Increase Your Sales Leadership Capacity

Welcome to The Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly. I am your host and thank you so much for joining me on this episode. I'm going to discuss today, we're going to go deeper and continue a conversation on what I started on my previous episode around leadership capacity, agency capacity.

Now, in future episodes, we're going to continue this conversation in terms of sales and service capacity, but there's much more that I wanted to discuss that I didn't get to in my last episode around leadership and agency capacity. In fact, the previous episode I recorded, and you don't have to go back and listen to that. In fact it's not mandatory for this episode by any means. But that episode is really around leadership in terms of personal leadership capacity.

I challenge you, the agency leader, to think about some questions. In fact, three questions that will get you to go deeper into where am I most impactful? Where am I most effective? Where do I provide the greatest return for myself and of course the organization that I work with? So that's an important episode, but today I want to take it a bit deeper and really in terms of sales leadership capacity. Sales leadership capacity. And this stems from some really great conversations, some great coaching conversations I've had over the past few weeks, and really, quite frankly, the past several years with the members of the Sitkins network.

I mentioned before, I have a great opportunity to have impactful, real, authentic conversations with sales leaders in particular that are struggling with certain issues. That's what coaching is all about to get people unstuck where maybe they're stuck. And this issue I'm going to talk about today in terms of sales leadership capacity really got reinforced to me over the past few weeks in some of the conversations that I've had.

Now before, if you're a producer or an insurance professional who's not in a sales leadership role, and I'm talking specifically to you, the producer, before you turn this off, if you haven't already, okay, hang in there because there's a different perspective to this that I hope you hear and what I'm going to deliver today around sales leadership because it really is about your own personal accountability.

We believe that Sitkins Group that you as a producer, you have Me Inc, your own company, which is part of We Inc. So these two definitely collaborate, and it's important that really any person, this agency here is messaged because sales leadership is such a crucial part. I've mentioned before that I know with the sales leaders that are in that role of an agency, maybe they are a hundred percent sales leader, meaning that's their 100% role is leading the sales team in their agency.

A lot of agencies have player coaches where you've got a book of business and maybe you're a sales leadership position where you're in conjunction with three, four, five other people. So it's like a leadership by committee. So whatever it is, I think this is going to be very helpful for you, is I'm going to talk today about sales capacity.

I always want to mention this as well, that if you're an agency that's looking to get clarity, to build consistency, to truly make a commitment on the right things to do in your agency, we'd love to have a conversation with you. As part of the Sitkins network, we are inviting more agencies into the network as we speak, and it's not for everybody. But if you're an agency that is looking for true personal professional growth, if you're looking for processes that are predictable and guaranteed, if you're looking to simplify things in your agency that maybe you've made too complicated and give your team a true platform to run on, go to sitkins.com/experience to learn about the best version possible experience and what we do with agencies. So I want to make sure you have that opportunity to check that out.

Now, I want to get into sales leadership. Initially, when I was thinking about and highlighting and outlining some of the content I want to share with you all today, it brought me back to something I heard several years ago from leadership expert and speaker, John Maxwell and he talked about the 4M's of leadership. This actually is part of a book that he wrote called Becoming a Person of Influence. And really leadership is influence. Right?

So this idea was interesting to me. When I first heard it, I'm like, "Okay, conceptually it makes sense. I get it." And now that I've worked with so many different producers, and now at this point with our membership and we've got really some great agencies that every single week I have a chance to have conversations with, I get to see how this really plays out, and when it works and when it doesn't work.

So I want to share these 4Ms that John Maxwell shared, and I want to put it in perspective of sales leadership in particular. Again, if you're a producer, listen to this, or if you're in the sales side of things, listen to this. Guess what, this will be a message for you as well. So let's go through these 4M'S and what it means. The first M, and if you're taking notes at home, please take a note here is model. To model what the right things to do, what those are. And by the way, I understand that as a sales leader, you may have different responsibilities, so it's all going to look the same from every specific role that you have.

But model the right mindset, model the key behaviors as far as habits and how you approach things, right? Model the fact that if you're going to ask your producers to know the differentiation of points of the company or the agency or be able to deliver as we teach an executive briefing at a high level. Well, you should be able to do that too, right?

That's part of this is don't ask your people to do what you've either never done or can't do. Right? That's not modeling by example. Of course, there's so many examples of that that's no different than me telling my child to clean up the room because it's a mess and mine is a complete and utter disaster. At some point, even children go, "Wait a second, dad. You don't do it. Why should I?" "Well, because I said so, because I'm the leader. Right?" That's not great leadership.

By the way, as I had mentioned before, people convinced against their will or of the same opinion still. So if you try to convince people to do something that they don't believe in or buy in, and a big part of that is because you don't even model it, well, why should they? So the first part of this is just modeling the right behaviors and habits, and those things, understanding that, yes, you may have different roles and responsibilities and you're not asking the producers, for example, to do everything that you're doing because they're different.

But the mindset, the approach, philosophy, and of course, again, different aspects of a sales process for example, you should be able to demonstrate that at a high level otherwise why should they? Right? So that's number one is model. I hope most people get that. The second one is to motivate. When I say motivate, I don't mean motivate in terms of it's rah-rah speeches all the time. If you give a good rah-rah speech, great, go give one. I have nothing against them. I love a good motivational speech. It gets you fired up.

I'm talking about motivation and the fact that we listen, that we understand, that certainly you should be doing a weekly sales improvement meeting. Notice my phrase there. I've done a podcast on this, not a sales meeting, but a sales improvement meeting. And anybody who's part of your team certainly should be in the room.

There may be a few circumstances that might be different, but for the most part, that aspect of motivation and listening and understanding should be provided by all, right? The fact that everybody on your team, it's part of your team, should be resourced and equipped with the basic things necessary to be successful, that you should pour out to people. So motivation.

The crux of the conversation today is going to be the next step. And I think this is where sales leaders get stuck. In the next step, so it's model, motivate. Step three is to mentor, right? To be a mentor. I could add in a mentor slash coach, and there's some differences there, but the approach itself that I want to talk about is the same.

Mentor and coaching is when you go deeper with those that you serve, right? That you are truly engaging and you are investing your precious time, your precious energy, and your precious effort. Which by the way, to go back to what I said, regardless of how you're set up, whether you are a player coach, many of them are, whether you've got other sales leaders who help you in this or maybe that's your main responsibility is to lead the team. Your time, energy and effort is precious.

There's a principle that we teach our agencies that you probably have all heard of before, the 80-20 rule. We've talked about the 80-20 rule on this podcast, Pareto's principle, the vital few versus the trivial many. And we typically, certainly with producers, go very deep in the 80-20 in terms of their book of business and understanding focus and priority and where to invest their key effort areas. Right? Because there is a substantial difference. There is a predictable imbalance in the universe, and we need to understand what that is and leverage it. Why? So that we can get greater freedoms. We have greater impact. We can make a difference in where we're trying to make a difference.

So when I think about mentorship, this is where I want to spend the most of the time talking on this podcast today, and this is what John Maxwell said, and this one hits people a little bit weird, but I think when I say it or after I maybe articulate it a little bit better, you'll probably understand this. Here's what he said. "Not everyone is worthy of your mentorship. Not everyone is worthy of your mentorship."

Now, why is this so important? Well, because this is where sales leaders in particular get stuck. They get really frustrated, they get really exhausted, and they get really inefficient. So all these things come together. It's like, "Well, you don't like what you're doing. You're not having great success. The organization is not performing at the level you want it to. You think it should. And a big part of this is because this idea of not everyone is worthy of your mentorship doesn't ring true.

Here's what happens. Maybe this has happened to you or in your agency. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Probably heard that phrase before, but what do I mean by that? Well, let's face it, some of the most unproductive producers on your team, those producers who haven't committed much time, energy, and effort on their own are asking most of for your time, energy, and effort, and sometimes to substitute what they are not doing or not willing to do.

So you take ownership of that. "Well, I'm going to help you. I'm going to save you. I'm going to go deeper. I'm going to do whatever I can." You keep pouring in time and you keep pouring in effort, and you keep pouring in energy, and you go, "It doesn't make a difference. They're not doing anything." But you try it again and you try it again, and you try it again, and you try it again.

Now, listen, if you want to look at the 80-20 principle in terms of agencies... Now I understand this is not true for every agency. I understand that there are unique circumstances, all of that. But just understand the concept, the fact that 20% of something leads to 80% of something else. As we talk about the producer's book of business, the agency's book of business, typically we see 20% of the clients produce 80% of revenue. Predictable and balance.

I can tell you a couple things with producers, from sales teams. I work with agencies and I've got a few agencies that may have four, six, seven producers. I have some agencies that have 40, 50, 60 producers on their team. So the ratio is the same, although the numbers may change a bit. But I will tell you that 20% of the producers from most sales teams produce 80% of the revenue.

Now, we're going to get to what that means in a second, but 20% of producers produce about 80% of the revenue. It's close for most agencies. Here's another correlation of 80-20. 20% of the producers on your team cause 80% of the issues, problems or suck up the most of your time. So knowing those two concepts, and those are two total ends of the spectrum. So 20% of the producers produce 80% of revenue.

Now, again, there's some nuances there we're going to talk about, and typically 20% of your producers suck up most 80% of your time, energy, and effort. Okay, we got to figure this out. So what happens is that we invest as a sales leader the majority of our time, not the minority - majority of our time with producers who either don't care, don't commit are complacent, fight back, are resistant, frustrate you, and you want it for them more than they want it for themselves. I mean, that's what happens.

Now, what does all this mean? It's like, "Where am I going with all this?" Does this mean that if you have a producer on your team and they're new, and they're starting, and they only have a very small percent of the revenue that you shouldn't mentor them? No. Please hear me. It's not what I'm saying. There are always nuances to anything. There's always a bigger story in anything. But just understand you take a step back and look at the principle behind it because here's what happens. If you look at a lot of agency sales teams, if you want to make this even simpler, you typically can look at it because this is very true. All the different agencies we look at and work with, it's typically about a third, third, third.

You have a third of producers who are doing really, really well and have big books of business. Now, by the way, some of those might be complacent or legacy agents. That's a bit of a different story, but there's a big chunk of business there. Then you get a third in the middle who, again, you've got some in that middle that are like, "Man, if I can give them more time than energy and effort, if I can equip them better, if I can educate better, if I can resource better, if I can connect them better, they will take off.

And you know it. You don't need a big workbook for this. This is called gut and conversation. You know it. So there's that middle group and then there's a group at the bottom. Again, I'm not talking about those that just got started or you're trying to get through validation process because, again, everyone is owed that, right? They owe that opportunity if you bring them on your team. But those... Maybe they've been there for a while and you know, gosh, it's not working. It's not happening.

I ask questions. I try to motivate them. I spur them on. I give them articles to read. I give them skills to work on. And they don't do it. They don't care. They don't buy in. They don't want it. But you keep pouring this time and energy and effort with this group. Well, a couple things that happens. Number one, it gets you really, really frustrated. I had this conversation all the time. Remember I just said it. You want it for them or than they want it for themselves, and it just doesn't work that way.

Here's the other part of this. You've got producers either at the high end or even the middle end. Again, every situation is unique, that would love more of your time, energy, and effort. They would appreciate more of your time, energy, and effort. They long for more interaction with time, energy, and effort. They're really close, and they're on their way, but they need more of you.

Now, here's an analogy to think about. Because you as a leader, I talked about this last week of personal leadership, you only have so much capacity. That's what we're talking. This is what the series is about, leadership capacity. I talked more about sales leadership capacity. We're going to get to sales and service capacity, so hang in there if you like this conversation because it's important.

So you're filling your cup every day, hopefully, right? You're trying to fill up your cup. And by the way, I've got my cup if you're watching the video here. But you're filling your cup. More capabilities, more skills for you, more learning, more experience. And then you take that cup and you pour it into people on your team who quite frankly have a hole in the bottom of their cup and it just pours out, and you just keep pouring in, and you keep pouring in, and you keep pouring in, and you keep pouring in, and it just keeps coming out.

Meanwhile, again, the analogy here is you got people on your team, they got a big old cup. They want that sucker filled and they're just saying, "Hey, and you come over after you keep pouring time, energy, and effort into those people, and maybe you got to drip or drop left." Right? A drip drop. You got a drip left in your cup and you kind of boop, there you go. Here's a little of me left."

Now, why is this so important? Well, again, from an organizational standpoint, you're pouring all this effort into people, and let's be real here that maybe there are two or threes out of 10. Now, there's a different situation on hiring and all that kind of stuff, but that just happens. No one hires perfect. You're always going to have issues. But you pour into people that maybe there are three out of 10, and if you pour all the time, energy, and effort and the world in them, they might be a four.

That's just the fact. Maybe they're in the wrong position, the wrong role was, the wrong hire. It could be a number of things. But time is only a diminishing asset. And you got people on your team that maybe are five or six, or seven. They're right in the middle, and if you pour into them, they could be eights, nines, or 10s. What does that mean for revenue for the agency? Huge. Huge opportunities.

So just think about that from that component, that analogy of what cup are you going to pour into? Are you going to pour into a cup that's bigger, and willing, and receptive to take it? And by the way, they've earned the right. Because here's the thing, and this is... Obviously, I work in coaching and consulting, so this is a bit of me getting on a soapbox here. But there's nothing more deflating when you see it. Here's this bad word, potential in people, and you know what's possible for them.

If only they would just invest a little bit more and they never do it. They're good. And at some point they have to earn the right. That's why it says not everyone is worthy of your mentorship. They have to earn the right for more. Again, everyone gets a level of basic training and resources and equipment from the agency and where you're at. Absolutely. That's why they're there. But beyond that, you got people that say, "Listen, listen, coach, listen, sales leader, I want to get better. Help me get better. What can I do?"

Those are the people you pour more and more into, right? I mean, this is true for anything. This is true, I know for me in sports. My kids are in sports. My daughter was like, "Why is the coach always talking to me and getting on me?" I said, "Because he sees that in you, and when you give it back, he'll give you more." Same is true as anything in terms of production and the sales leadership. So go deeper in that.

By the way, here's where I'm going to get to my fourth M. I know I spent a lot of time on mentorship. The fourth M is multiply. So when you model, you do the right things, you motivate, you listen, you encourage to everybody on your team. Then you begin to mentor the right people on the agency that have earned the right for your mentorship. Hopefully, it's a lot of people by the way. You got more of that. You begin to pour more. And this is when it gets exciting because, "Well, gosh, what do I do 'Cause I'm running out of capacity again," is it begins to multiply.

Now, whether that's another sales leader that steps in or here's the what typically happens. You have your champions in your agency. If you don't already, your producers that they're leading by example, they're leading by demonstration, they're leading by success, they're leading by results where it becomes part of the agency's DNA and culture if it isn't already. It's like if you go to a very high level organization, and I can use sports on this or some great examples of sports organizations, that they just do things differently and that when you go to that organization, there's a level of expectation, not because the coach or the manager is always barking at you, but it's because that's who we are and that's the way we do it.

When you've got people leading for the top, that's what great organizations do. It's all fostered in. It helps with buy-in. So that's the multiply, right? You get to watch your investments in the right people. You've mentored the right people and empower them to grow. Now, they're pouring to other people in different ways, whether it's directly or indirectly.

Here's the other thing. This is really important. So even if you didn't buy in anything that I just said, right there, there is no doubt there is an issue. When we talk about people, people, people, people, people, it is not easy. Leadership is not easy. But this idea that agencies are struggling with, what, attracting the right people, developing the right people. Here's a key one, retaining the right people. When you pour in your time and energy and effort and spending all this effort in people that don't really give a darn right or don't care, some other people on your team do, what do your best people think?

Now, sometimes they go, "Well, they want to be left alone, Brent." You know what, to a degree that may be true, but they do want you to appreciate their efforts. "Hey, you are rocking it. Is there anything else we could do to even help you take it to the next level? I love what you're doing." Now, again, while that's trips and all that. I know there's things that happen with agencies, but as a leader sometimes it's just this fact that remember silent gratitude is no gratitude at all.

If you got someone who... I will tell you this, someone who was a $200,000 producer that became a $500,000 producer that came to a million dollar producer, guess what? Most of those producers, the growth producers, they're going, "How do I get to one and a half?" Not I'm good. Now, are there exceptions to that? Of course. But the best people, the best producers are growing because they like competition. They like to win. They like to hunt. They like to find the fullest expression of themselves. And just sitting there for years is not what they want.

Now, again, there may be different capacity issues and freedom things they want to look at, but at the end of the day, you as a sales leader need to continue to invest in these people. Even if it's smaller amounts that you are being intentional with your best producers and just like you think you are sometimes with your worst producers. And of course I've already talked about where the time, energy, effort gets disproportionate, but you always think about why do some of the best producers or team, or talent leave your agency?

Of course, we talk about lift outs and what's going on in the marketplace today. And you can't prevent this 100%. I get that. But part of that is it's amazing. This is a relationship business. Just like we talk about clients. They buy on emotion. So does your team. I appreciate you. We have conversations. What's next for you? Those are things that sometimes you go, "Well, I don't know. We don't have the money, the financial structure."

Could be true to some degree to keep some people, but somehow I'd just be like, "You know what? It's pretty close and I wasn't appreciated and I think there's more opportunity. They'll help develop me to the next level where I'm kind of stuck here now. I've reached my ceiling here. And by the way, our sales leader is more worried about the people that aren't doing the right stuff than the people that are." Right?

So maybe this is hitting home for some of you. Maybe this is kind of like, "Ah, I don't want to hear this and I don't..." But listen, I mean, part of my goal in this podcast and what I do as a coach is I want to help agencies sometimes see things they may be missing. I want to help them execute of things maybe they've just had ideas for a while. I want them to take action on things that truly have an impact on their agency. And this is something that we just see again and again. And if you're watching me, I've got a couple notes here. This is just pouring out from my heart because I love this business. I love when I see sales leaders in particular, which by the way, I said this before, I'll say it again, I truly believe the sales leadership role, whether it's sales manager, whatever title you give, chief revenue officer, I believe that is the most difficult role in the agency.

Now, this is not to diminish any other role because there's a lot of very difficult roles when you're talking about producers and account managers, and obviously agency principles, and all this trust that goes into that. But many sales leaders, they are wearing more hats than anyone else in the agency, and they in many cases have their own book of business, which they have grown and nourished, and they've got that responsibility.

Now, they've got these people who have these different backgrounds and experiences. I always say producers are trying to nail jello to a tree. They wiggle a lot. That's hard. Different personalities. Some are easygoing. Some are fiery. Some people are go-getters. Some people are not like. You got to figure out all that stuff. Well, I've got your own book of business. And you got the responsibility in many cases to the executive team or the leadership overall to get results.

So there's a lot that goes into that. So when I say all that, the reason why that's so important is it comes back to the word capacity. Capacity. So you as a sales leader, how do you maximize your capacity? I think at a very simple level, but a difficult level is to really understand the 80-20 for you and your team. What is the 20%? Whether it's the personnel, right, the conversations that you have, how you apply your time, energy, effort, the 20% that gets you the 80% of the results you want.

By the way, when you get the results, it also provides greater freedom. We talk about the best version possible. The best version possible is freedom of your time, freedom of the relationships, meaning you have better relationships, freedom financially. Certainly you're making more money as an agency personally and as an organization and freedom of purpose that what you do matters.

Because that's probably the biggest thing of purpose. Is there anything more frustrating when you get passionate, you try to help someone, and again, going back to what I said earlier, they don't care. It feels like you lose your purpose. Why do I even have this conversation? So those things are critically important. So we're going to continue this conversation in future episodes, and we're going to talk about sales capacity in particular, right? Sales capacity, and of course how that reflects to service capacity.

Because listen, most agencies are saying, "We got to find more people. We need more people." And that could be very well be true, right? I have to know the specific instant of the agency, but for many agencies, that is certainly true. But I would ask you as an agency, as an agency leader, as an agency producer, I don't care what your role is, if you have an in influence, you're a leader. I would ask you, "Okay, people might be true, certainly, but what can I do? What can we do to increase our capacity?"

What are the things that are generating the greatest impact that we're not doing as much of as we should, and what are the things part, frankly, that we're doing too much of that isn't generating much in terms of result, or certainly isn't very effective. As always, I want to thank you for being a podcast listener. I really appreciate the growth of this podcast and the audience. We'll continue to publish things. I know I've got some interviews lined up coming up. It's been a while since I've done some of those, so I'm going to get those back on the docket. I'm going to bring Roger Sitkins back in and get some of his wisdom on some of these areas of capacity as well.

But again, if you're an agency that's looking to take the next step in your growth, in your journey, I'd love for you to learn about the best version possible experience, process. What that means for agencies, helping your agency understand there are four things that an agency can do very well and very deep: Alignment, Green Zone, retain and replicate, and obtain. Focus on those four things in particular system and order that makes results predictable and guaranteed. Thanks so much for being a listener. If this has helped, leave a rating and review. We appreciate that. Five star reviews only please. But no, seriously, I want to thank you for that reviews. Share this with other agency leaders as well, and we'll continue to try to do our best, my best and our team's best to add value to you and your agency. Take care.