Winner or Winger?

Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on another episode. And today we have our regular special guest, also the CEO and founder of the Sitkins Group, Roger Sitkins. Roger, welcome to the Agent Leader podcast again.

Well, Brant, it's always great to be here and great to share some thoughts with people and have them change their mindset in certain ways.

Always love to have Roger on for many reasons, just his wealth of knowledge. And one of the things that we were talking about and he brought up to me was this idea of, you know, Brent, so many agencies are winging it versus really winning it. And kind of gave me some ideas around some examples of that. And so that's going to be the purpose of the podcast today, the content. I'm going to talk with Roger about that. What's the difference between winging it and winning it? Right. Both tangible examples, some philosophies around that, and just some ways for you as an agency to move from, hopefully from winging it if you are in certain areas, to truly wing it, winning it. Before I get into the content today with Roger, just a couple really important announcements and things going on at the Sidkins Group. We are launching our next Virtual Producer Fit program, which begins on March 30th. So as this podcast releases this week here we're in the second week of March, we got about a week or two to kind of get ready for that. So if you're listening to my voice right now and you've been thinking or wondering about this Producer Fit program, this is a great opportunity for you to hop on board. And we just wrapped up yesterday, our fourth. Our fourth Virtual Producer Fit program. In the last year. We had about 80 participants, 80 attendees, had a blast. It was a lot of fun. And as always, go through our eight live interactive sessions. And I do want to read a testimonial. You know, we ask for feedback on every one of our programs. Always looking to improve and get better and enhance the things that we're doing and. And had a great feedback from Josh McDuff, one of our attendees of the program. Just got this yesterday, so great time to read this. Just to share with you what he got out of the program and some things that you could expect as an attendee. He said, I highly recommend this course to producers of every level. I am an experienced. He had that in quotes. Producer who has realized success prior to taking this course, but still found that I was average in many ways. The positive energy that Roger and Brent brought to the table helped shape my mindset to both realize that, that I am not yet my best version possible and to help identify why I will continue to put in the work to become my best version possible. And, you know, it's always great. It's obviously one of the things that we love is we want to see producers and agencies get results, but just to get them to think deeper and then of course, be able to perform at that level as well. And this podcast, I always say the purpose of the podcast itself is to help agents and leaders like you gain clarity, consistency, and to make a commitment to become your best version possible. So if you are a producer or you've got a producer team and you would like to find ways, how can we become our best version possible? And we have run hundreds. Roger, how many, how many camps now producer fit have you run in your career? If you had a guess, it.

Well, actually it's a pretty specific number. It's a little bit over 150. I don't have exact, exact, but I know we broke the 150 barrier and we're bumping up against 4,000 producers now.

Wow. So there's been a lot of people, a lot of success and, you know, we just wanted you to be part of this. And it's great to see producers, producers that have those clicks and they're able to take their game and their performance to the next level. Also to mention too, if, if you are an agency leader, where you've got a sales team of multiple producers, we have an opportunity for you as well. Besides of just signing up all your producers, which you're welcome to do, our all inclusive model or all inclusive membership is available and that starts at 9.97amonth, which is actually less than the cost of one producer attending our producer camp. So it's a great opportunity, great value for you. And go to sitkins.com profit sitkins.com profit to learn about our producer program or sitkins.com aim for all inclusive membership. So again, take advantage of that opportunity. And with that, I want to get in to the content which I mentioned at the beginning was, are you winging it or are you winning it? And this is actually a foundation for an article that Roger is going to be publishing in Rough Notes magazine coming up shortly. But I, first of all, Roger, just get an overall feedback from you. Where did this concept come from? Why is it such a big deal?

Well, one of the producer camps, several years ago, we were talking and it was our second or third session with the people and I said, look, you Know, the reality is, I hope you understand that every day as a producer or as an agency principal, you're in a competition. You're competing to keep your best clients, and you're competing to take other agencies best clients. So we want to open new relationships by opening new sales or continue current relationships. And as you know, we always talk about continuations versus a renewal process. And so when we look at this and we say, the reality is that this is about being in a game, a relationship game. And I find that there's two paths you can take when you look at this. You can wing it, and you can just kind of show up and play the game and you'll do okay, or you can be in it to win it. You know, I think it's kind of a cliche in the sports world being it to win it, but it really comes down to what are we doing in this game. And I remember one time a senior producer, I think this is the first time I really thought deep about this Sprint, a senior producer, probably 300, 400,000, I think was bumping against 400,000 in commission income. And he had been in the business 25 years or so, and he came to the program, which we always love. It's, you know, the. The best. Never quit getting better, as you know, and he was doing fine. But through the session, at one point, you could just see when somebody has that, you know, you mentioned the word click when their brain goes click and their eyes light up. And he raised his hand right away, and I said, yeah, what can I help you with? He said, coach, I think I've had one of your BFOs, and if you've not heard Brent Wright talk about that before, it's the blinding flash of the obvious. I said, water. So I just realized that really, for my whole career, I've been winging it, and I've done pretty good, but I never had together the system, the process, the mindset to do the great things. Now, back then we weren't using the term best version possible, but that's really what he was looking at. And then he said, wow, I wish I would have known you a long time ago and got in the program then, because I just wonder how good I could have become. And I said, well, the reality is a lot of the stuff that we're teaching you today, 10 years ago, I didn't know because we keep getting better. But this became an overall theme of, you know, if you just wing it in our business, you can do okay. We've talked about this Before I know you've talked about it in your podcast that I'm not on. And just winging, just kind of show up and react all day long to stuff and go home. You can get to that 100, $150,000 of personal income and plateau and just kind of float along, but you'll never really win the game at a big level. You'll never get to financial freedom. So that's really the foundation of all of this.

Brent, that's fantastic. Just as you went through that, Roger. And I'm already taking notes, but three things that pop out to me, and I'm just like comparisons when you say winning or winging it. And that example you shared is one of my mentors years ago said, you can either go through things or you can grow through them. And I think I see a lot of agencies that just go through the motions versus how can we really grow through this? And a concept that I'm going to 100% steal from you and mentioned this podcast before is that you can look back, like this producer said, of course he's, you know, making the changes, but you can have regrets or you can go make regrets. And I think that's something that we often forget. And then the last thing that I wrote, I had three things here was that you can either hope things will get better or you can go make things get better. Right. I mean, that, that idea of being intentional versus reactive. So really powerful stuff there to start. And I guess I just want to, for the audience here, and you've kind of mentioned a little bit, but how would you define winging it? I mean, if I'm an agency and I go, I don't know, am I winging it or am I winning it? As Roger's going to talk about today, how would you define it?

Well, first of all, this whole regrets and regrets. At the end of their career, they're going to realize that they did okay, but at best, they're going to be semi successful. You know, they have the nice house, the nice cars, kids will be in the right schools, they'll belong to some clubs, give back to their community, give back to their church and to the outside world. They look good. But something that always amazes me, why is it that only 5% of Americans have financial freedom at age 65? A lot of them just aren't managing their money at all. And I'll put a big plug in here for my friend David Bach and his latest book, the Latte Factor. Bach, B, A, C, H. If you've not Read any of his works, please jump on it. But he talks in there so much about, it's not what you make, it's what you keep. So it's not just being on the surface like you're doing well. The reality is it's doing the things where you do get to financial freedom. So when we look at this and we say, okay, what are some of the things where agents and agencies are winging it? Well, I think we can start with little things like, well, what is winning overall? I think winning overall is that you have a 99% effective retention rate, which we've both talked about before. When you look at this and you say, of all of the clients I wanted to keep that I could have kept, what percent did I keep? And if you're not at 99% effective retention, you've got something wrong. If you're closing ratio, when you're out there opening new relationships, not making a sale, there's a big difference. But opening new relationships, if it's not at 75%, you're doing something wrong. So when we look at this, we say, okay, what are some strategies that are different between winging it and winning? So the first one, Brent, that we hear all the time, and what's the biggest frustration you have in your agency? What's the biggest frustration you have as a producer? What percent of the time do we hear? Pipelines.

99.6.

Yeah, I think it just 99.5. But when you look, you just say, okay, what does your pipeline look like? Well, the Wingers believe that every suspect that talks to them is worth quoting, that every, you know, every suspect, every prospect is worth chasing. And, hey, you never know. You know, you. You throw enough against the wall, something might stick, you might get lucky. And they're literally. I just see this so often today that the producers are sitting by their phone and their computer, and they're waiting for those clicks, pings, rings, and dings to happen. So they get an opportunity to do some practice quoting and some unpaid consulting, and they confuse this, and they say, well, you know, yeah, I've got a lot of my pipeline. But as you know, when we challenge producers and say, let me see your top 20 prospects. Let me see what you're doing with them. They rarely have them. So something, again, that we've talked about, repetition is the mother of skill, is don't have suspects, don't have prospects, have future ideal clients. So the winners, the ones that are winning at very, very high levels, they can tell you specifically, Brent, they can say, this is exactly what a future ideal client looks like for me. I know the industry or industries I'm chasing. As we always say, specialists will always make more money than general practition. So I know what I'm chasing. I know the account size, I know how far I'm willing to travel. Okay. As we get back to travel. And then I actually do the research to know the names of the people, the businesses and the decision makers of these future ideal clients. And then I use that list, those lists that I generate to cross reference against my current clients to then be able to do the reverse referral list and ask for and receive referrals. Okay. But we see that the wingers just kind of say, well, you never know, every opportunity is great and I'll give them a quote. And again, they can get to semi successful over the long term doing that versus the winners that are going, wow, we're going to get our top 20. In fact, a new thing that we've just started. I don't even know if you've talked about it on this podcast yet. I listened to most years, what concept does the agency have their top 100, and the CEO of the agency, is he or she personally overseeing that to make sure that these are the 100 we want to really write this year. And my gosh, if we just wrote 50 or 75 of them, it would be a great year. So we just see that there's a big difference between randomly quoting and, you know, clicks, pings, rings and dings. Let's give some quotes out there versus having a true marketing approach saying, this is what I want. So that's really the starting place of all this, the pipelines that as I.

Joked, I said it's. Every agency has issues with pipelines to some degree. And I think with all the things that you said there, I mean, there are just a lot of questions that popped in my mind and thoughts. But I mean, at a very simplest degree, if you ask most agencies, and certainly most producers, who is your future ideal client, basically, who do you really want? Most of them will say, are they breathing? You know, do they have a checkbook maybe, right? And the idea of saying it's really hard to go somewhere, someplace when you don't have a specific desired destination, right? Where am I really going? Which means in this particular case, Rogers, you're saying, who have identified, where are we positioned? What are we known for? What am I known for? And what's the plan? How are we going to get there? And as you just mentioned, and we haven't Fully released. I mentioned the top 100, I think in one of the podcasts through a story. But just imagine the power, the visual power and the planning by saying, these are our future ideal clients and here's why they are. And now we're going to start talking about progress and plans around it versus hey, I hope you all have a really good week. Go out there, you know, hope those phones ring. You want to add anything to that, Roger?

Well, it's just again, sitting in the office or at home, wherever you are. Clicks, pings, rings and dings. And I kiddingly say it's like sitting there waiting for the roast duck to fly into your mouth. They don't fly very well. But picking out this is who I want to do business with. It just totally reverses the game. And instead of just marketing to everybody, it's much more about abm account based marketing. Who we want to get into, how we're going to get there. And you know, one of the tools that our clients use all the time, I wish they all did, but most of them are using them most of the time now. I'd say that most, but it's that targeted account strategy plan, sitting down and being very intentional saying, this is a future ideal client. What do I know about them? What are the best opportunities I have? What tools do I use that can differentiate? And how am I going to get in the door to meet this person? And guess what? That takes a lot of work. Winging. It doesn't take work winging. It just says, show up and see what happens. Yeah, this takes work. I remember one of the first times I was talking about this, really in depth and we talked through the whole process and a couple of producers said, you know, Roger, that's really going to take a lot of time. I said, okay, be real. If you did everything, I just said, how much time would you spend? And one of the producers said, oh, like a day and a half. And the other one said, oh, no, I think it'd be two days. Okay. And we were, I don't know, four or five months into the year when this happened. I said, how many of you in the room have already wasted two days doing stupid stuff? And of course everybody raised their hand. So it's just a matter of if this is important, if this project's important, you've got to manage it like any project. You've got to get a plan together, you've got to sit down, you've got to dedicate the time to it, make an appointment with yourself. If it's really important. Dedicate the time, get an accountability partner or partners, get your service team working with you, whatever it may be, and sit down and say, okay, these are 20 that I, as an individual producer, I'm going to go after. And These are the 100 best for our whole agency. Our larger clients are doing 500 best. But I hope people understand the concept here. You know, just get intentional in the marketing period.

That's the word, intentional. It's just. And to steal another phrase from you, Roger, and you say it all the time, but it's so true. It's, it's really easy to do. It's also really easy not to do that. Like, well, I could, I could spend a couple days in planning, really thinking about the direction that I want to go and my competitive advantages and the plan around it, or I could just keep doing the stuff and that's it too. So. Well said. Another area that, that we had talked about, I know this is something that you're passionate about, Roger, about winging it versus winning it. And it's, it's somewhere a little bit future ideal clients, but it kind of leads into the next step. Maybe they get to that is what's your process? And we could look at this from a sales process and as you mentioned earlier, a continuation process. Because as I see, and I want to get your thoughts on it very similar to pipeline. If I ask most agency leaders, what's your specific sales process, what's your specific continuation process, it's well, so tell me your views on winging it versus winning it in this area.

It's really simple. Like you said, when you ask most producers or even most agency leaders at mid sized, even some of the larger agencies, what's your process? Well, we go talk to them and then we start looking at their stuff, we look at their policies and then we will put together submissions. And they don't say, step one is this, step two is this, step three is this. And what they're really doing with something you and I kid around about all the time is they're really doing the look, copy, quote and pray. Yeah, I'm gonna look at your policies, I'm gonna copy the information, I'm gonna go out to the marketplace, I'm gonna get a bunch of quotes, I'm gonna make some proposals to you, and then I'm gonna pray that it's a low price and I'm also gonna pray you return my phone calls. And they think this look, copy, quote and pray is gonna lead them to the promised land. It doesn't happen that way. It just gets them in hysterical activity and a very low closing ratio. And even with all of that, where they can say, man, I'm busy, I'm really busy. I got a lot going on, they're not differentiating. They sure don't have the points of differentiation, which we talk about all the time. So when we look at this and say, how are you differentiating? Well, if you're just doing everybody else's look, copy, quote and pray, you're not going to stand out in the marketplace. But here's the crazy thing, Brent. Even with that, they'll get a 3, 4 or 5% raise every year. Now, with the market getting harder, they might get a 5, 6, 7% raise. Who knows? But that's not what a pro does. That's not what the best ones do. You're not winning at that level. You're just keeping up with the people next door to you, in effect. So it's really just, it's so frustrating to see that, that they'll work so hard to get in front of, hopefully a future ideal client. Hope they do the work there, but then they just, when they get in there, they look like everybody else and they literally hear you. Insurance people are all the same. If you want to quote it, go ahead. Wow, what a sad way to live. But if you want to be semi successful and have a bunch of regrets later, go for it.

Thank you so much for allowing me to quote your business this year. And let me tell you about all the cool stuff our agency does. Okay? That's usually where it goes. And let's look, copy, quote, praise you mentioned. So very well said. Well, I want to, I want to get into one more area, Roger, and certainly this has been addressed in the podcast, but it's so relevant. It never ends. And, you know, as I just mentioned earlier, we just, we just finished up our last session, our eighth session with our most recent Virtual Producer Fit program. And, you know, one of the things that we do on every session is talk about what's working, what's not working. And one of the big reasons for that is it's really easy to get information. It's really hard to achieve transformation, as I've talked about before. And the fact that. Oh, yeah, Brent, Roger said this in session, too. That was good. And so we always talk about what's working and what's not working. And you can tell me this is different, Roger. But the thing that was very consistent and this does not surprise us why we continue to talk about it. Of what's working and not working? One of the things that always stands out, hey, I'm still struggling, still working, still seeking, still trying to improve, which is great, is the fact that I'm not being very intentional with my calendar, that whole word of time. And so I know you're very passionate about this. And it's just. It's so crucial, but it's basic, but so vital is the fact that the difference between how producers and agencies wing it in this area versus how they really win it. So talk to me, Roger. Preach about. About this area of the rot and just the time spent selling that whole concept.

Yeah, return on time. It's just so crucial. We all know that time's our only diminishing asset. And whenever we start a new program and we say, what do you really want to get out of this program? Time always comes up. Time management, time management, time management. And then, of course, we have to bust their bubble and say, I've got bad news for you. Time management does not work in our business. Time management was designed as a vehicle to help in the manufacturing industries. Okay, Manufacturing processes. How many steps? How do you do this? How many pieces do we get out? That's time management. Now, certainly some people are calling it time management in our areas, but as we refer to it, it's really about situation management. It's being in the right situation at the right time of day. And this falls into what we've talked about in a past podcast, red zone and green zone, that the average producer, the one that's winging it, never differentiates between the two. They don't know the difference between pay and no pay time. They show up, they react all day long to the INC arrows, the clicks, pings, rings, and dings. They interrupt if they're at home. They get interrupted now, and it's understandable. It's a whole different world. But they're just sitting there reacting all day long, even though they probably start with good intentions. But they're not really saying, okay, is this a red zone or green zone that I'm in right now? Because we all have red zone stuff. Those are the no pay activities that we have to do. All right? That's just a reality. But our goal, of course, and what the winners do versus the wingers is the winners are intentional. They block times on their calendar where they're saying, in our new terminology, they're saying, this is a green zone time. And during that green zone, where I need to spend, by the way, 80% of my time, what am I doing? Well, I should be doing pure sales activities. I should be managing relationships. I should have a continuation process I'm following and I should be building my pipelines. So every time we bring this up and just challenge producers say, be honest with yourself. You know that as we've always talked about, the minute you tell yourself you're being 100% honest with yourself, it's your first lie. So stop lying to yourself. Face reality on this. Okay? So when we challenge producers and say, how much time honestly have you spent in the Green Zone in the last week? In fact, you and I, as soon as we're done with this recording, we're doing a session with one of our mastery programs and I'm going to ambush him this morning. I'm going to say, pull out your phones, look at your calendars. I want to know how many appointments you had in each of the last two weeks and what percent of your time was Green Zone. And what we find is because producers are not aware of this, they just show up with semi good intentions, got a few appointments booked, then they wonder what's going to happen, okay? And as a result of that, their time spent selling is way less than 10 hours a week. Way less. And what they finally come to the realization on is, you know what, I'm a part time producer, by the way, my part time pay is pretty good. But what if I took it to 20 hours and what if I took it to 30 hours? Now that's going to be tough, but certainly 20 hours a week, still rate it half time, part time, okay? You can really make a lot of money. So, and one of the things that we talk about a lot too is this return on time where we'll say to the producers, how many of you have ever, ever made $500 in an hour? And now, of course, with our all the zoom people we have, we see the virtual hands come up. How many of you ever made a thousand bucks in an hour? Hands are coming. How many have you ever made? 5,000 or 10,000 in one hour. And we'll see hands come up and I'll say, how many of you realize the problem is you only did that once or twice and then you went back to hysterical activity hoping things would happen. So my attitude is real simple. If you sporadically can get a great return on time, figure out what it is you did to get that and replicate it just five more times. So how do we take that sporadic, very high return on time and make it systematic? And boy, as you know, you talk about light bulbs coming on and BFOs, when producers jump on that, they get all over it. The Wingers, again, they just, they show up pretty good intentions. At the end of the day, they're going, God, man, I had so many things in my plans today, but I just, I got busy and I got interrupted and this. And they're just not intentional. Versus the ones that block their calendar and say, you know what, I can't be interrupted during this time because I'm working on this project or I'm preparing for this event. It's a huge difference, Brent. And it just comes down to you want to wing it. That's what's going to happen. And by the way, winging it really drains your energy. As you know, when you're in the zone, doing that which you love and that which gets you great results, you could work very hard. Three, four, five hours, and at the end of it, feel great, man, that was cool. And then the days where you're spending 3, 4, 5 hours just reacting to incoming arrows and interruptions and historic activity, you're drained. How are you going to use your time? Come on.

Well, I just wrote down here, you know, wingers are our amateurs and they trapped. Yeah, you know, you just said that. I mean, you know, it's. Well, I'll just kind of do whatever. And, and because of that, they're trapped by what happens to them, right? And they're trapped by everything that these inbound arrows, so to speak, that we don't know if there's going to be 10 or 8, 4, 15 that day. No one knows. And you just, well, I don't know. And then you get dying. I was busy. And winners are the professionals that are financially and time free, to use that word, as best as they can be. I mean, it's just, it's no different than you think of any high level professional, at least that I know of. And this is in business and sports and music and you name it, that, you know, I don't see the highest level professional show up to their office or wherever their place of work is for the week and go, I wonder what I should do this week. I, you know, I wonder, whereas professionals say plan the week before it begins, what would be an ideal week? What would it look like? What is that best version? If it's not in my calendar, guess what? It's not going to happen. Now, we know that things happen, there are things, there are emergencies, so to speak, but boy, you better have it planned out or I can guarantee you, as you always say, Roger, it's going to be filled with of junk. Yeah. And that's what happens. So as we wrap up here, I guess my last question or thing I'd ask you, Roger, is what would be your challenge? I mean, one thing I love about you as a coach, Roger, is that you're always there to encourage, but also to challenge agencies to be that best version. In this case, what would be your call to action, to agencies to go be a winner?

Well, you can't do everything as we know there are. There are always more great ideas, whether they come from us or others, but there are always more great ideas than there is time or capacity to implement. So if you just take a look at some of the key areas we've talked about, your pipelines, your process, as we mentioned, continuation process, sales process. And one of the most important ones is just how do I get in that green zone and invest 80% of my time there? And even if I just got to 60, it's really good. But our best ones are 80. So if you don't understand the difference or just understand this, you can wing it and you'll probably be semi successful, all right? But at the end of the career, you're just going to look back and say, my gosh, I left literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of personal income on the table because I allowed myself to just react all day long. And it's really, really a shame when we look at really small producers or really small agencies and we talk to them, their mindset is so random, so sporadic, so. Well, I don't know, I just, I don't have time for this. I don't have time for that. They never invest the time to get better. Now, I'm preaching to the choir because people are listening to this podcast, all right, and we know you get thousands of listeners every week now, but just take the time to sit down and say, okay, I'm winging it and doing all right. In fact, this comes back to the whole concept we've talked about a couple times now. Your current direction and your desired destination. Do they match? Well, for most people, they don't. So if you just keep doing what you're doing, where are you going to be in 10 years from now? Are you going to be sitting there looking back, saying, God, I wish I would have, I should have, or are you going to get intentional today, create a great 10 year outcome and then say, okay, what are the trends I've got to change? What are the things I need to do differently? And then make a commitment to it, share that commitment with to your significant others in your life, share it with team members, share it with accountability partner. And then it comes down to one very important thing. Are you going to do what you said you were going to do? It's your choice.

I'm not going to add anything more to that. Roger, that was fantastic as always. That's why I love having you on the podcast. And if you were listening and you were driving your car or you weren't buy a pen and paper, pencil and paper, hopefully go back and listen to this and take some notes because you know, those are certainly pearls of wisdom and things that you can begin to think about and of course use right away. And if you really want to take your game to the next level, as I mentioned, the beginning our next Virtual Producer Fit program, which is our most popular program that does start on March 30th. And you know these are eight live interactive, interactive sessions. We do peer roundtables frequently which the participants love to be able to share with with their peers, other people that are committed to growth and and just kind of exchange some of these ideas as collective genius. And then of course we're going to resource you and equip you and talk about things like how do you really design your future? How do you move specifically with tools from activities to results? Do you understand the power of 8020 in your business, really? And then of course, are you doing something about it? Are you building your pipelines? Have you positioned yourself with differentiation? Do you have a continuation process set up and your sales process? So these are all things that we want to walk you through to equip you to do that. And like I said, if you've been thinking about it, this is an opportunity to do it. And March 30th is the next is our next one. And of course again, I mentioned earlier too, if you're an agency leader and you want to also experience not just producer Fit, but our account manager program, our sales leader program, our agency leader program, our monthly sales meetings that we run for your agency and more. Then also look at our all inclusive membership or all inclusive model. So go to sitkins.com profit for the producer fit. Sitkins.com aim for the all inclusive membership. We would love an opportunity just to get to know if this is a fit for you and most importantly if it is a fit to really transform your future and your future results. So thanks for being a listener. If this podcast has added value to you, as always, I ask would love a review from you on itunes or wherever your listening platform is so with that, all the best. And your success. Thanks for listening.