Leveraging Your Most Vital Skill

Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on another episode. As always, I am super grateful for you being a listener to the Agent Leader Podcast. We continue to grow this audience and get more downloads and shares and we certainly appreciate it. Again, our mission here, I mean, my goal at the Agent Leader Podcast is to help agency leaders, agency professionals like you, to gain clarity, to build consistency, and to make a commitment to become your best version possible. And you know, one thing I'd add too, that if you have a certain topic or idea that you'd like me to talk about, I can't guarantee this, but certainly want to hear from you. And if you just email me and my team@podcastitkins.com that's podcastitkins.com we certainly could take a look at that and want to hear from you and any ideas that you want to share. Again, topics that you think would be beneficial to a group of insurance professionals like yourself. Now, on today's episode, I'm going to talk about the most vital skill that quite often is just not utilized, not leveraged at the highest possible way it should be. And I've talked about this in different areas of this podcast, but there's so much of a deeper level and I want to just hit some areas of three areas that this specific skill must be utilized. Listen, if you're an agent leader, where you're leading a team, if you're a sales professional and you're out there leading your clients, if you're a claims person or service person and you're out there having these conversations, as I've always said, influence is the heart of leadership. And you all have influence. And the most vital skill in influence is to be a high level communicator. Right? To be a high level communicator. Many, many years ago. Now, I won't give the exact years, but I was probably, I don't know, seven, eight years old. I don't remember exactly the time frame, but it was over a period of time. When I was a child. My mom would always say something that I thought was really profound. She said those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still. Now, maybe you've heard that before. I'm sure it's not the only person that would use that phrase. But think about that. Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still, which basically means this. We can try to tell people how to think or what to think or what to do, right? The next step to make. We could do that and it might work a little bit, especially if you've got, you know, some type of positional power or you write the paycheck. But, but that's not long term success. We all know that at some point that runs out and it's frustrating for really everybody involved. And so the idea is that I want to share today in this idea of communication, the vital skill. When I say vital skill, think about vital signs. You know, if you were to be rushed into the hospital and you're having a heart attack, they're going to check your vital signs. They're not looking about the scrape on your knee. And so often, you know, I see insurance professionals that miss this vital sign, this vital skill of communication. They kind of overlook it or pooh, pooh it. Like, well, you know, yeah, of course I've got to talk and you know, I've got to be a better listener and I should ask better questions. But they don't really go deep into it and they never have the intention of trying to master it. Now, we're never going to be perfect. You're never going to fully master anything. But you should be on the path. I mean, if you're an insurance professional, and I've stated this before, I say it in all my trainings, but on a scale of 1 to 10, how vital, how important is the skill of communication? I always hear 10, 11, 12, 13, 15. Yet then I asked the question, how diligently, deliberately are you practicing that skill and improving that skill? And are you attending programs and you're working with yourself and doing low risk practice and, you know, role play, everything? Well, not so much. Right, not so much. So what I'm going to talk today is about three areas. Again, this is not anything new, but my question is, how well are you doing these things? I always ask that. I mean, it's not. Well, I know that. I know I should be a better communicator. Well, duh, of course. But how well are you doing it? And so the three aspects that I want to go through is how to ask powerful questions, how to be a true active listener, and how you gain more influence when you talk, when you speak. You know, as a father of five kiddos, some of you know that some of you may not. I've got five kids and they range from 17 all the way down to three. Okay, so like any parent or grandparent or if you're aunt and uncle, Right, whatever it is, or you're around little kids, we know that little kids in particular ask a tremendous amount of questions, a lot of questions. In fact, I saw a study. I don't know how they actually proved all this, but the study was pretty interesting. It said the average 4 year old asks 360 questions per day. The average 4 year old asked 360 questions per day. And I can tell you again, having a three year old right now and a seven year old who just turned eight actually. But these little kids, they ask a lot of questions. I don't know if it's 360, but it's a lot. It's a lot of questions. Well, why is that? Well, because they're naturally curious and they want to learn. That's why they ask questions. I don't know. So I'm going to ask you, mom and dad or whoever, why do we do this? Why do we do that? When are we going to get there? I mean, that's the worst one. But a lot of questions, right? They're naturally curious. But at some point as adults, and maybe even as we go to adolescence, to teen, you know, to pre adulthood, whatever, you know, our upper teen years, we start to lose our curiosity. We start to lose that awe and wonder of why do things work this way? Why do people do that? Why do we do that? Now, some of that is because we learn more. That's good, right? We have more information in our heads. But I think also, I think the big thing that I see, certainly when it comes to the professional world, certainly with insurance professionals, is that we lose curiosity and we stop asking as many questions because of two main things, fear and insecurity. Fear and insecurity. We don't ask as many questions because we fear that we may look stupid or fear that we may ask the wrong question, or, you know, fear that we may offend someone. I don't know what it is. We just have a fear. It could be a number of fears and we have insecurity. You know, what if I look stupid? What if it looks like I don't know enough? What if I'm not as credible? And it's interesting to me because, you know, as you grow and expand in your professional world, you will certainly learn more and have more knowledge that you can share. But the best insurance professionals that I'm around, and, you know, it's interesting to me, here's the best example I can give. I have the fortune and privilege of training and coaching thousands of insurance professionals. When I look at, you know, whether it's keynote trainings, whether it's the ongoing programs that we run, you know, we've had over 200 producers go through our program or starting this, this spring, we had almost 100 in the winter. I mean, there's a lot of different insurance professionals that I get the chance to be around and learn from myself. And it's interesting. The most successful going into the program, those with maybe larger books of business or more success from the agency perspective, however you wanted to find that, also ask the most questions. And guess what? They also stay to the end every session that we run. And here's a quick plug every session that we run. And you certainly can learn about all of our programs by going to sitkins.com programs. And it's sales leadership and leadership and sales. But we do a 90 minute or two hour virtual interactive live program. And at the end we'll stay on myself and Roger Sitkins, if we're both running the program, we'll stay on up to 30 minutes if they want, just to answer questions, just to have more dialogue and conversation. And here's a shocker. The most successful producers that either have left the program or, you know, gone through it and then continued on in business or come back to us later. Right. To continue to learn, or those that have come into the program who are already at a higher level, they stay for Q and A and they're the ones that ask the questions. They're always looking to learn. They're always curious. It's not that, well, now I know enough, so I'm good. It's no. What else? What am I missing? How could I learn more? And that's a big difference. So I would just ask yourself, how naturally curious are you? Are you continuing to try to learn by asking questions or are you just. Life's good enough. I've graduated from high school, college, I've got my cic. I don't care what it is, I'm done. So what's your natural curiosity? If we think about questions, and this certainly is more producer based. Okay, but a couple things on questions, number one is that we know that just like we teach 8020 for clients and revenue, that 20% of clients on average produce about 80% of revenue. There's also an 8020 and it's not the same philosophy necessarily, but it works. That we should be asking questions 20% of the time and listening 80% of the time. Right. That we should be doing that. And there's a great acronym from the book the 21 Secrets of Million Dollar Sellers. I think I've mentioned that book before. The author is Stephen Harville. Great book. A lot of insur. Analogies and stories in there, but 21 secrets of million Dollar Sellers. He has a section in there that talks about wait W A I T which stands for why am I talking? I really would suggest that you go into any appointment or meeting and have that tattooed in your eyelids. Wait, why am I talking? Right. What are the questions I'm not asking that I should be asking? And if you're an insurance producer, I mean there's just some basics here. What are the risk based questions that you're asking? Are you going to an appointment and saying what are the risk based questions that no one else is asking? Or how can I be more prepared before every appointment to say what would be three risk exposures, Three things that I'm going to be asking to learn more about how this client manages risk versus show up, throw up, blow up. Good to see you kind of look at your policies and you're just kind of winging it. What about we've done podcasts on points of differentiation so you can go back and find someone. Differentiation. But do you have POD based questions? If you know that, for example, an annual risk review is something that you do at a high level that most other agencies don't do. Or if you have a disaster recovery plan or if you have an experience modification program or system that gives you an advantage, are you asking open ended peer to peer type questions? These are questions that are open ended and that they assume that they're already doing it. So just how are you asking those questions? Are you coming in prepared? How do you measure? What's the frequency? When's the last time? Share with me this. And then of course, referral based questions. Are you asking questions based on referrals? It's amazing to me. It shouldn't be amazing, but it's still amazing to me. I guess I should say that, you know, we've got these clients who want to help us and we're not prepared and willing to ask questions about how they could help us. Because if you go in and wing it, you're gonna screw it up or look silly. That's why most people don't ask. So again, this is a vital skill, asking questions. Work at home, work in your office, work on asking questions that make people stop, think and answer in terms of you. And then here's the next part of list of communication. I gave it away there. Active listening. Do you listen to reply or listen to understand? You know, some people ask questions only because they're told to ask questions and then they reply with what they were going to say. No matter what the answer is, I know I've done that in different ways. Well, I have something I have to say and something I need to share with you and I'm the expert here and I know everything and I've loved this team or I've been doing this for 20 years, whatever the case may be. So I asked you a question and whatever your answer is, just thanks for allowing me to listen. And now I'm going to tell you what you really need to know. So do you listen to reply or listen to understand? Stephen Covey 7 Habits of Highly Effective People seek first to understand, then to be understood. So to me, active listening is about going deeper in your conversation. It's about clarifying, it's about quantifying. Tell me why you feel this way. How did you come to that conclusion? What does that mean to you? What is the impact? How would that affect your business? Right? I mean, these are just questions. When someone gives you an answer, I'm listening to you and I want to make sure I understand. Author Jerry Ballard has a great quote. He said, all miscommunication is simply a differing of assumptions. Something like that. We just, we have different assumptions. Well, you said this and I thought you meant that. You know, I thought, have you ever been there? I have, like, well, I thought you meant that. Well, no, if I would have asked another question or listened more actively, I would have gotten to the true statement, not just what I wanted to hear. So I would just ask yourself, how well are you doing active listening? When you ask a question or when you're having a conversation, do you clarify and quantify? Why is it? Tell me more about that. Let me make sure I understand. This is what you said. Is that what you meant? Whatever that is. And by the way, it's one of the greatest signals that you care about someone. There is no doubt. If you had a conversation with someone when they really wanted to find and clarify what you said, you feel appreciated. You feel appreciated. Last thing I'm going to share on this podcast, I just want to challenge you. This is a vital skill. This isn't like, oh yeah, you know, communication is pretty important. But like, are you actively working on asking questions and actively listening? And the last part, are you actively working on being a better speaker, a better presenter? Are you practicing things? Do you have a rehearse prepared? 30 second commercial. Can you give a first appointment we call an executive briefing, whatever that may be. This goes back to a study years and years ago, a UCLA professor, Albert Mehrabean. And there's been some different takes on this study. It's exactly this, exactly that. The bottom line is this. I think the overall point is that words are only a very small part of what people hear. In fact, in his study, he said 7% of influence comes from words, 38% of the influence comes from the tone of voice, and 55% comes from our physiology, our body language. So how well are you using not just your words, but your tone of voice or your body language? I mean, this is a podcast. I don't have video on this. But think about how much more impactful it is when you can see people's body language. Are they smiling? Are they shrugging their shoulders? Are they, you know, are they. Are their hands going back and forth? Are they grinding their eyes? Whatever it may be, Right? I mean, those are things that we see. I know my own family. I mean, the communication with my kids at home is much different when we're on the table than it is on a text. I can't see the eye rolls and the shrugs or the smiles or the laughs. Right. Those things I can't always see, but they are so important. If you want to be a great presenter, you've got to understand all three of those. Now, I spent. I was fortunate. My feedback. I spent several years in Toastmasters. In fact, I think it was like seven or eight years I was in Toastmasters. And the reason was pretty simple. I knew that communication was going to be important to my success and I wanted to get better at it. And it's always interesting to me that people, many people now like, well, Brent, you're a pretty natural communicator. It comes easy to you. Yes, I enjoy speaking and training and coaching and those kind of things. I do. I have a natural affinity to it. But I can tell you I continue to try to work on getting better. And if you would have seen me 20 years ago speak, it would have been very, very painful. Ten years ago, painful. Five years ago, still pretty painful. Maybe last week it was painful for some of them, I don't know. But the point of it is I'm always looking to get better. And how can I get better next week and the next week and the next week? Because I know it's a vital skill for me as well, just like it is for you as an insurance professional. Here's the bottom line on today's podcast. Ask yourself, as a communicator, how do you truly rate yourself and what's the next thing you're going to do to up your game if you want to have the most success in this business. It's about leadership, it's about influence, and it's about moving from just basic communication to true human connection. That comes by being prepared and rehearsed. Ask questions. That comes by being a true active listener and understanding body language and tone of voice and physiology and your words all integrate that. You know what this person, when they speak it means something more than most people because they're good at it. As a communicator, as a connector, as a leader, as an influencer, what's your best version possible and how you're going to get there? Hey, thanks for being a listener to the Agent Leader Podcast. If this podcast other podcasts have added value to you and your agency, do me a couple favors. Number one, could you share? I would appreciate that. Or subscribe. That would be helpful. I guess. I'll give you a third one if you if you enjoy this and I deserve a good rating, please give me one. Again. We're continuing to try to grow this podcast in the audience. And lastly is this if you as an agency are looking to up your game at the highest level, want to look to be part of our private client group or all inclusive membership where you have access to all of our training and programs that we run a monthly sales meeting, Please visit our sitkins.com program@sitkins.com programs I wish you all the best in your success. Thanks for listening.