Be So Good at the Basics That You're Cutting Edge

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Brent Kelly:

Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on another episode. And I want to first of all just start off by saying thank you. Thank you to all of you who are listeners. I want to have a big thanks to all of our members and our partners and attendees of our programs this year. As I'm recording this, it is basically a week before the Thanksgiving holiday. And I'm not exactly sure when this podcast will be released, but I do want to make sure at the beginning that I just sense my gratitude and give you all my gratitude and thankfulness. It's been a really incredible year, a lot of learning and growing throughout this year, probably just like you have experienced in different aspects, whether again, you're in leadership or sales or whatever your specific role is.

Brent Kelly:

But I know sometimes that even I get caught up in all the things that we need to do that just need to take a step back and say, thank you. And I know I've gotten some great feedback from listeners on this podcast or people through our programs, and it just serves our mission and we want to help independent insurance agency leaders, and we want to help leaders of all kinds, to help you build the clarity, gain clarity, and get more consistency and to make a commitment to be that best version possible. That's why we do what we do and also want to give a big thank you to someone who is my special guest today.

Brent Kelly:

I've got a special guest. He's a return guest. He's a regular guest, but it's been a few weeks, a few recordings I should say, Roger, since I've had you on. But Roger Sitkins, the CEO of the Sitkins Group is with me today. And before I turn it to you, Roger, to say a quick hello, I do want to give my thanks to you as well as a mentor and a friend, and allowing me to be part of the organization and be able to give value. I just want to say thank you. It means the world to me. So Roger, thank you and welcome. That felt kind of self-serving didn't it, but thanks for being part of the Agent Leader Podcast. Welcome.

Roger Sitkins:

Well, Brent, thank you. And I appreciate your kind comments and I want to echo them also that we get such great feedback from the things that we're doing as an organization, the impact we're having on people, the impact we're having on agencies. And we truly feel blessed that we can do that. It's a passion we have. So I just want to say thank you to everybody also, and thank our amazing team and our amazing families that they support what we do.

Brent Kelly:

Yeah. I should probably mention that too. Thank you to my family and my wife who supports me and my kiddos out there. So thank you to everyone. I don't think my kids listen to the Agent Leader Podcast. I wish they would, but apparently, they've got other things they want to be watching and listening to, but again, thank you to all of you. And I brought Roger on for several reasons. We always have great conversations. There's things that we love to share with our listeners of this podcast. We just wrapped up a pretty hectic season, so to speak at Sitkins with our membership. And I mentioned before we run all types of programs throughout the year, and our core programs that we run around sales, and leadership, and sales leadership, and for our account managers, we run those on a quarterly basis.

Brent Kelly:

And we just wrapped up our last quarter of training and coaching programs around those and like anything, A, we love to give value. We love to see agencies and producers and any insurance agency professional advance and grow and attain and get to that best version possible. But we also take a lot of notes on things that we kind of discovered throughout this. And there was our last session, I believe Roger. And one of the programs that we did is you came to me and you saw something that applied to everything that we do, and it really summed it up so well, and it came from a person you know, a friend of yours as well, and an author, I'm not going to steal your thunder but, probably going to be the title of this podcast. But what was the quote that you heard that kind of inspired you to this thought? And I want to go deeper in this today in this conversation. So I'll turn it over to you.

Roger Sitkins:

It's from someone I consider a friend, the author, Joe Calloway, and the quote, I'm going to make sure I don't goof it up here. The quote is, "Be so good at the basics that you're cutting edge." And that just hit me like a ton of bricks, be so good at the basics that you are considered cutting edge. And that just speaks so much to everything we do. And Joe's written some phenomenal books. The first one I ever read was Be the Best at What Matters Most. And then one of our favorite ones is Becoming a Category of One. And so if you haven't read any of those books, strongly suggest you do it, but again, be so good at the basics that you're considered cutting edge. How powerful is that?

Brent Kelly:

Yeah it is. And you shared it with me and again, little inside information, obviously Roger and I talk frequently through our programs and everything else. And I know something's really important when he sends me a text at like 5:30 in the morning. And this was one of those, like, "Hey, I just heard this and it's so true." And we've talked a little bit in this podcast before Roger, when you've been on, about getting your MBA, mastering the basic activities and this quote really outlined that.

Brent Kelly:

And it's true. I mean, I don't want to use the word amazing because we say it more than I guess would like to care to admit. But so many agencies just take for granted some of the basic things that really matter. And on the flip side of it, luckily our partner agencies have understood some of the few basics that they go very deep in and guess what? They're getting great results. They're having great success in it. So my first question to you around the basics is this, pretty simple question, but why so often are the basics overlooked or missed, or maybe even frowned upon? What jumps out at you, Roger?

Roger Sitkins:

Well, we get criticized in the industry for saying, well, that's just the Sitkins basic stuff. And I somewhat tongue in cheek and somewhat not tongue in cheek say, "You know what, as soon as you've mastered these, let me know and we'll move on." The reality is that people, they hear it and they go, "Oh, well, that's pretty simple." And yeah, what we talk about is simple. It's just not easy. And we've talked about that on the podcast before. Sure. There's simple, basic things that work really, really well, but they're not easy to do. If they were easy to do and had the discipline to do them all the time, everybody would do them. The other thing, and you alluded to it. People, they're always chasing the next bright and shining. They're aggressively waiting for the clicks, pings, rings, and dings and they belong to the gimmick of the month club.

Roger Sitkins:

And they jump from here to there rather than understanding as we call it the deep, going deep, delivering excellence in every process and not chasing trivial many, determine the vital few and determine that you will master it. And mastery I think is, MBA, what is mastery? Mastery is you know it so well, you can do it without thinking, you're in the zone. But not only do you know it so well that it's part of your DNA, you can do it without thinking, you know it well enough that you can teach others. And once these basics become part of the culture of an agency, it becomes somewhat self-sustaining. People start holding each other accountable to them. They'll actually ambush each other, basic as you get, how do you ask for a referral? "Oh my gosh, that's so old fashioned."

Roger Sitkins:

Ask me for a referral right now. And most people would stumble. And in our highest performing agencies we work with, they literally will ambush each other. "Hey, how you doing? Good. Ask me for a referral. Hey, how you doing? I'm pretty good. What's your 30 second commercial? And hey, how many appointments did you have last week? How many do you have scheduled this week?" And it just gets down to the basics, but people say, "Well, that's cool now what's next?" And what I would rather have people do is cancel their membership in the gimmick of the month. Determine the basic things that they're going to master no matter what. And once they get to that, the results... And this is what's really cool. The results are predictable. And in fact, they're guaranteed when you do this, this is what happens, period.

Brent Kelly:

Yeah. One of the things I say, it hit me. Why do people not do the basics? And we could probably have a long list if you wanted to analyze all areas of this. But I think a big part of it in many cases, it's not very fun sometimes. "What do you mean Brent?" It's not fun. And I was sharing before with you, Roger, about my oldest daughter who's a senior in high school this year and started her basketball season last night. And I was just thinking, actually, as you were saying that, last year I coached my other daughter in fifth grade and some of the things that I sat there, even watched last night, whether it's fifth grade or senior in high school, and you can take this to college and pros to many cases even if you're just looking at basketball.

Brent Kelly:

Because I would talk to my wife and I'm like, "If they could just successfully grab a rebound with two hands, they would be way better. If they could successfully have a two hand pass and catch it with strength, they would be better. If they could just dribble with their head up, they would be better." And it's just like, but that's basic, that's monotonous. That's not fun, but you know what is fun? And we've had some of our agency members and partners, you know what's fun? Winning. Winning is really fun.

Roger Sitkins:

Yes.

Brent Kelly:

So if you could Roger, maybe share some examples of either people or agencies that you've experienced that had that "You know what? We did the ambushes, we did some practices, we did all these kinds of things, make it part of our culture. And maybe it wasn't always fun, although sometimes it is, but guess what was fun? Freedom of winning, freedom of making more money, freedom of having better relationships, deeper relationships." So can you share some examples that you've seen, Roger in your day?

Roger Sitkins:

Well, first of all, winning is more fun than not winning.

Brent Kelly:

There you go.

Roger Sitkins:

Let's be real basic here. Winning an account is more fun than losing an account. Keeping an account is more fun than losing an account and just doing the things that allow you to win. So when we look at this and we say, so what are some of the basics? Well, first of all, if you are a sales organization, do you have a sales meeting every week? And we always say goofing around a weekly sales meeting is not spelled with an A, it's every week we have it. I can't imagine like back in my football days in college and everything, we had practice every week and we had the offensive meeting versus the defensive meeting. We had lineman versus others, but you had a weekly meeting, in this case, we had a weekly team meeting, but every day you were meeting on something. So what are the basics? Well, if you're a sales organization and you don't have a sales meeting that includes low-risk practice, all you're doing is getting together and complaining about stuff.

Roger Sitkins:

Or giving results, what'd you do? "Well, I was busy and I was this." And they just don't do that. And when we take the agencies, had one of our larger members, they were struggling in their pipeline a little bit. Well, a lot, let's put it that way. Because they fell into the quarterly cycle of a quarter where we're doing a lot of prospecting and now those sales start coming due and we stop prospecting because we're selling. So we confuse those two. And in the coaching call we started talking. I said, "Okay, what do we have to do?" So we determined we needed to set up a blitz state where every producer would show up with their list of top 20 prospects that just they haven't been in the door yet.

Roger Sitkins:

And we set it up so there would be some practice ahead of time. What would you say? Great example of basics. What happens if somebody actually answers the phone, what do you say? Or what does your voicemail sound like that you're going to leave? And by the way, you just hope that their system says, press five to rerecord and just getting those basics down. And we have had I think it was either 10 or 11 producers that participated. And in the one day we started with a warmup then they called from like 9:00 to 11:30. They debriefed, they had lunch together, started calling again at like 1:30 till 3:30, whatever it was. And then debriefed the whole thing.

Roger Sitkins:

They set, it was either 26 or 27 appointments in one day, by getting down to the basics of what do we say? What's our message if we talk to them. If we don't talk to them, do we leave the world's greatest voicemail message and we've got to practice it so that we get better. And by the way, interesting too, all of them said afterwards, they were better in the afternoon than they were in the morning. And it wasn't because of time of day, it was because of the repetition they had doing the calls and they admit the first few were pretty poor, but this is as basic as you get. But oh that's just that basic stuff. Absolutely.

Brent Kelly:

Yeah. I just had a call this week with one of our partner agencies, Roger, and it's interesting, they've made some tremendous progress in one year. I mean so many areas as you know, we do an assessment and get some ratings and I was like, wow, the numbers have substantially improved. And what hit me when we got to the end of the call, is that so many times like, okay, well we're making some progress. So now what? And I give them so much credit because most of the leadership teams said, "Wait a second. We're making progress, but we're not there yet. So what we need to do is not to try to find something else that we think is cool. We got to keep the gas pedal down." And part of that as we see, it's like from a culture of an agency, we start to see improvement when they understand what are those vital few basic things that we're going to be really serious about.

Brent Kelly:

And you start, it takes a little while. Then you start to get that momentum going. And unfortunately, the momentum builds and then we turn our back on the momentum and not only do we slip, do we go plateau, but sometimes we slide back to where we actually were. And you have a great story and I hope you can share it because you won't brag on yourself, but I will. You were inducted to the Michigan Hall of Fame a few years ago. Roger and you made a trip back up there a few weeks ago to visit one of your good friends and agency leaders. And he's got a great story of consistency in the basics. Can you share that?

Roger Sitkins:

Well, first of all, let's make sure it was the Michigan Insurance Hall of Fame.

Brent Kelly:

Okay, okay.

Roger Sitkins:

I never made it to the football hall of fame. Okay. But it was the insurance hall of fame and it's quite an honor for me coming from Michigan and the fact that being recognized there. Well, Scott White, who's the CEO of VAST in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I always kidded around if you can do it in the UP, you can do it anywhere. And they've grown 10 or 12 fold now. But so much of what they did is they bought into the idea that, okay, if we're a sales organization, not only do we have to have great sales meetings, once a quarter we need to get together and have a sales summit where everybody gets there, we talk about what we're doing. And their's has evolved now to the point where the producers, when they go to the summit, they actually treat it as though they're going in front of a board of directors and they're reporting. They give a quarterly report, just like a public company does, here's my quarterly earnings report. Well, how many have they done? They just completed their 70th.

Brent Kelly:

What was that?

Roger Sitkins:

7-0. So that means what 17 and a half years, they've not missed a single sales summit. Now it's evolved. It started off quite as a blitz and it evolved into quarterly sales summits, quarterly accountability. And the producers love that. And it's evolved now to the point where Scott's daughter Christie is now the chief revenue officer, sales manager there. And she continues to run them. And Scott, by the way, got inducted into the Michigan Insurance Hall of Fame. I went up there to share in that celebration with him. But it's just the basics, it's having the discipline. I'm pretty sure that that 70 would put them in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Brent Kelly:

Well, I'm sure it does. If that existed, I don't know. Maybe we can create that, Roger, in the book, but I mean, it's just part of this and it goes back to even just in our mission, we talk about clarity, consistency, commitment. I mean, oh is it really that simple? Yeah. Clarity of we know who we are, we're a sales organization. And if you listen to my recent podcast with Todd Lykke, he talked about that too. He's like, "We're going to give great service, but we are a sales organization and we can't just give lip service." Oh, we're a sales organization, but what is it, How are you a sales organization? Well, we sell stuff. Versus every quarter we do a summit. That's an example of we're walking the talk.

Brent Kelly:

We're living it out. And I think that's clarity. Consistency, it's pretty evident what they're doing in the story you shared. And of course, the commitment around together that this isn't going to go away. This is real. I know you've got some more examples, Roger, probably that you can share, things that come to mind, but I just want to share a couple of things of some agencies and or individuals that have really bought into this idea of simple stuff works and it gets you results. And I had, I've mentioned her a few times on this podcast and she was an interviewee, Brittney Stinnett of Peel & Holland and I had Paul Corder who was the sales leader from Peel & Holland. And they have rallied around this idea of simple things, but Brittney, she was almost apologetic in the fact that, "well, Brent, I know you guys talk about having five points of differentiation and really owning them."

Brent Kelly:

"I'm still working through that, because she's still newer in the industry, but I've really gone deep in two. And by the way, I hit my annual sales goal in four months, it's over $100K." Pretty good for a new producer and she's continuing to grow. And then I think about our friends, Roger at Specialty Risk in Missouri, Kevin Charleston, who's the owner of that. And every time I talk to them they reinforce. It's like, Kevin, how are you growing at such a huge level and they are growing like gang busters, continue to grow and evolve. And he is like, "We just keep doing the stuff you said to do. And we do it really well and it doesn't go away." And it's just that relentless focus. So just a couple examples that came to my mind as you shared that, Roger, anything else jumping out at you from examples?

Roger Sitkins:

Well I think we mentioned this producer before, she went through the program, we talked about the world's greatest voicemail message. And she had 10 prospects she had been chasing and she's up in Sarasota, Florida. 10 she had been chasing, she left the world's greatest voicemail message with the 10 of them. I think it was seven people called her back the same day and she set six appointments in one day. See, I love it when we get the younger producers that say, "Oh, I guess that works." Versus maybe some of the older ones that go, "Well, I tried that before and it doesn't work" Very few things work the first time you try them. But the fact that she just did the basics, she just did the basics.

Roger Sitkins:

The points of differentiation you mentioned with Brittney, the agencies and the individual producers that take this seriously, especially the producers that have specialized where they've got their niches down and they say, "These are the five things we do that differentiate." And they can truly tell the story, storytelling with so much of this, having the piece of evidence you can talk about. And we look at this and a lot of times the producers will say, "Well, our competitors do that, too." Say, you know what, maybe they do work comp experience mod, whatever it may be. Or maybe they talk disaster recovery, but they don't really sell it. They don't make it part of it. They just assume that everybody's doing it. This is MBA, mastering the basic activity. You better master your storytelling and tell it in a way that people go, "Huh, never heard of that before. Never heard of that before."

Roger Sitkins:

And one of Joe Calloway's books, by the way, Keep It Simple, it's another great read. Just keep it simple. Do the basics better than anybody else, whether it's asking for a referral. Oh, that's old fashioned. Okay. But how cool would it be and I'll say, will it be when an agency gets to the point that they have a continuation process itself and part of that is they build into it, the referral process we have where they actually do all the steps in it. It's very simplistic, it's just not easy. But Brent, what percent of the producers that you work with directly and indirectly in our programs when they follow the process, what percent of them get a referral?

Brent Kelly:

When they actually follow the process?

Roger Sitkins:

Yeah.

Brent Kelly:

Well, I mean you mentioned, I don't know the exact number. Here's what I do know, those that do follow the process or told me they did almost always come back and it's almost a wry smile of some kind where it's like, hey Brent, I just want to let you know... Kind of like look around like is anybody looking? I just want to let you know that I identified the future ideal clients that I really want. I took some time to understand who I really want, not suspects or prospects, but future ideal clients. And I wrote them down and identified them. And then I had a conversation with my current client, or it could be a center of influence. And then I worked and practiced on how I was going to present that and why it was impactful and why it's a win-win.

Brent Kelly:

And then I directly asked in the way that you told me, and they gave me two referrals. And then I stop. I go, "They did what?" Yeah, well they actually gave them to me. I said, "Then what?" Well, then I'm going to contact these referrals. I said, "Is that easier or harder than what you've done in the last five years?" That was a lot easier. And we say simple, not easy, but some of these it's just the hard work was done up front. Because here's the thing, Roger, in that story I just shared is that most producers in particular are not going to take the time to identify who they actually want, why they want them, what their plan is. They won't. They won't work on their craft of how they're going to present their message and or story to the people that can help introduce them. And because of that, they struggle on the end. So I know you're nodding back. So you've got something to add to that, but the percentage, it's very high, very high.

Roger Sitkins:

Yeah. Best I know it's 100%, let's just say it's 98. Well this gets back to how cool would it be if you follow the process, when you follow the process and 100% of your new business comes from referrals, now you've spent zero on marketing. You might spend stuff on brand management, but not on marketing. And we look at it and say, all right, so if a hundred percent of my new business comes from referrals, we have to get more referrals. And a question that we've been asking of people that have inquired about joining with us and some of the people we're challenging. I say, "What percent of your, A and B customers, your top 20%, gave you a referral last year?" That's pretty basic. And what percent of your new business came from a referral?

Roger Sitkins:

By the way, I don't want people to think that's the only way we suggest you market. It's not at all. It's just the easiest. It's just the easiest. And we look at this and Brent, you made a great point. People just, they won't do the work. They won't do the work. Yeah. This might take, let's just say on an average appointment, you're going out on, once you've done the upfront work of identifying your avatar, what a future ideal client looks like, and you get the names and then you've got to go through and cross reference against your current client's LinkedIn profiles and say, "Okay, people I'm trying to go after that I have an interest in going after who do they know?" And what's the connection? Well, what if it took 30 minutes of extra prep before every appointment with a client and you did that.

Roger Sitkins:

So this comes back to winning is better than not winning but here's a question that the best will always answer. Are you willing to pay the price to win? And what that's called is extra effort. And again, simple, not easy. It's not easy to do the extra work. What if it just becomes part of this is what I do to win and, W.I.N. the acronym, What is Normal? What is normal is I prep because every event deserves my very best. That's a basic thing. Every event deserves my very best. What does my very best look like? Am I going to pay the price to win? Am I going to pay the price that when I'm out there, I'm going to continue the relationship, I'm going to earn and in fact generate a referral to a future ideal client. I'm going to do the basics.

Roger Sitkins:

I'm going to know what my points of differentiation are. Here's another, just real basic, this drives me crazy. This one's just so basic. The Sunday evening review, or sometime in the weekend. Just to go through and debrief last week and pre-brief this week. Well, that takes discipline. It takes a set appointment with yourself. And this year I'm basically at 100% doing that. Although I've had some that I've done on Monday, because I didn't get them done on Sunday, but they gotten done. And it's made a huge difference for me in productivity

Brent Kelly:

We could go on and on because there's so many things there. A couple things that I want to address or it may be more of a challenge or encouragement to the listeners right now. Because they're probably thinking and well, gosh there's... Yeah. Okay, I get it, but what do I do? And I know you can probably get some thoughts on this, Roger and I will as well, but I would say right now and I know for many of you listening again this podcast will come out around Thanksgiving or come out around Thanksgiving and I know for many of you, certainly for our friends in employee benefits, that this is kind of a crazy time. We get that, at the end of the year.

Brent Kelly:

But whether it's the following weeks here or if you've got time and I wouldn't suggest wait this long, but if you get to the holiday, hopefully you've got some time or maybe even over Thanksgiving, if you listen to this before Thanksgiving, but just some time where you can kind of get away and just think about your business and what really matters. Because I think what happens, Roger, I think you can attest to this is one of the biggest reasons why among many, why people don't do the basics at a high level. And as you said, and I loved it. Sometimes it doesn't even take that much more, but just upping your game in some of these basic things, but just ask yourself what really matters. What's most important?

Brent Kelly:

What are some of the things that I know I should be doing, or as an agency we should be doing at a basic level that we've strayed away from? And one of the biggest reasons why is distractions. You mentioned gimmick of the month club. Well, we'll just try that. I'll just do that. Or we don't even take the time, it's all hysterical activity on the way to the grave and it's just like, we'll just keep going through it. So I really would challenge and encourage you to say, hey, listen, let's take a step back. One of the things that we have created in our programs, and Roger, you could talk about this and some things that jump out at you, but we talk a lot and we've had podcasts about this idea of going DEEP, Delivering Excellence in Every Process.

Brent Kelly:

And what does that really mean? And if you're going to master basic activities, you've got to figure out first of all, what those things are. And so in our programs, we've developed understanding that we do provide a lot of different content and things to look at, but how can you as an agency, how can you as a performer, as a professional, how do you simplify and focus on the right things? And so we've identified key areas that we are now going to walk agencies through at a very deep level. So you're going to hear all the messages. You're going to get things that are going to be new and exciting and communication you can now have with your team at a much deeper level, but then what, what do I do from there? And so different aspects, whether it's just being more productive and building your high performance team, whether pipelines, how deep do you really go in your pipelines?

Brent Kelly:

What about points of differentiation that Roger talked about and I mentioned? Do we really know them and own them? What about a process, a continuation process or a sales process. And so we've taken these areas and say, listen, for 90 days or longer if needed, I want you to really focus and we're going to guide you through this, that you can actually get tangible progress in these areas. And so this is all part of our All-Inclusive Model. That's going to start in 2022, that we're going to allow everyone to certainly experience our core programs as we have.

Brent Kelly:

We had great success with that, but then be able to help them simplify and focus in the most critical area for them and their agency to go really deep. To say, I am willing to master this, to own it because what's it all about? Well, as we talked about today, winning is more fun than not winning and we want to help you as an agency win. So, Roger, I know you were part of the design and certainly the thinking through this. When you think of going deep in certain areas, what's jumping out at you?

Roger Sitkins:

Well, it's mastery of the basics. And one of the things that we realized is that whether it's the referral process or the overall pipeline building or high performance teams, all the things you mentioned, is that the core training gets people to understand that. But then there's so much more depth when you start executing. And we just find that the agencies we work the closest with, the ones that have the depth get the best results. So really what it becomes is a playbook. And it's a playbook for the agency that says, okay, these are the things. It goes back to one of Joe Calloway's books, Be the Best at What Matters Most. Well, what matters most right now for your agency? And the deep dives are a 90 day process where we provide what we call the Deep Dive Bites.

Roger Sitkins:

We're taking each one of the areas and breaking them down into smaller bites, but what are the things that have to be in place in order for an agency to master a basic thing? So it could be again, just the high performance teams, how do we make sure that same goal, different roles, everybody understands their role. And we get the producers out of day-to-day service. We get them focused in the green zone, the four key money-making activities and we get the service team doing a much better job of managing the relationships on a day-to-day basis. So, I mean, there are just so many things in these.

Roger Sitkins:

So the agencies we're working with not only will go through the core training so they get the information, they start understanding the mindsets behind what the best producers do, but then we're going to take them very, very deep on here's everything you need to know. Here's the insight into the processes. This is what the communication should look like. So that there's no excuse from an agent. They won't have to figure it out now. By the way, will everybody execute 100% of what we talk about? No, but it's going to guide them through the things that have taken me decades to figure out, they're going to have available.

Brent Kelly:

Well, and you said that Roger, I mean your experience and the results and the agencies you've been able to work with and what you've learned, I've learned, and the agencies have learned, the thing that you always tell me, and it's so true is we want to help agencies compress time and accelerate results.

Roger Sitkins:

Yep.

Brent Kelly:

Compress time, you don't have to learn it all again and again and again and again, we know what works, let us give you a roadmap or a guide to help you walk through it. Because at the end of the day, the only way we win is when you win. And that's really all we want throughout this process. Again, as I'm recording this, we had agencies that were on our waiting list for 2022, we're now ready to start enrolling agencies today.

Brent Kelly:

And so I wanted to make sure that was available. And you knew that if you go to Sitkins.com/AIM, for All-Inclusive Model, you can learn more about that and get yourself and your agency enrolled so that you're ready to start 2022. Hard to believe. I hate to say that 2022 off on the right foot and gets you going. And as Roger mentioned, this is access to all of our core programs and we run these every single quarter. So whether you've got an employee that wants to back through it, or you've got a new employee, you bring on, everyone has access and it doesn't change your fee. It's all the same. We have monthly sales meetings with all of our agency partners. We have monthly leadership forums to help you build a community of peers that care as much about winning and growth as you do.

Brent Kelly:

And as Roger just mentioned and I mentioned, now we have these deep dive areas that you can get super hyper-focused to get tangible results. So again, if you're interested, if you have questions, let us know. Again, it may not be a fit, but I'll tell you the agencies that are really truly committed to growth, we know that we're not for everybody, but those that do really, truly desire growth at the highest level, we going to help you get there faster, compress time and accelerate results. So go to Sitkins.com/AIM to learn more about that. Before we officially close, and again, thank you to all the listeners. Roger, thanks for being here and sharing your time and wisdom. Any final thoughts or things you want to share to the listeners today?

Roger Sitkins:

Well, I would challenge everybody to get to the basics and just again, the great quote, "Be so good at the basics that you're cutting edge." People would go, wow, look at that, their producers are spending the vast majority of their time actually producing. I wonder how they're doing that? Well, they have high performance teams. They have a strong division between sales and service. The clients are educated to deal with the service people for day-to-day activities. The producers know what the four key money-making activities are and they're executing them. Wow, they're working on referrals only. And they've got like an 82% closing ratio. How are they doing that? Well, they're following the process. They're doing what they said they were going to do. They're holding each other accountable.

Roger Sitkins:

They have low-risk practice on a regular basis so that they're conversationally comfortable when they're doing it. Be so good at the basics that your competition says, uh-oh, we're in trouble. That's what I would hope everybody would want. See, being so good at the basics that you're cutting edge gives you an unfair advantage in the marketplace. Someone's going to have the unfair advantage, you or your biggest competitor. I hope it's you that wants to win. Brent.

Brent Kelly:

Yeah. Thank you, thanks Roger, for those again, the wisdom and your time today. Thanks for being a listener. If this podcast is adding value to you, please subscribe, share, follow. We want to continue to grow the audience and add value to you. So with that, Roger, thanks again. All the best in your success.