Wish List for Insurance Agencies

Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast, the podcast to help you, the independent insurance agency leader, gain clarity, build consistency, and to make a commitment to become your best version possible. This is going to be the last recorded podcast of 2022. I want to, first of all, thank you, the agents, Agent Leader Podcast listeners. We've had a great growth in subscribers and comments and feedback. Just want to say, appreciate you being a listener. It's a mission, it's a passion of mine and the Sitkins Group to continue to add value to agency leaders. So I just want to thank you for that. Certainly, depending on when you're listening to this, wish you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, Happy Holidays. Just again, as a thank you for being a listener.

By the way, side note here, if you have enjoyed the podcast and you haven't given a rating or you haven't shared it with another agency leader. Well, that would be my ask for a Christmas present for me for this year. So again, thanks again for being a listener. Also want to mention that as we go into 2023, and we're going to have some conversation today, you may have heard a laugh there from Roger Sitkins, who's going to be joining me on today's podcast. Excited to share some really important thoughts for 2023 and beyond with Roger Sitkins.

But we're looking at the Roger Sitkins Group for committed agency leaders. Committed agencies that are truly looking for a strategic growth partner. We're getting very selective on who we want, who work with, and to go very deep with agencies. So if you're interested in learning more about what that means, it even be a fit for you as an agency, go to sitkins.com/experience to learn more on what that means for you as an agency leader.

I mentioned, Roger Sitkins, I don't want to put him on hold any longer. I've got a very special guest who's been on many podcasts with me in 2022, but I think it's been a while, Roger, I believe, since you've been on with me. So Roger, welcome back to the Agent Leader Podcast.

Well, thanks Brent. I'm really excited about the topic today because it goes along almost to like it's a Christmas list if you were a kid. But now you're a grownup, and what would you really want? So that's what we're going to be talking about.

Yeah, we were having some fun with this. There's going to be some great substance and strategies we're going to get into. But yeah, we were thinking about, what do we really want this podcast to be about for you, the listener? We're thinking, you think about Christmas, you think about New Years and all the things that I want to do, we should do, or things that I want. We want to take a bunch of those things that we hear from agencies that we would desire as an agency to say, just imagine. Just imagine if you had that. This really stems back, and I've mentioned this in the podcast before, but it's been a few years ago, Roger, now when I ask you the question, what would the best version possible of an agency look like? There was a ... as you did your research, when I asked that question, I'll let you share this. You stumbled upon someone via the internet that asked this question to you, or at least got you to think about, just imagine. So do you want to share that again with the audience?

When you asked the question, it got me pontificating, if you will. I went, well, they would do this, they would do this, they would do this. It's all the core strategies we talk about, and when the agencies bring that all together, it's amazing what happens. But for some reason, that question about best version possible kept ringing in my head, and I couldn't go to sleep, and I was kind of thinking I was going to call your room and wake you up so that you knew that you had me up.

Surprised you didn't.

Well, now I would. It was literally right exactly at 3:00 AM, because I rolled over, grabbed my cell phone, 3:00 AM, I said, "Okay, I can't sleep.' So I got up and Googled, best version possible. Hopefully most of your listeners here have heard this before. But I came across these lyrics from a Canadian songwriter, Chris Assaad. He says, "Close your eyes and imagine the best version possible of you. That's who you really are and you have to eliminate anything that stands in your way." So that just became so powerful. It eventually became the name of our book, it's what we do with agencies. Now we're saying, "Hey, what's the best version possible? And how do we work towards that?" So that's really how it all started.

Thanks again, I don't assume that everyone's listening to this podcast. We've shared that a little bit before, but it is really important. I think what you hit on, Roger, that I want to get into today, and we're going to go deeper on some of these areas. Is that you said it, self-limiting beliefs. Oftentimes agencies would say, "Wouldn't it be neat if. Wouldn't it be great if." And as I've shared before and we share in our trainings with our member groups, is the fact there's this evil doctor, yeah but, that comes out and it's like, well, that would be great. Yeah, but you don't understand. Yeah, but I'm so busy. Yeah, but I'm too old, I'm too young. You don't understand. We're in a rural area. You name it, you get the yeah buts. As you always say, Roger, I love this, and doctor yeah but lives on the worst island in the world, Someday I'll. Yeah, but someday I'll.

So what I wanted to do, and Roger, you created a really great list that I want you to go through.

Sure.

I'll make some comments. Maybe we can share some experiences, I'm sure we will, of some of the agencies that have addressed some of these. Then at the end, for any of you that go, "Well yeah, but still." I'm going to share what some of our members have actually experienced this past year and before that, possibly, as well. When they've made a commitment or they've gone past some of the self-limiting beliefs and actually committed to one or several of these items that we're going to get to on this list. So Roger, this is your Christmas list or Christmas wish, I guess, so to speak, to all the agency listeners.

Christmas wish for agencies, yes.

For agencies. So these are these, just imagine this. So I'm going to allow you, you've got the list that you shared. I love it, I'm excited when-

Thank you.

You go through it. So it's all yours.

Thanks. Well, as you're thinking about the planning of your agency, and hopefully by the time you listen to this, you really do have a 2023 plan in place. But certainly these are some things that we would suggest you take a hard look at. So I want you to imagine your agency accomplishing the following things in 2023, 24, 25, 26.

So let's start with the first one. I've got a throat thing going here, sorry everybody. But could you imagine all of your team members, having them 100% aligned around a common goal. So imagine that. All of your team members aligned. In other words, we're going in the same direction around a common goal. The common goal we talk about is retaining and obtaining ideal clients. But then probably the most important part of it from an alignment is the fact there's an appreciation, respect, and trust of the various roles we played.

What is the role of the producer? What is the role of the service partner or partners? What's the role of leadership? But getting them all aligned, going in the same direction. Because when they do it, it's really, really amazing. I know we've talked before and it's in our book that we've all seen a car or truck going down the road that's not in alignment. And it's shaking, rattling and rolling. So when agencies come together and when we have sales and service working together like this, it's amazing how the productivity, the culture, the fun of working there really becomes so much better when we get aligned.

Just feedback on that, Roger. Again, like all of these we'll say it's simple to understand, it's not always easy to execute. There's a lot of work in this. But this, to me, is all about leadership. Leadership is hard, but it's so important. I know as I get that opportunity to work with different departments, whether it's producers, service reps, or when I travel Roger and go to events and talk to different people. Oftentimes you'll hear people within an agency and they'll say this, I'd love to do more. I don't really know what they really want or what's really expected or where we're really going.

Guess what? That creates confusion. That creates a bit of chaos. So we continue to see is when we can rally around something. When you as a leader say, "This is what it's all about. This is why this is important, this is what we're going to do." Now again, there's different roles for that same goal. It's amazing how over communicating or at least clarity and communication can be so, so important, Roger.

Again, it's something everybody rallies around. What's it all about here? It's about retaining and obtaining ideal client. So there's a lot of things behind that. But that's the first one. Going with this, can you imagine, just imagine, all of your client facing team members having ongoing personal development programs? Training around a common sales-based platform where they literally are speaking the same language. I mean, how cool would that be? This comes back to alignment.

But it's even more because the key phrase here, Brent, is personal development. We've talked about this before and we talked about the lessons learned from the best practices. It's not just about the continuing education to keep your license or to keep your designation. This is about personal development skills, processes and attitudes that make a big difference. So if we could get everybody being developed, and to me this is the number one role of management. It's to develop their players, develop their team. Just imagine that, if that was happening.

I'm going to just add one thought to this because you hit it, Roger, and if they've listened to my podcast, I've said it I don't know how many times now. The number one job of an agency leader is to develop your people. But I would just ask you this as an agency leader, and here's a question to truly consider. What is your current training and development program for your people today? What is your current training development program? It's just something to consider because when I have enough conversations and I do with agency leaders, they go, "Well, I don't know. We do a little of this. Little of this." So this to me is just, if that's the number one rule, it's something to really think about as you go into 23. Just imagine. Just imagine your entire team is getting this consistent personal and professional development, as Roger mentioned. So Roger, keep going, this is good.

Well, thank you, I'm glad you like it.

The next thing is just imagine the marriage of sales and service. Now we always talk about the division of sales and service. Same goal, different roles, identify those, what are we supposed to do? But the reality of it's a marriage of sales and service working together. We have high performance teams, not high maintenance teams. Our ultimate litmus test, and I know we've talked about this several times when I've been on with you and other guests you've had on.

Our ultimate litmus test here is, do we have the producers available for green zone time? There's a red zone and the green zone and hopefully everybody understands that and now it's become very sticky in our industry. The producers are doing four things and four things only. These are the things they do in the green zone. They make sales. Gee, that's what is a surprise ... producer, one who actually produces. Number two, relationship management because it's still a relationship game. In fact, I think it's becoming even more a relationship game on the accounts that you really should be pursuing. Next, it's the continuation process of proactive continuation process. Not a renewal process. Because renewing policies is the easy thing. It's continuing the relationship. And then finally, it's pipeline development.

So our goal is to get the producers in the green zone 80% of the time. Now here's the reality, average producer based on some discussions we've had with people that are asking if they can join what we do, we say, what percent of your time are your producers in the green zone? Once we explain it, if they didn't understand it, we continue to hear things, "Oh, 25% of the time, maybe. Maybe." So what they have ... our whole system quite frankly is loaded with it. Our system is loaded with part-time producers. Versus let's get them to at least 80% producers because it's never perfect. But just imagine that, Brent. And we've seen it so often now.

Well I have to share my analogy because I know you like it and I've shared it on this podcast before. But it's one of those things, whenever I say it, whether I'm at a live training event or something that people hear me talk about this, they go, "Oh my gosh." But you talk about 80% is the goal. A lot of the agencies, maybe 20, 30% of actually being in the green zone say, just imagine. Just imagine this, it's the NBA championship this year and the Golden State Warriors who keep winning are back in it. And Steph Curry, their best player who scores a lot of points, that's his job to score points. We get to game seven of the NBA championship. Roger, here it is, on the line. Are you going to win the championship or not?

The game is tipped off. Steph Curry runs around after a minute or two, checks himself out and goes to the bench. Not because he's hurt, not because he's tired, not because he's in foul trouble. But because he's got other things he needs to do, as well, I guess. So the game ends and Steph Curry was maybe on a quarter or maybe two of the entire game. He go, "Why didn't we win? Why didn't we score more points?" Well, our player who's job is to score points is on the bench. My question I always say to agency leaders is, how many of your best players, or certainly those that should be out scoring points, are spending the majority of the time on your bench?

It's scary. It's the part-time producer again. Just get up to 80%, amazing what happens.

Yeah, it's all about it. Continue.

Yeah, absolutely. Again, green zone, red zone.

Next one, just imagine that you were able to dramatically improve your sales and your service capacity. The concept of capacity is not talked about very much in our industry. We've been talking about it with our private clients now quite a bit lately. Actually, it was part of a recent Rough Notes article I wrote also. When I'm talking about capacity from the service perspective, how much revenue are they handling? How many transactions are they handling? What's the capacity to do that? With the producers, again, getting them in the green zone, what's their capacity to do it?

We start looking at this and we can measure capacity a bunch of different ways. What I've already mentioned is, how much revenue are the service people handling each? Even in the best practices, I think it's very low for where it should be. What's our revenue per employee? What's our revenue per validated producer? What's our revenue per relationship? All these things we talk about. But in the best practices, right in front, and again, we had talked about this previously. All in capital letters it says, "It's all about the people. It's all about the people." That's the number one concern everyone seems to have. All the great agency leaders that we talked to are saying, "We've got to get our people doing more." So just imagine that right now, what if you found out you were actually overstaffed to your workload? Now that's going to create some people going, "I don't believe that."

What? Overstaffed? That's not possible, Roger.

Well, if your revenue per employee is way less than $200,000, you are overstaffed for your workload. If your revenue per validated producer is less than a half a million, which is really the low end, then you've got a lot of capacity left. So we look at it and we say, we've got to understand that because there's going to be this continued challenge on getting staff and keeping staff, and all the things that are going on out there. You better be able to do more with less. Do more with less.

It comes back to use of the technology, their agency automation system, so many things. But just imagine dramatically increasing sales capacity. Producers actually produce. Dramatically increasing the service capacity because of the way we work and the way our high performance teams work together. And 80 to 90% of all transactions go to the service person first, not the salesperson. All of these things, one and done. That we wind up with increased capacity, which of course means increased profitability. It also means the ability to pay your internal people more money so it's easier to keep them. Because there's so many people are getting [inaudible 00:16:17] out now. But just imagine that where you're saying, "Wow, look at this. Last year we had 22 employees. This year we have 20, but our revenues up a million bucks." Sounds like a good plan to me. So just imagine. This is not la-la land. This is real world stuff we're seeing with our clients.

Yeah, I was just, as you're saying that, I'm thinking of ... and these are challenging questions. These are questions we're asking ourselves, Roger, as an organization. But it's like one thing is, well, how busy are you? What answer are you going to get? Oh, so busy, right? Everybody's busy. The question is, how effective are you? You got to think though, effective. Gosh, we're busy, but how effective are we? It comes back to the impact you're making. So that's a great, just imagine. Hopefully you're sitting there at his agency going, "Ah, that would be pretty cool. That'd be pretty cool." All right, what's the next one, Roger?

Well, the next one is maybe a shorter one, but maybe one of the most impactful. Just imagine having weekly as an every week a sales improvement meeting. Not a sales meeting. And Brent, you did a podcast on this recently about the effectiveness of sales improvement meetings. And the attitudes very simple, and this is what we work with the CROs, Chief Revenue Officers we work with is every producer leaves that meeting better in some way every week. Every week.

But then let's take it to the next level. This is what the highest performers do, and not many do it. But it's not only having this sales meeting, it's all the content which you've talked about. But it's also a quarterly sales retreat. Where one day a quarter, you take all the producers, you go offsite and you do deep dives on things and you hold each other accountable. You report to your peers.

One of our best clients ever at an agency that went from basically about a million of revenue to over 10 million of revenue. One of the things they did for 17 and a half years before he retired, 17 and a half years, every quarter they had a retreat. They never missed a single quarter in 17 and a half years. Their producers loved it because they all got better. They all got better. It was a cultural thing. Just imagine that. I mean, how could you be a sales organization if you're not doing ... that's like an offense. Would you have an offensive meeting every week in football? I did way back when. Just getting together and say, "Let's get better together. No interruptions a quarter." That's one of the things we're doing now with our best clients.

I feel like every time you do this, I just keep thinking of questions to ask. So here I'll go, I've said this before in different ways, but I have to ask yourself as an agency, are we a true sales organization that provides excellent service? Or are we a great service organization that does sales when possible? When convenient.

When convenient.

Yeah. I mean, like, oh yeah, we should be doing some sales, too. Because people always say, well, it's either. No, it's not, it's not either or, it's both and. By the way, if you're not having sales improvement meetings, as Roger mentioned, I did do a podcast on that. Here's a note, go back and listen to it if you want to know more about that. Or your quarterly retreats with focus, are you really a sales organization?

All right, Roger, we're cooking now. Give me the next one.

Okay. Well this is one of my favorite points of contention, complaining, or maybe I bitch about this a little bit. It's, can you imagine being in a situation where 90% plus of your producers meet or exceed their sales goals every year? This is one of the things ... the goal setting is a joke in most agencies. It's done one or two ways. Everybody's going to do a hundred thousand new revenue this year. Or it's, well, we'll lower the bar if everybody does 50, we're fine. Or they might do an individual goal setting, but then they're not held accountable.

I've told this story before, but it's worth repeating and probably most people didn't hear it. It's okay. But about four years ago, I did a session, I was asked to do some surveys with a large group of larger rate in 19 agencies, average agency, 21 million revenue. One of the questions I asked is, what percentage of your producers met or exceeded their goals last year? The answer was 43%. Again, average agency of 21 million of revenue. A lot of our listeners are going, that's a really big agency. So one of our singular focus when we work with agencies is, what do we do to get that upward 75, 80, 85, 90% of our producers meet and exceed their goals?

Now, you may remember one of our CRO sessions recently, actually about six months ago now, we talked about this and there were two funny things that happened. The first question I asked is, how many of your producers hit their goals? The one guy in the chat room on Zoom went, "A hundred percent." I called him, I said, "Hundred percent?" He said, "Yeah, they hit them because we don't have any." Then someone else commented and said, "Well, I know how we can get all of our producers to hit their goals, lower them." I said, "No, that's not the way we do it."

So getting to the point where there's a culture and case of accountability, there's an expectation you hit your goals. By the way, everybody knows whether or not you're hitting your goals because it's up on the wall or it's up on a digital chart. But just imagine how much better an agency would be. This is one of the things we talk about too, is producer recruitment starts at home. Don't go hire a whole bunch of more producers right now, additional producers now, if only 43% of your current producers are hitting their goals. It's a huge challenge. But just imagine, 90% hitting their goals.

Yeah, yeah. Just imagine it wasn't treated like most New Year's resolutions, which people are going to be talking about right now. Which is typically they're forgotten ... not only are they not done, but they're almost forgotten by February. I will tell you, and you hear this too, Roger, that not only are a lot of sales goals by producers forgotten, I mean, they don't remember what they were. I mean, honestly, what? I don't know. Or they make numbers up. Just imagine, actually, as you said, having a goal that is realistic but will stretch you. There's coaching around it and guess what? There's accountability to achieve it. So I love it. Love it, love it, love it. All right, let's get to the next one.

All right, well just imagine that you achieved a 99% effective retention on your clients, on those that you wanted to keep, that you could keep. That's important to understand that when I say effective retention. Certain customers you can't keep. Why? Well, they might go out of business. They might sell to somebody much bigger, they might merge with someone much bigger. The first line side, they may move out of town, they may pass away. That kind of like happens.

So getting into situations and identifying, who are the clients? This comes back to future ideal client, making sure that we're working towards that. Who are the clients that we could retain? That we wanted to retain. Because there are certain clients, quite frankly, your staff doesn't enjoy looking at an email coming in from them or call ID on their phone, they go, "Oh crap." You've got to get rid of those caustic relationships if you have any. But imagine 99% effective retention on the people that you wanted to retake. It's one of the beauties of the businesses, the recurring revenue model. But when we talk to people about, well, what are your exit barriers you put in place? How do you make sure that you keep them? Well, we give good service. That's not it. But imagine that.

Yeah. One of the things we obviously talk about in our program, maybe not obviously to the listener, but obviously to us. Is that the fact that, is there a continuation process? You mentioned exit barriers, but one of the questions that we ask, Roger, I love it, is, what does it truly take? What does it truly mean to earn the right to continue that relationship? It's amazing when you start to understand what that really is and you can follow a plan, you become really hard to fire, as you just said. I've got your bullet points in front of me. I love the next one. You know how much I love the next one. So please share, Roger.

Well, something people have probably never heard of before, but it's the 80, 20 rule. It's never been around since 1897. So some may not have read about it yet in some archives someplace. Okay, tongue in cheek. But using the power of 80, 20, was understanding that 20% of your customers are 80% of your revenue. We've done thousands and thousands and thousands of surveys. It's very rare that it's not almost exactly right on, just make a little bit off, but right there, that's what it is.

So what if you were able to use that and say, what we're going to do is identify the top 20% of our customers that are 80% of our revenue. And we're going to round out, retain and replicate them. We're going to round them out, so full-time client only, VIP, personal, commercial, benefits, life insurance. Whatever you may do, some do financial services. You retain them because your continuation of process is so powerful. The exit barriers are in place, you're doing stewardship reports with them. They would never think of leaving you, you're an indispensable partner to them. Then you replicate them. Because you go to your top 20% and following the reverse referral process we have, which it's cumbersome to get it set up. We talk about it, you mentioned this earlier. It's simple, it's just not easy because it takes that discipline.

But we go to the top 20%, we follow our reverse referral process. We get a referral from 80% plus of the clients, and then what's our closing ratio on a referral? So we look at this and what's really cool ... and this is what we refer to, of course, as the ultimate marketing strategy. The producers that have done it and followed it, and it's rare that they can take it all the way through. But the ones that have the discipline, imagine the discipline of having this. Here's what we see. On average over a three year timeframe, the average producer grows his or her book by 60%. But the second part of round out, retain and replicate is systematically trading down the bottom 80% of your customers. Because they're only 20% of your revenue, in fact, the bottom 50 are only 10% of your revenue. Don't agree? Go ahead and run your numbers.

But imagine that in three years, your average producer grows by 60% as far as the revenue they handle. Which means they get a 60% raise and they have 60% fewer clients. Now some of those go to newer producers, some of those go to an SBU, some of those go to service center. But we realize we can't service everybody. So one of the things we ask ourselves ... we just did in our own planning session about a month ago, one of the big questions we asked, and I would ask everybody to listen to this, who do you serve best? Who do you serve best? So it's the same thing here. Imagine you identify, these are the people we serve best, these are the people that appreciate what we do. These are the people that are raving fans for us. If we would just get in front of them, put the exit barriers in place, always keep them. Then have a process behind it where we get a referral. You don't spend any money on marketing. Maybe brand marketing, but not marketing, marketing.

Not in traditional sense.

No.

I know, Roger, you're a fan of Genius Network and Joe Polish, some of the stuff. He always talks about elf marketing. Effective, lucrative and fun. As you said that, I'm sitting there going, so yeah, so the downfall of really not understanding 80, 20, but applying it in the way that you just described it is that it's extremely effective. Because your best clients do want to help you done the right way. It's lucrative because they're the majority of your money. So you do really well financially. And it's fun, meaning that you get to have better, deeper conversations with better clients that really appreciate the relationship, really appreciate the risk advice. But outside of that, I think it's a terrible idea.

Yeah, because it takes work. It takes that big head of discipline we talked about before.

Right, right. All right.

All right, Brent, we got another one tied to this one. Just imagine having pipelines that are no longer suspects or prospects. Just imagine having future ideal client pipelines only that are overflowing with more opportunities than time. You actually had walkaway power. If you didn't like what they were doing and they came up and something happened, you could walk away.

Too often we see with younger producers before we really get them to understand it, they'll work on just about any account. Because you never know, you might get lucky and if they fogged up a mirror, they paid American dollars, we can probably work on. But we want to have the walkaway power, we want the ability to super qualify them upfront. Because as we've said before, the best day to lose a sale is the first day. So the first conversation, even though you've got them identified as the future ideal client, you might even get referred to them. But in your first conversation you might say, no. Or your first meeting, you might say, no.

But just imagine having a pipeline that had more opportunities than time. Everybody that did pop up was a future ideal client you've identified. And that's all you worked on. By the way, it doesn't happen overnight, nothing does that's great. But having the discipline to say, "That's our process. That's how we work it." It's so cool when I hear people say, "Yeah, I had three new prospects, future ideal clients came up this month. Two of my talk two, pretty obviously, they only wanted it on price only. One I went up and met with, and quite frankly, they just not someone I want to do business with." How cool is that?

I always get a chuckle when we have our producer programs and we talk a little bit about that. Leverage and having to be able to walk away and the smile. Have you ever said you don't qualify? Yeah, it's so cool. It's setting the rules of engagement because you've earned the right, because you have a full pipeline. All right, Roger, this next one is one that I ask agents all time in a question. So, let us have it.

Well I'm going to admit this is going to be self-serving. I hope that's okay.

Good, good. Great. Appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you. So just imagine being the only agency in your marketing territory where you work that has a unique, repeatable named sales process. I'm going to say that again. Unique, repeatable name sales process. Now with the members of our private client group, they have the risk cost share program. That totally differentiates them from all their me to competitors. It's one of the reasons as we've been redoing what we're looking at here is we're saying, hey, we need to work with agencies that have territorial exclusivity. And we want to be able to get that risk concierge program in their hands, so that when they go out there and sell, people are going, I've never seen anything like this before.

So just imagine having that so that you don't hear ... you never again hear, "Well, you insurance people are all the same. Yeah, we've bid it every year, every three years. Go ahead and give us a quote." No, what we want is a system, a repeatable system that we get in front of them. We have an executive briefing, et cetera, where the future ideal client says, "Wow, I've never seen that before. I've never seen anything like that before. No one ever brought that up to me before." That's what's really fun. That makes it, first of all, it's fun, it's also easier. Because you're totally differentiated. So imagine that.

Yeah. Well, obviously I love it and yes it is self serving, but good, thanks for bringing that up. I am going to skip ahead on one of your bullet points. Not that we can't come back to it, because this one ties into it directly. I say this all the time and I want you to get your thoughts on a just imagine. Because I say this all the time, you can't have a differentiated selling process, Roger, if you don't know how you're different. So part of this is obviously we want to help you with the selling process and having a name and effective, unique, all those things you mentioned. But just imagine what, Roger? If you're actually what?

Well, just imagine having specific points of differentiation that are actually different and they give you an unfair competitive advantage against your competition. Because the reality is that most agencies, not all, but most play the same game. Why should I do business with you? I already mentioned one, we give good service, we represent all the markets, we can save you money, we're local. And of course my least favorite, tongue in cheek is, and we have the best people. I'm sure you have good people, but the best of the whole industry? I don't know. Versus, and I know we've talked about this before. But have you really listened to it? Have you done it in your agency? Having at least five specific points of differentiation. So we know here's what we do that's different.

WIIFM, the radio station you all listen to, what's in it for this future ideal client? What's a piece of evidence we actually show them? Okay, so it's not just us yapping. Then finally, the producers are so prepared that they always know the two or three questions they could ask about each point of differentiation, where the prospect, the future ideal client winds up saying, "Don't get that. Don't get that, never heard of that before. Wonder why my current agent's not doing that."

So getting to that point, and Brent, it's one of those ones that it's simple to do. I shouldn't say simple to do, it's not easy. Again, but when we look at the agencies that are just having tremendous, tremendous growth with us, one of the things they absolutely got to handle on right up front, green zone, red zone and everything else. It's, how are we different? How is our story different versus, "Yeah, I'm in the insurance business, you want a quote?"

Yeah. Well again, I know I kind of went a little out of order on your bullet points there, so we can go back to the one we skipped over because it leads right back into this.

It ties back to it.

I mean, it's this idea of, oh yeah, we should be different. I mean, I think we're different. Then you go, well, tell me how you do that. Well I don't know. Why? Because the next bullet point. Just imagine if what?

Well just imagine being relentlessly prepared for every opportunity. A mindset. Mindset's so important with the agency overall and really the producer that's going out there. But what if their attitude was every event deserves my very best. Any sport you played in, any theater you did, any music you did growing up. You probably practiced, you rehearsed and you really were ready to play. My days of football in college and everything, you practiced way more than you actually played the game, to get ready to play the game at a very high rate.

So what if the attitude was, every event deserves our very best. Every time we're going out with an opportunity, whether it's with a client to do some sort of round out, whatever it may be, stewardship report. With a future ideal client, executive briefing, presentations. Centers of influence, meeting with them and sharing with them how you're different, how you could help their clients become better. That we were so prepared that we were literally in the zone all the time. We don't have to think about it anymore because we were so prepared.

Yet the average agency, well I know you've talked about this before in the podcast and hopefully people don't remember it so I can say it now, say it's new. But the time one of the young producers at our camp, this was pre COVID, we were in person. At the end of the day I said, "Hey, what did you get out of the session today? Anybody?" One young guy raised his hand, he said, "I got it, coach. I will no longer rehearse my presentation during the actual presentation." And they laugh. But agency leaders and producers that are leading their own me inc. There should do a pre-brief and debrief before every opportunity. Are we prepared to play? Then after it's done, did we win? Again, something we mentioned a lot, but learn from your losses, replicate your victories. If you didn't get it, why didn't you? Let's not make that mistake again. If you did get it, what did you do? And how do we do that five more times? It takes the discipline.

It's either preparation or, Roger, it's skill development. You hear that term a lot and I know I've used it, whether it's college athletics or anything like that. Where it's like, hey, these coaches, these leaders do a really good job at developing, there's that term, again, they're people, there are certain skills. I think unfortunately, it's just either taken for granted or not dean with importance. I can't understand why of are you working on your skill development? And a big part of that is being relentlessly prepared, as you said.

All right, Roger, I'm going to take these last three. As part of this as an agency leader, hopefully you're thinking, "Oh, that would be pretty cool. I like this." I want to take these last three because they're financial things. Part of this is, what's in it for me? What does this mean? Roger, if I begin to do, again, some of these, all of these, heck, even if you took one of these things that Roger just mentioned and said, "I'm going to turn this from a, just imagine to a, just do it, as Nike says. But I'm actually going to execute this. What are some things that happen? So give me some financial, just imagines, Roger, and how this correlates.

Well, two things, we'll do a little imagining and then we'll share some things that we just did a survey-

Perfect.

With our clients. So just imagine having organic growth rates that are two times the best practice numbers. Again, we talked about best practice several times here, and we did a whole podcast on it. If you haven't looked at it ... first of all, I hope you are our best practice agency. That's the type of agency we serve best. But if you're not, take a look at it and compare your agency. But just imagine having true organic growth rates of two times the best practice study. And a lot of agencies in Florida, unfortunately right now, they're getting a lot of increased rates. They're not selling anything now, they're having to renew them and it's tough. But imagine that.

Imagine earning an operating profit, no interest income, investment income, contingency profit sharing income. Pure operations. Imagine earning an operating profit of over 30%. Imagine increasing your agency value every year by a substantial number. For most agency owners, not all, but for most, the agency is one of their largest, if not their largest personal asset. We look at this and we say, "What's happened to the value of your agency?"

So we did a survey and you and I just looked at this last week for the first time. We asked our larger members, our private clients, we said, "What's the value of doing these things? What's the value of actually executing?" I've got a whole bunch of numbers here, I won't go through all of them. But it was interesting to me that the average agency from the beginning of '20 to the end of '22, our average private client, larger ones went from 10.3 million of revenue to 13.7 million of revenue. So over a million dollars a year growth, that new revenue. Then I said, "Okay, what about the profit? How profitable are they? Then more importantly, what's the value of their agency?"

I mentioned this a little earlier in the podcast, looking at the value and saying, just take 10 times. 10 times profit and it's really 10 times even if we just play a game here, 10 times. What's the value of the agency? Well, this is the one that got me really excited. Because at the end of the day, the agencies we work with, agency valuation is one of the biggest concerns. The way that even came out in the best practices study. We talked about that when we did that podcast.

So the average agency we work with went from a value of 16.8 million to 30.3 million in that timeframe. It's all because of us. No, it's not. It's because of the strategies we teach and people actually do it, and the coaching sessions we have with them. But it was just exciting for me to see this and say, "Okay." And we haven't looked at this enough in the past, but we just started looking and said, "Okay, what is the value of doing this?" Because we talk about it and we get together and we hold hands and sing kumbaya. But what are the results? That's what matters.

So when I look at this and I say, at the end of the day, if it is about developing your people and getting better results and having a set offense, the selling system and having high performance, all the things we talk about. Then you say, okay, but if at the end of the day is an agency owner, what I care about ... because everybody eventually leaves their agency. Some die at their desk, some go early, some go late. But everybody eventually leaves. So you look at this and you say, "All right, what's the value to me? Have I increased my personal asset? Yes or no?"

If you have, congratulations. And if you haven't, if you go back and look at your numbers and I'll say, maybe we're not doing so well. I think it's time to jump on it because these are just a few of the things to start imagining. I would just hope that you do listen to this maybe during the holiday break and you identify some things that you're saying. This is something that needs to be part of our agency, our business model. We talk about this all the time now, your current business model is perfectly designed for you to achieve the results you're currently achieving. And some people will say, "Well, I don't have a model." I say, "That's your model is to not have a model. What are you doing?" So to me, it starts with imagining it, filtering to say, "Okay, what things really make sense for our firm?" And they get to the point, you put the plan together and then you actually execute and you hold people accountable. It's so exciting when people get these type of results and that's what we do.

Yeah, Roger, I mean listen, I didn't count them all, it was about 10 on there. I love how you put that together at the end. Because again, if you're listing here, maybe you're doing some of these okay, maybe you're not doing any of them real well. But begin to filter and think about what Roger said and the notes that you took of areas of improvement. One of the things ... Roger, you mentioned this, I mentioned this at the beginning of the call, is we do have a mission and passion to work with agencies that are truly growth committed agencies. And we mean that, not that they say it, that they really are going to do it and they want to do it. None of us are perfect, but they're willing to take that next step.

For us, as we look at members in the 2023, the first step ... and I gave you the website earlier, sitkins.com/experience is to set up a strategy call. There's no obligation to this. It's an idea to say, where is my agency really today? And having a real conversation about that and determine what's next? What's right? We want to be a navigator for you in this. So again, if you're looking to take that next step, because these things, as Roger said, and I said it too, they're simple, but I admit, they're not all easy. They're not easy. It does take pigheaded discipline, it does take realistic approach to this, it does take coaching accountability in different ways and we want to be that growth partner with you.

I had one last thought here, Roger, and I want to turn it to you. I don't know if I should be saying this or not, but I'm going to. Because as you were talking about this, we were talking about the Doctor Seah but and someday I'll. Here's what I wrote down, I said, "Stop the fake BS." Which most of us know what that really stands for. All the BS that people talk about by embracing the real BS. Which is belief systems, which is the bright behaviors and strategies. Get rid of all that stuff and saying, listen, what does our belief system really need to be? And what are the behaviors and strategies needed to fulfill that? So Roger, last word to you as we wrap up here.

Well, it's real simple, you don't have to figure it out by yourself. For the right agencies, there's a fit. And for a lot of agencies, there's not a fit. But if there's an interest as we move forward with territorial exclusivity, let's at least have a conversation to see, number one, is the area open where you are? And number two, if there's a fit? There may not be. But it's worth a conversation.

Well, thank you, Roger, thank you to the listeners, again. We appreciate you, wishing you a very prosperous, successful 2023. Again, thanks again for being part of this podcast. We appreciate the opportunity to share this with you. So with that, I wish you all the best in your success.