The Power of Gratitude

Foreign. Hey there. Brent Kelly here of the Agent Leader podcast. Welcome to another episode. I'm so glad you're with me. And today I want to focus my time and energy around a subject that is so simple to understand, in many cases so simple to execute. But I can tell you, not only in my own life, but certainly in working with agency leaders and agency producers, it is so often overlooked and it's a missed opportunity. Now what am I talking about? I'm talking about gratitude, right? Simple gratitude. The ability to say I appreciate you. The ability to say thank you for what you provided me. The ability just to say you mean something to me. And this is really powerful to me. I've written about gratitude before and thank yous and I've shared stories from stage and different events about gratitude. But we just came back, I just got back from our Producer Fit sales training program. And if you don't know about our Producer Fit sales training program, go to sidkins.com and look at our programs. You'll see Producer Fit. It's our top notch sales training program for insurance producers. And you know what's interesting about our program is that yes, we talk about processes and yes, we talk about certain skills you need to develop and yes, we talk about questions and all the kind of things that you need to do to be a top level and insurance producer in today's world. But sometimes it's the most simple, obvious things that become the biggest aha's. And in our, we actually had, there's four different sessions that we do in our program and we had a new group of producers that came in for session one. So the first time they were live with Roger Sitkins and myself going through some training programs. And then we had a session four which was the fourth session obviously of a group that was finishing up. So our Producer Fit programs have four sessions. Two are live and and two are online. And so it was interesting that we had a session one and a session four back to back with different groups. But at the end of one of the, one of the areas we were working on in session number one, we were, I was talking about relationship management and the importance of relationship management. There's five areas that we always talk about at Sitkins. We talk about relationships with your clients, your future ideal clients, your centers of influence, your carriers and your colleagues. Right, the people on your team. And what are we doing specifically to manage those relationships. In essence, make deposits versus withdrawals. And of course we spend a lot of times talking about our client relationships. What are we really doing in Our client relationships. And the reality of it is, if we're objective and honest with ourselves and everybody's different. Right. When you listen to this podcast, you may be doing all kinds of stuff with your clients, but I can tell you, in my experience, the vast majority of insurance producers and agency leaders that we see are. Aren't doing much. Right. Aren't doing much when it comes to thank yous and gratitude. And so I spent some time. In fact, one of the stories I love to share and I'll share on this podcast is something I did as an insurance producer many years ago that was really, really effective. In fact, it was so effective for a couple years that I stopped doing it. Isn't that the case? So often we always joke about that. You know, it's like, it works so well that I decided I would just stop doing it. And what I did was, you know, most people do some form of holiday gift, holiday card, whatever it may be, right? Which is always a great thing to do for Christmas and the new year and however it is that you do that. But I realized that, you know, early in my. In my production career, like, you know, it'd be cool to use the opportunity of Thanksgiving. So a, the fact that it's a Thanksgiving to give thanks, secondly, the fact that people aren't totally inundated with cards and Christmas parties and everything yet. And to be able just to reach out personally and contact my clients. So what I did was, again, very simple, was that that week before Thanksgiving, Monday, Tuesday and the half of Wednesday, I spent the entire day just making phone calls and reaching out and following up. And so I actually wrote a handwritten card to every one of my clients. I sent it off the week before and just said, thank you. You know, whatever it is, I want to thank you for your business. It means the world to me, and I wish you all the best. You know, just basic handwritten thank you card. Which, by the way, I found in my extensive research that in general, 100% of people open thank you cards. Think about that. 100% of people. How often do you get a thank you card and go, oh, man, I'm so irritated. They sent me a thank you card. So that was step one. Step two is I actually reached out and made a phone call. I just picked up the phone and said, Mr. Client, this is Brent Kelly. And I just want to tell you that I don't say it often enough, but I appreciate you and I thank you for your business. It means the world to me. It means the world to our agency. And I just wish you a happy Thanksgiving season. Anything I can do for you, please let me know. And I got a lot of voicemails, no doubt. But I also talk to people directly. And the funniest part was that most people that I talked to that I got on the phone, their first question to me after I said that was, what do you think? What do you want? What do you need? What did I not pay? What situation do I have? Our insurance clients are so used to hearing from their insurance agencies only when we need something. I mean, just think about it. We didn't pay your bill. I need more information for underwriting. Your renewal's coming up. Do you want to renew? I mean, these are the basic things that our clients hear from most insurance agencies. And so it's always a withdrawal. It's always that we're taking from them. And so when we give true deposits, meaning that we're just trying to add value to them in some way. I'm not even getting into the risk surveys and risk management stuff that you should be doing. I'm just talking about thank yous. A simple gratitude that when we do these basic, basic things, they often look at us like, wow, that's crazy. Which says a couple things. First of all, it says it's amazing in society how a simple thank you has gotten to the point that is that powerful. Meaning that not just in the insurance industry, but many industries, we don't do much right to really say thank you and appreciate our clients. So, you know, I did that for Thanksgiving again for a couple years. Worked so well. In fact, I got, you know, I got people that said, hey, by the way, I was meaning to call you. I was, I knew a buddy of mine, you know, a friend of mine, another business who needs to talk to you about insurance, whatever it was. So not only did I round out many clients where, hey, I need to add something or do something or let me take a look. And that wasn't my intention. I also actually was able to get referrals, right? So round out, retain and referrals. It was, it was pretty cool. One of our ultimate marketing strategy techniques that we teach at SID Kids. So that was pretty neat. But the reason I want to share this in depth is I shared that story with my producer FIT attendees a couple weeks ago to our first session group attendees. And it was funny. I give credit here all to Roger Sitkins. I did that. And people were thinking about it and asking me questions. We came back in right before break, I should say right before break. Roger stands up and says, hey, I want everybody to look at your cell phone, your smartphone right now. And everybody's like, wait a second, we're not supposed to be looking at your smartphone. No, no, no. Pull your phone out right now. And I want you to pull up your number one client, your best client client that means the most to you, however you want to define it. And so people are going through their smartphone and he said, I want you right now to go outside. Here we are on Fort Myers beach, beautiful weather. So go outside, go out in the lobby, whatever you want to do. Go somewhere and call him and just say thank you. Just say thank you. So it was interesting. Is first of all, you could tell people were kind of uncomfortable. You know, it's like, wow, uncomfortable saying thank you. But I get it, right? I gotta go do something. So they get their phone and then people kind of come out and some of them have smiles on their faces and they go out and make calls. Now, I know many of them had voicemails. Some of them, for all I know, could have been calling their friend and just saying, hey, I need you to, you know, just to pick up the phone to pretend I'm talking to somebody. I don't know. We didn't monitor every call, but there were several people who came back and they were like, wow, that was really cool. You know, people were like, oh, thank you, thank you. And it's like, wait a second. No, I'm thanking you. In fact, we had one of our attendees, very successful producer, million dollar plus producer, right? So already very successful, who went out and made this call. And this was from a client who also was a huge center of influence. And he had two appointments, two appointments set up with really great future ideal clients. We don't use the word prospects. Future ideal clients that he was working on or wants to work on. And he had the biggest smile on his face, right? He's like, oh, so cool. I just said thank you. And we had a really nice conversation. They went into different things. And he said, man, you know, I've really been thinking about you. And I've got a couple CL that I've been looking at. Oh my gosh, that'd be perfect. I'd love to talk to them. And these were really great future ideal clients. All because he picked up the phone and said thank you. Just says thank you. Now, again, the idea of saying thank you and having appreciation isn't to get something that isn't the point. We don't pick up the phone and say thank you because we may get something. But guess what? That's the natural outcome in many cases of saying thank you, of showing gratitude, of showing appreciation, of just taking a few minutes to say, I care about you. So, you know, I followed up after that, that session. We did this again in our next week's session with session four and had similar results. But it got me thinking too, just about how we invest our time. I'm not going to say spend our time, how we invest our time, because I don't think anybody should just spend time. I think we should invest it in different areas. But how we invest time and the reality of it is, and by the way, I'm guilty of this too, this gets me to think about things in my area, of what I do every day and working with our private clients. But instead of maybe looking at Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram or having that chat in the water cooler with your buddy, those are okay things. Time to time, if you plan for it, if you make time for that. But most of us just take whatever extra time we have and we waste it. We don't invest it in anything important. We just waste it to get through the next minute. That's just the reality. We don't want to be thinking about things. But what if every two minutes of wasted time, so to speak, instead you picked up the phone and called your best client, you called a center of influence, you called your carrier underwriter to say, you know what? I just want to tell you I appreciate all the work you've been doing for me. You went to your colleague at the office. Maybe it's your customer service rep, account manager, maybe you're an account manager. You talk to your producer. Maybe it's the agency principal. I don't care who it is, it's the receptionist. And say, hey, I just want to tell you I really appreciate all the stuff you've been doing. It means a lot to me. What if we took those times just a minute or two, and instead of just filling it with blank space or busy work that we're not really accomplishing something with, we. We spend it on gratitude. What do you think that would mean in a week, in a month, in a year? Now, I don't know the direct answer to that. Right? Everybody's different. But I can tell you it would be positive. I can tell you that if you make enough deposits in people's lives that things naturally seem to happen, there is karma in the world, right? It's called doing the right thing. And I think in this business, the insurance business in particular, and I say this over and over again. This is a relationship business first. We can use technology to enhance relationships, but at the end of the day, it comes down to true relationships, human being to human being. And that occurs again with your clients that you currently have. The ones that are actually paying you money, the ones that are actually helping you fund your retirement, pay your mortgage, clothe your kids, whatever it is, right? Especially when you're 100% commission, as most of you are. That is a person we should appreciate. Your future ideal clients, those people that you want to work with, of course, what are you doing for them? Versus I just want to get your business. What about again, people at your office, your insurance carriers, those centers of influence that have helped you, influencing the influencers. Just take some time and think about today, this week, next week, whatever it is, instead of hopping to Facebook, instead of having that casual conversation just because you got a few minutes extra, what if you put a list of people that you want to thank, right? And you just said, anytime I have an open two minutes, I'm going to pick up the phone and just say, I want to thank you. By the way, here's the cool thing I mentioned, the guy that came back, the million dollar producer who had some referrals because of this. He had the biggest smile on his face I've ever seen. I mean, huge smile. Because guess what? Saying thank you and showing appreciation is fun. It is fun and this business should be fun. And if you're not having fun doing it, you may be doing the wrong thing. Think about that. Think about that. I'm gonna wrap this up with a quote that I got from John Maxwell in his book, everyone Communicates, Few Connect. And it's a great, just a great book on communication and leadership. And there's a lot of stuff about gratitude and appreciation, but I don't even know, quite honestly if it's his quote or he had an excerpt from someone else. But I love the quote and I share it quite a bit because it's important to me. Just remember this. Silent gratitude is no gratitude at all. Silent gratitude is no gratitude at all. And I know personally that quote hits me really hard because whether it's clients, whether for me in my personal life, my family and my wife, there are so many times that I say, man, I really appreciate them. I really, you know, I have good intentions, but I don't verbalize it or I don't write it. I don't say it in any form of communication. And so what I think is gratitude is truly no gratitude at all. So I want you to think about that moving forward and I want you to figure out ways that you can become a high level thank you deposit giver in your agency and in your life. Also, just again to mention, if you're curious more about Sidkins and our programs and how we help producers and agency leaders sell more, retain more, earn more, how we help agencies become truly the best versions of themselves possible, live a life of no regrets. Go to our page sipkins.com, check out our programs, check out some of our resources we have for you. We would love an opportunity to work with you and share some information and learn from you as we grow on this journey. And you know, after having just two weeks spent in Fort Myers beach, we did our trainings with over 60 different producers and agency leaders and seen their, their, you know, just the excitement and the tools and the resources and some of them coming back in session for the results they're already getting. It's worth it, right? It's, it's so worth this opportunity to have these conversations. So love to talk to you more. Wish you all the best in your success. Thank you.