The Best Investment You Can Make In Your Insurance Business

Many years ago, I heard a quote that perplexed me and then it began to challenge and ultimately change me. I'm going to discuss that quote as well as the most important investment that you will ever make in your insurance business on today's AgentLeader podcast. The Agent Leader Podcast is brought to you by the Sitkins Network. Become a Category 1 in your marketplace. Learn more at sitkins.coms I t k I n s.com. Well, hello there, friends. Brent Kelly here with another episode of the Agent Leader Podcast. So excited you're joining me here today. And as I said on the open of this podcast, you know, I heard a quote many years ago, it's been probably what, 15, 16 years ago when I first heard it, that at first it kind of confused me or perplexed me and then I began to understand it a little bit and apply it. And ultimately again, it's probably been the most important quote that I've ever heard. And it comes from the late, great Jim Rohn. Now, if you've heard me speak live on stage at an event or read some of my other articles, you'll hear me quote Jim Rohn quite a bit. Why? Well, because Jim Rohn is a smart dude, right? I mean, he just had some brilliant wisdom and really one of the finest teachers of personal development and growth and just the greatest business mind, one of the greatest business minds that I've ever heard. And here's the quote that I heard many years ago that began to change my life. And whether you're an insurance producer, you're an agency principal, you're an account executive, you're a claims rep, it doesn't really matter. This quote applies really to anyone, but I think it's so vital to the insurance industry today. And here's the quote. Jim said this. He said, work hard on your job, make a living, work hard on yourself, make a fortune. Work hard on your job, make a living, work hard on yourself, make a fortune. Now, I can tell you, as a commercial lines producer for about 15 years, you know, I attended a variety of sales trainings, product training classes from Insurance Carriers association, third party, you name it. And most of them were very informative. I mean, they really did help my business. I would gain an idea or two. I would get excited about that idea, I would take it back to the office. You know, maybe whether it's the beginning of the week or the end of the week, whenever I went to that training, I would think, okay, how am I going to apply this? How I'm going to do this? But what I would find is that several days later, maybe several weeks later, I would go back into bad habits to the things I was doing before that maybe were working okay, but not really getting me the results that I ultimately wanted. Just falling back to these bad habits, you know, and it wasn't because these trainings were poor or they didn't do a good job. It's just that often they focus more on the technical side of the business. You know, and I'll say this, when it comes especially to sales training, but this is any type of training, you know, technical training is important, and technical training has value. I also believe that technical training can help a business grow. I can help producers sell more insurance. But unfortunately, technical training completely misses the emotional aspect of why people buy. And so I had to ask myself this question, thinking about the quote from Jim Rohn. You know, work hard on your job, make a living, work hard at understanding coverages and details of the business. Again, all that is important. But what about working hard on yourself? What does that mean? Why so often do I see companies completely miss the boat on offering what we call soft skills training? You know, soft skills that include things like personal growth and development, communication skills, attitude, being able to use humor, likability, how do you build connections, how do you grow rapport with people, all those types of things. We could go on and on. And I think it's an important question, why is this missing out there? And here's some things that come to mind. Well, maybe it's that companies don't feel that teaching these soft sales skills and soft skills in general are important. Maybe companies don't understand how to teach them. How do you teach someone leadership and attitude and communication? Good question. Maybe they just don't know that they even exist, that there's really a lane, so to speak, where you can work on these things. Regardless of the reason, I think that soft sales skills are vital for every single insurance professional, every producer, every agency leader. Again, every account manager. Soft sales skills are vitally important. See, you can teach anyone about a product or service, a computer program or other technical skills, and maybe it'll take longer. Some take longer than others, but you can learn and master a technical skill over a period of time. The challenge of soft skills, especially soft sales skills, is that it's an ongoing process that takes a lifetime. You never master soft sales skills. You always have to continue to work on them. But before you can master something, you have to believe that there's value in them. You have to understand that there is value in Your own personal and professional growth, you getting better every single day, you being able to communicate with people, whether it's online, offline, building relationships, waking up each day and having a fresh and new and a positive attitude. It sounds cliche almost, doesn't it? But who are the people that are successful? Generally, people who can communicate, who have grown themselves, who can build relationships and have a positive attitude. Attitude. Now, soft skills are easy to overlook because they don't show up overnight. It's easy to diagnose. A salesperson, for example, doesn't understand the product that he or she sells. But it's very hard to pinpoint why that same person can't build quality relationships. Now, that doesn't undermine the importance of soft sales skills or soft skills in general. But here's the understanding. The point I want to make regarding soft sales skills for insurance producers in particular. Customers buy emotionally and they justify the purchase intellectually. We all buy things emotionally. Now, when I say buy things, certainly that could be an insurance product. It can also be an idea. People want to buy into ideas. But every one of us, when we buy something, we will buy it emotionally. There's a feeling, there's an emotional aspect that we're attached to. Then we justify it with reason. Yet most insurance producers, most agency leaders, we still try to sell ideas, products, whatever, intellectually by focusing just on the technical aspects of a purchase. Now, for insurance producers, this could be like competitive pricing. Coverage and insurance carry reputation. All important things, right? They're all important. But if the future client or client, or if you're working with your team, if they don't like or trust you, it's likely you're still not going to get them to buy in. You're going to lose the account, you're going to lose the team member, at least for a short period of time. See customers may use some of those technical aspects to justify the final purchase. But again, that's not why they buy. See, clients buy because of likability, because of relationships, because of trust, or maybe, just maybe even a feeling. Now, I can tell you this very informally. This isn't a structured survey by any means. I don't pretend it to be that way, but it was very impactful. When I really understood it, I asked 20 of my clients, this was several years ago, 20 of my clients. This was commercial lines. I had a few that were personal lines accounts. I had some larger commercial accounts. I had some medium, middle size, middle market accounts, a couple small accounts. So it was a variety of different people. And I asked them this question, what's the number one reason that you selected me and our agency, and why do you continue to do business with me? Just give me one reason. I mean, there may be multiple, but give me just the number one reason. Now, I thought, well, some are going to answer price, some are going to answer customized insurance programs. Some are going to say maybe agency reputation, whatever it may be. Now, while those were all factors, when we, when we went into it deeper, the number one answer. Number one, 18 out of 20 clients said they simply liked doing business with me. They just liked doing business with me. Now, there's a lot more that goes into that. Don't get me wrong. But while the insurance business can seem complicated, especially in today's technological world, the great producers, the great leaders keep things simple. Your clients, your future clients, your team members, your community members still desire relationships, and they buy things, whether tangible or intangibly. Emotionally, producers and agency leaders need to understand the emotional reasons while people buy and then consistently work on improving the soft skills. So I want to go through just three basic ways on today's podcast that you can begin to improve your soft skills. Going back to the opening quote, how do you work hard on yourself? One of the things that challenged me when I heard that quote from Jim Rohn, when he said, work hard on your job, make a living, work hard on yourself, make a fortune, was, how do I work hard on myself? What does that really even mean? And I think that's a fair question. If you're someone who's never really understood, maybe you've heard professional growth or personal development, you thought, oh, that sounds kind of cool, but I don't really know what that is. Sounds kind of hokey. What does that mean? And when I began to understand it and understood that it took a long, it takes a long period of time, it really started to change my paradigm, my perspective on this. So how can you improve your soft skills? How can you improve working on you? Well, number one is you have to believe that you're worth investing in. You must invest in yourself. The best producers, the best agency leaders are continual learners. They see growth as a daily process of learning and trying new things. Now, this takes diligence. You've got to work at it. You've got to surround yourself with books, with podcasts, with videos, with anything else that will push you. And I'll tell you, this doesn't take as much time as you think. Some people go, well, I just don't. I just don't have time to invest in myself. Brent, I mean, I'm busy. I'm running my agency or I'm out seeing clients and I've got a family and I've got these events to attend. I get it. Listen, as an executive coach and working and traveling and speaking and five kids of my own, believe me, I get it. Time is precious, but even 10 to 15 minutes a day can springboard you ahead of your competition. Invest in yourself, in a good book and watching a positive video. Whatever it is for you, whatever is it you need to work on, maybe an area that you're doing okay, but you want to improve on. By the way, this may require that you give up some things in your life. You've got to start to determine the trade offs that you want to make. As leadership expert, and my mentor John Maxwell says you have to give up to go up. So are you willing to sacrifice watching SportsCenter or dancing with the Stars or the latest Netflix release at night and maybe replace it with a book, a reflection, or prepare for tomorrow's meeting? Are you willing to get up 10 minutes earlier every day? Sometimes that's all it takes. By the way, who you surround yourself with matters. Are you willing to release some relationships that aren't contributing to your growth and development and begin to surround yourself with others who will both challenge you and encourage you? By the way, those are really difficult decisions, aren't they? By basically kind of, you know, starting to separate yourself from people that maybe you spent more time with because you know they aren't helping you get where you want to go. That goes back to number one. I'm saying here is you must invest in yourself. You must feel that you're worthy to invest in. I often say to groups that I speak at, you can't give what you don't have. See, if you don't pour into your own cup, if you are an empty glass of water, if you don't fill it up first, you can't pour it out to anyone else. And that's often what I see agency leaders and sales producers doing in particular is that we try to give out and there's nothing to give. So, number one, invest in yourself. Number two, I love this. Record yourself doing everything. This can be a big challenge. Now, just the other day I was at a workshop and I asked the audience, hey, how many of you record yourself practicing a presentation or a proposal? And a few hands went up in the air. And then I asked the group, this was a group of young agents, how did you like watching yourself? You know, everyone laughs and shakes their head and like, oh, it was terrible, it was awful. You know, I can't stand the way I looked or the way I sound. And I was kind of chuckling along with them. And I just, I sat there and I paused and I then I just quietly, politely asked with a smile on my face, well, let me ask you another question. If you don't like the way you sound or the gestures you make, how do you think your audience feels? Now, that may sound mean to some degree, but it's true, right? Well, I don't like the way I sound. I can't believe I do this with my hair. I can't believe that I do this with my hands. I can't believe whatever it is. And again, this is more of a communication thing. But the only way to get better in communication in this case is to practice. The only way to get better in delivering great presentations to your clients is to practice. The only way to run a successful meeting through agency is to practice. And not just practice, but deliberately practice and record yourself. It may take a little extra time, but it'll mean a lot. Believe me. I speak all the time and I know I have a long way to go. And as I look back, I listen to stuff that I did two, three years ago. It astounds me and I hope I'll look, hopefully two or three years now, I'll look back and go, wow, I've gotten a lot better since then. I want to continually improve. So I ask yourself, record yourself when you practice a presentation where you conduct a meeting or any situation where you're in front of other people. And then you just watch, you listen, you analyze, and you have to ask yourself, hey, where do I shine? Where am I? Pretty good and where do I need to practice? Again, that's investing in yourself. And that's step two is by recording yourself. And then third is this. This is what a lot of insurance professionals do pretty well. But I want to spur you on a little further. Number three is attend trainings. Spending time developing your soft skills can be done at your house, it can be done in your office, but you also need to go to other places, find opportunities to get in front of other trainers and peers. There's nothing like the energy of a live event. And here's what the great thing about a live event is, is that you, especially if you attend the right ones, you're going to learn a lot of new information and, and you're going to learn, you know, new ways of doing things, but you're also going to learn from others. Your peers. At the same time, I can tell you that some of the greatest information I've ever received was not from the speaker on the stage, but from the person sitting at my table at lunch. And this is coming from a person who speaks on a stage. You know, I tell the audiences, listen, I hope you learned something from me today, but I hope you go network and talk to each other because all of us is a lot smarter than one of us. So find events in your local area, attend things online or commit to travel. Find an event or two, put it in your calendar and learn and network with other growth minded individuals. All of these things that I talked about, investing in yourself, recording yourself, doing things, attending these trainings, you have to put them in your calendar, you have to make them a priority because if you don't, they're not going to happen. They're just not going to happen. I know for me personally, I will just tell you that now in the morning in my calendar, it pops up. Personal development for about 30 minutes every morning is one of the first things I want to do before the kids wake up, before anything else happens, I want to say, how do I pour into myself? So I'm ready to take on this day and I'm equipping myself to get better every single day. All right, here's the bottom line. All high achievers invest in themselves. As I said, you can't give to others what you first have not received. And this goes way beyond just understanding the products that you sell and the companies you represent. You must also be able to work on your own personal growth and development. I believe that poor sales results, poor agency growth results are often the result of poor sales skills and relationship building, right? Not lack of knowledge. One of the podcasts I think I just released, I talked about Leadership success is 87% people knowledge and only 13% technical knowledge. This kind of follows that trend. See, you as a agency professional, as a insurance leader, are expected to know the technical side of the business. Now, are some people more equipped than others in the industry? Of course. But I can tell you, your clients, your future clients, your community thinks that insurance professionals should just know insurance stuff. You better know insurance stuff because you're part of an insurance group, whatever that may be. But you must go beyond that. You've got to learn to develop that knowledge. That's just the beginning. That's just the beginning. As it's been said many times, and actually I've heard this in many, many places. My favorite guy who ever said it was Jack Jeffrey Gittamer he just says it so well. He says all things being equal, people will buy from those they know like and trust. All things not being equal, people will still buy from those they know like and trust. That comes by investing in yourself to become a stronger, more confident, equipped resource person to go out and deliver value to your clients, your future clients and your team team members. As Jim Rohn said, if you work hard on your job, you can make a living. If you work hard on yourself, you can make a fortune. Thanks for listening. Today's podcast Again, my name is Brent Kelly. I'm an executive coach with the Sitkins and Network and if you want to join a community of high achieving, high growth insurance agencies, then check out the Sitkins Network. We help agencies transcend commoditization and defy comparison so that your agency, your agency becomes a category of one. Now again, this is territorial exclusive. So if you're interested please go to sitkins.coms I t k I n s.com to learn more and see if your territory is available today.