Your Ultimate Competitive Advantage

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Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me for another episode. Our purpose, as always, is to help you as an agency leader gain clarity, consistency, and to make that commitment to become your best version possible. And it's been a couple weeks since my regular slash special special guest has been with me, but he's back. I guess I didn't skirm away too much, right? Roger Sitkins, CEO of Sitkins Group, is with me today. Roger, how are you today?

I'm doing great, thank you. And good morning, good afternoon, or good evening to everyone.

Awesome. It's always great to have Roger on. And we are going to tackle the question, the idea of what is the greatest competitive advantage for insurance agencies today? What is the greatest competitive advantage for insurance agencies today? And I'm going to let Roger, when we get to it, he can spill the secret and we can dive into this really important topic today. But before I get to that, just to keep you in a little bit of suspense, I, I do want to make a couple of announcements. Very important announcements we have at. Sitkins Group launched two virtual producer camps late this spring into the summer. Obviously, with all the challenges of COVID 19, just like you're dealing with, you got to make some adjustments and you know, like anything that you go into, that's a new endeavor. You always, you always prepare the best you can and, and you put things together and your strategies and here's what it's going to look like and here's what the end in mind would be. But you don't know, right, if you haven't done it before. But we have been, I guess, pleasantly surprised, would be putting it mildly, very, very excited about what's going on in our virtual Producer camps. The interaction, the ability to live stream this more like a TV show versus a webinar. The virtual roundtables. And we're getting great feedback. We've got one of our programs that's now passed halfway through, so they're already halfway through another one that's about a quarter of the way through. We're making tinkering and adjustments, but overwhelmingly very positive. And we're already seeing the producers get great results. So I say all of that to let you know that we are launching another Virtual Producer camp that starts on September 10th. And the great thing is not only are we launching a producer virtual Producer camp, but we're also launching a CRO Chief Revenue Officer or Sales Leadership camp as well. Now, the first two camps sold out. This one will sell out so if you're listening to my voice right now and you want to be part of our most popular program by far is Producer fit and our Chief Revenue Officer program is right there as well, then you need to check this out sooner than later. Go to sitkins.coms I t k dash I n s dot com program. So if you go to that, you'll see both the Producer Fit and the CRO. You can learn more about it, get the agenda, whatever you need to to make your final decision. But I can tell you it's well worth your investment. And we're getting, you know, we're going to have more and more testimonials, which is our best way of sharing our story. So we want you to be part of those success stories as well. Go to sitkins.com programs or, or you can go sitkins.com profit if you want to go to the producer camp. So all that being said, I want to dive in to today's content, which is around this question. So, Roger, are you ready for this question? Are you prepared?

I think I am.

Okay, I may have given a clue there, but I don't want to give it away. What is the greatest competitive advantage for insurance agencies? Roger, what is it?

It is not product and price.

Okay, it's not product and price, but what is it?

Well, and that's what most people think. Of course, they think it's product and price. And those are obviously important. They really are. But if you're really looking for an unfair competitive advantage, it's about relentless preparation and boiling that down to practice.

So preparation, practice, the greatest competitive advantage may seem almost too obvious, isn't it?

Yep.

But, you know, it's, it's always interesting. Obviously I mentioned our camps, but we're doing coaching or training or whatever it may be with a group, it is so obvious, yet so very few actually do it. And you think of anything, whether it's business, I mean, you know, my best analogies that I can think of would be, you know, a musical, a Broadway production or a sporting event. I mean, could you imagine the top talent in a professional sports league and, you know, not practicing? Ah, we're just going to show up Super Bowls in two weeks. Show up, and hopefully you'll, you'll be fine. And whenever you think about it in that context, that's their professional endeavor. That's what they do best. That's what they're paid for. It seems ridiculous that they wouldn't practice. Yet insurance agencies, producers, professionals show up and just hope they'll get by, they'll get lucky. They'll wing it. So here's my first question to you, Roger. I want to address this subject. Why do so many insurance agencies, insurance professionals, producers, why do they fail to prepare and practice?

Because they don't have to. I mean, the reality is, we've talked about this before. It's a great business. All of us know that. I'm second generation in the business. It's a wonderful business. And it's a business whereby, whether you're the agency leader or a producer, you can do really well. You'll make more money than your peers and your siblings and your best friends and high school and college buddies, whatever it may be. You'll make a lot of money, but you won't have financial freedom. You'll get to the point of being semi successful, which is pretty darn good. You know, you've got a nice house, make a lot of money. You're in the right clubs, your kids are in good schools. You're giving back to your community, you're giving back to your church, but they don't really have financial freedom yet. And when we see the big, big difference between them, again, it's not product and price, and it's not we give great service and everything else. It's how prepared are they. You mentioned sporting the athletic teams or Broadway play. The amount of practice they do, the preparation they do to be able to get up there and make it look easy is ridiculous. It's so tough. It's tough to be great. So you can be semi successful and you'll do okay. But one of the biggest things we're seeing, boy, we get success stories every day. Now, the agents and agencies that are buying into this concept are seeing phenomenal increases in their actual results.

It's true, and I think it goes back to just the simplicity of it, but yet most people don't do it. And one of the things that I always love when you teach and talk about this, Roger, is the different levels of practice or the different types of practice. Because I think when you talk about this, it really like, oh, you're right. So what are those three types of practice that you always talk about?

Well, there's high risk, medium risk, and low risk. High risk is out in front of a future ideal client. As the listeners know, we don't like the term suspect or prospect. We only want to work on future ideal clients. But high risk would be showing up for the first time in a meeting and just kind of walk in with a yellow legal pad or your iPad, taking Some copious notes and saying, so tell me, what do you all do here that's real high risk? You're not going to wow them with that. Medium risk is when you're developing a new process or a new way of doing things and you're sharing it with your best clients. Because something we absolutely know is your best clients want you to succeed. They want you to be successful. You've already got great relationships with them. That's medium practice. Low risk practice is in the office, practicing in front of your peers, the people you work with, your team, other producers, your sales leader, whatever it may be. And it's really weird when I ask producers and you do the same thing when we ask them, why don't you practice? Why don't you rehearse in the office? And the thing we always get is some version of, I don't want to look stupid in front of my friends. Of course, my response is, hey, you're going to look stupid someplace. It better be where it's low risk, where if you blow it there, you're not going to lose the account. It's blowing it out in front of somebody where you just weren't prepared. That's where it's just crazy. Why would you lose that opportunity? Something we stress, real world, you work very hard to get in front of a great future ideal client, somebody you've really targeted, you finally get in the door. And then I just see so many producers that literally show up, throw up and blow up rather than just being relentlessly prepared for that first event. Relentlessly prepared even for the first phone call with them. So the low risk is a huge differentiator.

Roger, you made me think of something that I always share at our events. Kind of along those lines, is that you're going to look stupid someplace. And people you know especially like, well, I don't like to hear my own voice or, you know, it's really embarrassing to see myself on video. And certainly today. I mean, how much video and voice do we need today? How important is that? I mean, it's huge, more than ever before. And yet, you know, they'll say, well, I feel stupid. I don't like the way I look. And I jokingly say tongue in cheek, but it's true, is, how do you think your future ideal client or clients feel? They're the one that have to see you, right? So if, you know, it's like, why don't I kind of look in video? Well, you're going to be on video somewhere, as you just said. So it's important. And the other thing you talked about, you know, kind of showing up at the big event goes back to the super bowl analogy. I just, you know, I know they do practice throughout the year, but if they did just think about like get two weeks to super bowl and they never practice, they never prepare and imagine like, you know, Tom Brady walking out there and going, okay, guys, what do you think we should run here? Well, I'm going to go over here and I'm going to run this way. Well, hopefully it works. You'd never tried it and I mean, it just is ridiculous. But that's kind of the things that we see with insurance agencies. So I want to take this more maybe from a personal level then have you share some things you've learned in working with agencies, Roger, Just from your own personal experience. Because I know in my own, I can think of many examples of where I showed up prepared and guess what, things were better and when I didn't and I had egg on my face. But do you have some of those stories yourself? Or maybe you could think of a personal example where you have been prepared or one where you haven't been prepared and you felt it the worst story.

That was probably one of the best lessons ever. When I first started going out and speaking to independent insurance agencies, state associations, I was invited in to come to the Independent Insurance Agency of New Jersey. And my, my goal back then was I said, look, I'll. I'll come and speak for you, but I need an hour on the main stage and I need at least 200 people, okay? And so they, they lived up to their part. They had me on the main stage, annual Convention, well over 200 people and had one hour. At the end of the speech, there were 12 people left. I was so bad, I would have left if I couldn't. I had to stay on there. And I remember thinking to myself, I will never let that happen again. I just wasn't prepared as I should have been. But, you know, sometimes your best learning comes from the stupidest things you do. And then the key, of course, is don't let negative history repeat itself. But that was a tremendous eye opener for me. And I just said, I will never allow myself to do that again. And it was as painful as it was. What a great lesson. So that's probably my biggest one overall. In a business world, that's a.

It's an entertaining story for everybody else, Roger, probably not for you when you think back upon it again. I can think of many cases in my life where I showed up and thought I'll be fine. And you sit there and you're like, how do I get out of here? You know, And I think of some of my early appointments as an insurance agent, you know, the stupid things that I said because I just simply wasn't prepared and thought I could figure it out. And then on the flip of it, some things that I, I spent enormous hours for three minutes, you know, of time and what that, what that leads to. So you just get, it's just that to be aware of not having negative history repeat itself and think about those successes that you've had when it comes to agencies. And I can share an example or two as well, Roger, but I know you've worked a lot of agencies. What have you seen? Is there an example of a specific agency or just maybe a trend that you see with agencies that do get great results, that have been committed to preparation and practice?

Well, this won't surprise anyone. The very best agencies we work with and all of the agencies, the members of the recipients network are all very high performing agencies, but all of them are holding themselves to a higher level. And certainly in our model about dlx, the deep learning experience and execution and that we've just got to go deeper on everything we do and deep, that great acronym of delivering excellence in every process. So when I look at the highest performing of the high performers, if I were to just say one thing, it's the amount of practice and preparation they do for every single event. Okay? And again, you work real hard to get in front of somebody. Why wouldn't you just be so relentlessly prepared that you know you're going to win? And so it's clearly even amongst the high performers, you say the best of the best, they out prepare everybody else. That's the end of the story, period.

The idea too that comes to mind is, you know, you may have heard about deliberate practice or people say perfect practice. I don't think there's ever a perfect practice, but it's just deliberate and intentional and you know, part this may be a little bit of an aside, but I think a lot of that goes into visualizing. I mean if you're going in for an appointment, not only you practicing, but you're practicing at the highest level. What was that look like? What would that conversation feel like? And you're kind of setting the tone, the intention and not saying, you know, it's like the example I share many times, Roger, you've heard this is, you know, back to my basketball days when I had a coach challenge me about taking 100 shots. And this is at the end of the day and everybody's tired. And I went there and. And started taking these shots, but they were haphazard. I was tired and I was. I was just getting through it, right? It was like, whatever, I'll get 100 shots. And he came to me and says, were those game shots? No, they weren't. Then go back and give 100 game shots because all you're doing is wasting everybody's time. And that's the other thing. When it comes to practice, it's got to be deliberate practice. I. I would share if I could just. One of our. You mentioned the Sitkins network members give a shout out to one of our members, First Citizens Insurance in North Carolina, and their sales manager, sales leader Tim Rahore. They've done a really good job and they would admit that they're not perfect at this, but really making this part of their DNA and culture of an agency. In fact, Roger, you know this. We did a kind of a challenge during our monthly sales meetings to all of our agency members and said, hey, submit your 30 second commercial. How are you going to present yourself and tell your story in a short and compelling way? And, you know, we had. We had, you know, we had good response. Some agencies didn't, some producers didn't. We always wonder why, but they, as an agency, had a lot of producers that did it. And they would tell you, they say, well, this wasn't good enough. This wasn't perfect. But they would also tell you, but I can't believe how much better I got in telling my stories by not only rehearsing it and practicing it, but actually have to submit a video and putting it out there a little bit. And that's, you know, one of those things that you said earlier, Roger, is if you're not willing to put a video of yourself out to, you know, coaches or your peers, well, you know, and you're going to go see your best client. That doesn't make any sense. So I don't know if you had any additional response to that because you were part of that competition as well.

It was a great experience to do it. Just to say, okay, here's an ambush. And what we did is we said, we'll donate. I think it was 500. Yeah, it was 500. We'll donate $500 to a charity of your choice for the best video that we receive. And there were some great ones. You could just tell the producers were so well prepared for it. And the best message is always as you know, conversational, comfortable when you were talking about athletics. And that, of course, think back to my football days. I was very fortunate. A lot of you that have been around me have heard the story of coach Dick Mosley. Coach Mose. He was my high school coach, and in three of the four years I played in college, he was there. Then he went on and wound up in the pros, Green Bay packers and others. And I was really blessed to have him as a mentor in my life for 50 years before he passed away. But he had actually retired to Fort Myers, Florida, and we continued to get together at least once a month for dinner with our spouses. And I just love talking to him about the high performers and what they do. And I said, mose, if you just had to pick one thing, what would it be? And he said, I have to pick two. He said, number one is visualization. And when you mentioned that, it made me think of him. He said, number two is your practice has to be pbr. I was thinking perhaps blue ribbon beer at practice. He said, no, no. Purposeful bombardment of repetition. Purposeful bombardment of repetition. You've got to bombard people with the repetition so that when they're in the game, they don't have to think about it. And so whether it's the 30 second commercial, the two minute infomercial, whether it's making a phone call, whether it's the first questions you should be asking this future ideal client when you meet face to face with them. Purposeful bombardment of repetition. Until you get conversational and comfortable and something that we preach, that the best meetings you have are conversation from your heart. Do you believe it deep enough that it's from your head to your heart to your mouth that you're having a conversation about how you can help people? Well, you've got to have that pbr. It's just crucial.

I love that story. And there's just so many, so many insights to that. And you know, one other comment on that, as you said it, back to the visualization part of it, I recently listened to a podcast that had Phil Mickelson on it. And if you're not a golf fan, you may not know Phil Mickelson, but very successful, won many major tournaments and other tournaments, always high on the money list. And it was interesting. The question was asked, you know, what is it that, you know, there are a lot of really talented golfers. I mean, you put them out there, they're all really good. What do you think's been one of your advantages? And practice was a huge Part of it, he said, you know, I go out there and I mean, but everybody practices. Because what's interesting though, what I see the difference is I visualize that best version of how I'm going to play and that's how I practice. And you know, I can see the shot specifically how I'm going to hit it and that's how I'm going to practice to it. And that's a difference. That's a competitive advantage. And it's same thing, you know, with producers, for example, is are they visualizing that perfect appointment? And we know there's nothing perfect in life, but that intention of this is what it would look like. These are the questions I'd ask. This is the engagement I would have and practice that level. There's a difference there and it's definitely a huge competitive advantage. So Roger, a couple things that I want to give to the audience here, a couple maybe practical or some action steps that they can take. And one is around preparation and the other is around practice. And so I'm going to kind of put these two questions together to you and, and get you think about it. What would be a basic area, areas that an agency or producer should be better prepared, where maybe okay, this is where first of all, what's the first action to take? Where am I not prepared as much? And then secondly, what would be a specific skill that you would recommend that they should practice?

Well, as far as preparation, it's getting to know what your product and price. And I'll come back to that. Product differentiations are. But more importantly it's what are your points of differentiation, the positives we talk about, what are the five things you and your agency do that others don't do? Or at least you can do a better job of explaining it, explaining what's in it for the future ideal client and having a piece of evidence you can share with them. You've talked about that before. So being so prepared that you could have a discussion with a future ideal client about the points of differentiation and how you can impact their business. And if you don't know that, then you fall back to the generic five, which again we give great service, have all the carriers, et cetera. So the preparation around that and then going even deeper. Here's deep again, not only knowing the points of differentiation, but what are the first three on the property and casualty side, what are the first three risk based questions you're going to ask this future ideal client when you get them on the phone or when you finally get a face to Face meeting with them, or it could be a zoom meeting now, but being that relentlessly prepared that, that you could do it. You know, one of the things we, we talk about all the time and this is part going to be part of our chief revenue officer training program, the sales managers program is can your producers withstand an ambush? In other words, if I were the sales leader and I came up to Brent as one of my producers and I said, Brent, tell me the five points of differentiation, Brent, tell me why people should do business with us. What's our 32nd commercial? If you know it well enough that you can withstand an ambush, that's when you've mastered it and that's when you can become conversational. As far as the number one skill of all of them, it's really simple. It's the ability to ask open ended questions and actively listen so that you can ask another question and another question and another question. And when we talk about questions open ended, it's what we refer to as peer to peer questions. You're asking the future ideal client what they are doing in their business today to deal with the various risk based issues such as what sort of disaster recovery training plan do you have in place, disaster recovery plan do you have in place and what's the training behind it? When's the last time you updated that? And of course 90% of the future ideal clients will say the what? Well, they're now creating some pain issues and so the ability to know how you differentiate. And then as you know, in our elite 50 sales mastery program, those producers have really taken it to the point now where on each one of their top five pods they've got at least one. And some of them have three questions prepared ahead of time that will create pain issues. Well, that's not a show up, throw up thing, that takes a lot of prep. But I also believe that every opportunity deserves your very best. And so again, working hard to get in front of somebody, you better be at your best when you're there. And that's the practice and preparation.

Questions, questions, questions. It hits me more and more as you were saying that I wrote down, I said questions lower walls and questions unlock doors. And so often you'll see, certainly with insurance producers is that they just want to techno barf all the stuff that they think that that's cool about them or their agency. And quite frankly, no one cares. They really don't. I don't care that you've been in business, I don't care that you have all this stuff. I don't really care. I do care how it impacts me. And the best way of allowing the, you know, a future ideal client or client to see that is just be prepared. What are the questions that I should be asking that other people aren't asking? I mean, if you would just focus on that. Be amazed at how deep into your term, Roger, that you can get with these clients. And so it's just such an important skill to be able to ask questions and actively listen. So thanks for sharing that. Here is my go ahead, Roger.

I do want to jump on this. Here's a litmus test. 8020 rule applies you as the producer should only talk 20% of the time. You should ask great questions and then 80% of the time you should be listening. Remember the acronym. I know you shared this on here before. Wait, why am I talking? And I love that a lot of our producers actually have that like on the dashboard of their car ahead of time or you know, on their phone at the office going, wait, wait, wait, why am I talking? 20% talk, 80% actively listen. So that you can find pain issues or you can do a follow up question that creates pain issues. But if you're just in there blabbing away, they know their eyes glaze over, you lose them.

Yeah, it's just, I love that. Wait, why am I talking? And I just think too, just from an active standpoint is when you go in somewhere and you did all the talk and I did this, how'd it go? Oh, I think it went great. And they're like, yeah, it was terrible. And yet you go in somewhere and you have that, that 80, 20 in your mind that I just ask a really engaging question. And then you just talked and talked and I just listened and listened. And they walk away and they go, that was the most meaningful conversation I've ever had. And, and the reason why is because you didn't talk. You know, so it's just, it's just, you know, but it's, it's hard. It's hard. So you definitely have to work on it. It's preparation and practice. So let one final thought and then, Roger, any, you know, final thoughts that you have a person that you want to share to the audience. If an agency leader, you got agency leaders listening right now. And like I said, we have agency principals, maybe some sales leaders, maybe some, you know, insurance producers that are all tuning in right now. If an agency leader of any kind hasn't really practiced or required practice in the past, where would you tell them to start?

Probably the best overall learning Is, can they, can they do an effective 30 second commercial? And that's tough to do. And you know, it's certainly something we teach. But when someone says, why should I do business with you? Well, if you can't answer that one in 30 seconds or less, you're in deep trouble. That's a starting point. Because what the average one, of course would say is, we give great service to great people. No, that's nothing compelling about that. That would be the starting point. Then the other one is just go to the core of asking questions and just do some role playing in the office. Why should people do business with us, what's special about us? And just role play it out. Just got to get the repetition, repetition, the mother of skill. No doubt about again, PBR purposeful bombardment of repetition.

Absolutely. And he's just thinking, as you were saying, that with whether it's our producers that are part of our camp or certainly our members, it's always funny because there's always that awkwardness of, oh, I got to practice. That's just human nature. Get that. And then all of a sudden they start and two things happen. Number one, no one dies. And they go, this wasn't, this wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. And they kind of have some fun with it. And number two is they go, I cannot believe how much better I just got in 10 minutes or 15 minutes or whatever it is. So just think about that. Number one, it's, it's, it's part of, you know, acting your way into that feeling of, you know what? I'm okay with this. This is okay. And number two, just improving that skill, which it's such a, it's a, it's a fundamental, vital skill to your success. So why would you not practice it? So just a couple things that I would add on is certainly if you're a sales leader, low risk practice should be mandatory every week. I mean, it just should, you know, do teams practice every week? Yes. So why would you as a sales team not have some form of low risk practice? And it could be very basic and a minimum. Hey, send me in what you're working on so I can help you and you can coach. If you're an individual who maybe doesn't. Isn't part of that, why would you not block it in your calendar 15, 30, 60 minutes a week at a minimum and a minimum of, hey, I'm going to work on this because as you said earlier, Roger, how hard do you work to get in front of a future ideal client. And then you say, well, I was too busy to practice. Are you kidding me? I mean, this is, this is when you're. I mean, imagine being on the stage, the lights are on, the audience is waiting. You go, I was too busy this week with other stuff. Okay, good luck. So that's my call to action. Roger, any final thoughts from you?

Well, something I know the best producers, the best performers do overall. Their attitude is, I will never lose a game to somebody more prepared than I am. I'll never lose a game to somebody more prepared than I am. This is something that I hope all of us have as eyelid tattoos.

I think that's a good way to end it. That's a good thing to think about and ponder as we hop off. So appreciate you being a listener of the AgentLeader podcast. By the way, if this podcast is adding value to you or your agency, love to have a rating review from you. Always looking to grow the audience, help more insurance agency agency leaders out there. And so again, whether, whether you're listening to itunes or stitcher, whatever you are, a rating review would be much appreciated. Also as a reminder, our next virtual producer programs, our producer fit and our CRO fit for sales leaders. This one we haven't done yet, so this is exciting as well, is starting on September 10th. They will sell out. So go to sitkins.com programs and you can see both of them there. So I'll speak on behalf of Roger for me, thank you for being a listener and wish you all the best in your success.