Proactive or Reactive?

Foreign welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on another episode. Glad to have you with me. And today I'm going to be talking about a really important issue. This idea of how can you as an agent leader and whatever your specific role in an insurance agency is, but how can you begin to become, if you're not already doing so, more proactive, right? More intentional, more in control of situations versus just responding to things all the time. And as I was thinking back of the first month of 2021, which I'm not alone here, it's crazy to think of how much time and prep and thought we go into planning a new year. Hopefully you did that. And then before you know it, just like that, you're like, wow, one month is already gone. I'm recording this the first week of February and it's just crazy to think that, you know, we're already 1/12 of the way through. And, and so, you know, a question I ask myself and our team, the question I would ask you is, how's the first 1 12th going? Right? Time definitely moves fast and we've gotta make sure that we are in this case, I'm gonna talk about today being more proactive, more intentional before we look back and all of a sudden say to ourself what the heck just happened this year, Right? So we'll be talking about different aspects of being more proactive today. And a big part of this content today comes just from the learning that I have had and our team has had to start this year with our various programs. And I've said before on this podcast, we've really transitioned in many ways very positively to be able to include more agency partners, to work with us with our all inclusive model that every one of our programs that we run, which is on sales and sales leadership, agency leadership and our account manager program, all have launched in the last couple weeks. Plus we did a monthly sales meeting for the first week of February for all of our members that are partners of our programs. And it's been an incredible experience. And it's just one of those things where we always try to be, and I always try to be a person who can inspire an idea so that you as an agency leader can go plant a seed somewhere. I believe in that. This idea that. I don't believe that just an idea or information is transformation. I've talked about that. But I do think it does inspire the opportunity for you as an individual to say, you know what, I going to go plant a seed, I'm going to water it and make sure it has air, give us some sunlight and let that thing grow. And that's what's exciting to see is that hopefully, and I've already seen this, is that we have new agencies, new insurance professionals who may have never heard some of the content that we've shared before, some of the ideas, some of the resources, some of the different mindset things, let alone skillset that are helping them go. You know what, I've got a lot more in me then I'm letting happen right now that I've been coasting or I've been complacent or as I'm going to talk about today, I haven't been as proactive as I need to be in certain areas. And I'm not just going to hope I get lucky, right? In a good way, in a business way. I'm going to go make lucky. I'm going to go make some lucky in my life and in my business. And so that's going to just a huge thing that I love to see in our programs. And if you're an agency leader, if you're an insurance professional, you want to learn more about what we're doing in our programs, how we're helping trans transform agencies to be that best version possible. Just go to sitkins.com and you can go to sitkins.com aim if you want to learn more specifically about our all inclusive model. So let's talk about being proactive and what that means. And in fact, this has been something that I shared partially in the recent monthly sales meeting that I just referenced. We do a monthly sales meeting for all of our agency members, all of our Sidkins network members run a meeting for you and then we have a meeting after the meeting so you as a sales leader can have your team, you know, tune in, listen, take some notes, get some ideas, get inspired and then talk about those ideas about specifically what you're going to do as a sales team and the overall philosophy. And what I talked about on the most recent sales meeting was this idea of the power of Pareto. And I have talked about Pareto and 8020 on a few different podcasts. So you can go back and listen to that. That's not something brand new. In fact, of course, you know, Vilfredo Pareto coined this idea, right? This idea of 8020 back in 1896. So it's not new. But what I am going to talk about today is specific areas, what I would call principles, priority principles that are going to help you Again, there's going to be some mindset ideas I'm going to share here and then some practical things that you can begin to do in your agency. And, you know, I think as I go through these, my guess is probably most of them you've heard in some capacity before. But maybe when you think about your business, and again, as I've already mentioned on the open of this podcast, some ways that maybe you've been more reactive than you should be, you know, hoping things happen or letting things happen versus saying, listen, you know, I'm the captain of my ship here, so to speak, I'm going to go out and lead the charge. I'm going to set the sale and go the direction I need to go to be the most successful I can be in this business. And, you know, one of my favorite analogies when it comes to priority is, is the lion tamer. And you know, again, there's no lion tamers today that I know of. I think they've, they've done away with that for probably various reasons. But there's some old pictures and stories of a lion tamer. And you'd see the lion tamer, you know, have his big hat and his coat, you know, and pomp and circumstance. And there would be this lion that would be, you know, standing on a stool or, you know, platform of some kind with his paws up, looking at this lion tamer. And there's this little lion tamer man, usually, and he's got a whip and a chair and. And I'd always ask the audience back when I would do live or in person events, you know, right there with them, I'd say, hey, listen, what's more important, the whip or the chair? And I would get a variety of answers, but the answer that really why lion tamers had the chair, besides to give them a little distance, is the fact that on the bottom of the chair there's four legs, right? Four legs to the chair or the stool, whatever they're using. And the lion gets distracted because instead of focusing on the one thing, right, or the most important thing, which for a lion, if the lion is hungry, maybe the lion wasn't hungry, but if the lion is hungry would be to eat this person. I mean, it sounds kind of gross, but it's true, right? And the lion actually looks at the bottom. If you take a chair and flip it around, you see the four legs. The lion, instead of seeing one person, it sees four legs. And so it gets distracted. It doesn't know what to do. And just like a lie and as humans, when we get distracted, instead of doing the things that we should do, we pause and we do nothing. Ah, whatever. I don't know. I'm just overwhelmed. Right. Maybe you've had that feeling before. I have. Right. Where it's like I don't even know where to start. And so I'm going to share some principles today. It's just me doing a solo podcast, but really important principles. And again, if you got a pen and paper and you're on your computer and you can take some notes, do so. Because these principles are really important. And I just want you to just, you know, marinate them on. On them and then begin to think about which one of these or how would these apply to me specifically. Right. We're all in different areas, whether it's our position or whether it's the current state of the agency or our business, whatever the case may be, how do they most apply to me? So I'm going to go through these five priority principles with you today. Number one, and I know you've probably heard this before, to some capacity, working smarter has a higher return than just working harder. Now, let me first say this is the duh moment. We all should work hard. Hard workers are needed. We need harder workers out there. But I will tell you, and this is a quote that I've shared before from the book the Road Less Stupid from Keith Cunningham. He says running the wrong direction enthusiastically is stupid. Running the wrong direction enthusiastically is stupid. I think so often we see that people, and I certainly have been there, where we're working really hard. I mean, we're enthusiastic. We're going to do this. There's a number of examples you could give on this, but they've never really worked smart. They haven't thought about it. Right. And, you know, an example I could give is, I'm going to pound out 100 cold calls today. Well, maybe. Right, maybe we always call cold calling God's punishment for not asking for a referral. But that's a separate episode. But you pound out a hundred cold calls, and my guess, the stats would show that, you know, you may have a success rate of about 3%. Right. Pretty low. Or you could say, maybe I could identify specific future ideal clients, develop a plan, get to think about underwriting concerns and needs, begin to become an expert, add value in different ways, make sure these clients fit my profile, not just in the right type of client, but also in profitability for me and my agency. You get the point, right? You could do some of your homework on this. Now, again, there's probably a balance there somewhere. But the point of it is, are you just running really hard the wrong direction? And you know, what Keith talks about in that book, which I would challenge all of you, I challenge myself to do, is are you spending some time each week and hopefully even each day for just thinking time? Right. And one of the easiest things you could do, I mean, the absolute easiest thing you could do is start your day with intention. I'll talk more about that later, but then in the day at some point. And for me, I actually sometimes debrief my day the next morning because I've got kiddos everywhere and I don't always have time to do that. So I try to do it in the morning. But just think back to yesterday and say, hey, what, what really worked yesterday? Like what was successful and what wasn't? And the things that weren't successful, why were they not successful? So this is idea that, you know, evaluation turns experience into insight. And this is something from John Maxwell. I love when he says that because it's true. And you know, I can think of countless examples. I really can. I certainly have producers, but all insurance professionals where, you know, one producer is just, I'm pedaling the metal, I'm grinding it out and guess what, they're going to have some success. Because a lot of producers don't even do that, but they're grinding it out. And another one goes, well, I've just thought about this a little deeper and the type of client I want and how I'm going to present myself and my specific sales process. Right. A little more depth to that. And guess what, they not only have more success and they have better retention in this case because they've, they have a longer term plan. But guess what, they feel less trapped, they're less hysterical reaction to things and it doesn't mean it's perfect, but there's just a deeper level there. So the first part is I would just ask yourself, am I working smart enough right now? Have I really sat down and done some strategy? Because even in leadership training that I do, there's strategy and there's tactics. And by the way, both are important. You got to have both strategy and tactics. But sometimes we only do tactics and we forget about strategy and we have to take a step back and go, wait a second, is this strategy really working right? Am I going about it the right way? Are there a few shifts that we have to make? And this doesn't mean you just change course every day either. It means that we make these slight Adjustments as necessary as needed. So number one, working smarter has a higher return. Number two, this one is so important and it's hard for me to say it because I'm an aggressive, winning mentality person, right? I'm an abundance thinker. I really believe that we can do so many great things. But here's what it is. You can't have it all. You can't have it all. Now what do I mean by that? Because people, yes, you can. You can have it all. Here's what I mean by this. When it comes to being proactive, when you say yes to something, to anything, you are inherently saying no to something else, right? For me as a parent, I cannot say yes to spend time with my 3 year old when I'm not inherently saying no to my 13 year old for that period of time. Now, again, you got to figure this out. But the idea, that's the truth. People try to be in so many places at once. They try to be everything for everyone all the time. And by the way, I'm raising my own hand about as high as I can raise it, right? I've learned and I'm learning through that. You know what, Be present where you are. Now, when you look at this from an agency perspective, and this is certainly true for agency leaders, right? One of the things that we see oftentimes priority power in this case is the fact that maybe you've got 10 producers on your team. Three are rock stars, four are doing okay, they're okay to good. And maybe three really aren't cutting it. And we spend all the time on the ones that are cutting it because we're going to fix them. Gosh darn it, we're going to help these producers get better. And guess what? Those four in the middle don't get their full attention. And sometimes the three at the top may feel like they feel they're not appreciated, right? There could be a number of things. So you've got to think about this. You can't have it all. So how do you say no? That's a question I would ask you. How do you say no if you're a producer and you have someone that wants to, you know, have them quote, oh, I hate that term, quote your business, right? And you know, it's not a good fit, but you just don't know how to say no. Yeah, we'll figure it out. And guess what? You're sucked into this trap the next day or hour, whatever the case may be, right? You've just said no to other things. We see this all the time. In just looking at books of business, when we talk about the 8020 principle, that 20% of your clients produce 80% of your revenue, if you look at most books of business, and I always tell producers in this case or service teams together, hey, listen, when you're saying yes to all this, you are inherently saying no to doing things proactively that you probably want to do to your best clients. We've got to start to think about what does that look like? And by the way, every agency, it's a little bit different, right, Depending on your setup and how that looks. But I will tell you this idea that I can't have it all. We've got to make some choices, and sometimes there are hard choices. And these are called trade offs. These are called trade offs. You can't have it all. So what is going to be our priority? What are we going to focus most on? Because if I'm focusing here, I'm certainly not focusing there. At least not at the moment. Not at the moment. So that's number two. Number three. And this comes from the book Good to Great by Jim Collins. Fantastic business book. It's been around for a long time now. But Jim says good is the enemy of great. And I just changed it to our version of the good is always the enemy of the best version possible. The good is always the enemy of the best version possible. That's something we talk about at Sitkins all the time to get people to think about what is your best version possible? Not. Not your peer and not your, you know, not. Not another person down the street. Not your friend. Right. Whatever it may be, what is your. If you're, if you're playing and you're working and you're living whatever it is at the highest level, what is that for you? And I think because this business, the insurance business, is a fantastic business in many ways. It certainly is a fantastic financial model for business, right? With renewals or as we would call continuations in relationships. But it's so easy to get sucked into complacency. It's good enough. I can't stand that phrase. It's good enough. Good enough for what? Good enough just to be okay. Good enough to get by, Good enough to maybe continue the account. I don't know what's good enough, but is that okay? So I think in priority power, we just say good enough. We get sucked into reactive things too often versus saying, you know what good enough is in me, the best version and best version is me doing things more proactively. Which gets me to number four, which is pretty simple. Proactive always beats reactive. Proactive always beats reactive. Now, first of all, there's always going to be things that happen. You know it, I know it, right. There are things we are going to have to react to. But when I heard this phrase a couple years ago, it was really powerful. Said you really have two choices in life. You can either prepare or you can repair. You can prepare or you can repair. You know people that are proactive and they initiate, I call these initiators, they plan ahead. Right. The people that react, if they live in the moment. Right. Well, whatever's going to happen there. What's going. I don't know. Initiators, for example, will pick up the phone and make contact when there's a situation or an issue. Reactors will wait for the phone to ring. I hope they don't call. Or if you're talking about prospecting, right. People pick up the phone to initiate reactive. Say, boy, I hope I get the lead in. Right. We're going to wait for the phone to ring in certain carriers, whatever it is. But that guy just had a conversation yesterday with an industry influencer and it's funny, we'll get stuck on email trains or whatever. And he just said, it's like, how often do we don't just pick up the phone? And all these strings of emails. Have you ever had that before? I have. Where there's been emails or in this case texts, and it goes back and forth and misunderstanding. If you just would have picked up the phone, you would have saved yourself a lot of hassle, heartache and miscommunication. Yeah, right. Initiators anticipate problems, whereas reactors or people that are reactive, they just react to them. And what I mean by that, certainly like you think of the insurance business, like, what are my clients thinking? What would be some pain points? What would be some issues that would be concerning to them around their employees or their profits or their clients? Are there things that I can do? That would be an example. Initiators seize the moment, right. They say now, now is the right time to do something worth doing. Reactors are going to wait. Initiators invest time with people. Invest, that's the key word. They invest. Reactors are going to spend time with people. I'm going to spend some time with this person. Think about just that mindset difference. If you're going to invest time with someone, you are making deposits to get a return. Again, not selfishly, because you are really with someone. If you're spending time with people, you're getting through a meeting, you're getting through an appointment. Are you going to grow through something or are you going to go through it? There's a huge difference. And here's the last one leads into number five for me. Initiators put priorities in their calendars. Reactors put others requests in their calendars. Whatever pops in their calendar is what goes in their calendar, if you're an initiator, priorities. And by the way, this is something that I continue to work through. I've gotten really good at it from business. But the first thing that I tell people to put in their calendars is, you know, they say, what's the most important thing? Well, my wife, my husband, my kids, you know, whatever it is this person in my life, I don't care who it is. Well, put that in first. What's the most important client this week or future? Idea list, person, put them in. Get that done first. Which leads to number five. And this comes back to Stephen Covey, who talks about the four quadrants that you see there's an X axis and a Y axis and there's, you know, urgent, important, urgent, not important, important, important, not urgent. Not important, not urgent. Those four quadra. But the bottom line is this. The important needs to take precedent over the urgent. The important needs to take precedent over the urgent. We're going to have urgent things that happen. That's called. We use the term at Sitkins for producers, emergencies in flight. There are sometimes there are emergencies in flight. So, you know, the producer's job we talk about is you want to take the plane off, which means you need to write the new account and you need to land the plane. So just like an airline pilot, that's their main things. Make sure the plane takes off, make sure the plane lands. But there can sometimes be, rarely. But there can be emergencies in flight. But outside of that, are we spending time, better yet investing, right, Use that word, investing our energy, our effort and with our time to make sure that we are understanding, highlighting the important versus the urgent. What is really important? What's really going to get the greatest return? There are certain things that are required of you. There are certain things you get a great return from, by the way, typically those things also give you the greatest reward, the greatest joy in life. So you have to start to figure what that is. And here's the bottom line with this. Of the programs we've been running the last few weeks. I mean, we had again, we did a. We're in the. Currently on session, what we just finished session two of a CEO Bootcamp. Today we're going to be doing a live session, session three of our Producer Fit program this afternoon, session two of our sales leader program tomorrow, session three of our account manager program. So, I mean, again, a lot of things going on where I get a lot of time to spend with hundreds and hundreds of insurance professionals. And so even though there's different roles and responsibilities and the content's a little bit different, I tell you the one thing that if you said, what have you most learned in the last two weeks or what has been one of the greatest frustrations that we're trying to work through in hearing from the people that attend our programs? It's this. They are letting things happen versus making things happen. They're letting things happen versus making things happen. Easier said than done. Yes. But one of the things that stands out, and again, I know from certain people, certainly if you're in more of a service position, there's going to be some reactive time, which is part of the responsibility. I get that. But I will tell you, certainly for agency leaders, for sales leaders, for the producers who their job really is results. And again, there's different areas to focus on. But when they say, listen, have you planned your week out before the week begins? Have you done that? I mean, have you looked at it and go, what would be an ideal week for me? Is there a perfect week? Never. But what would be an ideal week that I could begin to put together? And what would that look like? Put it on paper first or in your computer if you need to. Right. To be proactive. And here's the second thing. You got to keep those appointments. I mean, that seems like the duh. But if I'm going to put in that I need to be doing one on one conversations and meetings because we've got some issues. I need to have a communication with my team and really understand the vision of the agency and what our culture must be about and reinforce that culture. I mean, I'm just putting stuff out there, whatever it may be. I've really got to. But if I did that, that would really be helpful and I got to make sure I'm consistent. Put it in the calendar when you're going to do it. If I'm a producer, I've really got to do pipeline management. I've really got to get intentional with this. I really need to go out and reach out to these three centers of influence because I know they could be impactful. I got to figure out, I really need to spend time preparing how I'm going to do that. Put it in your calendar, right? And figure that out. Because what most people do is they let things happen. The week ends and they go, oh my gosh, that was crazy. What happened? Where did time go? As I said at the beginning. So there's no perfect way around this. But I just want to challenge you. Where can you be more proactive in your life and in your business, in your day, in your week, in your month, in your year, and work backwards. Start stacking these day by day. Learn from them. I've used this quote before. I'm going to say it again because it's powerful. From Jim Rohn. He said, if you don't plan your life, there's a good chance someone else will. Guess what they have planned for you. Not much. Take control of your destiny. Hey, thanks for listening to the AgentLeader podcast. As always, appreciate you being a listener. If this podcast or prior podcasts have added value to you and your agency, I really would appreciate a review on itunes, Stitcher or whatever your podcast device of choice is. Also, if you are interested in learning about what we do for agencies, how we help agencies, truly transform, how we help them in mindset and of course skill set and put them in an environment of growth to win, visit our website@sitkins.com that's S I T K I n S thanks for listening and I wish you all the best in your success.