The 4 Beliefs That Drive Agency Results

Foreign welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. It is my honor and pleasure that you are joining me today on this episode and this episode I will be going solo. I'm going to share a really important topic for agencies overall and for in particular for just individual agency professionals. Whether you are the principal sales leader, pro producer, you do service work, it doesn't really matter in this particular episode because I'm going to talk about the power of beliefs and in particular four key beliefs that every agency professional must have to really become your best version to get to the place that you want to go. And now you are going to have different goals that you're trying to achieve. But in general, these four core beliefs are vital for your success. And I think it's a topic that often is overlooked. It's a topic that is often poo pooed because it's beliefs, it's thinking, it's those kind of things. You know, it's not as tactical necessarily, but I think without these beliefs, anything that you try to do tactically is not going to be nearly as effective. And it's a question. I was talking with one of our private client members recently about just things that we're thinking through because I think a lot of what was preventing them or was in their way was not the knowledge or the action of what to do, it's the beliefs behind them. And so I wanted to share it on this podcast. As always, the Agent Leader Podcast, the purpose why I come on and do this is to provide clarity, consistency and commitment for you and your agency moving forward. I've had a few guests on recently. In particular, Roger Sitkins has been joining me, my mentor and CEO here at the Sitkins Group. And I'm going to be having Roger on again for some other episodes. He loves being on there and I'm getting some great feedback as well as doing some interviews with some of our private client members to kind of share their story, things that are working well for their agency, really impactful things coming up. So stay tuned for more episodes here coming of the Agent Leader Podcast. But with that, let me dive into again the topic of today, which is really four core beliefs that you as an insurance professional, certainly as an agency leader, you really have to possess because beliefs do drive behavior. What we believe ultimately drives our behavior. Now we can fake it, but at some point the truth will prevail. You know, you can fake things for so long, but the truth ultimately prevails. So let's talk about these four beliefs for your particular situation for your agency. And again, I think this is impactful for really any insurance professional. Certainly this is true for any person just in life and business. But I want to take this a little deeper into the agency functions that you have to understand and that you really must believe in to succeed. So the first one seems the most simplistic, but is the most challenging. The first belief that you have to have is that you are the best person for the position, and again, whatever position that may be, but you are the right choice and whatever it may be. So if you're the agency leader, you are the best agency leader out there. If you are a sales producer, you are the best sales producer out there. Now, I might say this, and it comes across, oh, that's a little bit cocky. But again, beliefs drive your behavior. And if you don't believe in you, why should your team? Why should your clients? And I think there's a lot of head trash that we all deal with. You know, one of the things I heard years ago was the imposter syndrome that, you know, even the President of the United States or anybody of a high position, we still have doubts. We still sometimes go, you know, I don't. I don't know if I'm really cut out for this. Am I really the right person to do this? Am I really the best person to do this? And we all deal with that. So part of that is just a mindset issue that we've got to have that confidence, that inner confidence that we are, again, the right person, the best person for whatever particular situation that we're dealing with. Well, how do you grow confidence? Because that's really what I'm talking about here, right? If you're going to believe in yourself, you have to be confident in yourself. There are a lot of things that you can do. But I think ultimately we talk about this in detail, certainly during our coaching and training programs with our agencies, is that your greatest competitive advantage is that you're prepared, that you were ultimately prepared for whatever it is. You know, I can think of many situations in my life. Certainly I do a lot of public speaking. If I am not prepared at the highest level, I have more doubts. It seems pretty obvious, right? But if I've gone through and prepared and prepared and prepared and prepared, I may still have some nerves and be anxious. That's just part of getting ready to do anything at a high level. But my confidence is sky high because I know that I'm prepared. It's like walking in. You talk, you know, look at, you know, sports And I use a lot of sports analogies. I know that. But if you put in the hard work, right, you've lifted the weights, you've ran the sprints, you've done the drills again and again and again and again at the highest level, and you get to the fourth quarter and you go, you know what? We're more prepared. We're ready for this. So preparation and go along with that would be knowledge, certainly insurance business. Are you doing your homework? Now, knowledge for an agency leader is learning more about your team and situations and all those kind of things coming up. But certainly for an insurance producer, it could be, am I prepared? Back to the right word again. Do I have the knowledge for my clients, knowledge that I need to gain for them? These are just things. When I think about beliefs you must have, the first belief is that you are the right and best person for the situation you're in. And it doesn't mean that there aren't people out there that you know are great competitors or that are very, very successful in their own right. I don't say this. It's got to be a competition thing. I'm talking about an internal belief that, you know what? I belong here. I belong in this situation, I belong in this conversation. I belong in this position. Whatever it is, I belong, and I believe in me. And that requires, again, preparation, which gives you confidence. So that's belief number one. Belief number two, I believe that you should believe that your agency is the best agency in the marketplace. And this is again, going to sound a little bit cocky. What do you mean we're the best agency in the marketplace? Yeah. If you don't believe you're the best agency, then why are you doing what you're doing? And does that mean technically there are agencies that may be more successful in different ways? Yeah, there probably are. But your internal belief has to be that I know exactly with this agency, where we're going. That's vision. We have very clear vision on where we're going with this agency. And more importantly, we believe in the mission of the agency. Why we do what we do doesn't mean you're not going to screw up. Doesn't mean your agency is perfect. Your agency is not perfect. Whether you're the leader or producer or service person, you know, first and foremost, your agency is not perfect. But we know where we're going and we know why we're going there. We know why we do what we do. We know the few, the vital things that we do exceedingly well at our agency, that we're laser focused on. Now, we talk a lot about this with our private client members in the sense of just having a one page business plan. And, you know, it's just we believe that, you know, for your team to get on one page, for you all to kind of rally around something, you should have a business plan that's on one page. And so within that, it's what truly is the mission of the agency, what is the vision, the mission, what are the key areas you have to focus on? What are the metrics we're going to look at and what's the one thing that we're going to agree upon, whatever that may be. And it's just to have something in front of you that we're very clear on that. So again, number two, belief is the agency, we believe that we are the best agency. Number three, that sometimes is overlooked or just, you know, kind of put on the back burner on the side is that you have to believe that you represent the best carriers in the world. Now, maybe you do, you have some that you do, maybe some you don't. But I think part of this is that we work with too many insurance carriers. Most agencies have way too many insurance carriers. And if I ask you, or ask, you know, if I'm in a live group, I always hear that, yeah, we've got a lot of carriers. Some of we don't even know why we have them, but, you know, it gives us more leverage. Does it? I don't know. You know, sometimes you see the time and effort that's spent to work and just have a few accounts with a certain carrier probably doesn't always make the right sense. And I could, I could go off on a whole different tangent on this, but what I want to focus on today is you have to believe that the carriers, carriers that you're using, which by the way, your client is paying premiums to that your client would get claims payments from if something were to happen. You have to believe they're the best carriers in the world. And I think part of this is that we need to go deeper with our carriers. We need to find the right partners. And you've heard me talk before. If you've listened to this podcast about the power of 80, 20, 20% of something, your input leads to 80% of your output. And this is true with producers, this is true with our clients, this is true with our carriers and most agencies. We look at, we look at 8020 and we can find out that 20% of our carriers produce 80% of our revenue. So you, as an agency leader or an agency partner of any kind, need to realize, okay, who are the carriers? We really need to go deeper with that. Not only financially can we do better with, obviously, but that we have a higher level of trust, that we're doing real planning, that we really know them, that when we're out there having a conversation and we bring a carrier. Right. As part of our presentation of solutions to our client, that we have our chest up high going, we are so proud to be partnered with this carrier. That's true belief. And again, people, your clients, your future ideal clients, they see that and they know that. They feel it. Right? They feel it. Which leads me to number four. So the beliefs that you must have, Number one, you really have to believe that you are the best person for the job or the position. Get rid of that head trash and prepare yourself so that you have greater confidence. Number two is belief in your agency, that you have a true vision, a mission, you understand the critical success factors, those vital things you need to do, that your agency is the best out there. Number three, that you represent the best insurance carrier partners. You truly believe that it would be unfair for you to go out in the marketplace and represent someone with a carrier that you don't really believe in. Would you want that? Of course not. Right. The last one is this. You have to believe that your clients are better off after doing business with you. This is a question and a belief of value that you provide the most value in the marketplace. Now, if you work just internally as a leader or a manager, well, you have to believe that your agency provides the most value to your team. If you're doing production or part of a production team of any kind, you're out there in the sales place, you need to believe that you provide the best value to your clients, that they are so much better after doing business with you. And this doesn't mean you go out and you just brag about yourself. Of course not. But internally, you ask the questions and can provide the stories and examples and testimonials that go, we're really good at what we do. And we know that if you work with us, work with me, work with our team, your life, your business will be better off after. Now, how do you do that? Well, one of the things that I've talked about before in this podcast, and we talk in depth, I mean, we spent a lot of time with this because it seems easy to understand but hard to execute is what truly is your point of differentiation. And I think as an agency, you should have at least five. Now, if you're a specialist and you've got different people doing different things, they may be different throughout the agency, but ultimately the agency should have five points of differentiation that you can ask great questions around, that you can state with confidence, that you can provide examples of why that's important for a client of any kind, how they win, why they're better and should be able to back it up with evidence, whether it's a tool, a resource, a testimonial, whatever it may be. But when you go in with that belief that, listen, I would be doing you a disservice now, again, not every client in this particular case is the right fit. We've talked about that before too. Not everybody is the right fit. So you have to identify the right people, whether it's again, internally with your team, you got the right people internally with your team, or externally, that you're working and approaching the right type of clients. But when you have addressed that, that there is a fit there, you owe it to them. If you truly believe that you are the best person for that position, that your agency is the best agency out there, that you represent the best carriers, and that you have great value, that their lives and business are better afterwards, well, that speaks volume, sometimes without even saying a word. So these are the four beliefs. And I'm going to keep this podcast pretty short today, but I just wanted to share that because I had some agencies that have been talking about things. What are we getting stuck on? I said your problem in some cases isn't the tactics, so to speak. It's the fact that you've got tactics without purpose that you don't really believe in yourself. You don't really believe in your agency. I can tell you don't really believe in your cares. You don't really believe that the value provide is better off. So guess what, you're really just faking it. And you know, we say this comes from Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, that all progress starts by telling the truth. So I would just ask you to think about that. Do you really believe that in the situations that you're presented that you're the best person for that? Do you really believe your agency is the best agency? Do you really believe your carriers are the best carrier partners, the right partners, that you go deep with your partners, that you're proud of your carrier partners? And do you truly believe that you have such great value? Not just value for you, value for that client? Right. How they win around five, at least five points of differentiation. Do you truly believe all those things. If you do, you have a huge competitive advantage. If you don't, eventually guess what, the truth will prevail. As I said earlier, the truth will prevail. So last note here as well. Depending on when you're listening to this, we have a few things coming up. I always like to share what's going on at Sidkins. We have just recently announced our next Producer Fit program. This is by far our most popular program. Certainly our Sitkins Network members have first priority to these events, but this particular program is still open to the public if we do not have a competitor in your area. So Producer fit go to sitkins.coms I t k-I n s.com profit p r o f I t so sitkins.com profit to learn about our next event. It kicks off on May 14th. We have four live sessions. Two of them are on site and two of them are online. So two. We have four total sessions, two on site, two online. And again, this program is extremely popular. The rooms that we have for on site typically sell out. They're in a beautiful resort in Florida and I can tell you that the room is beginning to fill up and sell out for these events as well. So if you're interested, don't wait before it is sold out and full sitkins.com profit remember your beliefs truly do drive your behavior. So take some time. Again, think about some of the content I shared today. I'd love to hear your feedback. If you haven't yet, give us a rating and review. Always looking to grow this podcast and add more value to agency leaders out there in the marketplace. So with that, wish you all the best and your success. Thanks for listening.