Replicating Average - Mistake #4

Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on another episode. I'm glad you're with me and I'm excited, as always, to share some more information with you, the agency leader. And the purpose of this podcast, as always, is to help you as an agency leader, whether you are the CEO, the sales leader, you're an insurance professional, part of an agency, and you have influence. Guess what? You're an agency leader. Our goal on this podcast is to help you gain clarity, build consistency, and make a commitment to be your best version possible. And this is a continuation episode of a five part series that I'm doing on the five biggest mistakes that agency leaders make. Right. So are there more than just these five mistakes I've said before, of course there are. Right. There are a lot of different mistakes that are out there. But we've seen in working with clients across the country, whether they are private clients of ours, whether it's through training seminars that we do conversations, our influencers that we talk with, these mistakes certainly stand at the top of the list of being the most impactful. Right? And most impactful. And of course, these mistakes cover a lot of different areas and they can certainly go in a lot of different directions when you dive deep into them. And they also have a lot of crossover right within themselves. So, you know, whether it's around just agency philosophy or a specific strategy, these mistakes, it can be blind spots to agency leaders. And so, you know, my goal in these podcasts is just to help you raise awareness. Some of these mistakes that I've, I've shared already and we'll share today in the next episode, might have a huge impact to you and your agency. And you, when I say it, you go, oh my gosh, that's, that's us. Some of them may not be as impactful to you because you're doing a good job in that area. But again, altogether, they're really important for agency leaders. And just a really quick review, the first mistake that I talked about was based on this concept of running the wrong way enthusiastically is stupid. Bottom line is this. Most agency leaders and agencies, they work pretty hard. The question is, do they have a plan, a true strategy, a financial plan, a plan on how they're going to implement things, or is it just we hope if we work hard enough, we'll get through it? So go back and listen to that one if that's an issue. Mistake number two was around wearing busy as a badge of honor. If you feel like you're just really, really, really, really busy. But we're not focused as much on results. I talk about that in mistake number two last session. I talked about ignoring the power of Pareto, which is the 8020 principle. And you know, one thing that we hear all the time is, Yeah, I know 80 20, I hear 80 20, I've heard you talk about 80 20. We get it. But the truth is that getting it doesn't really get it done. And you know, I believe the greatest gap in performance see this, whether it's personally, whether it's by the agency, a member of the agency, the largest gap in performance is the gap between what we know and what we actually do. It's, it's the execution part that's the hard part, right? To actually make it happen. And certainly we see in 80:20 is that even when agencies, if agencies run the numbers and look at it and okay, let's identify our priority, priority areas, the vital few versus the trivial many. The next step is, okay, what specifically are we going to start doing and maybe even more importantly, what are we specifically going to stop doing? So that's a review of the mistakes so far, which leads me into mistake number four of the five biggest mistakes that insurance agency leaders and CEOs make. Are you ready? Mistake number four is replicating average. Replicating average. I remember years ago and I forgot who said this to me, but it was, it was impactful and funny and I think it's both impactful and funny today. But this is back when I was actively producing an agency and I think I was at an association meeting and talking to a top level insurance agent at the time and he said, hey, listen, if you want to be really, really successful in this business, just watch what 98% of the insurance professionals do and just do the opposite and just do the opposite and kind of laugh about that. And I get, I don't know if it's 98% or whatever the number is, but the bottom line is that most agencies, right, most agencies, if you're really honest about it, they look, they talk, they walk the same type of thing, right? They look alike, they talk alike and they do many of the same things out there in the marketplace. Now again, they may vary in scope and size and geography, but when you really think about it overall and how they're positioning themselves both in their message and understanding the type of clients they work with, they typically look a lot the same. Now in fact, just from a very practical level, if you are actively selling or whether, again, whether it's you know, in person, or you're doing some on the phone, or you've had a situation around talking with clients around their specific policy or program. My guess is that at some point you've heard something like this, could you just give me a free quote? I'm looking for a free quote. Or, you know, I really want to keep my insurance agent honest. Or would you be able to bid on our insurance this year? And then, of course, there's my favorite, which is something like this. I'm looking for an Apples to Apples quote or an Apples to Apples comparison on my insurance. Now, if you've been in this business very long, you probably have heard that right at some point before, at least something like that. And here's the reason why There's a couple different parts of this. Number one is that insurance buyers have been conditioned or programmed to talk this way to ask these questions. And a big reason why they have been is because as an insurance marketplace now, this could come from some of the big companies out there on tv, or it's just even smaller agencies. And how we talk and walk on things is that that's what their expectations are. That's how they're programmed to look and shop and buy insurance products and programs. And the bottom line of any of those types of phrases, we all know that those are commodity type of phrases. Those are commodity type of questions. Basically, hey, at the end of the day, what they're saying is this, you gals, you guys, you people are all the same. But maybe, maybe one of you be a little bit cheaper, or maybe one of you is a little bit cheaper or about the same. And I just sort of kind of maybe like you a little more. Right? Those are kind of things that we hear. And the bottom line is this. You have no or very little differentiation in the marketplace. You're certainly as an agency, an agency leader, an agency professional, these type of things, if our clients are saying, or future clients, which I'll talk about in a minute, are saying, you're not a trusted advisor. You're just a commodity that looks like everybody else. But see, here's the really frustrating part as a, as a coach and a consultant working with agencies is that most agencies and most agency leaders approve of gladly offering a free quote, gladly giving unpaid consulting, just because that's what we are supposed to do. And we never think twice about it. It's just kind of part of who we are. It's a DNA. That's what all agencies do. So, you know, they offer a quote. If you ask for a Quote. We got to give them a quote. You know, if apples to apples, we'll just show them kind of in different, you know, places. Maybe we're a little bit different, but, yeah, we want to just position ourselves a little bit differently. Now, here's something to think about and consider. And again, I share this in many of our different trainings. And it's like many things that we share at Sitkins, it's not complicated. It's actually simple. But most agencies simply don't do it right. It's moving from knowing to doing. But here's something that if you're not driving, you may want to write down. And you're going to write it down and go, oh, yeah, duh. I know that. Here's the bottom line. You can't have a differentiated sales process. You can't have a differentiated buying process. However you want to define it. If you don't know how you're different, if you don't know how you're different. And I would say even deeper to this, it's something we do in some of our mastery programs. If you don't believe that you're different, it's one thing to know. Well, yeah, we do some different things. That's pretty good. But do you really believe it as an agency and an agency culture, that we are different and we know why we're different and we know the impact and the outcome of being different. So therefore, when we have conversations, it's not about arrogance, it's not about being difficult. It's the fact that we have a unique process, we have a unique model, we have a different way of doing things. And by the way, I'm now going to be asking you some questions that you may have not heard before. And this is a concept, when we get into this, we dive very deep in a lot of our programs, but this idea of not just having points of differentiation, that's part of it. But understanding that what is the impact for the client? What is the evidence that we can show? What are the questions we must ask to open new files? I may have used that term before. I'll say it again. To open new files. Because I said at the beginning of this podcast with Replicating average is that most insurance buyers, they've been trained, programmed for years to buy insurance in a certain way because that's all they know. So our job as an agency, first of all, is to know how and why we're different and then be able to ask questions so that we can open new files. What do I mean by that? It means that that programming that is in the buyer's head, their mind of this is how the insurance process works. You're able to open some new files, they go, hmm, I've never heard that before. No one has ever asked me that question. Or what do you mean by that? And then from there, you're able to share stories and evidence, ask deeper questions. Where they go, wait a second. Why isn't my current agent doing this? Why have I not heard this before? Well, that's a good question. That's a good question. Now, you know, when I go around and I train and I speak, and of course, you know, 2020, I've done a lot less traveling and speaking for obvious reasons, but when I'm out, and again, now I do it. But when I have initial trainings and do keynotes and talk to groups, I always ask the question, what makes you. What makes your agency different? And, you know, every time I ask that question, two things happen. Number one is I get, like, silence. What makes you different? You can see, like, you know, geez, I know. I never really thought about that before. Or the other part of this is I get very generic answers. Answers like, we provide great service. That's what makes us different. Okay, do other agencies say they don't provide great service? Or what makes us different is that we're very competitive in the marketplace, which, of course, is a pricing differentiation. Okay, tell me more. Number three is we represent all the markets, right? So we're in. We're an independent insurance agency, which, of course is always funny because all we work with at Sidkins is independent insurance agencies. So it's like, well, everybody else that's listening to this right now is going to say the same thing. Now, Maybe you've got 23 markets versus their 18, or whatever the number may be. Guess what? The buyer, the insurance buyer, doesn't really care unless they understand the impact. So maybe there's an impact, but in many cases not that big. Or we're local. That's number four. Local, Great reputation, been around for a long time. Okay, maybe true, but is a differentiator really in risk advice, in relationships? Not really. Not necessarily today. Then of course, my absolute favorite is that we have the best people. We've got the best people. That's what makes us different, Bren. It's our people. Our people make the difference. And you know what? That's heartfelt and it's probably true, but does the client really care? Or, by the way, would the future client think that your people stink? Well, of course, not so if you have a reason and real impact of what your people specifically do, that's different. Well, that's a different story. But most cases it's just generic and we have the best people. So my question to you is this. Are you as an agency leader is your true differentiation, is it generic, is it common? Or does it begin to position you not as just a comparison point? That's the big item here to write down. You can either be a comparison point or you can become the point of comparison. A comparison point is we're getting five quotes and you're one of them or we've been doing business for a couple years, we're going to get some other quotes. We may or may not stay with you. You're generic and you're a comparison point. What great agencies do, the mistake that agencies make is they don't think deep enough in this area to become the point of comparison that we can, the very beginning of conversation, say things, do things, ask questions that by the way, take a little bit of thought and work and practice a team to where those initial conversations and throughout the buying process, whether it's one time, if it's small account or many meetings, if it's a larger account, you're always setting yourself up as the point of comparison. Right, the point of comparison. One of the best examples that I can share with you, one of the agencies that's part of our private client group at the Sidkins Network, they're an agency on the east coast and, and you know, good size agency, been doing business for a long period of time, good service, great people, represent a bunch of markets. All those generic stuff. Right. That I just talked about. They were doing all that and they were doing okay, right? Doing okay. We began to really work with the leadership team and of course the insurance production team as well as the service team. Right. All together to say what areas are we a vendor, truthfully, and what areas are we a trusted risk advisor or someone that someone really reaches out and values what we bring to the table and you know, we challenge them for a long period of time. Think what is your point of differentiation outside of these generic things that you've been saying? What really is the impact? What evidence do you have or what do we need to begin to think about doing and what are the questions that we've got to be asking and let's practice those questions and let's get better and let's change mindset and philosophy and then begin to start to change the strategies around that. And the key areas were Points of differentiation, number one. And number two, to go deeper into this area of replicating average is a mistake, is to really understand, identify, and have a strategy around future ideal clients. So replicated average to me, again, there's two areas here. There's the point of differentiation. Well, part of that is who are you going to talk to with these points of differentiation? Because to be fair, not every client that you know, every person that breathes air, or every business open is going to resonate or you're going to work well with as a future ideal client. In fact, they are probably a suspect or a prospect. One of the first things that we work with agencies in depth around is the fact that we don't want to use the word or have the mindset or the thought of a prospect or a suspect because there's, you know, other than the number. Oh, we got, you know, we got 6,000 suspects or prospects in our database. Great. What are you doing with them? Well, they're in our database. Yeah, but proactively. How are you reaching them? Why should they talk to you? What is your message of differentiation when you do begin that conversation? Who are your influence sources to get in there? Well, I don't know. We just have a big database. Had a producer a couple years ago that came to one of our producer fit programs. Great, great person, and actually been a very successful producer. But at the time, we got into the discussion around pipelines in particular, and we're talking about future ideal clients versus suspects or prospects. And she said, you know, I've got a huge database of prospects. And I said, great, what are you doing with them? What's the plan? What's the strategy? Well, I don't really have that. I've got a bunch of names and numbers and emails and boy, they're all in that database. And I stopped for a second and just had a smile and I said, can I be real with you? She said, well, of course. And I said, you don't have a prospect list or certainly don't have a future ideal client list. You have a database of hope. You have a database of hope. And as I said before on this podcast, hope. Hope is great, but hope is not a strategy. So again, this idea of understanding who they are. And so with this agency on the east coast that we're working with, again, we said, listen, no more suspects and prospects. Let's identify a future ideal client where we have a competitive advantage, understand our points of differentiation. And obviously, this is an audio podcast, so I can't show you the visual, but what we worked around with, a future ideal client with the producers was, hey, I want every producer to have a top 10 list and we're all going to come together as an agency and together create a top 100 list so that we had a visual board of who specifically it is that you wanted to target. And then we actually had little stars and I'm not going to dive deeper in this, but areas of like, you know, how far along we are in a process and communicating and you know, whether it was a first meeting or second meeting or whatever the case may be, but let's just track where you're at and that way it's visual so that it's in front of us, we can be accountable to it. And by the way, it's really amazing. This is a thought of an agency leader depending on the size of your agency. But even if it's a smaller agency, you'd be surprised if other people, whether it's a service team or a claims person or an admin person or whatever, who you wouldn't think would be in sales, so to speak, that would walk around and go, oh, I know that account, my father in law owns that company or my cousin knows them, right? So it also becomes a team approach that we're together even though they may have a list of here specifically who I'm going after. It becomes a team process. It's a culture issue, right? It's a culture issue. So we coach this agency to make this visual to remind them of the key strategies and behaviors and they created this top 100 board and this board. And this is, this is the impactful part, this is the result part. So if you haven't been listening, tune in right now. Just doing this board that was visual that we targeted future ideal clients and began to write things down. This wasn't on the board, but had the producers then look at what is our target account strategy plan just by this board alone, they resulted in, it resulted in $750,000 in new revenue. So if nothing else rings true, just understand that getting really focused, not replicating all the average stuff resulted in 750,000 of new revenue. And that's just one small yet very effective strategy. And the bottom line, and if you've heard Sitkins at all or read articles and rough notes from Roger or myself or just, you know, whatever been to one of our programs, you may have heard this before, but this is something worth writing down again. And certainly remembering the bottom line is this. No more practice quoting. You don't need to practice quote Unless you just started, right, and you're learning how this stuff works, fine. But outside of that, you don't need to practice. Quote, that's what rookies do. That's what average agencies do. No more unpaid consulting. Right. That we're just. Yeah, I'll just give you some advice. And we really have no competitive advantage here, but we're going to tell you what we think anyway. Without having an opportunity to write the business. No. So this mindset shift, along with the 750,000 in new business revenue just from having a top 100 board and a strategy around it. Overall, just to give you an idea, this strategy shift helped provide a 29% increase for this agency in 2019, and they're on track in 2020 to do even better. And by the way, this is with COVID This is with COVID because they're really focused, avoiding the mistake of we are not going to look and talk and walk like everybody else. And of all this, I've said it before, I'll say it again. You really have two options on this mistake. You can either be a comparison point, and you're going to get lucky enough, you're going to have enough small wins, you're going to be okay, or you can become the point of comparison. One strategy allows you to be okay, to be average. You're going to replicate average. And in this business, average can still give you a pretty decent life. It's true. Or you can do a little the harder work and understand the power of differentiation, understanding the idea of future ideal clients, and starting to dive deep into this. Now, I've already mentioned our upcoming CEO bootcamp, but I will tell you, one of the sessions that we have in this bootcamp is to help agencies specifically come up with a plan around future ideal clients and, and their points of differentiation, not just in theory, but in practicality, and then how to actually implement and use it to get results. So, yeah, maybe this is an advertisement for the CEO boot camp. Good. I want to help you as an agency leader get better. And too often, just very candidly with you, too often. And I'm guilty of this too, in certain areas of my life, so I get it. But too often we go, yeah, that's a really good idea. That makes sense. We should do that. And then we should ourselves to death. I should do this, I should do that. I should do that. Listen, if you have all shoulds in your life, you're going to get average results in this particular area, I would challenge you. This should be a must. We've got to change our philosophy, our thinking, and of course, our strategy and tactics around our philosophy to be our best version to get the results that we really want. So, all that being said, there's mistake number four. Replicate an average next week. Next session, I am going to talk about mistake number five, which really summarizes all together. I'm not going to give any big hints. You're going to have to stay tuned to the next episode. But I'll talk about mistake number five. And then, of course, I've already mentioned a few times, if you're interested in the CEO Bootcamp, we'd love to see you there. You can learn more about it, what's included, pricing, all that kind of stuff. Just go to sitkins.com CEO Bootcamp hope to see you then. All the best in your success. Thanks for listening.