Three Questions to Ignite Your Communication

Hi, Brent Kelly here of the Agent Leader Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. Excited to be with you. And I'm excited to share some really important information, in fact, three questions in particular that you as an agency leader should be asking yourself before any important conversation, meeting, appointment, just to give yourself some time and pause to go, how can I get the most out of this conversation, whatever it may be? Because obviously, as an agency leader, you've got a lot of things going on. Your time is valuable. Time is our only diminishing asset. How do we make the most out of it? When we're communicating with our team, when we're communicating with our insurance carrier partners or marketing people that come in, when we're communicating with our clients, we're communicating with community members, all those things, how do we get greater impact? Because I think oftentimes we find ourselves just kind of saying things because we're supposed to say things, or we show up and go, we'll figure it out. But I've learned something that's really been impactful for me and my communication, and I'm not perfect at this. I find myself sometimes getting busy or distracted and getting away from this. But when I slow down, just for even. Just take a few minutes, even though I'm prepared for, whether I'm doing a workshop or a training or a live event, speaking event, a coaching call, I mean, being prepared. But before I go into those type of conversations to ask myself these three questions. And these are the three questions that you as an agency leader should be asking to get the most out of your conversations, to increase your influence, to get greater impact. And they're very simple questions. Nothing that we talk about on this podcast, nothing that we work with our Sidkins network members, our private client group, do we make complex. But it's about doing the most effective things right, doing the most effective things the right way and being consistent with those type of things. So here's the three questions. I'm going to give you all three of these questions, and then I'm going to kind of dive in a little bit to each one of them. But when you hear them, you're going to go, okay, I get it. But I want you to think about this before every conversation that you have, before you go into a team meeting, before you go into a carrier appointment meeting. I don't care what it is. There's a lot of important conversations that as an agency leader that you have. Are you asking yourself these three questions? So here are the three questions. Number One is, what do I want my audience to know? What do I want them to know? The second question is, how do I want them to feel? And the last question is, what do I want them to do? So know, feel, do. And I want to go into each of these because there is a little bit of a deeper layer that I want to explain to help you have greater communication. Well, the first question is pretty simple, right? What do I want them to know? And this is where most agency leaders. This is where most people are pretty good. I mean, at least they think they are. Because here's what I want you to know. Here's the information I want to share with you. Here's what I've learned. I don't care what it is. It becomes kind of an information dump. Here's all the stuff I want you to know. Here's what I want to caution you as a leader. Just because you know lots of stuff, because you've read lots of things, because you talk with someone that gave you a lot of information, doesn't mean you need to share it all. I remember early on when I started to do workshops, one of the things that I was prideful about, that's a terrible thing to say, but I was prideful about, was that I would say, here's the 12 steps to this, or here's the 14 ways to do this, the 10 things, right? Because lists work and people like it. But what I found quickly was that, you know, I thought it was pretty cool. And people like, wow, those were 10 things. But they couldn't grasp them all. It was too much. And like many people, if I presented too much information, instead of taking one thing, I just won't do any of it. And so when you're going to go into a conversation again, clients, team members, carriers, I don't care who it is, you got to ask yourself, what are the most important, impactful, relevant things that I want them to know? And be honest with yourself, how much is too much? So the first question is, what do I want them to know? What are the most relevant, important things that I need to share with them? The second question is an emotional question. Question, how do I want them to feel? Because as you've heard, I'm sure many times, facts tell and stories sell. So the no parts, the facts, right? And maybe you don't lead with that, by the way, anyway. But part of it is, how do I want them to feel? How do I deliver this message? Do I ask questions? Do I slow down? Am I, you know, am I going to Be using my physiology of my body in what way? And we could dive deep into a communication because, as you know, probably physiology is a huge part of what people remember and what's impactful for them in communication. But how do I want them to feel? You know, if you're meeting with an insurance carrier, maybe you want them to feel that your agency is doing the right things to get to where you both want to go, right? So maybe it's a confidence. You want them to feel confident about your agency. Maybe if you're meeting with your client, the feeling you want, and I hate to use the word fear, but they're worried that maybe they're not getting true risk coverage like they should, that maybe they haven't really understood how they manage, identify and control the cost of risk. And we use those terms all the time at Sitkins. But maybe that's a feeling. If you're meeting with your team, maybe you want them to feel inspired, right? Maybe there's inspiration you want to convey. Maybe you want them to feel accountable. I don't care. It depends on the context of the meeting. But the emotional connection you have to address. And if you don't know and you haven't thought about how you want them to feel, when you start the conversation, it could go anywhere, right? You're not being intentional with communication. So the second question is, how do I want them to feel? And the last question is, what do I want them to do? What's the call to action? I can tell you in my own experience, I've been called out on this, rightfully so, that I've done, you know, and every situation is unique, but I've done something, a presentation, and I haven't done a good job of a call to action. Like, what's the next step? You know, you shared some good information, I know some new things, I feel a certain way, and now I want to go do it. But what do you want me to do? And you have to understand people, whether it's your team, your carriers, your clients, they want to know what's the next step? And maybe that is what they do. The next step is we're going to have another conversation. The next step is, I need this from you. The next step is you're required to do this. Here's the expectations. But what is the doing part? Because that's part of accountability, that's part of action. And otherwise we're just leaving it to the audience own accord. They just kind of have to figure out what to do. We want to make things easier and this is really what this entire question this communication revolves around is. We want to be able to transfer knowledge, we want to be able to transfer influence, we want to be able to transfer ideas so that we can make an impact. Otherwise, communication is just a bunch of words and we go on our very merry way and nothing never changes. And so doing this prep. And by the way, again, you should be prepped depending on the type of conversation in different ways. But even if you just took a few minutes before you had that next meeting with your insurance carrier, before you sat down with your client, before you had your weekly sales meeting, which you should be having, if it's proactive and intentional, not just to have a meeting, but you ask yourself the question, okay, what is it most important that this audience knows of all the things I'm going to share, what are the things they really need to know to make sure that I'm being very intentional about that? Secondly is how do I want them to feel? What's the emotional response that I want to help draw from them? Because, you know, and this is when we say people buy emotionally and justify logically, we think of buyers as, you know, buying a car or whatever, but it's. Maybe it's buying an idea, buying into a process, but people buy emotionally and they justify intellectually. So how do I want them to feel? What's the emotional context? And lastly is, okay, now that I know how they want them to feel, what do I really want them to do? Let's go take that mountain, right? Whatever it may be. But I want to be able to have that call to action. So this episode is pretty short. I don't have too much more to expand upon it. But I just want you to think, as an agency leader, how can I improve the quality of my communication? How can I move from a communicator to a connector? These connectors have more influence, and a lot of it is just having a proactive approach before we have conversations of any kind. So I hope this short podcast was helpful for you and your agency. And if this podcast, this episode, other episodes, have added value to you and your agency, I would appreciate a rating and review on itunes or wherever it is that you listen to this podcast. And also if your agency is looking for greater clarity, you're trying to figure out, where are we trying to go and why. Why is it important to us that we go there? It's got to be your reason. If you're looking for greater consistency, why can't we establish consistent habits and behaviors in the agency? And lastly, if you're looking to make a commitment, a commitment to yourself, a commitment to your team, and a commitment to others around you to really become your best version possible. If you're hungry for that, those types of things. And I would love, we would love to talk to you, the Sitkins Group, but we have a private client group. Not everyone is accepted. But we find the right agencies and put you in an environment, a culture of growth, so that you truly do become your best version possible. So there's my call to action on this podcast today. With all that being said, I wish you, your agency, all the best and your success. Thanks for listening.