The Vital Few

Foreign. Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host, and I'm coming live today right now actually from my car. So I'm heading to the airport right now. I've got an event I'll be speaking at tomorrow in North Carolina. Excited to be out with the Young Agents Development Conference in North Carolina. Great group. And was kind of just thinking about some different areas and as I was driving I thought, you know what, I'm going to give this a shot just to be able to, you know, hands free, looking straight ahead. I'm being very careful, just like I'm talking to someone in the car, but instead I'm just talking to myself. But yet I'm talking to you. On today's Agent Leader podcast, I just want to give an idea, kind of a cliff notes version of some of the things that I'll be presenting tomorrow in my keynote and also a little bit in my breakout sessions that I'll be doing. I'll be doing a 90 minute keynote and then in the afternoon doing a couple breakout sessions with smaller groups. A little more of a workshop and excited about that. I always love to get out and be with the people and as I always share, learn, learn from a lot of different agents and agency leaders out there, just like yourself. And as I was kind of preparing this, one thing that struck me that my title of my keynote tomorrow is the Vital Few. And I've talked about different aspects, practice, probably on this podcast in different areas of the Vital Few before. But what really struck me as I was preparing and doing some rehearsals and going through notes was this idea that most agency leaders, most agency professionals, most business people in general, and by the way, most people like me, because I am guilty of this, just like many of you are, is that we're really great starters of things, but we're typically very poor finishers actually completing things. Now, part of that is personality type and I think we're all wired differently. I mean, it's safe to say that many entrepreneurs, sales professionals, business leaders, are very good at high level strategic thinking. They come up with a lot of ideas and they need people around them to help execute. That's very common on many agencies that I work with, is that, hey, I've got an idea a minute and I can totally relate to that. But the challenge is understanding, as my keynote says tomorrow, the vital Few. What are the vital few things that we really need to do at a high level? And how do we not just start something but actually finish it, actually execute the plan because, you know, I'm probably guilty of this, not just as an individual and as a business leader, but also I may be somewhat part of the problem, and I say this tongue in cheek, but when I go out and do a keynote, for example, I mean, it's an hour, hour and a half. I'm sharing new ideas with the audience. Now, I always try, and I mention this on the outset of any type of keynote or workshop that I give is that my goal is not to feed your brain with 32 different things and then just splash it out to you and then let you figure it out. And hopefully that maybe you do something with it, because I don't know about you, but if I have 32 ideas, the likelihood of me doing any is pretty slim. And so instead of doing that, I always try to help filter throughout a presentation. Certainly we do our live trainings with our private client group. We always do that because it's about execution and not just all the things that we say, but what are they filtering? And so we talk about the vital few. There are just three areas that I'm going to focus on tomorrow. But even in these three areas, I'm going to ask the audience, okay, now filter down with these, because you're not going to do them all. We're not going to change anybody's life in 60 minutes or 90 minutes. But if I can see you an idea, a different way of thinking, that I'll challenge you to take something and say, this is important enough. Not just that we start something, because ever been to a keynote or listened to a podcast or read a book and go, ah, we should start doing this. And then you hear like, let's just pretend you're reading a book, right? And you're reading a really good book, a great business book, a learning book, and you're in the first chapter like, oh, we should do that. We should start that. And then chapter two, oh, you know, we should start that, too. And then chapter three, you know, really we should do is start that. You forgot what chapter one was even about. And I know for many people, and again, I'm guilty of this, some books are very good at saying, okay, now, before you move forward, let's talk about this and actually figure out what you're going to do. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll get back to that later. And so it's really important to say together, we're not just going to start, what are we going to finish? And that's where my message today, not what are you going to start, but what do you need to finish. What have you committed to in the past to yourself? What have you committed to your team? What have you committed to your clients? What have you committed to your community to say, listen, this is important enough for us to do, so let's actually do it to the final buzzer, so to speak. So tomorrow I'm going to be talking about three areas. Number one is the vital few strategies that agencies can use. And again, there are a lot of strategies. In fact, at Sidkins there are seven strategies that all correlate. They all go together like a puzzle pieces. But I'm going to talk in particular about one and I've mentioned this on this podcast before, but it all revolves around the 8020 principle and understanding 8020 that 20%. And this is just so many areas of life. Actors. A great book that I just read from Richard Koch. I don't know if it's Richard Koch or Richard Koch. It's K O, C, H. I'm not sure how you pronounce his name, but in the book he talks about the 8020 principle in all different areas. Business life throughout. It was very, very interesting read. But we look at insurance agencies just as a whole. We look at insurance producers just in their book of business. We know that 20% of our clients generally produce 80% of the revenue and it may be a little bit less, maybe a little bit more, but the idea is not to get so hung up on the number but this predictable imbalance. There's always this imbalance in the universe and most agencies may feel it, but they don't really know it, they don't really see it and they don't really do anything about it. They go, yeah, we know that our best clients produce most of our revenue and we like working with them and we like to have more like them, but we have no strategy around how we're actually going to do that. So we're going to continue to work with the 80% of clients that produce 20% of revenue and cause us the most problems in our time and take up our energy and give us issues and problems and cause more expenses. They don't create revenue, they actually cause expenses and they suck all of our employees time. So let's just spend more time there. So I'm going to spend a lot of time tomorrow talking about the vital fee that 20% of our clients lead to 80% of our revenue and some ideas of what to do around that. Now this is true 8020 as well with your insurance carriers. I just was in an online discussion and saw Something on. I think it was on Facebook that someone was talking about that. It's so true that 20% of our insurance carriers produce 80% of our agency revenue as well. And most insurance agencies have way, way, way too many carriers. We've got carriers that we may have one or two accounts, but just because we had to write that one account that didn't really fit, but we just thought we'd squeeze it in, and we're missing huge opportunities, not just in contingency money, which is true, you're wasting a lot of dollars, there's no doubt about that. But you're also just wasting your time and your effort and your enjoyment because you're just chasing so many rabbits and you got to satisfy so many people. And so this is simplified. And the idea of 8020 and everything that we're talking about in the vital few is this less is more. You just got to find the right less. And part of that takes a little bit of soul searching and be honest with yourself and look at some of the numbers and look at some of the behaviors and look at some of the results and say, what are those 20% of things that are leading to 80% of our results? I can tell you most agencies, and if you've got a production team, so if you're leading sales producers, I would venture to guess that 20% of your producers produce 80% of your revenue as well. Right. So this commonality of 8020 is very true. So that's my first vital few. The vital few strategies is just understanding 80 20. The next vital strategy I'm going to speak tomorrow about is the vital few relationships, which really goes into this top 20% that I just talked about. But what are we doing with the vital few relationships that we have now? I think that if you have a client in your agency, every client deserves a high level of service. They deserve to be treated well, they deserve to be treated with respect, and they deserve to be responded to in a timely manner. I 100% agree with that. But I will tell you, and we see it all the time, and I always ask agencies, if you only had these clients, what would you do for them? Right? Your top 20%, your top 5%, which, by the way, in many cases could be 30 to 50% of your agency revenues, just your top 5%, what would you do? Oh, well, we would do this, and we would try to do this, and we'd have more proactive touches and, great, then why don't you do it? Because you're really vulnerable there. And you also have great opportunity. It's vulnerability and opportunity. Why are you doing that? Well, because we don't have time. Because even though we know there's this predictable imbalance that I just talked about, we spend our time and energy equally with every client, for the most part. Our service team, if they get a change submission or something they need to work on, there's nothing that we have an A level and a B level and a C level because they're paying us more money and probably would desire greater level of service. And us being proactive versus reactive, we just do whatever is. Whatever is the most urgent. It's the whole idea. Back to Stephen Covey. Are we doing what's urgent or what's most important? And of course, you want to put those two together in many cases, but it's just, again, thinking about these vital few relationships. Are we really having an annual risk survey with every one of them? Because if we're not doing an annual risk survey, we're not really being an insurance or risk management professional. We're just a quoter and floater. So what are we doing with these vital three relationships? Are we doing that? Are we. Are we really defining and documenting what their needs are, what they really want, not what we think they are, but really, are we spending enough time to know, to ask important questions, to dive deeper with these relationships? Are we earning and are we asking for referrals? You know, this is so common and it's been around in sales 101, right? I mean, you've got good clients, great clients. Why aren't we getting referrals? Some of the numbers out there are staggering. I mean, think about it. You could do virtually nothing with your clients. This business, the insurance industry, is so great. It is such a great industry, as my friend Jason Kass says, the greatest industry that God ever created for you as an insurance professional, that even if we do virtually nothing with our clients, I mean, just the bare minimum, we're probably going to renew between 80 and 90%. Now, of course, depends on your lines of business, but let's just say at least 80. So why is it that even if we do nothing, 80% of our clients will renew, but only 10% refer? So 80% and maybe up to 90%, some of you have retention levels that are 93, 95% even. We see. So why, if 80 to 90% of our clients renew, only 10% refer, meaning they're saying this, you're good enough for us to stay with you, or at least we don't care enough to leave, right Maybe one of those two. But we don't really love you enough or care enough about you or respect you enough to tell somebody else about you. I mean, obviously the best referrals become unsolicited, where people are just so blown away because you have defined what they want, you have met what they want, you have exceeded because you're able to know how to exceed and want to exceed. But also it's about just asking. And most producers in particular don't ask because they feel if we really dive deep. I always ask producers, I said, well, why don't you ask? Because they know they're not asking. Well, it's uncomfortable. Agreed. I don't argue that it is uncomfortable. Why? Well, deep down inside, I really believe this. Deep down inside, in our subconscious, we don't truly feel that we've earned it. And you know, whether it's true or not, every situation is different. But if you don't really feel like you've earned it, how could you. If you don't feel like you've earned it, how could you actually ask? Right. In a way that feels confident and that you're comfortable doing it. So again, these are all just things to think about. And this is back the vital few relationships. Here's my summary of the vital few relationships. Spend more quality time with your most important relationships. And as I say that out loud to myself here, heading to the airport, it strikes me just as I leave my family, these are questions that I ask myself with my own family, with my own clients that I work with. Am I spending enough time, quality time, engaged time, fully present time, proactive time with my most important relationships? It's a question we all need to ask ourselves, an important question because really, what's it all about? Right? What's it all about? And of course, most agencies I talk to, if you could have more of your best clients, not just in terms of revenue, obviously you're more profitable, but gosh darn it, it's fun. Most of our best clients oftentimes become some of our best friends and then we enjoy spending time with them. So let's leverage those opportunities and really become risk professionals and build those relationships deep and wide. So vital few strategies. 80, 20 vital few relationships talked about some of the things. There's the last part I'm going to be diving deep intomorrow is the vital few behaviors. Now, the vital few behaviors are a lot of things we can look at. This is more focused for the sales team, but also in conjunction with sales and service. So here's what I'll tell you with the vital few behaviors, there is one metric that has become more and more popular that great sales agencies and departments measure that really hasn't been measured before. And it seems so common sense, it seems so ridiculous to even say it, but it's true. And it's a huge metric. And there's an acronym for it. It's called tss. Tss. You're thinking, what does TSS stand for? Well, let me tell you. TSS stands for time spent selling. Actual time spent selling. Are we actually getting in front of the people, having conversations, building pipelines, being proactive in our continuations and relationships in the areas that we need to be doing it? Because I can tell you, most agencies are not sales agencies. If you really look at where they spend their time and energy, they are very much service agencies. Now, as I said earlier, is there anything wrong with great service? Well, of course not. In fact, it should be expected and delivered. But if you're not producing sales, if you're not growing, I mean, this is pretty obvious, right? We always said that revenue doesn't fix all problems, just most of them. So if we're not being proactive and where are we actually spending our time, then any strategy that you put together, a specific sales process that we work with in our private client group, the Sipkins Network called Risk Concierge, we've got one of those. But I even tell the agencies, until you can start to work as a sales and service saying, listen, how do we begin to do this at a higher level to make sure that as a sales professional, I'm not hiding behind activities, I'm not pretending to be busy. I'm not just doing things because I'm trying to get through the day, But I'm truly a sales professional. Am I having a true sales service handoff with my high performance team? Am I proactively communicating with my service team to help them, to empower them, to educate them? These are all part of getting out, to get out and sell. We've got to work internally to get out externally. But again, most agencies are service agencies. They just don't want to admit it. And a lot of producers will even say that, you know, well, I think I spent a lot of time selling. So here's the litmus test and I'm going to spend a lot of time on this tomorrow. But here's something just to think about. There are 168 hours in every single week. Every one of us has the same amount of time. 168 in every single week. Now if you take 40 hours a week, which is a typical American work week, now some of you may work more hours than that. Some of you might go, wow, 40 is a lot. But if you just take 40 hours a week, that is 24% of your week. That's 24% of your week is 40 hours a week. Obviously we have time with sleeping and we have time eating and time with other activities and all of that. Right? But 40 hours of work activity is 24% of 168. Well, we challenge insurance producers in particular is can you just spend 12%? It's the 12% factor. 12% of your week in sales and sales related activities, meaning that you're on the phone, you're face to face with clients and future ideal clients and centers of influence and you're doing pipeline building and you're proactively building relationships not just with someone called, I mean proactively going out and doing some of these things. If you can just spend 20 hours a week or 12% of your week in those areas, I can tell you if you're honest with yourself, most agencies, if they can just get to that number, they'll improve 25% just by doing that one thing, taking everything else, all the shiny objects, all the cool things that we could do, we could start this, we could start this, we could start this, we could start this, we could do this. Wouldn't this be cool? We need this piece of technology, we need this new website, we need all this. And by the way, those things are great. I'm not into technology, I love technology. We should leverage technology. But if we're trying to fix all these external type of things, right, that seem like they're important and that seem to keep us busy and we don't understand the vital few behavior as a producer. And by the way, whether your agency uses the term producer or not, some of you risk advisors and consultants, I don't care what term you use, your job, your role is to produce. The definition of a producer and we keep things very simple at Sitkins is one who produces. So if you're an insurance professional, sales professional, listen to me right now, look at your actual week, this week, last week and next week and say am I really spending truthfully 20 hours in sales and sales related directly activities in those areas or am I kidding myself? And what we find with many insurance producers and working with agencies is that most producers are part time producers. They're only spending about part of their part time work doing the thing that they are hired and supposed to do. And some of that again, comes back to, maybe there is an issue in the agency that they are overwhelmed, they're not getting the support they need. That can be true. But part of that is an agency's responsibility, a producer's responsibility, a team's responsibility to say, listen, how can we empower and equip each other to put ourselves in the best position to win? As a service professional, you do what you do really, really well. Let me help you do that better. What are some things I can do to help you have real candid conversations around that. And the service team, if they understand this, and most of them do, we work with our agencies, they go, wow, we want you to get out and do sales stuff, because my future is dependent upon it. And by the way, when you're in the office, you pretty much just interrupt me. That's what many service people tell me. And here's one more thing I didn't plan on adding, but it's in my mind. There's. There's been some studies done out there about people and their work productivity. And I can tell you, service teams in general, for agencies, they kind of get crapped on. They just do, right? They're just there and you do the work and you grind it out and you figure it out, all those kind of things. And one of the things that producers do and agencies do in general that cause a lot of issues with service teams is that we consistently interrupt them. So they may have a schedule of things that they've got to get done and some changes to go through and submissions or whatever it may be, right? Lots of different things. And the producer just randomly stops by their desk or calls them on the phone when they're out on the road, hey, want to check in? Need anything? What's going on? Or hey, I was just thinking about this one thing. And the service person who's in the middle of a flow of actually getting something done now has to stop what they're doing, redirect to this interruption. Think about what this interruption is, which is usually not that important, but may be urgent in the producer's mind or someone else's mind, kind of go to that and then try to figure out where they just were and how to get back into that flow state they were. And the studies show that it takes 23 minutes when you're interrupted to get back the level of production efficiency of where you were when you were interrupted. 23 minutes. Now, let me ask you as an agency leader, how often does your team get interrupted if it's twice an hour, twice an hour, basically the entire hour has been disrupted. If you look at 46 minutes to get back to where they were, almost the entire hour is wasted. Or not nearly as efficient. I shouldn't say it's wasted, but not nearly as efficient just by just a couple interruptions an hour. So the vital few, and these are things again. I'm going to dive deeper in this in my keynote tomorrow and then kind of do more in the breakout sessions. But the vital few, what are they? Well, goes back to what I said at the beginning of this podcast. Most of us are really good starters. We like to start new things because it's fun and it's new and it's shiny and it might work and someone else did it. So it's cool. So we should try it. Even though it doesn't fit our model, what we really are about, but most of us are really terrible finishers. We have a great idea or an idea that we have agreed upon as a team that is important, that is impactful, it does match our value system, that does match our mission and our vision of the agency. And because it's not always easy, because not everybody buys into it at once, which they won't because we second guess ourselves, we quit. Or more likely because we get distracted by shiny object syndrome. So the vital few 80:20, look at the top 20% of your clients. Look at the top 20% of your carriers. Look at the top 20 percent of your production team and your team. Are you spending enough time in those areas? The vital few relationships, are we spending the quality, not even just quantity, which is part of the quality time in these vital few relationships. And lastly, the vital few behaviors. Just do the things you're supposed to do. And it sounds so simple, but most agencies we look at, they're not doing some of these vital few things very, very well. And we always say, what are the needle movers? What are the things that really move the needle? And these vital few are really impactful. So hopefully this podcast has been helpful for you. It's allowed me to almost to the airport now to get to the airport and get some of these thoughts out of my head and onto you and hopefully add some value to you. And as always, if we can help you at the Sidkins Group, a lot of different resources, both paid and free, that we offer at Sitkins, just Visit us@sitkins.com S I t k I n s.com Love a chance to hear from you and learn more about things that we can help you with. Also, if this podcast is adding value to your life, adding value to your business, I really would appreciate a rating and review. Always trying to grow and reach new members, new audience members out there, new agency leaders. And I would appreciate that whatever, whatever area, whatever place you listen at, a rating review would be appreciated. So with that, I wish you all the best in your success.