Mastering Agency Growth With Execution

Most agencies do not have an idea problem. They have an execution problem. They already know dozens of ways to grow. Just ask them. Cross-sell existing clients, improve retention, ask for referrals, build centers of influence, specialize, prospect consistently. Hire another producer, launch another new campaign. How about this one? Buy another technology platform. Now, none of those ideas are necessarily wrong, but when every idea becomes a priority, guess what happens? No idea receives the focus required for it to become a result. The agency stays busy. The calendar stays full. People go to all kinds of meetings, new initiatives are announced, yet 6 months later, the same problems remain. More ideas do not automatically create more growth. In fact, in many agencies, more ideas are weakening your execution. The question is not what else could or should we do? The better question is, what is the one Growth strategy our entire agency must execute. Here's a keyword, consistently. Well, welcome back to the Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly. My goal, my mission of this podcast is to help you, the agency leader, become a best version possible agency leader that leads a best version possible agency. Now we're continuing our series on the 4 disciplines that help an agency become its best version possible. Clarify, align, execute, and optimize. Now, clarification, the first one I did in this series, it creates awareness. Alignment creates momentum. Execution creates results, and optimization creates continuous improvement. But here's the focus today. Clarity and alignment, although incredibly important, and that's why they're the first 2 disciplines, they do not create results By themselves. Now, my guess, if you're listening to this podcast or you're trying to become a better agency, you probably want results, right? At some point, the agency has to do the work repeatedly, consistently, even when the work is not exciting. The next new idea is trying to steal everyone's new attention. So today we're going to talk about execution. And execution, as I already had in my opener, is not about doing more things. It's turning the right strategy into the normal behaviors of the organization. In fact, one of our definitions of culture, the main definition of culture at the Sitkins organization, is culture is the language and behaviors that are normal in your agency. So this is about turning the right strategy into normal behaviors of the organization. And for agency growth, The strategies should be simple enough for the entire organization to understand and powerful enough to improve growth, profitability, client relationships, and capacity. Now, the strategy we're going to talk about today, the key linchpin strategy for agencies that we work as private clients with is around the ultimate growth strategy. Simple to understand, challenging to execute. And not because it's overwhelming, it's because it requires consistency. Round out your best clients, retain your best clients, and replicate your best clients. I want to start with talking about why execution breaks down, because in this strategy I'm going to share with you today, it's not complicated. It's not overwhelming. Oh, wow. Brent, you're going to tell me to round out my best clients? I never would have thought of that. Retain at the highest level, my best clients. I never would've thought of that. Replicate my best clients. Now, these things sound simple, but we need to talk about why execution breaks down because, well, I know that. I know that. How many people said, I get it? Here's my question to you. How well do you do it? I don't care that you know something. My job as a coach in working with agencies, yes, they have to first have awareness. But then it's about, we actually gotta execute the thing. Otherwise we're just talking about stuff, right? So we need to talk about these ideas that the leaders believe in, that the team agrees with, that everyone leaves the meeting energized and not just energized, but with specific focus, right? Because here's what happens. How often does it happen to you? We all get excited about a new idea. Then the urgent takes over. The phone rings, an email arrives, a carrier creates a problem, a renewal becomes difficult. Someone needs help. The meeting gets moved, stuff gets shifted. The follow-up never happens. And guess what? The initiative, which was super exciting a few months ago, maybe weeks ago, slowly disappears. Now here's the bottom line. The agency didn't reject the strategy. It wasn't like we, ah, we think that's stupid. That's not what happens. The execution and why it slows down is simply not due to rejection. It's because we allow daily activity to defeat it, distraction to defeat it. That is why execution cannot depend on enthusiasm, excitement. There was a great quote by the late, great Zig Ziglar about motivation. Motivation doesn't last. And he said, well, neither does bathing. That's why I recommend it daily. I always love that quote. Enthusiasm is helpful, but it's temporary. Execution. Please listen. Execution requires focused, defined behaviors, ownership, measurement, and a cadence of accountability. I mentioned culture, the language of behaviors that are normal, the culture of accountability. There's also a cadence. Of accountability, it's not about getting excited in January and then forgetting about it in February and coming back to it next January. It's about a cadence. It requires leaders to resist what we sometimes describe as the gimmick of the month club—the constant search for the next tool, the next tactic, the next miracle idea. Execution improves when people know exactly what matters, what they are responsible for. what good performance looks like and when progress will be reviewed. The ultimate growth strategy gives the entire agency one shared focus. It creates more value for the right clients. It protects those relationships and intentionally creates more relationships just like them. So the first component is round out. You know, many agencies have what we call part-time clients. The agency handles one policy, maybe one location, one line of business, or one small piece of the total opportunity of the relationship. Another advisor handles the rest. We got it from a different agency. The relationship may look like a client relationship inside the management system, but the agency has only earned a fraction of the opportunity. Round it out means helping the client identify and address gaps across the total relationship. Oftentimes you see this as, oh my gosh, we just haven't thought about it. We got away from it. For a commercial client, that may mean reviewing property and casualty, benefits, personal risk, executive coverage, life insurance, bonds, all kinds of different areas for the agency. Because a rounded-out client, a full-time client, is usually better protected. Of course, they're more deeply connected to the agency, more likely to see the team as trusted advisors, and they're less vulnerable to a competitor who finds the gaps first. Rounding out also improves one of the key metrics that we see all the time, revenue per relationship, the greatest growth indicator for your agency. That matters because profitable growth is not simply about adding more accounts. It's about creating more value within the right relationship. If you want to do something interesting this next week, ask your team these questions. Which of our part-time clients Are still part-time clients? What important areas of their risk or business do we not fully understand? What conversation have we failed to initiate? By the way, don't begin with every client. Begin with the top relationships where the greater value can be created for both the client and you, the agency. The second part is to retain. Retention is often treated as a number that's reviewed at the end of the year. Our retention number was 92%. 94%, 91%. Hopefully it's higher, right? But by the time that retention appears on a report, the result has already happened. Retention is created through behaviors that occur through the relationship. The goal is not merely to keep the account for another year. The goal is to make the relationship stronger every year. Now think about that. We're not just trying to renew accounts. We're trying to improve and engage these relationships. Your top clients should know what you've done for them, why it matters, what's changing, and what you recommend next. Retention becomes more predictable when it's not left to personality or memory. I often see that. What's your process for this? Well, he kind of does it this way. She kind of does it this way. Oh yeah, I remember this year, this year I didn't. The agency needs a named, documented, and consistently delivered continuation process. Ask your team some more questions. Which key relationships require attention right now? What promises are still open? Where are we being reactive instead of proactive? If a top competitor met with one of our best clients tomorrow, how clearly could that client explain why they should stay with us? All right. That is the power of retaining with focus on the right clients. Last area. This is the one that should be the most exciting. You know, the first 2 certainly round out full-time clients, right? All those things protects the client relationship, grows revenue per relationship, right? So there's expanding in business, retain, obviously building upon those relationships and continuing the business. But the last one is where the multiplication effects take place. This is where agencies skyrocket. When they embrace this, it changes the next 2, 3, 5, 10 years of the agency. Because growth is not simply writing more business, it's about writing more of the right business. Every agency, your agency replicates something. The question is whether it's replicating its best relationships or simply accepting whatever appears. If your pipeline is filled with small transactional wrong-fit opportunities, Winning more of them may actually increase revenue while increasing workload. You're actually becoming less profitable. That's growth without leverage. Replication starts by defining the characteristics of your best clients. Your best clients are not only the most valuable relationships, they're also a map showing you where the agency should grow next. If the top 20% of your clients deserve greater attention, the agency must stop delivering the same service The same model to every relationship. Well, they're all clients of our agency. Sorry, doesn't work that way. If you've got a number of clients, you could pretend that every client deserves the same or gets the same level of service, but they don't. All right. You just don't. So that does not mean treating smaller clients poorly. Please hear me. Every client definitely deserves professional service, but professional service does not require Identical service. Leaders must intentionally determine the appropriate service model for each client tier. That may mean different workflows, different communication standards, maybe a select business unit utilizing carrier service centers for some agencies, outsourced support, or respectfully helping certain accounts find a better fit. Sometimes serving people Is actually not serving people. There's a truth to that. You are not a great fit for everybody, right? This is where many leaders lose their nerve. They agree oftentimes 80/20 makes sense. In principle, we get it, but they refuse to make any decision that changes how resources are allocated. This goes back to execution. Oh, that's a great idea. Are you executing it well? No, it's kind of challenging. Then we look back 6 months, a year, 2 years, and 3 years. We wonder why producers remain trapped in service work. We wonder why account managers remain overloaded. We, we wonder why top clients receive inconsistent attention. Execution requires trade-offs. If everything remains equally important, nothing becomes strategically important. So turn the strategy into a behavior because a strategy is only executable when it becomes observable, when we actually do things. So this idea of round out, retain, and replicate, right? Leaders have gotta translate round out, retain, and replicate into a small number of non-optional behaviors. Keyword, non-optional. Not, well, if you feel like this is our standard, this is how we do business. And by the way, this provides the client the absolute best experience. Yes, it's selfish in terms of we're going to grow more, we're going to be more profitable, our agency value is going to skyrocket, we're going to have more capacity. I guess if you want to call that selfish, but you know who we're really serving? The client. You know, there's a very famous quote out there. If you help enough people get what they want, you can have anything and everything that you want. So just understand this. We have got to make sure that we have non-optional behaviors, and then we assign ownership. We put behaviors on the calendar, we track leading indicators. Review progress consistently. Coach up gaps. Where do we have skill, lacking skill, uh, skill areas in our agency? Do not measure only lagging results such as total revenue and retention. Those are great. You should know total revenue. You should know retention, but they're lagging. We've got to understand this idea. We've got to measure the key actions. What does that look like? And we do these things. Guess what happens? Growth is a result. Accountability must focus on the behaviors that produce it. The execution challenge. This is what I want to start with. What is your challenge? We talked about no agency has a problem of ideas. We all have them. I have a lot of ideas. How we execute is what matters. So here's the next practical challenge for your next leadership meeting. Oh, by the way, outside of contacting us, because we could probably help you. Okay. But here's, here's the next practical challenge for your next leadership meeting. Identify the top 20% of your client relationships. There we go. 80/20. Do not debate the perfect formula for 3 months. You could overthink the heck out of this. Just start somewhere. Use revenue, profitability, strategic fit, relationship strength, and future potential to create an initial list. Just look at who you currently work well with. Second, select a manageable group of priority relationships for the next 90 days. What does it look like? Third, for each relationship, answer 3 questions. Back to what I talked about. How do we round this relationship out and create greater value? What must we do to retain and deepen the relationship? And how can this relationship help us identify or earn access to other ideal clients? Here's a fourth, a bonus. Define the few non-optional behaviors the team will execute every week. And finally, establish an accountability cadence, right? You can review this weekly, biweekly if you want to, monthly, and keep it simple enough to maintain and specific enough that people cannot hide behind the vague updates. Well, I worked hard this week. By the way, the goal of this is not to give you more things to do or spreadsheets, although I'm giving you actionable items. The purpose is to make the strategy visible, repeatable, and normal. Execution is what turns an idea into a habit, a habit into a standard, and a standard into a predictable result. Now listen, I'm not here to kid you to say this stuff is easy, but I'm telling you it's worth it. It's worth it. And we have created at Sitkins a very clear, repeatable, and highly focused on execution path for your agency. We help independent insurance agencies simplify growth by doing several things I've talked about on this podcast, aligning leaders, producers, and service professionals around proven strategies and behaviors required to execute them. The ultimate growth strategy is simple to understand, but simple, as I said earlier, does not mean easy. It's going to require leadership, segmentation, clear roles, a defined client experience, producer focus, And accountability. So here's my invitation to you. If you lead a growth-focused independent insurance agency and you're ready to turn good ideas into consistent execution, if you're ready to take good to great, great to elite, and that becoming part of your standards, go visit our website, sitkins.com. Learn more about how we work with agencies. And ultimately, if you want to schedule an initial conversation just to get to know you, we may or may not be a right fit. Go to sitkins.com/bookacall. We can explore where your agency is today, where you want to go, and whether Sitkins is the right fit to help you close the gap. Now, let me leave you with this. Your agency does not become exceptional because it knows more. It becomes exceptional because it consistently executes what matters Most. Round out your best relationships, retain and deepen them, replicate more clients like them, and create the capacity required to do these things exceptionally well. Stop asking your team to chase every possible growth idea. Give them one clear strategy. Translate that into behavior. Reinforce it until it becomes normal. Clarify creates awareness. Align creates momentum. As I talked about today, execution creates results. Now in the 4th and final episode of this series, we're going to focus on optimization. How exceptional agencies measure progress, learn from experience, reinforce what works, and continually improve. Until next time, it's a pleasure to be with you. Continue your pursuit of becoming a best agency. Thank you. version possible agency. Wish you all the best in your success. Thanks for listening. Today's episode is brought to you by Rough Notes Magazine. Since 1878, Rough Notes has helped independent insurance professionals stay informed, sharpen their leadership, and grow their agencies. From industry trends and technology to marketing and specialty lines, Rough Notes delivers practical insights that you can put to work. They also offer Rough Notes Advantage, giving agencies additional tools and resources to help them compete and grow. Visit them at roughnotes.com. Hey there, agent leader. Brent Kelly here. Want to take just a few seconds to remind you that now is the time to create your true best version possible. Agency. If you go to sitkins.com/bookacall, sitkins.com/bookacall, we'll get to know more about your agency, conduct an agency assessment, and provide your agency with a customized plan to help you avoid some of the pitfalls, frustrations, challenges, and roadblocks to get your agency to true ultimate freedom and become its best version possible. It all starts by going to sitkins.com/bookacall.