In the early days of my Producer Training Camps, we’d have brand new producers— literally just licensed and in the business for only a few months—as well as 30-year-plus veterans who were still committed to improving. I’d always tell the younger producers to pay very close...
Eventually, every agency owner will leave their business. Whether or not you want to, whether it’s through internal or external perpetuation, you are going to leave. Knowing that this is going to happen, why leave millions of dollars on the table when you do?
In today’s merger and...
Accounts receivable.
If you have an accounts receivable problem, you better fix it.
It's not as prevalent today as it was in the past, because direct bill has resolved problems with collections for so many agencies. However, if you ever have to write off a bad debt, what's the cost?
Let's take a...
There’s an old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” While I won’t argue with that, I think an even better saying might be, “If it is broke, fix it!” In this article, I want to challenge your thinking about what it means for an agency to be...
In order to face success, rather than turn away from it, we must dedicate blocks of time during the week to work on each of these situations. If you do that as you plan your week, you’ll be in really good shape!
You may recall “The 12% Factor”: In any given week, you have 168...
What exactly is success? Some people define success in terms of their family, health or happiness. However, for the purposes of this article, I am referring to business success/personal financial freedom.
My definition of financial freedom (or personal financial success) is the ability to do what...
If there were just one pearl of wisdom I could share with producers, it would be this: Your network equals your net worth. That’s not a Sitkins original idea; however, I truly believe it’s the number- one tip I could give any producer.
In today’s totally data driven world, I...
Most, if not all, independent insurance agencies say they want to grow. However, the actual organic growth rate for most agencies does not reflect this.
According to a recent report, even the national brokers had an organic growth rate of only about 3% last year. While their 3% translates to a...
Your agency has plateaued employees.
Originally I was going to say “plateaued owners and producers,” but the reality is you cannot afford to have any employee who has “retired in place.” We talked about this in our Profit Zones articles in the May and June issues. As I...
This month I want to challenge you with a theme we’ve often discussed:
What’s the cost of doing nothing?
This applies to those who consistently do the same old, same old and brings to mind two of my favorite adages: “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get...
Last month’s article was about the Five Profit Zones. Well, after it went to print I had one of my semi-famous BFOs (Blinding Flashes of the Obvious): There is a sixth and very important profit zone—your insurance carriers.
I would love to have just 1% of the dollars left on the table...
