The "Secret" Skill to Success

So there's this super duper secret skill that if agency leaders and producers and professionals could just grasp it, if they could just understand this secret that most people miss, that most other producers and agency leaders miss, they would be heads and shoulders above the competition. Well, what is this super duper secret? I know you're dying to know. Well, here it is. And maybe you're not shocked by this. And of course it's not a super deeper secret. It's something that every one of us knows and understands and would agree that we probably should be better at in any form of business that requires us to talk and listen. It's communication, the skill of communication. And the reason why this is so important to me and what I want to talk about it in today's agent leader podcast is the fact that we do our private producer trainings and spend a lot of time talking about positioning ourselves and being able to open up conversation, asking questions and of course, asking for referrals and all types of things that require the skill set of communication. And it's interesting to me, I say, you know, everybody in the room who thinks that communication, the skill, the art, the improvement of communication is important in your success for today and in your future success. And every single hand in the room goes up, right? Unless someone's sleeping or nodding off in the back. But that doesn't happen in our workshops. We're too excited. But no, I mean, everybody raises their hand. Then I asked a follow up question, right? It's kind of a setup. I said, well then if that's the case, if every one of you in this room believes that communication is an important skill that you should be working on and developing to you to be your best version for you to have more success in the industry. How many of you are actively working on improving your communication skills every single day or at least every single week? All the hands come down. All the hands come down. Maybe there's one or two. Let's just think about this for a second, right? I mean, just think about this. One of the aspects that we preach all the time in our training and coaching is the fact that your greatest competitive advantage over anybody else is preparation, right? To be able to be prepared for whether it's a meeting, a client appointment, you know, whatever it is, we should be prepared. And how do you prepare? Well, a big part of preparation is practice and low risk practice that we call it, where you're just doing stuff that's on your own or with somebody that if you screw it up, it doesn't matter. So when it comes to communication, this is obviously a form of low risk practice. You know, are you able to get up if you wanted to write large accounts, are you able to confidently get up in front of a room, in front of a board of directors, or before a CFO and a CEO and present yourself well, that you're good on your feet? Because I can tell you in many cases the difference of getting and not getting an account. Now, of course, you've got to have the substance, you've got to have all the coverages, and you've gone through the questions and their risk program and all of that, of course. But I'm just saying from that initial perspective, because let's face it, whether it's fair or not, people judge you, people are judging you every day. You know, the whole head and shoulders idea that you never have a second chance to make a first impression is so true. So whether it's the first client meeting, whether you're meeting with a center of influence, whether you're meeting with a carrier partner, whether you're meeting with a current client, a future ideal client, I don't care what is the first impression they're getting of you, how are you presenting yourself? And then, of course, how are you communicating? So when you think of communication, how do you get better at it? Well, you get better at it by practicing it. And some of you are thinking, well, of course I practice it, Brent. I mean, I go out on appointments and have conversations every day, so I'm practicing every day. That's sort of true. I'll give you that. Right? If you go out there and you're working at something, you're going to get better, at least hopefully. If you have some level of evaluation and you're trying to actually improve. But the reality of it is, I believe this, that experience is a great teacher. But evaluated experience is a much better teacher when you're actually looking at what you're doing. Have you ever gone on an appointment of any kind? Certainly in the insurance business, on a future ideal client appointment? So in this case, a new person you're talking with and you get back into the car after you're done, you're like, oh, my gosh, I should have said that, or why didn't I say that right? And you start to rehearse your appointment after you've already had your appointment, See, it's too late. It's too late. But those are the times when you before, during, after that, you're starting to evaluate your experience and then work on things. How do I begin to ask better questions. While I practice in asking better questions, how do I get better to get on my feet to deliver a presentation or proposal? Well, I practice with people in my office or in front of a camera or listen to myself on audio. I know most people, especially when I have this in private conversations or in small groups. We're doing training. I said, how many of you enjoy to hear yourself on audio or to watch yourself on video? And everyone kind of laughs and shakes their head like, not me. And I say, well, why? Why don't you like to see yourself on video or audio or hear yourself on audio? And they're like, well, because I. I sound. I sound weird or I look stupid or I do this weird thing with my hand or whatever it is, right? There's these weird quirks that we all, as human beings have. And I said, let me ask you a question. Like, if it. If it's uncomfortable for you to watch and you have weird quirks that may be distracting or that don't give yourself or don't present yourself in the best light, how do you think your best clients feel or your best future ideal clients feel or your best carrier relationships feel, right? Whatever your role it is that you're doing or if you're meeting a big center of influence, it doesn't matter anybody that you want to influence. And again, leadership is influence, as I always say. How do they feel? And that's kind of a hard question, right? Because we're typically more critical of ourselves than we are. Other people are critical of us. But the bottom line is you want to be at your highest level. You want to be at your best version. And to get there, you've got to prepare and you've got to practice, right? So I, you know, my challenge, and just thinking about my challenge to you and my thinking about this podcast when I was just coming through ideas of things that we share in our programs that I hear, and I'm like, man, if I could just help agents and producers and agency leaders understand that, like, the power of their communication. I mean, it is at the top. And obviously, I'm a big fan and mentor of mine is John Maxwell. And, you know, one thing that I truly believe is that if you want to convince someone, the first thing you should do is connect with them. And if you want to convince somebody of something, you better first connect with them, because they may verbally hear you, right, with their ears, and they may visually see you with their eyes, but they're emotionally feeling you with their heart, right? Their sense I mean, we've all had that, right? You've met somebody or seen someone in the first few seconds. You're like, I don't know if there's something off. I don't know if this person's qualified or whatever gut feeling we have about somebody, fair or not fair. But that comes with being able to be a great communicator. Because I believe when I think of all the very best professionals, the agency leaders that we work with, certainly the insurance producers who are out there every day, you know, what makes them stand above the rest? Well, there's several things, but certainly right at the top of that list is they're great communicators, which means they're great listeners. They're in the moment in these conversations, and they're well prepared and they've established themselves through practice and training is the fact that they can get on their feet. And when I say stand on your feet or get on your feet, they could also be sitting across the table. Right? Doesn't matter. But present themselves with confidence and clarity. With confidence and clarity. And so if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, I get it, Brent, communication is important, you know, and some people, it's always funny when you, you teach or train anything. I mean, the best part about teaching and training is that you learn so much, right, because you're preparing yourself. But there's been many times, I know in my own life, I've said things like, well, I've heard that, or I know that, or, duh, right? I mean, okay, I got it. I got to be a better communicator. The question you have to ask yourself on any of this stuff is not, do I know that? That doesn't really solve your problem, does it? Do I know that I need to be a better communicator? Yes. Great, go forth and conquer. No, no. The difference is you have to ask yourself, how well do I do that? But how well do I do that? Go and ask people in your office or people that you trust or, you know, even your spouse, if you dare to do so. If you've got one of those, or partner, just say, you know, if. Again, I don't care if it's someone family or a business partner, whoever the case may be, but just ask them. If you had to rate me on a scale of 1 to 10, one being that I mumble and you can't understand what I'm saying or can't present myself well, and 10 being absolutely world class, how am I as a communicator? Better yet, how about how well do I communicate and then effectively connect with people and just get feedback, right? Just get feedback. Because ultimately the heart of this business is relationships. And to build relationships you've got to be able to communicate and communicate at a high level. And let me say this because I think some of you, I just think, what are people thinking? What are their doubts? Well, I had, people have come to me, for example. Of course my job, my profession now is to speak and to train and to coach. So again, I better be a good communicator. I still slip up. I'm sure you can catch many times just me talking right now that I've said an ah or, or stumble, right? It's just the reality. But I can tell you there's people that come to me and say, well, you're just a natural communicator. That's a gift that you have. I've had people look at other producers and go, well, they just kind of have that thing. I don't have that. Now do I believe that certain people have God given talents or natural abilities that are a good starting point? Absolutely, absolutely. And I think one of the things you have to understand is what are your unique abilities, what are your strengths and to really maximize them. But if you're in, in the world as an insurance leader, insurance producer, service person, guess what, you're going to be talking to people, right? So if you're really, really bad at it, like you hate it, then you probably shouldn't do it. Like if you just are, it's a zero. I really do not like people and I really cannot talk to people and I have no interest in getting better, then maybe you need to look at a career switch. But I think those of you listening to this right now, you're probably in the business of, yeah, I talk to people, I enjoy it, I enjoy helping people, all those kind of things. So the question then is what's next, right? What's the next step? Because if you say, well, you're just a natural communicator, let me tell you something, I have some natural abilities in this realm. But if you talk to people who knew me 15 years ago, 16 years ago, when I graduated college, just from a talking standpoint, I talked way too fast, I mumbled, I wasn't clear, I wasn't very prepared on things I was going to say, and that's part of growth and progress. But then I got serious. And I remember as a young insurance agent, after really struggling three or four years, when I moved from one Agency to another agency. It was kind of a start. Like, okay, what have I learned in the last four years and what can I use now to kind of get a better starting point? And the very first thing that I did or one of the very first things I did is I joined a local Toastmasters Club just because I realized that to be able to speak is going to be critical to my development and my success. So I might as well go out and do something that'll, that'll help me with that. Now there are a lot of speaking clubs. Toastmasters is all over the country. There's Dale Carnegie courses. Even the John Maxwell team, which I'm part of, has speaking clubs. There's all kinds of things you can, you can do to get better. Read books on it, watch great communicators and speakers. What do they do? You know, all of that. The point of it is you may not be great today and that's okay, but you've got to start somewhere. And in this business, to be successful means to be a great communicator means that you should probably be working on it as much as you possibly can. As much as you possibly can. So I would just challenge you and encourage you that if you're one of those people that raises their hand saying that communication is vital to my long term success and development as an insurance professional of any kind, that you better also raise your hand in saying that I'm willing to put the time and effort energy into being a better communicator. Last thing I'll share on this, that comes to mind when it comes to communication. And I could go on a long time on communication because I just think it's so obvious, yet it's so missed. You think about the power of telling stories. So certainly great communicators, they listen, they think they're in the moment, they know the right questions to ask at the right time. That all comes with practice. But when you're presenting things, when you, it is your time to speak and communicate, do you just tell facts and data? Especially in this business, right? If you're an insurance producer, I've got this coverage, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. My first sales trainer told me if you're techno barfing on people, then they're probably not going to buy from you. So are you techno barfing? Are you telling a bunch of facts and data about how smart you are and how much the agency does and all these things that you're going to do or are you willing or are you able to tell things in the forms of stories, analogies, situations. And of course, as you gain more experience, you have more stories to tell. But I would say, listen, just for example, what are the five coverages? This is just one example. The five coverages that are most vital to you when you go out and present to your clients, right? Just think about that. What are five coverages that you have, five types of risk solutions that you provide that are most important? And then my next thing is, are you able to describe those five or share those five without just using a bunch of data and facts? You know, someone asks a question about business interruption coverage, you just say, okay, now business interruption coverage is a monthly reporting form and blah, blah, blah. Or we have, you know, actual loss sustained. And here's how I mean that kind of stuff, which they're kind of going, okay, I think I get it. I think I may need that. Or do you say, you know, let me. Let me share a story. We have a client of ours just the next town over, and last year we had this situation, and here's what happened, right? And you share a story like that, and the outcome was this, you know, and that's why, Mr. Client, this coverage is so important to our clients because we've. We've seen it, we've lived it. What's more powerful? Giving facts and data about the business interruption limits or telling a story with purpose and power about what that means and how that directly could affect them? Because guess what? When you tell a story, people put themselves in that story. And that's what great communicators do, is they tell stories that have a point, right? They have to have a point. But they tell stories where you as the listener, put yourself in that story and you go, oh, that's me. I've had that situation. I get that. And then when you get to the point, they go, yep, that makes sense. We need that, or I would like to do that, or whatever the case may be. So I know I've talked about a lot of different areas of communication in today's podcast, but I just want. I can't emphasize enough how important it is and how overlooked it is. It's just amazing to me. There are 35,000 independent insurance agencies in the country, which means we have how many thousands more of independent insurance agents that are out there? And I would guess that 1% actively pursue getting better at communication, which is one of the top skills they need to be successful. So dare to be different. Dare to be the best. I wish you all the best in your future success. And if you or your agencies are looking to take the next level to really be the best version possible. We'd love to have a conversation with you. I know. I love to have a conversation with you because, you know, in particular with our Sitkins network, which is our private client group, people always ask me, well, what, what's, what do those clients look like? What do they do? What's the size of the agency? And we have, you know, there's different trends certainly. But you know, the common thing that we see with agencies that are part of our network that are successful, they're hungry for growth. They don't think they know everything. They're willing to share and listen and be open and be coachable. This doesn't mean that we or the Sitkins team have all the answers, but we certainly can help facilitate and accelerate your growth through our coaching, through our training and certainly with our peer network to be able to share with each other. Because if we don't have an answer, there's a great chance that someone in our network does and open to share things. So if you are interested in that opportunity, go to sitkins.com apply and you can apply for our network or just go to sitkins.com and learn about all of our programs and resources. And if you'd like to reach out to me for anything, I'd love to help you. My email is Brent B r e n t at sitkins s I t k-I n s.com until next time. I'll talk to you soon. All the best.