. And we could. I just hit me, though. But how many times you got a producer that chases a bunch of different businesses and now they got to learn that language and they got to learn those underwriting concerns and, well, how do they do that? And what carriers do we have that work best? And just all that. I mean, it just, it can suck up a day and I mean it just like.

Well, what did you do?

Well, I worked really hard on this one account. I don't have a great opportunity. I don't really understand the risk. But you know what? I got a shot, you know, so anyway. All right, I'll stop there. I want to. I know that, you know, the audience is probably thinking, well, this sounds good, guys. I mean, great in theory, but what are some of the foundational things or strategies that, that, you know, certainly from a sales side that producers and agencies can think about to be able to implement some of these capacity things. Roger. So we could probably have a list of a hundred, but maybe just give me a few things that jump out that are most impactful to you, some.

Of the key ones. And we're going to get into service capacity here. And that's number one. Again, we've got to get the producers freedom to spend their time in the green zone. But within that, things we talk about all the time. Number one, do you have a unique selling process? Do you have a unique named selling process? And you explain to someone in 30 seconds what you really do. Okay, well, I'm an insurance agent. I give quotes and I float along and hope somebody buys. Versus do you have a compelling story? It basically starts with like, you might say manufacturers turn to me when. Okay. Or what. Whatever the class of business you're working at, what is it that people come to with what are they frustrated by that you help solve? So the unique selling proposition, it's named in that it's yours. And you can explain it very clearly. Here's how we work. The second thing we talk about all the time. It ties right to unique selling proposition. What are your five points of differentiation? What is it about you and your agency that you do that most others don't do? And even if they, quote, do it, they don't know how to articulate it. And it's certainly not part of an executive briefing you do up front front that focuses on them. So many of the executive briefings, capability, presentations, whatever you call it, they talk about themselves. It's very self focused versus potential client focused because that's what they care about. I, I see these ones where here's our agency, here's how long we've been in business, here's how big we are, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What do I care about? Well, I care whether you understand my business. Tell me in a capabilities presentation. Again, we would prefer to call it executive briefing. What are the three biggest problems you solve for that class of business? And that's where you get focus. So that's points of differentiation. Certainly at the end of the day there have somebody to talk to. All right, so that's the future ideal client pipeline, which we've talked about 100 times. And that pipeline should be full with referred or targeted leads. And as we've talked about and we preach with the producers now, every, every, every new client we write comes from a referral. And every new client we write within 12 to 18 months gives us a referral because the experience is so great. Now is that going to be 100% true by anybody? I guess if you take one order off of a referral, it would be. But what if 80% of your new business came from a targeted referred lead or introduction? And the experience you gave them was so great in that first, first 12 to 18 months that when you followed a very specific, as we call it, the reverse referral process, you get a referral from 80% of those people. So 80% of what you write comes from referring, introduction. And those people are so wowed, they give you a referral, introduction, referral, introduction. Get a dry mouth here. Okay. But it's, it's just so powerful and it's a mindset. So much of what we talk about is changing the mindset. It's changing the mindset. It's not just, oh, here I am going through my, through the thing. So like we kid around about the old Dunkin Donuts, time to make the donuts guy every four hours. So it's crucial. Those are the key. And then one, one that we talk about all the time. And I love the analogy. You said it for the first time three or four years ago in one of our producer camps. You said, would you rather have 100 pennies or four quarters? Okay, but you want four quarters. So that revenue per relationship is key and that ties back to future ideal Client. So those are some things absolutely to do. And the other thing, which I know you've said before, you can't be a million dollar producer writing thousand dollar accounts because it takes a thousand. So it comes back to not only the agency, but the individual producer. What's your business plan? I want 50 clients at $20,000 each. Great. Might take us four or five years to get there. Six years, who cares? Then the other mindset, I'm going to put the time in anyway. I might as well be great at it.

Yeah, yeah, it's, well it, it hits recently for me, Roger. So, you know, yesterday I was doing a producer camp with the group producers and we talk about that. I mean this idea that, you know, here's the cool thing about this business. I mean you really get to choose your business model and we're talking about the vision, you know, and now we've got samples on there, things to think about. But it's like, well, okay, if you're going to build a million dollar or two million dollar model, what does it look like? How many clients would you have? And sometimes they're like, well, I've never thought about that before. And I would say, you know, if you don't aim at something, you might hit it. And what do you mean? It's kind of a joke. It's like, it means you have no idea where you're going. You're just wandering through the desert, so to speak, and just hopefully you run into stuff. And it. One other comment on this because as you're saying, just hitting me on notes, it's like this idea because it comes back to capacity, right.

Like you have a.

Producers like you could tell a hundred really bad stories 100 times to people that don't fit your future ideal client. Or you could tell it really, really effectively, super powerfully with 10 people of higher levels that are 10 times as large as of size of the account size, you tell me what you want to do. Where's your capacity going to be? Well, you know, I don't know. I, I can't. Part of this is you got to practice it. You got to get better at it. Right. There's, there's things that go around this and again we can go down a whole different, different rabbit hole there. So it's important stuff. Important stuff for sure.

I want to jump in on some. You said they're all practice. Okay. Because we talk about all the time, low risk practice.

Yep.

And I'm, I'm appalled with some agencies where they work so hard to get in front of a future ideal client.

Yep.

And then it's not rehearsed. The executive briefing, the initial discussion is not rehearsed. And when we do challenge people to do that, it's painful for this. Painful for us too. But what's amazing is how quickly the story turns, how much better they get because they practiced it. You know, the first time you're doing an executive briefing or whatever you want to call it in front of a future ideal client better be like the third or fourth time you've actually done it. But it's the first time in front of them. And we just see this so often. We've kidded around. I know on this before about the, the young guy pre Covid days where we said at the end of the first day of the producer camp, what did you learn? He said, coach, I got it. I'm no longer going to practice my presentation. During the actual presentation, of course, everybody cracked up, but hit too close to home. Why would you not rehearse it? Mindset. Every event deserves my very best. My very best is not showing up, throwing up and blowing up. My very best is. Is a conversation based upon research on their industry. Okay. Research on their company, how underwriters would look at their accounts and the things we do that we can help them control total cost to risk or total cost of benefits. But if you're not prepared for that, you just kind of go and go, okay, we're here. Let's look at your policies. And unfortunately, you still make 100, 150,000, but come on. Sure. Yeah.

I mean, again, we say about this, you don't have to do any of this stuff. You'd probably still be. But it just, I mean, this just comes back to like, you know, tangible moments and, and this is the reality of it. Again, I know every situation is different, but it's like you've got an opportunity to go see a good future ideal client. Hopefully a great future ideal client. And you know, let's say the hour before you're getting ready to go there, are you doing true prep and practice and going through the game and visually getting yourself ready for this and making sure you're not missing anything and, and rehearsing how you're going to present things and the questions you're going to ask or you back look at email scrolling through social media, doing something that someone else has probably already paid to do in your office. Think about that for a second. What's that value of an hour? Well, you know, I didn't do my best at the appointment, but I sure did. I scrolled through a few emails and social media and again, I, you know, maybe I'm sounding harsh here, but it's true because we get back to, well, they just, there's not enough time. Well, it depends. We always say, Roger, there's no time management. It's situation management. How are you, man, in that situation before, you know, I say it's, it's when the lights go on. It's what you did when the lights were off. And I think so often people overlook that or go, yeah, that makes sense, but they don't actually do it. So, all right, my rant's over now. My rant's over. All right. I want to get how this ties into service capacity because, you know, let's face it, I mean, this is something I've got. Many of the agencies I personally coach, Roger, that are really struggling with this and they're dealing with it is, it's again, just like with sales, it's hard to find good service people. It's hard to figure out how to maximize our efficiency in that area. So I just want you to think about from a service perspective, service capacity, what are, I'll start big picture here. What are some big things that jump out if you in this area that can help help agencies move forward in this. Hi, Brent Kelly here. You've just listened to part one of the two part series with Roger Sitkins on sales and service capacity. Next episode we're going to dive deep into service capacity. So we're going to talk about what that means for you as an agency leader, talk about some KPIs and metrics to focus on as well. So thanks for listening as always and we'll see you back for part two.