Culture of Excellence

Welcome to The Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode. I have a lot of really important content to share today about your agency's culture. And something that I want to talk about today is what is a culture of excellence? What does a culture of excellence mean to you as an agent leader, to your agency, your team, your clients, your community? You name it. It's all about a culture of excellence. And part of this topic came up because of some conversations we've had in the last couple weeks with our private client members. And one of my favorite things I get an opportunity to do is to be a coach with some of the top agency leaders across the country as part of our private client network. And in fact, if you want to learn more about that and what that might mean for your agency, just go to sitkins.com/experience, sitkins.com/experience to learn more about our network and the Best Version Possible experience.

But in those coaching calls, one of the things that had come up over the past few weeks, and through our programs that we run for all of our members as well, whether it's our producer, development programs, our service development programs, our sales leadership development programs, really if I could take one theme, it's been around excellence. And what does a culture of excellence, what does that actually mean for your agency? One of the illustrations that we show with agencies is an iceberg. It's something that's relevant, it's very visible. The fact that you think about an iceberg, that 10% of an iceberg is visible, it's above the waterline that you can see. That's what most people would notice. It's stuff that's shallow, it's trivial, it's there, but the depth, the important stuff is below the waterline. That's where the excellence comes in.

In fact, excellence is part of an acronym that we share all the time. I've mentioned it on this podcast, deep, going deep, delivering excellence in every process. So what I want to do today a little bit and talk to you, the agent leader, is this idea of what does excellence mean to you? And to go a little bit deeper in one specific area, it's about the ultimate competitive advantage that your agency has. And it's something that we see all the time with agencies that I think can get overlooked. And the reason it can get overlooked is that you don't have to do a lot of the stuff that I'm going to talk about today and you could still be okay, you can still be pretty good quite honestly, but you'll never reach that level of that culture of excellence, that best version possible that we teach and preach through processes, and attitude, and skill development if this isn't part of the culture.

And this is something that in fact, we're going to be going through a program with our producers around this specific topic, but this is agency-wide as well. So this topic today that I'm going to talk about can certainly apply to the agency holistically, and it should, but it certainly is something that you need to be discussing with your producers. Or if you're a producer and listening to this, I would challenge you to say the same thing, what is your culture of excellence? And to me, it starts and it centers around the ultimate competitive advantage that every agency, every producer has. The ultimate competitive advantage that you as an agency have, that your producer has, that you as an individual of an agency, an insurance professional has, doesn't depend on your level of experience. It doesn't depend on how many markets you have, it doesn't depend on every tool and resource that your agency has.

Now, are those important? Yeah, of course they're important, but this doesn't matter about those things. This is about you and a culture of excellence. The ultimate competitive advantage is this, what is your level, expectation, and excellence around preparation? Preparation for every person in your agency. Now, certainly we get into to producers, this is probably the most prevalent because they're on the front lines, so to speak, having these new conversations with future ideal clients, current conversations with clients, centers of influence, they're the sales engine of the agency. And I say this to producers, same thing I just mentioned for agencies, that regardless of your experience, does that matter? Sure, it matters to a degree and your markets and your tools, maybe processes that we help teach, but whatever those are, at the end of the day, this is what you have 100% control of.

This is, as an agency leader, what you as an agency leader have 100% control of in dictating the culture. It doesn't mean it's going to be perfect, we know that. But what if we can strive for 100%? This is the vision of excellence in the agency based around our level of preparation and practice, some things that we talk about all the time. What if we got 80% of that? I can tell you that's way ahead of most agencies, because you're never going to get a hundred percent, we know perfection's not attainable, but as Vince Lombardi said, in the chase of perfection, we can catch excellence. And that's what this is really all about.

So I want to talk about the ultimate competitive advantage and a lot of this is around three years. I mean, to me, a culture of excellence and the ultimate competitive advantage around preparation, I think there's three main points. Number one, there's a mindset. The mindset of, "This is who we are, this is how we do things." Every great organization, whether it's in business, sports, you name it, the best performers, the best agencies, the best businesses, there is a set level of expectation. We're not going to settle to average, we are going to aspire to excellence.

Maybe that's something you can think about talking to your team about, "Hey, we're not going to settle for average, we're not going to settle for good enough. We're going to aspire for excellence," because why not? I mean, why not? The late great Jim Rohn always said, he said this, I love this quote. He goes, "How tall does an oak tree grow? How tall does an oak tree grow?" Everybody kind of thinks about it and he goes, "It grows as tall as it possibly can, yet as humans, and as organizations, businesses, insurance agencies, we sometimes go, 'Ah, that's pretty good.'" Well, why? We are designed to be our best version. Let's aspire for that. So let me talk about some of these things that jump in. And part of this seems like there's mindset around the ultimate competitive advantage that I think if this becomes part of the culture, the DNA of your agency, you are definitely on the road to aspire for excellence. Let's search for that, let's reach for that, let's grow to this.

So one of the things that hits me just in the marketplace overall is the fact that you are either going to fear the competition that's out there. "Oh, this agency's pretty good, they're pretty good." Or you will be the competition that's feared. Now, this is all going to come in preparation and I mentioned there's a mindset, then there's the action, which is the second part of this. There's a mindset and then there's the action. And the third part I want to talk about is accountability around that. Those three all become a culture of excellence around this idea of being relentlessly prepared. And listen, we are going to be the agency that when other producers and agencies compete against us in different ways, it doesn't mean we're always going to win. That happens, you're not going to win everyone, but they're going to go, "Wow, we're going against that group. We're going against that agency. That's going to be rough. That's going to be rough. How are we going to do that?"

So again, think about that. So these are some mindset things. Here's some other things that I think should be part of a culture of excellence in terms of your preparation, that ultimate competitive advantage. This should be this. I as an agency leader will inspire my team and hold them accountable, I'll talk more about that in a minute, the fact that we will never lose to someone more prepared than we are, we'll never lose to someone more prepared than we are. I mean right now, would that be part of the culture of the agency? Well, it might depend, Brent. Some do, some don't. Well again, are we allowing that?

One of the things that, again, I said this earlier. Again, this doesn't depend on experience in markets and all these things that that's the one thing that you have 100% control of. Listen, we're going to win every single time, but we will always be the most prepared, we will always put the time, energy, and effort because we're focused on the right things to be the most prepared. Think about producers, how often do producers, and this can be true in many different departments, but certainly with insurance producers, that they show up, they throw up, and then they blow up. They show up. "I showed up, I'm here. And then I just throw up, I just say things. And then I come back and get mad because we didn't write the account" Typically, it's more excuse-based than debriefing where I made mistakes, where I could have done better.

And this happens, we had one of our producers in our camp a few years ago, so it was funny and I appreciate his transparency. We said, "What did you learn from today's session?" It was all about preparation and excellence. And he said, "Well, I learned today that I'm going to stop rehearsing my presentation during the presentation. I'm going to stop rehearsing my presentation during the presentation because let's face it, once you're there, it's too late. It's too late." Now, can you get away with it in this business and you've been doing it for a while? Yeah, you probably can. Guess what? The bar is really low. And that's where you and your agency want to compete. And I'm challenging you right here because listen, I talked to agencies.

One thing that I believe in as a coach and as a leader of the Sitkins Group and the Sitkins network and working with agencies is that listen, I want to inspire you and help you to aspire to excellence, so that you look back in your life as an agency or as a producer and say, "Listen, I don't have any regrets. I didn't win everything, I made mistakes, things happened. I don't have regrets, at least not in this area, because I showed up prepared, I delivered excellence in every process that I had." And one of the things that you can just think about this is that every event, and these are all mindset ideas, every event deserves my very best. Is that part of the culture of your agency, culture of excellence?

I mean, would your team right now say, "Hey, you know what? Every event, if we're going to show up, if we're going to go to a networking event, if we're going to have a meeting with our center of influence, certainly we're going to talk to one of our A and B future ideal clients, a targeted account that we really want in our agency, our current client has great importance. We showing up at every opportunity deserves our very best." Or are we going to say, "That was pretty good." And we'll keep doing some more of that? Which one is it going to be? Every opportunity deserves your very best. So that's the mindset part of a culture of excellence. And part of this is as a leader, challenge your team, but you got to set the tone right, challenge your team.

What you can't do as a leader is ask your team for excellence and you deliver average. Now, obviously as a leader, you may have different roles and responsibilities than people on your team. Certainly. Now, I know a lot of agency leaders are also in production, so this will apply in both areas, but bottom line is that if you're a modeling average and you expect excellence, well, what do you think is going to happen? Culture of excellence, what does that mean? I think that's again, a great question to ask from a mindset perspective is what does that really mean for our agency? If we decide to be a culture of excellence, and I hope you do, what does that really mean for our agency? And I gave you some mindset ideas. This is who we are, this is how we live, this is how we breathe, this is our DNA.

I always think about that with sports teams. And I'm a sports fan, I know I use a lot of sports analogies, but they relate pretty well. And you think about even in professional franchises, people that get paid a lot of money to play sports, that you'll have people that maybe in other organizations had kind of gotten complacent, or lazy, or got in trouble, whatever it is, and then they get moved to a different organization and suddenly it's like, oh, well, they've seen the light. Well, maybe individually they've made some changes, certainly. But I also believe that that organization had a culture of excellence, a certain way they did things that, "Listen, if you're part of this organization, you're part of us, which gives you great opportunity personally and professionally for you to succeed, these are some non-optional things."

And again, using my examples of mindset is that every opportunity deserves our very best. We will be relentlessly prepared, we will practice, we will work on skill development, we will debrief and learn from any losses that we have, we're going to replicate victories. So I mean, just some of these things, "This is who we are, this is how we do things, this is why we do it." So that was the mindset.

I want to talk about actions, and I could go very long and deep here. I want to keep this really simple, but one of the most simple, yet not-done actions at agencies is this one word called practice. Yes, I said it that way. If you're a basketball fan from years ago, the '90s, you remember Allen Iverson. I'm talking about practice, man. Now listen, practice is incredibly important and I think it can be overlooked because you always tell producers this, your number one skill, and I'd mentioned this on the podcast, is the ability to communicate. No different than a basketball player being able to dribble a basketball. I've got to be able to ask questions, and to listen, and to be able to present with influence, be intriguing, be interesting, be compelling.

This is all part of the preparation, but I got to have the skill and build, and work, and develop that skill of communication. It's vital for me. And producers will agree. This is true for the service team. Sales leaders, what's your skill communication with your team? What questions are you asking? Are you listening? Are you able to present with influence? This is true. I mean, you think about life and business, it's all sales. Sales is simply a transfer of an idea to another human being. That's what it is. Sometimes they're physical products, sometimes they're service products, sometimes they're just emotional ideas that we're transferring that people buy in. That's a sale. So the skill of communication is absolutely critical.

And one of the basic things that we teach, and we go very deep in our program, but just for this podcast just to help you understand, there are different types of practice. There's different types of practice. There's high-risk practice, which is that we show up and we practice. I mentioned this, I'm going to practice my presentation during the presentation. That's high-risk practice. Not only are you going in with a client, or a future client, or center of influence and you're not prepared, you're not practiced, you're not rehearsed, and you might get away with it. But if you don't and you're caught, not only may you lose money, like significant opportunities financially, but you also may lose credibility. Credibility to your team, credibility to the marketplace, credibility to a center of influence, credibility to a certain niche or a specific type of area that you play in. That's hard to get back.

What happened? "Well, I just got so busy, I didn't practice. I'm too busy to practice. I didn't think I needed to, I've done it before." Okay. I mean, look at musicians or people that have been singing their whole life, they've been performing their whole life, and they still rehearse before the concert. Why? They owe it to themselves, they owe it to their fans. And if you go to a concert and it just falls flat, you're probably not going back. And the word gets out. "My gosh, they showed up and they were terrible. I thought they were going to be good. They were terrible." So you got to show up, rehearse, and practice. And high-risk practice is dangerous. Medium risk practice as well, we're doing some practice in our agency. Maybe it's small clients, maybe get away, maybe it's not a big deal. Still don't love it.

What you need to be focused on as an agency, and the questions and conversations you have is, "How much low-risk practice are we having? How much low-risk practice are we having?" When I say low-risk practice, this is practice that we're doing when nobody gets hurt except maybe your pride or feelings. One of the things that we love to say, and I'll say it here, is that you're going to look stupid someplace. Where do you want that to be? You're going to look stupid someplace. And let's face it, the first time that we do anything, we're not very good at it. If you've been selling insurance and working on in the insurance game for 20 years, you weren't born with that level of experience and knowledge. The first time you do anything, you're not very good at it.

With my kiddos, whether I've got my college-aged kid right now or my five-year-old daughter. For either one of them, there's a first time for anything. And whether it's the first time riding a bike or the first time going to a job interview, you're not very good at it. But where do you want to do that? Do you want to do that in front of a crowd? Do you want to do that in front of a bunch of people? Do you want to do that when there's money in the line? Or do you want to do that when no one's looking? And one the favorite things that I hear, you think about sports performers, again, I'm using another analogy there, but you see them throw the touchdown pass or make the shot or hit the winning goal. I don't care what it is. And you go, "Wow, what a great time, what a great moment." And they'd say, "The reason why I had that moment is because I had thousands of moments when no one was watching."

Now, does that guarantee you're going to win? Nope, but it certainly gives you the absolute best opportunity. And I can't emphasize this enough for agencies, where we see agencies fall short is they don't require, even oftentimes talk about practice. I hope they're doing it. Some of them probably are doing it, some maybe aren't. I did a podcast a few weeks ago, and so this kind of reemphasized this. If we're doing sales meetings, and you should be, not weak sales meetings, but strong weekly sales meetings every week, part of that is low-risk practice part of the sales meeting. If you're going out and your producer is going out to see a top client or a top future ideal client.

Now again, there's variabilities in how long they've been around, all this kind of stuff. But I think at a minimum, should they not be doing a presentation or rehearsal or something either on camera, on video, on voice, in one to one, in person with someone, a sales leader, accountability partner, I'll talk more about that in a second, before they go on the appointment? Do you run plays the week before the football game or you just show up and hope you get them right, because you did them the week before? Of course not, right? But an agency somehow it's just like, "I don't know. I'm just really busy." Busy doing what? Is there anything more important than showing up prepared when the opportunity presents itself?

And I got to share a personal story here, and this was an eye-opener for me, and I was for a period of time, and I still do a significant amount of speaking and working with our partner agencies and do some outside events, but for a while there I was doing a lot of outside public speaking and I was working with an organization, a leadership, coaching development organization that had a bunch of resources and tools. They had a mentorship program, which was great, and I'd hop on a call about every week. They had different mentors and you could listen in, they would share some things and you could just ask questions to mentors, people that have done stuff that you're trying to do, give you some experience on it. And I called in, this was the president of this entire company, this is a multimillion dollar operation and the president. And so, "Hey, I'm going to take my shot here."

And I said, "Listen, I'm trying to build my speaking business, I want to get in front of larger crowds, I want to earn more income in this, charge higher fees." And he said, "Great, I love it." And he said, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "Well, I'm doing this and I'm doing this." And I shared some things that I was working on. He said, "Let me ask you a question." He goes, "Well, what type of events are you speaking at mainly now?" And I told him they were typically smaller events and they were growing, but they were still pretty small. And he goes, "Well, what type event do you really want?" And I said, "This and I want to get paid this." He's like, "Fantastic." He goes, "Let me ask you a question. If that highest level event that you desire to speak at to get paid for, if they called you right now and they said, 'I need you to drive down the street and show up and give me that value right now,' are you prepared to deliver at the highest level?"

And I was going to lie, but that's not good. So I'm like, I stopped there, kind of maybe stop my tracks. I'm like, "Wow, that's a great question. I feel like I'm pretty good, but from what you just said, no. The answer is no, I would need some time, I would need more time to keep working at it." And he said, "Well, then it's too late." He goes, "It's too late. If you're not preparing yourself for the highest level opportunity that you aspire to, then it's too late." And I'm like, "Wow." And it really hit me. It's like, if your desire, what you're targeted is this, then prepare yourself for that target. Don't hope. Hope is great, but hope isn't a strategy. Don't hope that someday you'll just stumble upon it. Could you get lucky? Yeah, but try replicating luck. How do you replicate luck? You just hope, right?

I want you to replicate stuff that works. So for your producers, for example, we talk about target account strategies, target account size, that the future ideal client you really want, that you've defined. Now it's going, "Okay, what specifically do I need to prepare for around that? What questions should I be asking? How do I make my materials really shine?" All these things you could go very deep in into the process. Now again, there's always going to be nuances. And as you get to know clients, I understand there's more questions and questions, but the point of it is right now, if you ask your producers or your producer list and you say, "Are you prepared for your highest level client at the level you should be right now today, or is there more work to be done?" My guess is most people would say there's more work to be done. A culture of excellence aspires to that.

Let's talk about that. How do we get ourselves prepared right now to what it is we really want to achieve? Are we going to be an organization of individuals that, "Gosh, I hope I hit my goal, I hope I make it, I hope I do this"? Or is it, "We are going to make some luck this year." That's a culture, a culture of excellence. So again, those are some action things. And by the way, in our programs and in our coaching, we get specific skill development areas to work on that should be an ongoing, preparation questions, all those kind of things. But I just want to really challenge you right now, just are you a culture of excellence? And if not, how far do you have to go? What are some things you need to do?

And the last thing that I want to share is this, I mentioned a little bit, accountability. I did a podcast a few weeks back on the best version pyramid, best version producer pyramid, at the very top was personal accountability. Absolutely personal accountability should be part of everybody on your team to a degree and it should be discussed. But as an organization, do we have overall accountability? Not that accountability is something that if it's convenient, if it's right, but as I said earlier, if every opportunity deserves our very best, shouldn't there be accountability in the sense that every person, if you're going on a presentation, there absolutely is accountability, that there is something being done to prepare at the highest level for those activities, those functions, those meetings, that it should be expected, not surprised.

I mean, part of our culture DNA is that before you go out on a future ideal client, appointment with an A and B type of a future ideal client, which should be the only ones you're going out on, by the way, but if you're going out on that, I should know your three risk-based questions, and I want to hear your executive briefing how you open that conversation up? Let's work on it. Well, that might be uncomfortable. You know what's really uncomfortable? Missing out on opportunities and having regrets of what might have been. What's slightly uncomfortable is realizing you're not where you need to be, but the good news it's before the show starts, it's before the game actually begins. And you can tweak and you can make things better and you can improve and you prep a little bit more, so that when you go out, and by the way, here's the key part of this.

This kind of sounds negative with accountability, but when you have the mindset and you're doing the right actions and you're accountable to these things as part of the culture of excellence, the one word this breeds with agencies is confidence. It's confidence. I mean, when you're prepared, when you've done some of the stuff that was uncomfortable early on and you've kind of found some of the works that maybe that's all in the conversation or you weren't prepared, you found some areas and people will help you identify things and you go, "Ah, you're right." And you can let your pride get in the way and go, "Well, I'm never doing anything wrong." Or you can say, "Listen. Coach me, teach me. I'm open. I feel like I'm doing pretty good here, but I want to get better. How do I get better? Show me how to get better, teach me how to get better, challenge me." That's a pretty good culture that we're all striving for that.

But when you get to that level that people are, it's an expectation of accountability, not because we're trying to micromanage you, but because our culture of excellence, the fact that we want you to show up with the best opportunity to win every single time. And yes, it helps the agency because we're going to get more business, we're going to deepen relationships, we're going to improve our professionalism as an agency. But better yet, you as individual are going to grow personally and professionally too. And you're going to look back in six months, in one year, in two years, in three years and go, "I didn't even recognize that person because our culture is excellence. And because of this, I keep growing. I grow, I grow, I grow, I grow, I grow." And that's all part of a culture of excellence.

And I'll just say this, and this certainly is we believe in what we do with our private client members and part of the Sitkins network and the Best Version Possible experience. I mean, there's a reason those things are all part of the agencies we work with, is that we're not a training company. Do we do training exercises and developmental programs? Yes, but we are a developmental, we are an agency growth partner. Growth partner, yes, in money and profitability, but growth personally and professionally. We're a development organization. Continue to develop, and develop, and develop, and develop. And part of development is be able to find more people to develop.

So this is all part of the aspect of what is a culture of excellence? It's a culture that has a mindset that will never be out prepared, ever outworked on these things, that we're going to take the right actions that align with those things, and we're going to be accountable to doing the things we said we were going to do. Why? Well, there's financial wins certainly, but what about the freedoms of not just money, but of your time, that every opportunity deserves your very best, you show up prepared. The freedom of the relationships that you're going deeper in the relationships with your clients and internally, and the freedom of purpose that what you do really matters. If you just show up and throw up and blow up. It doesn't really matter. When you really dive deep, what you do has meaning and significance. It matters, it matters.

So again, I know I'm a little bit on my soapbox here and I'm preaching today, and hopefully you can tell this is not... And this is just coming from my heart, I got no script on this, although I've done some teaching around it. No script, this is coming from my heart because I want you as an agency leader to really challenge yourself. What is our culture of excellence? The ultimate competitive advantage is our preparation of practice, the work that we put into that. Do we really live up to that, or is it a bunch of just talking points? And I can tell you personally as a leader, it's something that's really hitting me in our own organization that I know there's certain areas that I fall short in this. And we're all human. But I go back, wait a second? What does a culture of excellence really look like? And are we on the path attaining that culture of excellence?

As I mentioned earlier, if you want to learn more about what we do at the Sitkins Group, part of our private client network, and the Best Version Possible experience, you can a lot of ways to connect with us, certainly reach out to anyone, myself or on our team, we'd be happy to connect with you and learn more about your agency. See if there is a fit for us to work together long term to help your agency achieve things that maybe you've been stuck on, plateaued on, you're frustrated with. We're going to help you take that next step, that next level in your journey, whatever it is.

But we got to make sure it's a fit. So if you go to sitkins.com/experience, you can learn all about the program, the Best Version Possible experience there, what's involved, but it's sitkins.com/experience. And with that, I wish you and your agency all the best in your success. Thanks for being a listener. By the way, if this podcast, other episodes have helped you, certainly as always, whatever podcast app, player you're listening on, would certainly appreciate a rating and review, so we can share this to more agencies out there in the country. So wish you all the best in your success. Thanks for listening.