What Does the Best Version Possible of Your Agency Look Like?

Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. This is the podcast for insurance agency leaders to elevate your thinking, to raise your standards, and ultimately build exceptional organizations that become their best version possible. My name is Brent Kelly. I am your host. Delighted to be with you today. Glad to be back. And today I'm going to be sharing something that's been years In the making. Yeah, years in the making. In fact, several years ago, Roger Sitkins and I— now, if you don't know Roger Sitkins, he's the founder and CEO of the Sitkins Group, which I am fortunate to be the president of. We were having a conversation. This was at a leadership event. And I asked Roger what I thought was a very basic, mundane question. It was at the end of the day. We had some great conversation, great topics. And I just said, you know, Roger, What does the best version possible of an insurance agency look like? And like Roger always did, and if you don't know Roger, he has lots of great ideas. He immediately started sharing them. You know, we talked about aspects of leadership and great leadership, the power of culture, obviously having better producers, getting your producers to produce healthy profitability, clear vision, standards based around accountability. Great client relationships, and on and on and on. In fact, I've got notes still to this day based on that conversation. But something stuck with me. In fact, over the next several years, and this was after we actually co-authored the book Best Version Possible that was initiated from this specific conversation, and after coaching hundreds of agencies and reflecting more on Roger's question, I kept coming back to it. I keep asking myself this question: What does the best version possible of an insurance Agency look like? Okay, not comparing an agency to another agency. That's fine. There's best practices. I believe in those. But what does the best version possible look like? And eventually I realized something. It isn't simply a list of characteristics, although those are good. It's a process. It is a framework. In fact, we've gone from the best version possible philosophy and idea, which we still believe in, to the best version possible. framework or process. Exceptional agencies don't become exceptional because they accidentally do a few things well. It's because they consistently practice a handful of disciplines, keyword disciplines, that build the exceptional organization. Today, I'd like to share those disciplines with you. And just to note, this isn't just a podcast episode. Well, I mean, it is, but it's the beginning of a conversation. That I've been wanting to have for a long time. So over the next several episodes, we're going to explore what I believe are the foundational disciplines that help agencies become the best version possible. You know, one of the things that we've observed as an organization, and I've observed in now what, 25, 26 years of being around the insurance industry, is that insurance industry's industry leaders wake up every day and they're trying to solve problems. And this is true for producers and service team members, but insurance agency professionals Are looking to solve problems. Now, from an agency leader perspective, it may sound something like this. I need another producer. I need better producers. They need more appointments. Hey, and we need better accountability. Let's get another sales tool. What do we do with this thing called AI? We need to get another CSR because we need more capacity. We need different markets or another carrier. Maybe we have too many carriers. Maybe we don't have enough carriers. And those are all very legitimate challenges. In fact, I have these type of conversations every single week with agency leaders. But what if those aren't actually the problem? What if they're simply symptoms of something much bigger? See, I don't believe that most agencies have a producer problem. That might be one of their problems, but not the core or initial problem, or even a sales problem. I believe that they have an organizational excellence problem. Because when you build a better organization, most of those other challenges become easier to solve. In fact, again, I'm going to show this book, but I will describe it. One of my favorite books, our team's favorite book is The One Thing by Gary Keller. Jay Papasan helped out with as well. If I say that name right, want to give credit where credit is due. But The One Thing book's been around for a while, a fantastic read, and foundationally, revolves around one key question. What is the one thing so that by doing it will make everything else either easier or unnecessary? What a great question. What's the one thing that we could do that would make everything else easier or maybe even unnecessary? And that's really what I'm going to be talking about today, right? I was thinking about exceptional agencies, why and how they become exceptional is that they've understood that this is not just about Fixing this and fixing this. This is about understanding the one thing is organizational excellence. You know, I've mentioned this in previous podcasts, but I'll restate it. You know, why do agencies stagnate? Why do agencies plateau? Because obviously every agency wants growth. They may look at it differently, but they want growth. Now, here's the great thing about growth: it's growth. Here's the challenging thing about growth: growth creates. Complexity. The agencies that I have the fortune of talking with are generally very good, if not even great agencies, but because they are growing agencies, they now have greater complexity, more people, more clients, more and difficult communication, oftentimes more priorities. There's more meetings involved, oftentimes certainly more decisions. And eventually what happens is that growth exposes weaknesses. Not because people stop working, but because the organization doesn't necessarily evolve with the growth. You know, most agencies become very good at solving today's problems or yesterday's problems, but exceptional agencies spend just as much time building tomorrow's organization, right? That's the difference. So the question becomes, what separates agencies that continue to improve from those that stagnate? Or plateau? Well, I believe it comes down to 4, 4 disciplines, 4 key areas that if an agency can understand and develop and lean into will be that one thing, right? I know there's 4 disciplines, but understanding that these all build into the one thing. If we can understand these, it'll help us execute all the other stuff that they're working to do. So I'm gonna go through these 4 disciplines. By the way, This is, uh, and give credit where credit is due. One of my favorite books that hit me as I was saying this is The 4 Disciplines of Execution. Well, that's not what this is, but discipline is the key word. Discipline isn't easy, but it's foundationally important. So let me go through these 4 disciplines. Discipline number 1 is to clarify, to get really clear on what's most important. Now, this is the step. This is the discipline that most agencies overlook. They don't take the time to slow down. Peel everything back and go, okay, what does this really look like? Because clarity really is awareness. Everything begins with awareness. You can't improve what you don't understand. Now, that may sound simple, but you can't improve what you don't understand. I see a lot of agencies trying to fix things, but maybe they're not even fixing, quote unquote, the right things. Too many agencies immediately move into activity. Let's just do more. By the way, most agency leaders were probably producers at one time, or certainly they're high-level entrepreneurs or achievers. So it's always just do the next thing. And that comes from a good place, but it actually can cause stagnation or plateaus if we're not careful. I often see agencies that move right into, let's get another producer. Let's do this next thing. Let's buy or get this next system. Let's have another discussion without asking some really basic questions. Where are we today? Now, by the way, you have to be honest with that question. It's very easy for agencies to make it look prettier than it is. Not to say that it's all bad. It's not. But where are we today? Honestly. Here's the second question. Where are we trying to go? Like, what are we looking to accomplish? And then of course, what's standing in our way? What does it look like? What matters most? Because great agencies slow down long enough to create clarity. before they create activity. Now, one of the things that we preach and then we live out at Sitkins is that every relationship that we have with agency leaders, their teams, it begins with an understanding before we recommend anything. Now, I've talked about this in the podcast before, but we start our initial conversations with a best version possible assessment. Yes, we have a framework. I'm going to talk about it today, but I want to understand from an agency perspective, What do you really want? What does 1 year, 3 or 5 years look like to you today? Have you really thought about it? What are the goals you're looking to achieve? What are the challenges that are getting in your way or could get in your way? And what are the opportunities that you're not maximizing? A lot of agencies have superpowers or strengths they don't even realize. Like, do you realize how good you are at this? Let's capitalize on that. Right. So then once an agency then begins and, and works with us as an organization, we begin our coaching relationship with even greater clarity. We run something called the Sitkins Principle Analysis. Now, I don't need to go super deep into this. I've talked about this before on the podcast, but we're looking deeper into 4 tiers of an agency, their clients, their revenue, how their employees fit into that. We talk about some of the hidden drains that are quietly stealing growth, profitability, and capacity, not just to create another report. Here's some more stuff look at, but to create awareness. I can't tell you how many conversations— it's really cool because they just, oh yeah, yeah, I kind of know. And then they submit the data. We review the data and discuss it and they go, wow, I never really thought about it that way before. Because awareness creates clarity and clarity creates better decisions. And I always say it's really hard to take the right actions if you're not aware of what actions to take. So awareness creates clarity and clarity creates better decisions. All right. So that's the first discipline is clarity, to clarify what's most important in your agency. And again, it's one of those, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's really easy to skip past. So what's the second discipline? The second discipline for your agency is alignment. Alignment is about common language and culture. It's about clarity, back to that word, but alignment within clarity of your communication. Because once we're clear, we have to get everyone moving together. Now, your agency may have 10 team members. You might have 50, you might have 500. Now, obviously, as the numbers get bigger, it's even more and more important to have alignment. And no one's gonna have 100% unity and alignment, but we've gotta get as many people as possible moving together. You might have some superstars on your team, but if we got people rowing in different directions, they get slowed down. There's frustration, all these things that transpire. So This is about leadership, sales, service, understanding there are different responsibilities, but there is one philosophy, one language, one culture. By the way, I'm just gonna say this as an aside. At Sitkins, we don't believe in like taking over your culture. It's your agency culture. You've gotta do what's right for you. Every agency thinks differently in what they want. That's the benefit of being independent. But whatever that thing is, we've gotta align around it, right? Because one of the biggest mistakes that agencies make is they assume that everyone defines success in the same way. Well, I just assume that they think like I do, or this person thinks like he does and she thinks like he does, whatever it is, but they don't. Exceptional agencies intentionally create a common language, common expectations, common standards. Culture doesn't happen by accident. It happens through intentional leadership. You know, at Sitkins, one of the ways that we help agencies create alignment is through our leadership sales And service developmental programs. Each of these programs are different in what we teach because obviously leadership and sales and service have different components, different responsibilities, but it's all based around these same key principles, the same language, the same strategies, because alignment creates momentum. Give you one example of this. One of the things that we hear the most, and again, it's the agency's language, not ours, but we do introduce things. And for example, One of the concepts that becomes very normal for most agencies is high-performance team meetings. Now, maybe they were doing some communication before, maybe not, but this idea that on a weekly cadence, sales and service are having a proactive, intentional meeting to discuss some key areas. And I'm not gonna get to the details of it. My point of it is we'll hear from an agency, we had our high-performance team meeting. I'll hear a producer say, hey, our next high-performance team meeting. A service professional will say, in our last high-performance team meeting, you're like, oh. We're beginning to speak the same language. There is incredible power in alignment because alignment does create momentum. All right. Discipline number 3. This is about executing the things that you actually agreed upon executing. It's about focus. This may be the discipline that separates exceptional agencies more than any other, right? It's about clarifying what's important, aligning your people together. Now we're actually going to do the thing. Or maybe the few things that we agreed we're going to do. I have said this before. I will say it again. I will say it again. And then I will say it probably again, is that most agencies do not have a growth problem. They have a focus problem. They're trying to do too much, serve everyone, fix everything, chase every opportunity. Exceptional agencies understand leverage. They intentionally focus their time, their energy, and their resources that create the greatest return. You know, I mentioned earlier about the Sitkins Principle. We talk a lot about leverage based on the Sitkins Principle. Again, without going into all the specifics, I'll give you some very basics. One thing we continue to see is that the top 25% of clients in an agency produces somewhere between 85 to 90% of the revenue. Well, There's vulnerability there. There's also great opportunity in leverage. I can also tell you that for most agencies, the bottom quartile of your clients produces probably less than 1%. If we're spending time there, we're losing what? Leverage, right? So this is about getting leverage by getting focused on creating greater value for your best relationships. Things like rounding out your best clients. Gosh, who would've thought of that? Everybody talks about it, but why doesn't it happen? Lack of focus in the execution. Retaining your best clients. Most agencies do a pretty good job of retention, but you lose a few big ones or you get surprised. Why? Because we don't have a true process in place. In our terms, we call it the continuation process. Well, guess what? The top tier of clients needs the best process. Why? Again, we're vulnerable and there's opportunity. Why? Because not only can you retain your best clients, But you can replicate them. You can replicate your best clients by earning and then asking from targeted referrals. Again, this requires focus and execution. Guess what? When you do it, it works. It's also about focusing and developing your best people, putting your best people with your best clients, best opportunities, the right time. It's about creating greater capacity because when we do these things, you get the one thing that you can't get back— time. It's about doing fewer things better because focus creates leverage. That's how you execute. Which leads me to the final discipline in this best version possible framework. It's about optimizing. And when I say optimize, what do I mean by that? I mean continuous improvements. Exceptional agencies never say, well, I guess we got to the top. Now, does that mean they don't share success or they don't have gratitude or they're not proud of things they've achieved? Of course. But they're always looking for another level. There's another opportunity. There's things they hadn't even seen yet. They never say, well, we figured it all out, Brent. Instead, they build continuous improvement into their culture. They review, what did we learn? What worked? What didn't? They measure, how does it compare on what we wanted to do? Then they adjust. What's a slight adjustment we could make going into the next year? And then they make the improvement. And then guess what? They repeat and they repeat and they repeat. One of my absolute favorite sayings is that consistency beats intensity every time. Consistency beats intensity every time. We joke oftentimes, especially in our producer program, how many of you have ever done something really cool that was really successful? In fact, you did it so well that you stopped Doing it. I'm raising my hand. Well, I'm gonna go do something totally different now. Again, it doesn't mean you don't model. Of course you make slight adjustments, but it's like, let's go through that process again. I'm gonna review, I'm gonna measure, I'm gonna adjust, I'm gonna improve, and then I'm gonna go back and repeat making those slight differences. See, one great meeting won't transform your agency. One conference won't transform your agency. One coaching session won't transform your agency. We believe that. We do coaching and training and consulting with agencies. And one of the things that we can tell you is this. The studies show that 84% of learning that you have is gone within 90 days. So you better supplement it or support it. One great meeting, woo-hoo, will feel good for a day, maybe a week, maybe a month, but then what? It's about continuous improvement. In fact, in our programs, everything is built around a cadence, a rhythm, right? So let's wrap this up and bring it together. Okay. Exceptional agencies, they create awareness. They build alignment. They maintain focus. They commit to continuous improvement. These 4 disciplines create exceptional organizations. And that's what Roger's statement, when I asked the question, hey, what does the best version possible agency look like? It's what eventually led me to realize that the best version possible isn't simply a destination. There isn't like, well, here's where it is. It's the result of a disciplined process. So let me leave you with one question, right? Just one question. I want you to think about this, ponder it, do your best. Which discipline represents the greatest opportunity in your agency today? Now, all 4 of these are part of the Best Version Possible framework, but just ask yourself, where do you see the biggest gap? Do you need greater clarity? You're not quite sure where you're going, where you're at, what challenges you have. You're just kind of going through it and hoping it works out. Is it better alignment? Do you have too many people doing too many different things? Maybe it's better focus or you need more focus that, gosh, the problem is that we just start something, we stop it, we get distracted all the time. Or is it you need a stronger rhythm of continuous improvement, right? That consistency. So don't try to improve everything. I mean, look at one. That's why I wanna do this podcast. And as I said earlier, this will be part of a story that I'll begin to tell in the podcast, and we'll talk about each of those 4 areas a little bit deeper. Now here's my invitation to you. If this conversation challenged your thinking, And by the way, these are the conversations we have all the time with agency leaders. I'd love to continue that conversation with you because we believe that every great partnership, and that's how we view our agencies that we work with, begins the same way. Not with recommendations. We don't just say, here's what you need to do. Here's the one thing. No, not with a proposal, but with understanding. And that's why the first step is a conversation. That's it. Spend some time learning about your agency. Hey, what are some things you want to attain? What is your visions? What are your goals? What are some challenges you have? What are some opportunities that you see? And And we can see things from often a different perspective. It'll also give you a chance to learn more about Sitkins and determine whether we might be a right fit for each other. One thing that I know is that we are not a fit for every agency, but those agencies that we are a fit for, that we seem to align, using my words here, incredible things happen. So if this makes sense, the next step would be to have a discussion, which would lead to your Best Version Possible assessment. If you're interested, Really simple. Go to sitkins.com/bookacall. That's it. There's no pressure. It's perspective. sitkins.com/bookacall. We'd love the opportunity to get to know you and explore what becoming your best version might look like. I'll leave you with one final, final thought. Several years ago, I asked Roger the question, what does the best version possible of an agency look like? And over the years, I've come to realize it isn't just a list of stuff or characteristics. It is truly A disciplined process. Exceptional agencies intentionally create awareness. They intentionally create alignment. They intentionally focus on what matters the most, and they intentionally commit to continuous improvement. You might've noticed there was a key word there, intentionally. That's how exceptional agencies are built. As I mentioned before, the next few episodes, I'm going to explore each of these, uh, 4 areas of disciplines in a deeper You know, every agency, your agency, you're listening to me now, you have another level. The question isn't whether your agency can improve. The question is, are you intentionally building towards your, not mine, towards your best version possible? Thanks again for joining me. Until next time, continue that pursuit of your best version possible. I wish you all the best in your success. Thanks so much for listening. Hey there, agent leader. Brent Kelly here. Want to take just a few seconds to remind you that now is the time to create your true best version possible agency. If you go to sitkins.com/bookacall, sitkins.com/bookacall, we'll get to know more about your agency, conduct an agency assessment, and provide your agency with a customized plan To help you avoid some of the pitfalls, frustrations, challenges, and roadblocks to get your agency to true ultimate freedom and become its best version possible. It all starts by going to sitkins.com/bookacall.