This is the time to go to the SPA

Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on today's episode. I've got a special guest who now I think at this point I would call a regular guest to the Agent Leader podcast. Roger Sitkins is with us. Roger, say hello, good morning, good afternoon.

Or good evening whenever you're listening to this. It's great to be with you again.

Great. Well Roger, I excited to share some more information. Obviously admits if you're listening to this sometimes in April, probably May, we're still dealing with the COVID 19 crisis. Even though I don't like that word crisis, it's certainly a challenge for a lot of agency leaders out there. So we're going to talk about some more things that you can do as an agency leader and things with your team really just to be your best version moving forward. And really gets back to the purpose of this podcast. Really want to help you as an agency leader to gain clarity, to build consistency and to make a commitment. And now is more important than ever to make a commitment to how you and your team are going to become your best version possible. I want to make a quick announcement too before we dive into the content. We just launched officially, officially last week to the, to the public, our Virtual Producer Fit program. Now our Producer Fit program is the most popular program out there when it comes to sales processes and building salespeople for agency teams. And we've been talking for quite a while about an online program. Well, the COVID 19 situation made us move faster as well and adapt and we are really excited. And this is not a a watered down version of our very well known and respected producer camp. This is the whole deal. And it's going to be over 12 sessions. We're going to have live casting, we're going to be doing round tables and masterminding. So if you or your agency is interested in learning more about our upcoming Producer Fit program, this is our virtual version. It'll begin in May. Go to sitkins.com profit so it's S I T K-I N S.com/profit so talk more about that at the end as well. But I want to dive into the content because again we've got our special slash regular guest Roger Sitkins with me today. And really what I wanted to talk and Roger and I were before we got on Live here, we're just talking about some different things and one of the things that stands out to us that we've heard and we've said and we've discussed with our client groups and our producers is what are you going to do to prepare today to produce tomorrow? And produce could mean a number of different things. Obviously, if you're an agency leader, maybe it's producing better relationships with your team, with your carriers. For producers, it's producing more revenue. But what are you going to do to prepare today to produce tomorrow? So, Roger, just to kind of throw your, your hat in the ring here, what does that mean to you? Prepare today to produce tomorrow?

Well, first of all, you know, we have to have faith that we're going to get out of this and we'll get through it, and we will. It's not going to be easy. It's tough on everybody. But. But the concept prepare today to produce tomorrow, to me, really leads to the whole concept of preparation, even if we weren't dealing with this, because I firmly believe that those that prepare to the deepest possible level really are the ones that get the unfair advantage. So it's preparing now so that when things break loose, you will have some unfair advantages because you've done all the preparation and you think about all the things that so many people say, and we've talked about this before, someday I'll do this, and someday I'll do that. Someday I'll get my future ideal client list set up, whatever it may be. Just take all those things you said you were going to do someday when you had time. Well, now you've got the time. Let's start preparing now and again. Gain an unfair advantage.

Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about luck. And, Rog, you've heard me at our producer fit sessions before talk about, do you believe in luck? And typically, about half the room says, yeah, I believe in luck. And half the room says, no, I don't believe in luck. And, well, I shouldn't say half and half. It's probably a third say yes, a third say no, and a third don't want to raise their hand because they think I'm going to trick them. Right. But you know, and my point when I asked the question is, you know, whether you believe luck is real or not, I honestly don't really care. But I heard a phrase, and Roger, you've heard this before, too, from Robin Sharma, who talked about, you know, he says, go make lucky. Go make luck. And just as you alluded to about preparing, to me, luck. And this comes back even when I first heard it from an old football coach who said, luck, luck is when opportunity meets preparation. And when you prepare and the opportunity presents itself, that's Luck. I would add a third caveat, and that would be action. I think luck is that when you are prepared, and that's what we're talking about today, how to prepare. And then when opportunities do arise, you're prepared for them and then you take action. Because I think sometimes we find too, Roger, and you can comment on this, is that maybe we are prepared, maybe not as well as we could be, but we're prepared. An opportunity comes and then we get scared or we sit back in our comfort zone. So what do you think about luck, Roger? What are your thoughts?

Well, there's another whole saying that, you know, luck is a succession of four letter words and it's hard work, hard work, hard work, hard work. You know, the harder you work, the luckier you get. And I remember reading one time, famous Amos, the gentleman that created the cookies, you know, everybody talks about, well, you were at the right place at the right time. And he said, when you're at the right place at the right time, there's nothing happening. You still have got to take action. So prepare, prepare, prepare, because again, we're going to get out of this.

Roger, you just reminded me of something. And this is a little bit off cuff a little bit, but share a story. There's a story you share during our camps about a practice. And you know, people say, oh, I would love to be as good as you are. I would give anything to be as good as you are. Can you share that story?

Yeah. It's a classical pianist that had given a private concert and several people came up to her afterwards just congratulating her. And this one person said, I would give anything in the world to be able to play the piano as well as you would, as you do. And she looked at him, she said, no, you wouldn't. What do you mean, no, you wouldn't? You wouldn't give it time. And that to me is just the key, is how much time are you spending getting ready? And we just see that people start their day in hysterical activity and they never really prepare. They don't prepare for the week. They don't do the Sunday evening review right now because so much of that historical activity of going to the office has gone away. Let's again take this time to really be prepared to come out of the chute, not just running, but sprinting.

I love that story. When you share that, it's just so powerful and it's true. It kind of hits you between the eyes because people sell, you know, I wish I was a great producer. I wish our agency did this. I wish we would do that. Or that would be great if we had that. And you talk to successful people and they're like, well, the reason why. And he goes back to luck. Hard work, hard work, hard work, hard work. You know, it's just that preparation again and again and again. And so what I want to lead into is, and the focus around this podcast is, okay, well, prepare today to produce tomorrow. What are some things specifically that you can do to prepare? Because I know there's a lot of agencies out there, some of them are diving into things just because it's who they are and how they operate. Producers are doing the same thing, but I know many are going, well, I'm doing some things, but I'm not really sure where I should be focused because, you know, people aren't picking up the phone and life has changed. That's, that's, that's reality. But there's an acronym, Roger, that I learned from you. It's One of your 362 acronyms, I believe somewhere in that, in that vicinity. But the acronym is spa. And you'd always say we talk about going to the SPA and sounds kind of funny, especially now, but going to the SPA is around three different areas. Of course, an acronym. S is skills, P is processes, and A is attitude. So when I think about going to the SPA today and I would, I would challenge you as an agency leader, listening or a producer or any type of insurance professional is, you know, what are the skills that you must master, what are the processes that you need to improve upon or maybe even to start, what is the attitude that you need to develop and work on and reinforce? And so, Roger, I want to bring you in on all three of these areas. You've obviously got great insight and experience. Let's just start with skills. And you think about the different skills, all kinds of skills that you can teach upon and work upon. But what are some things to you right now, certainly in today's world, some skills that agency leaders, producers and others should begin to master.

Well, when we boil it all the way down and see if there was just one skill to work on and it's tough, but the skill to the ability to ask great open ended questions, actively listen so that you can ask another question and another question, another question. And one of the things that we always see is that most producers who might ask one or two open ended questions, then they go right to closed end and they never really ask questions that go deep enough. They're not asking questions that open new files. You Know, create new pain points with the prospect. So asking questions clearly number one. And that takes practice. That takes a lot of practice. People are surprised by that. But I know if we haven't done a live camp in four or five weeks and we come back in and it's time to teach people about asking questions, even I at times, and I've done it a million times, I'll stumble a little bit and I've just got to get back in the mode. So it takes a lot of practice. I think the other thing, and it ties to questioning skills, but just overall presentation skills. And when you say presentation skills in today's world, that of course can include what can include video conferencing. Because a lot of your conversations now or presentations are on video. Are you practicing your presentations? I don't have a hard number on this, but based on all of our years of putting the producer camp sign now and well over 3,500 people that have gone through it, I would guess that way less than 10% of agencies truly say we're going to practice before we go out on the presentation. So many people just, they're winging it. You know, the old show up, throw up and blow up. So they're not practicing their presentation. In fact, they're not even learning anything. The book we talk about a lot is the book the Exceptional Presenter by Timothy Kogel. I think it's K O E G E L. And he has another one, the virtual Exceptional Presenter. I get both of those and jump all over.

It's such an important point. And I've stated on this podcast before as well. And just thinking about our camps and the question I always ask is, on a scale of 1 to 10, how important is communication to your success now and in the future? And everyone's like 10. It's a 10. Yet most producers and agency leaders and having meetings with their team really don't spend much time, if at all proactively, intentionally practicing being a better communicator, being able to ask great questions, being prepared to ask great questions, understanding what it means to listen, understanding physiology and communication. I mean, there's so many different aspects of that. And, and you know, I just as you were sharing that, Roger, and with the Exceptional Presenter and the exceptional virtual presenter, just thinking about it, what would an example, as a, as a leader, producer, anyone in an agency, what if you began to record yourself presenting using the computer? Because isn't that how you're going to be doing much of it? The answer is yes, you're going to get Better. And also it gives you an opportunity to start to go out and work with future ideal clients and clients. And so it's just this idea of skill building. And I think, you know what I would challenge you as a listener right now is just pick one skill. I think sometimes where people get shortsighted and we talked a couple weeks ago, Roger, about deep work, you know, going deeper. There are a lot of skills that you need to master. But you know, let's just say for the next 30 or 45 or 60 days, whatever time frame you want, pick one and say, I'm going to really get good at this because it's that important to me and my business and everything that I want to accomplish. So skills is such a, is such a huge one now. What about processes, Roger? Talk about skills. Then we kind of move into processes. What are some of the processes that you see that agencies and their teams can begin to improve upon or implement? Start wherever they're at.

Well, the two main ones would, first of all, the sales process, which we've talked about before. But what is the sales process you have? What is the process you take your future ideal clients through? You know, and the look, copy, quote and pray is not a process. So that's number one. And then secondly, the continuation process. As you well know, we do not talk about renewals. We say you do not renew accounts, you continue relationships. So how good of a job are the agencies doing in building a continuation process? And the continuation process starts when the account first comes on board, whether it's a policy delivery or whatever you want to call it. Welcome aboard meeting, where you literally are sitting there and finding out exactly what the expectations are for the client moving forward. And then the process documents that we have, the quarterly meetings, if it's a larger account, at a minimum, we would see them at the six month anniversary for stewardship report, promise report, as we call it, and start then the marketplace strategies to get ahead of it. But people just don't have a continuation process. I just see so many agencies and it's going to be tougher now, but so many agencies that they, they start their process internally 90 days in advance. And then they wonder why they're always running late at renewal time. Get in front of the game. So those are the two main ones right up front.

Brett, you know, as you were speaking, sharing that, Roger, a couple things hit me. First of all, you've heard this before many times, but you know, this is a time to work on your business, not just in your business. And to be frank, I know many of you listening to this don't really have a sales process or a continuation process at all. You've probably been winging it to some degree and doing okay. Winging it. But again, things are going to continue to change or evolve. And so this is such a great time to say, okay, if we're going to have a sales process and a continuation of renewal process, what should it look like? What are things that we need to do at a minimum? And, you know, it just comes back to thinking of just having an annual risk review. All those things that Roger talked about are imperative. But, Roger, what would you say? I know Angela Adams, one of our content partners, has talked about this, and I can't remember the exact number. What did she say about the amount of agencies that she sees that actually do a true annual risk review?

Oh, less than a third. Way less than a third.

I think if I remember, it was like 20 or 25% or less. Do a true annual risk review. And so just start with that. If you don't have something of what that would look like, what would we need as a team to prepare for that? Who are the clients that get what right? Just put this together so that when things do begin to have some more sense of normal, that you're ready, you've been able to prepare for some of these things. So a couple of things that come to my mind that I took note. Thinking of processes. I know we were talking about sales and continuation. What about just the process of how you conduct your day? Block your time, start your day with a morning routine. I mean, a lot of things you can think about in processes, but it just goes back to thinking about things that you can do to be a better you and to work on. Not just on your business, but work on yourself. Which leads me to the third part of the acronym. We've talked about skills, processes, and now we go to attitude. And some people think attitude is this mysterious thing that you either just have a good attitude or you don't. There's probably some truth to that. Some people just naturally seem unhappy, maybe, but you can improve your attitude. So Roger asked you, what are some attitudes or an attitude that. That, you know, what can agencies do? What can producers do to improve, develop, or reinforce a better attitude?

Boy, short of a lobotomy, you know, right now, I believe it's a perfect time to have the death of old beliefs, old ways of doing things, and truly say, okay, there's going to be a rebirth of me as an individual. There's going to be A rebirth of me as a best version possible that we talk about. So it's really taking a deep, deep dive into what you believe about things and what's important to you. And as we always talk about, the mindset, the beliefs, the habits are really what drive your behavior, and that's how you improve your numbers. So a great example could be an attitude, which we talked about, practice. An attitude could be that I will never lose a game to somebody more prepared than I am. I'll never lose a sale to somebody more prepared than I am. Okay. That you will do the best. An attitude is I will master the skills. An attitude would be I'm going to focus on relationships. An attitude could be, you know what I'm going to. And this is one of Cal Newport's books. Be so good they can't ignore you. Is that you as a producer or you as a leader. And just be so good that it's obvious that you're the agency they should go with. You're the individual producer they should. Should go with. Another one would be, you know, why don't I just find a way to be so good at what I do that I work on referrals only or introductions only, because that's what the best producers do. And so it's just a matter of, again, take a look at some of the limiting beliefs that you had where at times, quite frankly, just didn't believe in yourself at a deep enough level and really break it down, deconstruct it. Why am I putting these limits on myself? And then as we come out of this by doing the things we've talked about today, how can we really say, you know what? This is a rebirth. This is a chance for a rebirth. And for me to come out of this as the best version possible. Well, you better start identifying what that best version possible looks like and then continually work on it.

Everything you said there, I just. I echo and I'm making little notes as you're. As you were talking about that, Roger, a word that I wrote down when I was thinking of attitude and what to share with listeners is choose your environment wisely. And I think sometimes we just take that for granted. That are our environment. That's our environment. And let me just share a couple things that are on my mind and heart for you as a listener. Number one is this. What are the things? And I would specify the information, the content that you're putting in your head. You know, Jim Rohn, a great mentor of mine and business philosopher, had a concept of bread for your head. And, you know, we think about the importance of what we put in our bodies. And if we don't put good stuff in our bodies, what happens? Right? It doesn't, doesn't do us well physically, but what about mentally? You talk about attitude. If all we're doing right now is watching, I don't care if it's Fox News, cnn, your local news, you know, going to Facebook and oh, woe is me and the world's going to end and political and all. I mean, we could go down forever. That. Is that really going to improve your attitude? Is that going to make you a better version of you? Well, I can pretty much certainly tell you no. You know, people say, well, Brent, I've got to go. I have to know what's going on. You can catch up on the news in about four minutes and you've got what's going on. Even in today's crazy world with, with what's going on with COVID 19. I'm not telling you not to be informed. I'm just telling you to be very cognizant of what you're putting in your head. What is the bread that you're feeding your head? What are you reading? Are you. This is a great time to. Roger mentioned some great books already. What are you reading? What are you watching? Are there some TED talks or videos about communication? We said earlier that you can watch. What are you learning? So that's part one of your environment. Part two to me is then who are you surrounding yourself with now, these answers? Well, nobody, Brett. I'm quarantined right now. But who are you surrounding with yourself, even online and virtually and as we move forward, maybe this is a great time to think about your relationships. Who are the people right now that I'm spending too much time with that aren't helping me get to where I want to go? And who are some people that I would love to hang out with? One of the things that comes to my mind with our live producer fit and this is certainly we're going to do some of this, replicate it virtually, but it's, it's really cool live is that when you see someone come in, for example, insurance producer, who in their mind, Roger, talked about beliefs, in their mind, they never saw themselves, could even imagine themselves as even maybe a $250,000 producer, let alone a half million dollar producer, and they're sitting down at a table next to someone who's a million dollar producer and within a day they'll come to me and say, I never even imagined or thought that was possible. And as I was talking to this person, I realized they're not much different than me. I can do this too. And that's where beliefs drive behavior. And Rog, you probably have one of the best stories with one of your good friends, longtime client you recently shared to another group. Would you share your story about the. The producer who just wrote an account during this time that was bigger than when you started talking with him initially.

This is a great friend of mine. He's been to Nicaragua with me several times on mission trips. And I'm gonna make a real long story real short. We were having lunch together on Fort Myers Beach. He was in town for an event, came in a day early so we could do some fishing and weather got bad, so we came in and just went to a restaurant. We're sitting there. And his book of business at that point was right about I think 650,000 of commission income. And I looked at him and I said, you know, you're going to be a million dollar producer someday. I just see it in you. I could just see it. And it was almost like I could hear something in his brain click. You know, when people really get it, their brain clicks in. And he said, God, I never thought of myself like that. He said, I really thought 650 was about the max for me. So we challenged him and we started talking about beliefs and really the whole thing about skills, process, attitudes. And he went back and he implemented at exceedingly high level. And this was probably 15 years ago now when this first happened. His book of business up until Monday of this week was rated about 3 and a half million of commission income. He called me Sunday night, talked to me about an account, and he called me again Monday and he wrote an account that when it all comes together will be right at a million dollars of commission income. Here's a guy that didn't think he could even ever do a million. And now he's writing accounts that are half a million and now a million dollars of revenue. And so much of it was just his belief structure. He didn't change his brain power, you know, he didn't change his iq, he changed his beliefs. And that to me is so much of it. It's just, what are the beliefs that you have? And get rid of the self limiting beliefs. Your best version possible doesn't have any constraints on it. It's your attitude and the beliefs that you have, again, self limiting. So this guy is just, continues to just kick butt. And it's so much fun to see him, he's so excited every day about winning bigger accounts. So I would challenge all of you. What are your self limiting beliefs? Get rid of them.

One of the exercises, I don't want to give too much away here. No, but one of the exercises that we, when we talk about best version possible, you know, and I would challenge people at any time. You think about, you know, where is it that you really desire and can see yourself going. Now sometimes we don't think big enough because we just have self limiting beliefs that we're not even aware of. But even we think about some direction and you always say, you know, does your direction match the destination? Right. Are those aligned? But we think about where we really want to go. I always challenge people. What was one thing that's going to stop you from getting there? And typically it's not an exterior, an external type of thing. You know, it's like, well, why couldn't you be a million dollar producer? Well, because I don't have good enough carriers or you know, whatever. It typically isn't things like that. It's really comes down to the fact they don't really believe it and you know, it sounds pretty simple. But again, what are you going to do right now when it comes to attitude? Whether it's, you know, your mindset, beliefs, what you're putting in your head, who you're surrounding yourself with to be that best version possible. That's just a great story, Roger. I love, love hearing that. So just do a quick overview here just to recap. So to be your best version possible to prepare today in this time of uncertainty to produce tomorrow, we talked about three areas, skills, processes and attitude. Going to the spa. So again, what are the skills that you and your team need to master? What are some processes that you and your agency can improve upon? What is the attitude? What do you need to develop? What do you need to reinforce? All these things are part of going to the spa. And Roger, I'm going to give you final words on this before I go to you again. This all goes back to what we're really excited about. We've spent, oh gosh, I mean a lot of time, I don't know how much time in the last couple weeks really reviewing and fine tuning things for our virtual producer fit in May. But we had a lot of producers who said, you know, I would love to go to your producer camp. I've heard great things about it and we've got so many testimonials of people have had success in our producer fit program. But maybe the time didn't work out as far as they couldn't get to Florida on a certain date. Maybe the fact that, hey, you know what, you do have to get get on a plane and get a hotel room just kind of prevented people from doing it. Well, now those restrictions are gone. The someday aisle is you click a Link and for 90 minutes, for 12 sessions, you're going to get Roger myself live. You're going to get a full of virtual people that want to help you, support you, encourage you, challenge you to do the things that you know you're capable of doing. So I'm just excited about that. Again, go to sitkins.com profit looks like profit, but sitkins.com profit. So, Roger, I'll give, I'll give you the last word here. Anything you want to add?

Well, just listening is the easy part. Now you've got to take action. Find those 2, 3, 4 things we talked about today and make an investment in yourself. Because I love Warren Buffett said the best investment you can make is an investment in yourself. The ITB I'm too busy excuse should go away because that's where most people I'm just too busy to do it now. I'm too busy to do this and this Sunday aisle like you talked about. No, take this time to work on your routine, to work on yourself, to continue to invest in yourself. The payoff is well worth it.

Well, I will leave it at that. Hey, thanks all for listening. We'll be back again shortly. And if you do like this podcast, the podcast is adding value to you and your agency. Please do us all a favor. Leave a review or rating on whatever device, whatever is itunes. Stitcher, I don't care what it is that you listen in. We'd much appreciate it. Want to get this to more agency leaders across the country and beyond. So thanks again and all the best in your success.