Improving Sales Capacity with Roger Sitkins

Roger Sitkins comes back as Brent's guest for a 2-Part series about Sales and Service Capacity.

In this first part, our coaches tackle the topics that can help you increase, and improve, your sales capacity.

Come back next week for Part 2.

Brent Kelly:

Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, I am your host, and thanks so much for joining me on another episode. Very excited today, I have a guest with me, it's been a while since I've had a guest on the podcast. He's a guest that has been with me many times before, so if you've listened to this podcast, you've heard his voice and I'm sure you've taken some great information from him, but it's been a while. So I've got Roger Sitkins, the founder and CEO of the Sitkins Group with me today on the podcast. Roger, welcome to the Agent Leader podcast again.

Roger Sitkins:

Well, thanks, Brent. It's great to be here, and I'm really excited about the topic here because it's becoming very transformational with the agencies we're working with, so it's going to be exciting to share it.

Brent Kelly:

If you've been listening to the podcast over the past few episodes, I've started a series, I guess we'll call it a series, on agency capacity, and I've talked about personal professional capacity, what that means. The most recent episode I talked about sales leadership capacity. And Roger's going to take this today, this is something we've been talking about a lot internally. I know Roger has had probably many mornings and nights researching this and thinking about this, so he's got a whole list of things that we want to talk about today. Before I get to the specific conversation with Roger on capacity, make sure you've got your pen and papers ready to go. I always want to mention the mission of this podcast is to help you, the agency leader, gain clarity, build consistency, and make a commitment to become your best version possible.

And not only is Roger my guest today, but co-author of the book, Best Version Possible. And as I mentioned before, if you want to get a copy of that book, just go to sitkins.com/bvp. And if you want to learn more about our experience, the process, what we do, how we partner with independent agencies that are looking for that next level of growth, and by the way, as we're going to talk today, increase their capacity, you can go to sitkins.com/experience to learn more about the experience. So Roger, you ready to talk about this important topic of capacity today?

Roger Sitkins:

Yeah, I sure am.

Brent Kelly:

All right. Well, I want to start off and give an intro to this. And this is a conversation that we've had internally for a long period of time that I've mentioned, but I think it was, I don't want to say highlighted or maybe reaffirmed, in the best practice to study, Roger, that recently came out. I don't know if it was early this year or late last year, but recently the study came out, and I know you went through the whole thing and reached out to me and said, "Wow, there's some major things here." So I want to start with that because I think it leads into what we're going to get into with capacity today. And just from the audience perspective, what jumped out at you from the best practice study that came out?

Roger Sitkins:

Well, first of all, I would hope that all the listeners, if they're not already a best practices agency, that they would be comparing their results against that, because it is best practices, and I'm assuming you want to be best, like best version possible. One of the things that jumped out at me right away, and we've talked about this a couple other times on the podcast, but I'm taking it even deeper now, in the beginning, all the verbiage of 3, 4, 5 pages of words, whatever, it was in all caps that said, "It's all about the people." And that's one of the number one things we're hearing out there is that we can't find people. People are getting lifted out, they're stealing our people, they're giving them big raises, allowing them to work from home, and there's all these things, and it's just so disruptive.

And I look at this and I say, "Well, if it's all about the people, what are we doing to help the people?" But then there was something, Brent, that's brand new. I was reading a study over the weekend and it said that about half of the industry workforce is going to retire between now and 2036. Well, that's a long way off, 2036, but in the whole scheme of things it's really not. And what it's basically saying is that half the workforce just because of age is going to retire, and that's 400,000 jobs. So that means we've got to find 400,000 more people and keep the ones we have, the ones that aren't going to be retiring in the next decade or so, we've got to keep them, and then we've got to find 400,000 more.

And to me, that number accelerates the fact that we darn well better start looking at the people we have now, can we and how will we increase their capacity to generate even greater results? So the key to this is what are we doing with what we have, how do we create a great cultural overall that will keep our people, attract more people, and the people we have get a lot greater results, are accelerating in their results, and as you know, at the end of the day everything's about results.

Brent Kelly:

And something I've shared on previous episodes in different ways, but you're so right, Roger, and first of all, those numbers are staggering. And I think about 2036, oh, that's forever, and I go, "Well, how long ago does 2010 really feel?" That's the same distance. Sometimes you got to look back, realize how fast it's going to be here. And you're right, is there going to be enough people for that? I don't know. So one of the things I talk about all the time, and you do as well, Roger, is yes, you need to attract the best talent, I think that's something every agency should be looking at doing, but what are you doing to retain and what are you doing to develop with what you've got? And so maybe you could walk us through some ideas you have. And really, I guess the biggest thing is what agencies are really doing in those areas, good and bad to retain and develop their people.

Roger Sitkins:

And we talked about this a few months ago on the podcast, but it's worth repeating, when you look at the best practice of study, you go across all of the ranges and pick an average what they're doing, and one of the line items is training and development. The average agency spends 0.3% of revenue on training and development.

Brent Kelly:

Could you say that one more time, Roger? Because I know you said it before, but I think people overlook it.

Roger Sitkins:

0.3, not even a third of 1%. 30% of 1%, three tenths, however you want to look at it. And yet they spend 0.5% on miscellaneous expenses. So what's more important, miscellaneous expenses or the training and development of your people? And as you know, a lot of those training and development costs as a line item are either continuing education and maintain a license, or continuing education to maintain a designation, which is crucial, you should have those. If you're a professional, you do it. But I look at it and I think, if people are important, we should be trading them all the time. I just see all too often that people fall under this trap, and it's one of the traps which we've talked about before, why training fails. And they say, traditional training's the one-off training, that after 90 days, 84% of the information's gone.

And people say, "It's a pretty good thing," but then they go back and they do the same thing they've always done, which means at best they'll maintain the same capacity that they've always done. So they've got some ideas and it goes away, but 84% of it later, oh, we went to training, we went to training. We've had this happen where people said, "Yeah, we've been through Sitkins." I said, "Really? What did you do?" We went through a one hour webinar. No, no, that's not it. So the challenge here becomes how much money am I willing to invest. And it is an investment. The best investment you can make as an individual is in yourself, and as your agency overall the best investment you can make is in your people. And at the end of the day saying, "We're investing in our people to dramatically improve their ability, their capacity to handle more than they're currently handling today."

So the study to me just pointed out, just jumped out at me that, holy smokes, what are we going to do to take care of that? It's like joining a gym and not going, or signing up for golf and not taking golf lessons. Yeah, I had five, six lessons, but after two I was so screwed up I couldn't go back and play anymore. Or it's somebody that's trying to play music and they say, "Well, I guess I need to practice," and they practice once or twice and then they quit. Come on.

Brent Kelly:

I was thinking about the training you said there, it's not only is it not showing up, but for the event versus the process, which you were talking about, like, "I went to an event, I went to a training." It's like, "Yeah, I went and worked out in February, so I'm good." It doesn't quite work that way. It also hit me too, as you were talking about the numbers there, and I know obviously there's a lot of different miscellaneous expenses, but the first one that came to me is paper. I'm like, "We're spending more on paper than we are on our people." And what's the return you get on the paper, for example, in a quote with miscellaneous expenses versus, as you said, the greatest investment you can make is into people. It's an investment, it really is, because done the right way it grows 2, 3, 5 tenfold in the right way.

So it's a great point there. I want to take this too, because one of the things that came up in the best practice study certainly was about people, but also how it impacted in many ways agency valuation, which is I think for any agency leader listening I'm guessing you care a little bit about that, so Roger, talk about your thoughts on the agency evaluation impact of this.

Roger Sitkins:

Well, first of all, it's a great business and the vast majority of people we work with are independent insurance agencies. So the owners of those agencies, their agency is probably certainly one of the largest, if not the largest, individual asset they have. So in this best practices study, the second main point that jumped out for agencies that are really growing is that valuation is top of mind. And today, when you're looking at the multiples of 10 times, 11 times, 12 times, 13 times, plus two or three times more on earnouts, it's a lot of money. And we look at this and say, "Well, what's really happening?" And as you know, we did a study about a month ago, we called it the value impact study with our platinum agencies, which is our larger agencies we work with. And we said, "What's happened to them at the end of the last three fiscal years as far as the valuation of their agency?"

And I took the profit they were receiving, the bottom line profit times 10, and even though the multiple's greater, but the study went back three years ago, and then we looked at 2022 as the last year, but once again, I didn't use a multiple of 12 or 14 or 15, I used 10. So over that timeframe, those agencies we work closely with that are really focused on, hey, this is our asset, we've got to invest in it, we've got to increase it, the average agency increased their valuation by 180% over three years, and these are not small agencies. So think what happens when you invest? Is this self-serving? Yeah, I guess, but the end of the day, what it comes down to is are you getting the best results, and that comes back to capacity, which leads to valuation, which leads to financial freedom.

Brent Kelly:

I was writing down, as you were saying that Roger, I think this is a, I'm not trying to be a smart alec here, but the 180% increase in valuation, did they bring on 180% more people to do that?

Roger Sitkins:

No. As a matter of fact, every one of them dramatically improved their capacity with their producers. In other words, the books of business, but more importantly, one of the KPIs, which we'll talk about that we all know we should measure, is the revenue per employee. So the valuation went up 180%, revenue per employee went up dramatically also. Again, it comes back to we're having trouble with people, they'd better handle more than they're currently handling. How do we do that? Well, we'll talk about that today.

Brent Kelly:

Well, let's get into that because there's a lot of meat I know that we can talk about. And I think I've mentioned to the audience here that the last couple weeks it's been more about personal professional capacity, sales leadership capacity, I really wanted to pick your brain, Roger, and get your thoughts when we get into sales and service capacity, because that's really where leaders run into this problem, I need more people, I need more of this, I need more of that. And what they're really saying is, "We just got to find some more producers. We just got to find more service team members." And by the way, again, that could be partially true. I don't doubt that there's a need for that, but I think sometimes the question you've asked so well, Roger, and again, I want to go deep with you, is well, what could we do with the capacity that we already have, and are we truly maximizing that? I want to talk about both sales and service capacity with you, and if it's okay with you, we'll start with sales, seems to be a big deal.

Roger Sitkins:

Yes.

Brent Kelly:

But just give me, again, without a specific question here, Roger, just some of your initial thoughts on what agencies have done, can do, and should do to help improve sales capacity.

Roger Sitkins:

Sure. Well, there's a couple of old sayings that always jump to mind here, nothing happens until something is sold, and then the other one is net new revenue doesn't solve all your problems, just most of them. So we look at this and we say, "We need to add more producers, need to add more to add more producers," and we somewhat tongue in cheek say, "The world's greatest producer recruiting program is to get your current producers producing at industry leading levels," because just adding more producers doesn't give you more capacity, it gives you more potential. And I challenge agency owners, as you do, all the time, say, "Look, if the majority of your profit comes from, in most cases, the top 20% of the producers are 80% of the revenue," so we're looking at this saying we want to add more people, but why would we add more producers if the producers we have now are not all successful?

And it comes down to what percent of your producers met or exceeded their sales goals last year. And in an average agency, it's quite frankly less than 50% if they're being honest with themselves. So do I want to add a whole bunch more producers that have potential or do I want to take the ones that are part of our team, part of our culture we like, but maybe they're underperforming today because we're not doing a great enough job as sales leaders, we don't have the high performance teams, we don't have a set offense that separates us from everybody else, but we don't want to just throw people at us. So we look at this, and as we've talked hundred times, and you've maybe talked a thousand, is that it comes down to the green zone and the red zone. And as we've laughed both internally on podcasts before, of everything we've ever developed, it's maybe the stickiest.

We've got to get our producers in the green zone 80% of the time. And if this is the first time you're listening to Brent's podcast, the green zone is four activities they do, sales, relationship management, a continuation process, not a renewal process, and building their pipelines, future ideal clients only. We want the producers in that green zone 80% of the time. The other zone is the red zone. Well, that's service trap, that's still going to happen, it's not a perfect world, but our goal is to get those producers up to 80% of their time, energy, and efforts in green zone activities. So there's a red zone and a green zone, but there's actually a third zone. It's called the comfort zone. It's the comfort zone. It's when the producers all of a sudden are making more money than they thought they'd ever make, and they're in a situation where, hey, they've got a few customers and they're doing pretty well and they're not really held accountable, but they're making more money than they thought they'd make, and they start coasting.

And the law of gravity says, "You only coast in one direction." But we get these producers that are complacent. And we know that one of the absolute best things about our business is recurring revenue, but it also allows a producer to get complacent because they go, "Man, I never thought I'd make $150,000 a year." And I'm looking at the producers saying, "Yeah, but right now, at this point in your career, you should be making 300,000 a year if you do the right things and spend the majority of your time in the green zone." But they get complacent and they hide behind activities, they stay in the service trap, as we kid around, they go on fake appointments. They're having a tough day, I got an appointment, I'm leaving. And they're not held accountable to it. So the number one thing we've got to do is take those, what we say, part-time producers and get them to be full-time producers, taking our sales team that less than 50% hit their sales goals to where 80 to 90% of them hit the sales goals.

It's not a perfect world. We could get 100% of the producers to hit their sales goals if we lower. Okay, that's not how it works. It's setting the bar much higher in your organization, because the bar's pretty low in our industry. It's a great industry. You can do pretty darn well even when you go complacent because you're making high six figures, but you're not really getting to financial freedom. So it's just frustrating to me that we have these producers who are not producing. They're coasting.

And so why is it that the best producers we work with are all over a million of commission? And we say somewhat tongue in cheek, until you get to a million dollars of commission income, you're still a producer in training. You're not allowed to quit the gym when you've only lost 10 pounds but you need to lose 20. It's the same thing here. Why would you quit? Why would you say, "I'm happy."? Because at the end of the day, if they don't do the right things as an agency or as individual producers, end of their career is full of regrets, and that's a terrible place to be.

Brent Kelly:

My brain, as you know, Roger, goes to sports analogies often, and I've told on this podcast before, I'm sure you've heard about it, I just think about the idea of if you're not on the court, an example is the best players you can't just go sit on the bench. And as you're talking about this, and I love the phrase you had, is adding more producers, basically, I wrote it down, it doesn't guarantee more capacity. It does give you more potential, but it's what you're doing with that. And all of a sudden, I just had this image of a basketball team, which by the way, usually has 12, 14, 15 players on the team, and they just keep adding more people on the bench, and all of a sudden they have this roster of 40 people and they all play a quarter.

So it's all you're doing is just adding, a lot of time, just more stuff versus you're not getting the results. So I think, again, just thinking about that, and I know there's a lot of work involved in that with agencies, there's no doubt, but you're right, the idea of green zone and red zone is one of the simplest things we've talked about. But I'd also say it's the most effective, at least one of the most effective things, because people just get it. I'm only 20, 30, 40% even in the game, yet we're trying to get more people to play. Well, just get the people that are there that aren't playing to play more, and by the way, if they don't and won't, maybe that's time for another conversation, depending on the situation that you're in. Go ahead, Roger. You were going to add.

Roger Sitkins:

Well, I was just going to say, maybe they're just an account exec hiding behind a producer, and that's fine. We've got to play the position we're fit to play. So that's a starting point. But getting to the point where the agency overall says, "Here's our business model." We've talked about this so many times now, it's so sticky with the producers and the agency leaders we talk to, we say, "Look, your current business model's perfectly designed for you to achieve the results you're currently achieving." And people will look at us when we first say that, and I'll say, "Well, if your business model is that only 60% of your producers hit their goal, that's your business model. And if your business model pipelines are pretty empty, that's your business model." People will go, "Wait a minute. Yeah, that's not our model." I say, "Well, I know it's not intentional, but the reality is, look back, that's your model. You're allowing that."

And the thing we see when people buy into this, and it's so cool to see that the platinum results we get when they buy in, all of a sudden they've raised the bar in every area of their agency. So now when we bring a new producer in and we say, "Look, you're going to be working with us as a sales leader, whoever that may be, but we're also going to have you look around because there are so many great role models." And this is something I would challenge every agency leader listening to this, watching it, is what are the role models in your agency today? Is it a bunch of producers that are in the comfort zone, they're complacent where they are? And the young producers go, "Well, in four or five years I could quit working too."

Versus the ones where boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, every single time. I saw a report, in fact, I haven't even shared with you yet, with our largest individual privately owned agency, and the producer goals for the top six or seven producers revenue this year is $500,000, new business. And what's really cool, two or three of them at the end of the first quarter were more than 50% of the way to their annual goal. Well, they've raised the bar, they have higher standards. So when I look at this and I say, "Well, if we're worried about capacity, I think a big part of capacity is what are the standards? What are you allowing to become normal?" We've talked about this all the time about, another one of our acronyms, what is normal? What's normal? Empty pipelines? Underperforming producers? Or is it normal that, wow, look at this high-powered agency, look at these results we're getting, because everything's about a result.

And by the way, one of the reasons our producers do so well is they spend 70, 80, some of them have been 85% of their time in the green zone, and they have great high performance teams, as we always talk about, sales and service, we'll get into that a little bit more today, that work together to make sure the producers are in the green zone 80% of the time.

Brent Kelly:

All right, I love these conversations, and we've got some bullet points to talk about, but as we get into the conversation, it's just more ideas come to my mind, and some of this is mindset here. And you nailed it, Roger. I just listened to... And I forgot actually the podcast I was listening to, listened to too many probably, but it was talking about as far as with labor shortage, the talent gap that, by the way, this is not an insurance industry thing, this is across a lot of industries, certainly. And he was just talking about, he said, "There's too many companies that because of a labor shortage or a challenge, they feel the pressure and they subdue or they allow themselves to go down towards mediocrity. To say, "Well, I know they're not great, but at least it's a body." Versus saying, "This is our standard. This is what we do as excellence."

He goes, "What's amazing is that when you keep that standard of excellence, the culture of excellence, this is who we are and why we do it," he goes, "Those few people that are truly great tend to find you." So where do you want to play? And you've talked about this for years, are you going to run your agency by design or by default? Default is allowing all the external things to determine your future versus saying, "No, this is who we are and what we do." And that doesn't mean there's not external forces that affect you, I get that, but I just see too many people that bend down to, well, it's just what it is and I guess we'll just have to be average, and I know that's what's out there, and at least we're better than some other people," versus saying, "No, no, no. This is who we are and why we do it, and the type of people that are part of our organization." So I don't know if it hits home with you, Roger.

Roger Sitkins:

Absolutely. When you think of what are you attracting, are you attracting the best employees, are you attracting the best clients? Or are you in a race to the bottom and everything you do is about price, commodity based selling only, and your producers are order takers, something that we just introduced this week actually, is the fact there are three types of producers, there are order takers, there are general practitioners, and there are specialists that are known as subject matter experts. So the order takers wait for the click, ping, ring, and ding to happen, they do a whole bunch of quoting and they're successful on 10, 20, 30, 40% sometimes, but it's all based on commodity. Now, unfortunately, in our business, you'll do okay with that. You'll have a lot of washouts, but overall you'll do just okay. The general practitioner or producer that's never specialized, we always say this, "That in any profession, specialists always make more money than general practitioners."

So we look at this and we say, "Well, if you're a general practitioner, at least you make sure you're raising the barn and have a minimum account size and targeted account size you go after." Because if not, as a general practitioner, you eventually have to plateau, because you have that too-too syndrome, too many accounts paying too little money each, and you run out of time because you're stuck in the red zone way more than the green zone.

And then the final one, the SME, subject matter expert, it's somebody who's absolutely specialized, the largest individual producer we're working with now, six million of commission income, two classes of business, two classes of business. By the way, he sells all over the country, and so much of it's now he can do easily because of this. Now, that's not for everybody, but when we look at every one of the over million dollar producers we work with and ones we help develop, they always have a couple of specialties at least. That doesn't mean they don't do some general practitioner work for whatever reason, but the more they specialize, the more they do. So think of your agency that's listening, do we have a whole bunch of order taker, or quoters and floaters? Do we have general practitioners? Or do we have SMEs? How good do you want to become?

Brent Kelly:

I want to be careful, because we could make this a whole separate podcast, maybe we should, but it just hit me because we talk a lot about specialists and indispensable risk partners, to do that, you got to know your craft. You want to say they expect insurance, you really understand them, their business, their needs, their frustrations, their wants, their desires, you got to get really deep with people, but also it hit me too with capacity, with the generalist, and some of you listening are going, "Yeah." It's like think about when you're writing 80... I don't know, I'm just making this up, but let's just say 50 different classes or types of business and all the accounts, how much extra research and chasing and time you spend of all this stuff that you know don't know that well, you got to go find out, and you keep replicating things that you don't...

It takes a lot of time, energy, and effort. And I won't speak for the gentleman you're speaking of, although I know who you're referencing, but for a six million dollar book of business, my guess is he knows this stuff so deep that it just comes out, he's got those classes of business, his capacity in that area is pretty darn incredible. I'll leave it at that.

Roger Sitkins:

And one of the other guys in our sales mastery program, who's almost as old as me, which is old as dirt, but he's right at four million of commission income in just three classes of business, but he knows those classes so well. I think we've referenced this before, there was a study done by a major carrier at the middle market accounts, 100, $150,000 of premium, and they were surveying the decision makers and saying just about what do you, what don't you like, et cetera, and there were two big frustrations that came out. The number one was my agent doesn't really understand my business. So that's the general practitioner who walks in, so tell me, what do you guys do here? I'm going to take a look at your policies, copy some information, the old look, copy, quote, and pray, so there's a frustration that there's not an understanding of the business, thus they can't really understand the risk factors.

And the second thing was, quote unquote, "we hate the renewal process." And that's why we say it's not a renewal process, it's a continuation process, a whole different way that you talk with these people. But when you're stuck as a general practitioner, again, you'll do okay. The average book of business at a general practitioner's going to be three, $400,000 of commission income, and they're going to make 30% blended, whatever it may be, and that's okay, but again, it's not even close to best version possible, it's not close to potential. And we've already used that word, and it's a terrible word, because potentials always... it'lll be like, "Boy, he had a lot of potential, she had a lot of potential," which means you didn't come close to it. And I know we can both pontificate on this forever.

Brent Kelly:

It's interesting because it just hits me some things that come up, because I wasn't even thinking capacity in that way, and it just hit me how many times you got a producer that chases a bunch of different businesses and now they got to learn that language and they got to learn those underwriting concerns and well, how do they do that, and what carriers do we have that work best. It can suck up a day. Just, well, what did you do? Well, I worked really hard on this one account but I don't have a great opportunity, I don't really understand the risk, but you know what? I got a shot. So anyway, all right, I'll stop there. I know that the audience is probably thinking, well, this sounds good guys, great in theory, but what are some of the foundational things or strategies, certainly from a sales side, that producers and agencies can think about to be able to implement some of these capacity things, Roger? So we could probably have a list of 100, but maybe just give me a few things that jump up that are most impactful to you.

Roger Sitkins:

Some of the key ones, and we're going to get into service capacity here, and that's number one, again, we've got to get the producers freedom to spend their time in the green zone. But within that, things we talk about all the time, number one, do you have a unique selling process? Do you have a unique named selling process? Can you explain to someone in 30 seconds what you really do? Well, I'm an insurance agent and I give quotes, and I float along and hope somebody buys. Versus do you have a compelling story. It basically starts with, like you might say, manufacturers turn to me when, or whatever the class of business you're working at, what is it that people come to with? What are they frustrated by that you help solve? So the unique selling proposition, it's named in that it's yours and you can explain it very clearly here's how we work.

The second thing we talk about all the time, it ties right to unique selling proposition, what are your five points of differentiation? What is it about you and your agency that you do that most others don't do? And even if they, quote, do it, they don't know how to articulate it, and it's certainly not part of an executive briefing you do up front that focuses on them. So many of the executive briefings, capability presentations, whatever you call it, they talk about themselves, it's very self-focused, versus potential client focused, because that's what they care about. I see these ones where here's our agency, here's how long we've been in business, here's how big we are, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What do I care about? Well, I care whether you understand my business. Tell me in a capabilities presentation, again, we would prefer to call it executive briefing, what are the three biggest problems you solve for that class of business, and that's where you get focused. So that's points of differentiation.

Certainly, at the end of the day, they're going to have somebody to talk to. So that's the future ideal client pipeline, which we've talked about 100 times. And that pipeline should be full with referred or targeted leads. And as we've talked about, and we preach with the producers now, every-every. Every new client we write comes from a referral and every new client we write within 12 to 18 months gives us a referral, because the experience is so great. Now, is that going to be 100% true by anybody? I guess if you take one order off of a referral it would be, but what if 80% of your new business came from a targeted referred lead or introduction, and the experience you gave them was so great in that first 12 to 18 months that when you filed a very specific, as we call it the reverse referral process, you get a referral from 80% of those people?

So 80% of what you're write comes from referral introduction, and those people are so wowed they give you a referral introduction. Getting a dry mouth here. But it's just so powerful and it's a mindset. So much of what we talk about is changing the mindset. It's changing the mindset. It's not just, oh, here I am going through the thing. So we kid around about the old Dunkin' Donuts time to make the donuts guy. So it is crucial. And then one that we talk about all the time, and I love the analogy, you said it for the first time three or four years ago when we brought our producer camps, you said, "Would you rather have 100 pennies or four quarters?" Four quarters. So that revenue per relationship is key. And that ties back to future ideal client. So those are some things absolutely to do.

And the other thing, which I know you've said before, you can't be a million dollar producer writing a thousand dollar accounts, because it takes a thousand. So it comes back to not only the agency, but the individual producer, what's your business plan? I want 50 clients at $20,000 each. Great. It might take us four or five years to get there, six years, who cares? And then the other mindset, I'm going to put the time in anyway, I must as well be great at it.

Brent Kelly:

Recently for me, Roger, yesterday I was doing a producer camp with a group producers and we talked about that, this idea that here's the cool thing about this business, you really get to choose your business model, and we were talking about the vision, and we've got samples on there, things to think about, but it's like, "Well, okay, if you're going to build a million dollar or a two million model, what does it look like? How many clients would you have?" And sometimes you're like, "Well, I've never thought about that before." And I would say, "If you don't aim at something, you might hit it." And what do you mean? It's a joke, it means you have no idea where you're going. You're just wandering through the desert, so to speak, and just hopefully you run into stuff.

One other comment on this, because as you're saying is just hitting me on notes, it's this idea of... Because it comes back to capacity. You as producers, you could tell 100 really bad stories 100 times to people that don't fit your future ideal client, or you could tell it really, really effectively super powerfully with 10 people of higher levels that are 10 times as large of the account size. And you tell me what you want to do. Where's your capacity going to be? Well, I don't know. Part of this is you got to practice it, you got to get better at it, there's things that go around this, and, again, we can go down a whole different rabbit hole there, so it's important stuff. Important stuff, for sure.

Roger Sitkins:

I want to jump in on something you said, they're all practice, because we talk about it all the time, low risk practice, and I'm appalled with some agencies where they work so hard to get in front of a future ideal client and then it's not rehearsed, the executive briefing, the initial discussion is not rehearsed. And when we do challenge people to do that, it's painful for us too, but what's amazing is how quickly the story turns and how much better they get because they've practiced it. The first time you're doing an executive briefing or whatever you want to call it in front of a future ideal client better be the third or fourth time you've actually done it, but it's the first time in front of them. And we just see this so often. We've kidded around I know on this before about the young guy back in the days, when we said at the end of the first day of the producer camp, "What did you learn?"

He said, "Coach, I got it. I'm no longer going to practice my presentation during the actual presentation." Of course, everybody cracked up, but it hit too close to home. Why would you not rehearse it? Mindset, every event deserves my very best, my very best is not showing up, throwing up, and blowing up. My very best is a conversation based upon research on their industry, research on their company, how underwriters would look at their accounts, and the things we do that we can help them control total cost to risk or total cost to benefits. But if you're not prepared for that, you just say okay, we're here, let's look at your policies. And unfortunately, you used still make 100, $150,000, but come on.

Brent Kelly:

Sure. Again, we're talking about this, you don't have to do any of this stuff. You'll probably still be fine.

Roger Sitkins:

No.

Brent Kelly:

But this just comes back to tangible moments, and this is the reality of it. Again, I know every situation's different, but it's like you've got an opportunity to go see a good future ideal client, hopefully a great future ideal client, and let's say the hour before you're getting ready to go there, are you doing true prep and practice and going to the game and visually getting yourself ready for this and making sure you're not missing anything and rehearsing how you're going to present things and the questions you're going to ask? Or are you back looking at emails, scrolling through social media, doing something that someone else has probably already paid to do in your office? Think about that for a second. What's that value of an hour? Well, I didn't do my best at the appointment, but I scrolled through a few emails and social media. And again, maybe I'm sounding a harsh here, but it's true because we get back to, well, there just is not enough time.

Well, it depends. We always say, Roger, there's no time management, it's situation management. How are you managing that situation before... I say when the lights go on, it's what you did when the lights were off, and I think so often people overlook that, they go, "Oh, yeah, that makes sense," but they don't actually do it. All right. My rant's over now. my rant's over. All right. I want to get how this ties into service capacity, because let's face it, this is something I've got many of the agencies I personally coach, Roger, that are really struggling with this and they're dealing with it is it's, again, just like with sales, it's hard to find good service people, it's hard to figure out how to maximize our efficiency in that area, so I just want you to think about from a service perspective, service capacity, I'll start big picture here, what are some big things to jump out at you in this area that can help agencies move forward in this?