Mastering Insurance Sales: Consistency, Balance, and Success with Dan Elliott

What does great consistency in a high level insurance agency look like? Well, on today's Agent Leader podcast, I interviewed Dan Elliott, managing partner of the Diebold Agency in Michigan. And this is an agency that continues to crush their sales goals year after year after year after year. And they continue to learn and grow and adapt. This is a dynamic sales organization that also provides exceptional service and. And Dan talks about that marriage between sales and service that helps them achieve the results that most agencies are looking for. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. This is the podcast for agency leaders to learn, to grow, to develop, and ultimately become their best version possible. It's a pleasure to be with you on this episode. My name is Brent Kelly. I'm the host of the Agent Leader podcast. And on today's episode, I'm. I have a fantastic guest, someone who is a longtime friend and client of the Sitkins Group, someone that I've had the pleasure of getting to know very well over the last several years in our relationship. He is a managing partner, he is a sales leader, he is a producer, he's a husband, he's a dad, he's got kids everywhere. I know the feeling I have. Managing partner of the Diebold Agency in the great state of Michigan, Dan Elliott. Dan, welcome to the Agent Leader podcast.

Brent, thanks for having me on this morning. Look forward to a conversation and really moving forward on a discussion about what's been working for us and the value that Sickens has added to our team.

Yeah, I can't wait. Love getting a chance to talk to you as most of you will not know. You know, Dan and I will have conversations in our, in our professional relationship and reach out personally on different stuff. I know he's a big Michigan State fan, so we'll talk some big ten talk once in a while, but way more important than that, and for you, the Agent Leader, listener and watcher of this podcast is he's got a wealth of experience and as a managing partner at the Diebold Agency, they've had tremendous growth over many, many years. So, Dan, if you would just give an overview of, you know, your role a little bit about the agency. You know, take some time to brag on, on DBOLD and, and where you've come from, where you are and where you're going.

Yeah, thanks, Brent. That's a great, great question. It's a great history. I'm actually fourth generation in the family business. My great Grandpa started in 19 one location and then my, my grandfather came in and really was the pioneer of the start of our Agency with Taoist Bay insurance. And then 1983, my dad acquired Diebold Insurance in West Branch with his brothers. They opened up a Houghton Lake office in Michigan. In 97, 2007, 2008, went and opened an office in Detroit. And then about two years ago now we acquired an agency over on the west side of Michigan in Muskegon. Me personally, I worked at auto owners on the carrier side for a couple years out of college, 2011-14. From then I came back as a producer in the agency, really developing my own book of business, cultivating relationships, setting some lofty goals and making sure I held myself accountable to achieve them. I've been at the agency now for 10 years. I've been an owner now for two years. Perpetuated my, my dad out of the business. You know, as on the personal side we've talked about, he still pops his head in on occasion. But it's been a successful transition and yeah, it's tremendous growth over the last couple years. This year is no different. This is our best sales year we've had in company history and look forward to continuing that. Thankful very much for your guidance, your support and your direction.

Yeah, well, yeah, I want to. You stated some stuff there. I don't, I don't want to take it lightly because you know, again, there's so many family agencies out there. We work with many of them and it's great to see that, you know, fourth generation, like, congrats, right. To keep those things going. But something you said was interesting. You, you went to work at Auto Owners. I know you, and you're not going to say much bragging, but you went out there, you've built a really nice book of business, you've worked your tail off and I think there's a lot to be said as a family agency because let's face it, when you think about a family agency, the people around you, what a lot of people think, oh, you're there because you're the kid. Right. It's your name. And yes, there's some reality to that. But what I think is really exceptional, Dan, as you said that, it just brought to my attention of I will say this and tell me if you agree with this or not. And then some things that you've learned in this process. But I always tell a lot of people that are in family agencies that you've got to prove yourself almost twice as much as others because there's always that stigma of oh, well, yeah, it's a family agency and you have done the things you first of all, I'd love to hear the fact that you went to auto owners versus, hey, I came out, now I just get this cushy job, right? You went and worked on the carrier side. And in the fact that you've went out there and earned your keep, like, you know, I'm not going to get into specific numbers, but you've got a nice, nice book of business. You went out there and proved yourself. So let me give you your perception of that. Being in a family agency, having the name, the legacy there, how did you find your way to prove yourself or what things did you do or see in that process? Dan?

Yeah, you're right. I mean, they're the family agencies. It's an incredible way to, to do business, but it comes with this fair share of challenges. And you know, my, my grandparents, grandpa and then, and then my dad and his brothers had a nice rule at the agency that we had to go work for a carrier for two or three years, get some real life experience, understand the industry, the ins and outs of what we do and why we do it. And then when we're ready, that's when, you know, if it makes sense at the agency level, that's when we come back to the agency. And myself, my brother Pete, my cousin Ben, all of us have gone through that process at different carriers and different levels, and it's hard to even verbalize the value that, that brought to, to all of us in our roles at the agency. Now, when, when we talk about earning your stripes and, and that, that target on your back that you have, you just got to work significantly harder. You got to put in the time, you got to put in the effort. You got to do things the right way because you do have that target on your back. Everybody's looking at you as, hey, you're, you're in my situation. Kevin's son, um, you know, this is something you got to go out and earn. And, you know, myself and my brother Peter have done a great job of going out there and building that relationship and rapport with our staff, showing we're willing to put in the time, we're willing to put in the effort. We're all in this together as a team, and it's not something that's just handed to you. It's something that you really have to go out there and earn, and you got to work twice as hard as anybody else.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, Dan, one of my favorite quotes, John Maxwell, it's pretty famous at this point. He says, you know, leadership is influence, nothing more. Nothing less. And you know, it's not title, it's not position. And I think, you know, what you stated is super important there because, you know, to come in at whatever age, you know, and be like, well, this is my name and my title. So now you all have to follow and listen to me. It doesn't work that way.

Right.

I mean, part of it is, yes, at some point there is. There. There is an aspect of maybe I'm the one sign of the check or different things. But, you know, who do people follow and why do they follow them? And why should I listen to you? And the thing that you mentioned, Dan, and you didn't use this word so I'll use it, is that the first aspect of great leadership is modeling. Modeling the mindset, modeling the behaviors. So from. From an aspect of culture. Right. And you guys have done that, doesn't mean there's not challenges. We'll talk about those. But from an aspect of culture, how have you and Pete and leadership team in general, what have you done to help instill a culture that you desire, that you want? Right. The things that you've mentioned before, leading a team and believing in them and helping them and serving them.

Yeah. So, you know, really two different things. And I'm going to pat your back here with, with everything that Sinkins has done. We aren't just an insurance agency. Right. We're truly a sales organization and that's how we want to position ourselves. We're a sales and a service organization. Sales drives our growth, service drives our growth. And that's something that we've really put an emphasis on at the agency, is Sidkins has done a great job of ingraining the culture of sales and service and same goal, different role. I mean, I don't know how many times you talk about that in your meetings. I'm sure you say that a few times through the year. But it's truly the way that business has to be done. We have high performance teams in our agencies. You guys talk about high performance teams all the time in your coaching. Vitally important that you're driving towards the same goal of putting new business on the books, keeping good business on the books in this market. It's incredibly challenging. Everybody knows what's going on with the current insurance market, but it's also a great opportunity in the marketplace. People want to look at different solutions. And if your service team is pushing your sales team to get out of the office, we'll take care of the clients. We know our job is to take care of the clients. It's really changed our culture of getting the salespeople out of the office, getting in that green zone 80% of the time, doing what they should be doing. And I think that's probably our biggest cultural shift is realizing that we're not against each other. Sales and service, we're really together as a team. And forever it was, hey, they're just writing business and dumping work on us. Sure, optics, that's what it looks like in some situations. But the value that we can communicate to our team and show them, hey, here is where we're going, here's how we're going to get there. And we can't do it without the same goal, different role mentality at the agency.

Yeah, it's so well said. Yeah, we, we do preach and teach it all the time. It's important. And, you know, it's interesting as I do a number of these podcasts and I ask questions about, you know, things you've taken away and things you're installing. I mean, that is has just continues to come up again and again and I guess it shouldn't surprise me, but, you know, my belief, and it's not a belief, it's a reality. If we don't have good internal relationships and internal communication, we will not have great external relationships and external communication. It fizzles out. And, and you're right, I mean, just the culture. And you said that, Dan, the fact that, you know, if a producer were to come into the office, of course, you know, you know our producer, perfect schedule, but middle of the week during sales time and you know, you've got the service team going, what are you doing? Like, go do what you need to go do. We got your back. We'll support this part. You go do what you have to do is quite frankly pretty uncommon in a lot of agencies. So kudos to you for, again, appreciate the fact we were able to help in that. But you're the one and your leadership team driving that and reinforcing that and of course, getting buy in from your team. Here's what I believe. I believe success leaves clues. And I know that as an agency, you've had successes. We're going to talk about some of the challenges because I think as a leader of this podcast or a listener of this podcast, who's a leader, we can take away and success leaves clues. So if you would, Dan, again, maybe this is a recent success, maybe it's years back, it doesn't matter. You can pick the one that jumps out, but could you highlight a success the agency's had, what you learned from that and how you're able to achieve that type of success in whatever area it is.

Yeah. When we talk about successes at the agency, you know, it can be on a lot of different levels. Right. It can be something organizationally we did something sales wise, we did different benchmarking that we can do. When I look back at as a sales organization, what's our best success? We're going to look at sales and it's really not a one year thing. When I, when I look back at these numbers and the growth we've had over the last couple years, we've hit our annual sales goal now three years in a row. We fell short a little bit with that Covid year, but three years in a row now of hitting a team goal. This year we hit our team sales goal. By October 1st. As of yesterday when I pulled the numbers, we're 125% of our team sales goal for the year. Right Now I've got 75% of my producers and sales team, risk advisors that have already hit goal. I'm anticipating 90% by December 1st and, and there's one or two that, that we need to continue to push a little bit. And I think that a lot of this is driven by the green zone, getting out of the office, the motivating, the pushing them. One thing that you had done for me, and I don't know if you remember this or not, we had talked about how do we motivate these people, how do we get them to continual push, push, push week to week to week to get to these numbers. And you had given me this point probably four or five years ago now you said, dan, how visible is it? And you know, when I looked at it I'm like, well you know, we send out the reports occasionally and we show everybody where they're at. You had told me to make it more visible. And what we do now is every Thursday or Friday I'll send out everybody on the sales team. I'll send the agenda for the Monday meeting. It's got their name listed, it's got their revenue goal, it's got their year to date revenue and their percentage to goal. And we'll change that list, right? So you can see climbing, falling and where you're at. And it's amazing the competitiveness that it's been there that's brought to the sales team and it's really filtered out to not just the sales team, but now the service team's looking at it. Right. And they're talking to their salesperson, say, hey, what are we going to do to climb this list? How are we going to get up in this list? I'm sick of being at the bottom of this list. Or you'll hear some taunting from my brother about how he's on the top of the list. But. But it's really created a nice culture around the competitiveness and the importance of putting that new business on the books.

Yeah, it's. I, I mean, it's. It's funny. I, I don't remember that exact conversation, but I do talk about that. Right. Invisible. And I want to get to that in a minute. But I, I want to stop and, and slow. I should slow down, I guess. I won't stop, but slow down on something you said. And I'm going to say it in my language because for all the agent leaders listening right now, I would have to ask you this question. Are you an agency that has a great service culture that does sales when it's convenient, or are you a dynamic sales culture that provides exceptional service? And you know what? You have gravitated to, Dan. And this is over a period of years. Like you said, there's consistency behind it, Right? I'm sure that's there. There. Would you agree there's probably bad weeks and even bad months that happen 100%.

Yeah.

But. But part of it is going back to the roots of the culture. Okay, great. But we are a dynamic sales organization. And, you know, those things that you're talking about are so important. Even that last thing you mentioned, going back to the high performance teams, the fact that you've got service professionals going, come on, Dan. Like, we got to get this thing going. Right? We're on this team together, and we want to go win. And you know one thing, and this is actually, I'm sure you would answer the same way. I don't know if I've asked you this, but I know, I remember Roger Sitkins, obviously, and your dad go back a long way. And I don't know if you know the story, but Roger was with your dad. I don't know if they're playing golf somewhere, and Roger's always asking questions. He's like, kevin, is it about money or is it about winning?

Winning, winning.

I want to win. The cool thing about winning is that the money comes with it, you know?

Right.

So I just, I applaud you for that. And just to get. For the listeners, the visible thing to me is important. I know I overuse sports analogies. They're easy to use. They're probably overused. But unless you're playing, like, super pee wee sports, like, you probably played sports for the court of the scoreboard. Like, I knew in a game, if I was up or down, I didn't like being down. And most people are wired that way. And even if it's not just, oh, you're always chasing a number, it's no, I'm chasing the result that, you know, I've got a, a goal and in mind that I want to achieve. And if it's hidden in a drawer or it's not discussed or it's only talked about every six months, I just don't have the awareness that I showed around. So kudos to you. And are you, when you say visible, are those things, are they posted around the office? Is it just discussed every week? Like, what does that look like, Tangibly?

No, it's emailed out to the entire staff, so our entire sales team gets it. Generally, the service team will see it during the HPT meetings that they're having so they can keep their eyes on it from an accountability standpoint. And then I, I send a full sales report with everybody's numbers out to the, the entire organization quarterly is when we send that.

Yeah, and I'll use, since I like to overuse them. Dan, here I go again. But, you know, if, if you're playing again, I don't care if it's basketball, football. Those are two that come to my mind. But, like, you know, imagine, like, you don't have any conversations about the behaviors and action you're taking until a week after the game's over, you know, and that happens a lot of agencies. The year ends and you're like, oh, Dan, you didn't, didn't hit your goal this year. I didn't. You're right. I guess I did. Hey, next year, let's go hit that goal. Okay, Next game versus first quarter, second quarter, third quarter, and we're talking about, hey, what's going on? Or help me understand how can I help empower you? What tools do you need? What conversations do we need to have? Right. All those things are part of getting people over, over the hump. So. All right, next question I want to get into is challenges, struggles, frustrations, because I know you don't have any, but if you could, Dan, highlight, you know, maybe a major challenge obstacle that either you're dealing with now or maybe you have dealt with and you've overcome it, just what, what really jumps out as your biggest frustration or challenge you're dealing with either now or in the past?

Yeah. I think that, you know, you can go a lot of different ways with this, and I'm not going to sit here and complain about the current insurance market. This is all something everybody knew was coming and something that had to be corrected. And, you know, every agenc out there is doing what they can to deal with that. I think that the biggest challenge that most agencies have right now is finding quality sales staff.