Empower the Talent & Technology in Your Insurance Agency
how well does your agency maximize its current talent in your agency today how well does your agency maximize the technology that you probably pay a lot of money for every year in your agency today I'm going to tackle both of those questions on today's agent leader podcast enjoy welcome in to the agent leader podcast this is the podcast for insurance aent agency leaders to learn to grow to develop to think bigger than you've ever thought before to have greater awareness and Clarity and ultimately design and execute a best version possible Insurance Agency my name is Brent Kelly I am your host I'm delighted to be with you on today's episode on today's episode I'm going to tackle good results trap number seven that's right number seven this is the final trap of seven that I've been going through on this podcast Series so if you've missed any of the past episodes just look at the current podcast platform you're are you're on or find another one they're on a bunch of podcast platforms and take a listen to the first six traps and the purpose of this entire series and the episode today is to help highlight a potential obstacle or trap that your agency may be facing to shine some light on it uh to provide some solutions and ways for you to address it and the reason we call them good results traps is because for insurance agency it's a great business such a great business that if you do none of these things that I've been talking about there's a good chance you're still going to get good results but we also know that good results can be and oftentimes is preventing insurance agencies from that true best version possible and I also want to highlight this a special opportunity for all Insurance Agency leaders and professionals listening to me right now if you would like to receive your own best version possible customize plan a true plan with Solutions and areas to identify for your agency to give you greater Clarity it all starts by booking a phone call there's no obligation or cost to this if you go to sens. cbook aall so go to sens. cbook aall we'll have an intro call for you just to make sure you are real human with real needs and a real agency and if you qualify past that uh we will do an assessment a coach will do an assessment with your agency takes about an hour to go through the assessment it's very thorough and then you will receive a customized plan that will be personally delivered by that coach again there's no cost there's no obligation we at the sitkins group want to provide as much value to agencies as we can yes some agencies that are get this plan may continue to work with us some agencies may not there's no obligation to this but we want to provide as much value for you to see the light in certain areas and what's possible for your agency to truly aspire to that best version possible so again it all starts by sitkins dcom SLB Booka call all right let's get into our episode today trap number seven we've gone through all these traps trap number one no strategic model trap number two uh was no unique selling proposition trap three part-time uh producers trap four part-time clients trap number five lack of accountability trap six not utilizing the power of 8020 which leads us to trap number seven which is an underutilization of talent and technology an underutilization of talent and technology so we're going to talk about this in conjunction today because this is a big one and I talked about this in Prior podcast episodes but I believe this at the bottom of my heart all right with everything that I have that the number one job the number one role number one responsibility of an insurance agency leader Above All Else and there are many responsibilities running and leading Insurance Agency is hard there is no doubt but if I if you if you ask me and ask the top agency leaders Above All Else as a leader or leadership team what's it all about number one it's about the growth and development of your agency's number one asset what is that your people the growth and development of your agency's number one asset your people obviously as a coaching and training and consulting company we deal with this every day with agencies the fact of what is your agency's growth and development plan today for your number one asset your people I'm going to ask that question to you obviously I'm not going to hear your response but I want you to think about it if I had to ask you and I will ask you what is the growth and development plan or process or strategy for your people today in your agency what would you answer how would you answer now you may have a great one but if you're like the majority of insurance agencies it's kind of a we hope that they're going to learn some things we hope that maybe there's a training program we hope that they read something we hope that they see something we hope that they learn from some other people we hope they just get some experience in the marketplace and we'll get better now this is an example of of a huge good results trap because if you don't train or develop your people with intentionality with the strategy with a model can you still get some semblance of good results yes you can right this is why this is a trap but what if you began to become more intentional and strategic with your people and really create a plan or process or model that says we believe in you enough to give you as much resources and tools and training for you to improve your skills at the highest level because isn't at the end of the day about the people executing skills uh it's no different than Sports you got to go out there and execute skills on the field or the court or the rink or whatever it is the track but we have to have our people to be be able to execute skills the highest level whether it's communicating with people whether it's our producers or service team our leadership team all these things work in conjunction so I just want you to think about that what is the growth and development plan or process or strategy for your agency's number one asset your people and if you're not sure or unsure it's very likely a trap that's costing you not only relationships and culture but a ton of money right a ton of money in terms of profit of growth and of course agency valuation U it's been interesting uh to do look at studies out there and I've referenced this on some prior episodes but the best practice report that comes out from the big ey and rean Consulting they do such a great job with that you know they they talk about the investment or there's some some stats in their show about the investment into your people and even based on best practices agency the number is shockingly low um if you look at Best Practices in just general Industries I've done some research on this of what do some of the best service companies and companies out there in in all Industries what do they invest what percent of the revenue do they invest back into their people uh the answers range obviously but typically it's been one to 5% you'll see it a lot about 1 to 5% of a company's Revenue goes back into the true growth and development the skill development of their people in the insurance industry for independent insurance agencies in particular the number the last number that I saw was one quarter of 1% one quarter of 1% and by the way some of that includes uh certifications uh licensing requirements so it's not even a true skill development it's almost just to maintain or be able to do the basic things of what you do so the bottom line of this is I see time and time again there's a major Gap and I think this comes back into talent development and talent recruitment I I really believe this I talked about this on a on a previous trap I think it was trap number five but I believe so much right now that the talent issues we're having in the insurance industry is often fact that we just expect good people to show up and Thrive like oh well we have an agency here so they should a just want to work for us and B when they work for us get better and see when they work for us stay forever it doesn't work that way uh it's very much like college recruiting in the college inil World which means that you've got to find ways to establish differentiation in your agency you've got to find ways to show people that you're willing and able to develop them at higher level so that they can succeed and also be able to to do that so that they want to stay with you for a long period of time right in college athletics you've got to be able to recruit you've got to be able to develop and now with nil you've got to be able to keep and the same thing is true for independent insurance agencies and I think sometimes we can take it for granted uh again every agency is different so I don't know your specific model but I would just challenge you and ask you to think about what is your talent and growth strategy and specifically how much are you investing in your people because here's the thing and here's the exciting thing is there really is not not a better investment there is not a better investment you can make in your agency than investing in your people now if you've got people you've invested in and they do nothing and then there's other issues well go back and listen to trap number five around accountability right or maybe you're holding on a people too long because if you have people in your agency that do not want to grow and develop just have no care about it then they shouldn't be on your team right now if you have plans in place and strategies and you can demonstrate it guess what for some reason better people want to show up better Talent wants to stay right better Talent gets to become even better Talent right they continue to grow and develop so there's no better investment in fact again there's a lot of studies on this and this is a hard one to track so I want to be careful on the numbers but in general terms every dollar you put into people in the right way creates $2 in return if not more and when you think about the insurance industry and you think about multiples and valuation it can be much much higher than that but at a basic level here's what I ask you um if you were to give me a dollar and I were to give you $2 do back how many dollars would you give me that may sound pretty stupid but let me ask it again if you give me a dollar and I give you $2 back how many dollars would you give me and the right answer and hopefully you're saying and thinking to yourself right now wherever you're listening is I would give you as many dollars as I possibly could Brent yeah the answer is yes right and obviously that's a generality but the point of it is the more that a agencies invest in their people the more they tend to make the better they tend to do shocking right shocking it's I always love Roger sitkins our CEO tells the story he'll go to the golf course and I don't remember the the exact circumstances but I'll go out there and play with a group of people and all of a sudden one guy is doing pretty well and they go well that's not fair you've been taking lessons yeah right I mean think about that well that's not fair you've been working on your game you've been getting better no wonder you're kicking our butt yeah the same is true with insurance agencies like it's not that complicated if I can help you develop and grow in your skills and you continue to grow week after week and month after month and year over year guess what we have a huge competitive advantage in the marketplace yeah but we're so busy we don't have time I don't know what to do I'm not sure how to do it guess what I'll give you a hint um we have a really good plan at sitkins group and there's a lot of companies that this but we live and breathe this our sole focus is how can we help grow and develop your number one asset your people what does it look like from a leadership standpoint from a sales standpoint from a service standpoint and from an operation standpoint together in alignment what does that look like recently I put a post on LinkedIn by the way if you'd like to follow me on LinkedIn please do I love to share videos and ideas and have great conversations on there I learned a ton from different people I think it's a pretty cool platform just go to LinkedIn and search for my name Brent Kelly and and you can connect and follow me on there I've got some stuff that I share pretty frequently but I wrote this and I'm going to I'm going to condense this a little bit but I believe in this and I got some pretty good response from it uh from people out there in the marketplace here's what I wrote your team wants and needs you to lead them your team wants and need you to lead them your team wants to grow and develop alongside you now that's an important caveat I want to throw and I'm going to stop here just for a second I will tell you this one of the things that's been um challenging and magical in some of the things that we've learned in coaching and training and development of agency teams over the years uh and maybe this isn't shocking but it's it's something that's certainly truthful is that when agency leaders say oh I want my people to get trained however as a leader I'm too busy to do any of that or be part of that it doesn't work very well right I've got some people that I need to fix by the way your people don't need fixing your people need coached your people need to be developed they're not broken right they they need to be poured into in different ways but if it's hey I'm going to you know get these people over here and then they're going to get better and then our agency is going to be magically fixed yet they're not part of it at all they're not bought in they're not working on themselves they're not working on how itoll how that growth collaborates with them as leaders in the communication if that's not part of it it doesn't work very well have we had successes for example where producer has gone to one of our producer fit programs or sales trading programs has walked away got great knowledge and value and skills and went out and improved their game yes does it work even better when the producer and the service team and the leader are all walking through growth and development together oh my gosh right oh my gosh it's a different story right it's a different story so that's why I think there's got to be intentionality of this and your team wants to grow and develop not just by themsel but alongside you your team wants to be challenged and encouraged I talked about this a little bit in the accountability trap but your team wants to be challenged a good team wants to be challenged they do they may not always like it but they want to be challenged why this is like an example with my daughter um and my oldest daughter who's now in college when she was in high school I think it was a freshman or sophomore year she's like you know the coach kind of gets on me quite a bit and there could be a lot of different aspects not all coaches are great not all coaches are created equal but I said this and this I believe is is so true is that if your coach didn't get on you or if your coach ignores you it means they don't even think enough of you to challenge you but when they do get on you and they challenge you it means they care enough about you or they see the potential that's really within you right so people within agencies if they're not being challenged at all or asked to get better or do more I mean a that's a huge culture problem but B what does that really say to them what what language is that speaking to that person I guess I'm good as I'm ever going to be I guess this is it I guess and maybe they don't say that verbally but just think of the message subconsciously so your team team wants to be challenged and encouraged and here's the last thing I wrote on this LinkedIn post your team is not looking for Perfection but they are looking for commitment your team is not looking for you as a leader to be perfect you're not going to be perfect you never will be perfect but you know what they are looking they're looking for leaders I'm committed to helping us go to places we haven't thought about I'm helping us to grow to X I'm helping us to be better I'm helping us to give back to more Community whatever your commitments are only you can make those commitments but they're looking for a commitment right they're not looking for Perfection they're looking for commitment and by the way um I shared another LinkedIn post I did a video on there recently uh and it I it it's it it highlights this idea of perfection I'm going on a bit of a tangent here but I think it's important to share because the best leaders they don't talk about how perfect they are and how they always win that's part of the story it's not the whole story they also talk about the challenges the struggles they're authentic they're vulnerable in certain ways I I'm not asking you to be perfect I'm asking you to be committed and by the way if you're truly committed you're going to run into stumbling box and here's what I heard from a mentor years too people may hear your successes but they will connect with your failures people may hear your successes but they will connect with your failures yeah you could talk about how you did this and how you're doing that and what's going on great right here's the things how great we are here and they'll hear you and there's some great examples and stories you can learn from that but they'll connect with your failures let me tell you how I struggled let me tell you how I dealt with that let me tell you how I fell flat on my face let me tell you how I messed up that appointment right all of a sudden you're connecting with people because they go oh you're like me I'm struggling too and by the way when you're authentic and vulnerable they're willing to be more authentic and vul vulnerable they may have real issues they're dealing with and struggling with certainly from a professional side of things that they may not share with you because they're scared because you're perfect and they're not but when you show them that you're not perfect and if there are mistakes being made and you struggle with things just like they have they might go thank you for sharing that let me tell you what's really going on here and now guess what you can do you can actually solve the real problem right the real problem there so I wanted to share that know it's a bit of a side but it's important all right so talent development underutilization of talent development is absolutely a good results trap it goes in conjunction with technology underutilization so I'm going to keep this super simple because the amount of Technology the agencies use is crazy the amount of money that goes in technology is crazy there are a billion platforms of different stuff I'm exaggerating there a bit but there's a lot of them so I'm not going to get specific here but I just want to ask you a few questions and some thoughts around this because it is a huge good results trap what percent of your agency's technology is currently being used today I mean just take a step back and for some of you go well that's a lot of technology I have to think about that but just if you had to give a quick response of all the technology that you currently have in your agency all those resources provided what percent is actually being used right and you know a lot of people say you know 25 to 50% is pretty common um that's very much like if you were hire someone for $100,000 or $200,000 doesn't matter the number let's just say $100,000 and they only give you $50,000 a work and you go well that's just the way it is which by the way goes back to trap number three part-time producers but but think about this again are we maximizing the technology of course this is your agency management system do you have a built-in CRM or is it separate uh man there's some tools out there that are that are huge that continue to grow I mean the big one out there is zywave another one like that work comp tools um these data resources there's so many things out there and you know them because you're probably using them or paying for them but I would just ask you what percentage of that of the technology are your people using at a level are they learning how to use it better is it something that's talked about and reinforced is there accountability and again I talked about some of that these all overlap in trap number five Because by the way it's the agency's job it really is the agency's job to provide the tools and resources and a big part of that is technology but guess what it's the team's job to execute the behaviors to use those and those two things have to work in conjunction and this goes back to the good results trap if you don't utilize the majority of your technology or certainly at least more than you're using today can you still get good results of course you can you can still get good results but are you as efficient and effective as productive as you possibly can be are you leaving potentially millions of dollars from the table probably probably in some uh in some way or another right so keep that in mind bottom line of all this uh you think about under underutilization of talent and Technology what is the overarching result or kpi that we typically can see in working with agencies now again there's a number of kpis there's a number of things you can look at this isn't the end all Beall but one that's very very telling is the revenue per employee right what is the revenue per employee at your agency which is pretty simple what's your agency's Revenue divided by your full-time equivalent employees right so you can take a look at that um and what we typically see is this number is often way lower than it can or should be right um we're not developing Talent so there's a lack of growth in development we're not maximizing technology the technology itself or the people utilizing the technology and because of it we have a lower Revenue per Revenue per employee we either have too many employees not doing enough things or they're not as efficient or effective right that's that's a common one that we see or we're simply just not maximizing their roles within the agency and guess what typically happens well we just hire more people we just need another person for this another person for this we just we'll just we'll just throw another person at the problem you can't just throw people at problems if you've never addressed what the problem actually is and that's why this is a huge good results trap when you take a step back and go gosh maybe the problem is that we need more people maybe the problem is we don't have enough people doing the right things with what we currently have and and and we see this time and time again now again every agency is different you very well may need more people I'm all for adding more people to your agency don't get me wrong but the problem we typically see is that we just think a person another person or two or three that's going to be the solution and we've never really addressed the underlying problem as far as kpis go and the number of this and again every agency set up a bit different so this is a bit abstract but I want to give you some just basic numbers to think about if your Revenue per employee right now for your agency is less than 200k you're in a bit of trouble uh certainly in today's world you're in a bit of trouble certainly you're in a danger zone doesn't mean again doesn't mean you can't do okay but you're definitely in a bit of a danger zone I've had some conversations the last few weeks right with some pretty low Revenue per employees and it comes back with just this capacity issue and all these things that are going on with their people so under 200 is is is a danger zone I think $2 200 to $300,000 you're starting to do pretty well I still think it's a bit of a yellow zone in fact we have agencies right now that are above 300,000 that are pushing towards 400,000 Revenue per employee and Beyond why they've gotten really intentional they've gotten really focused they maximized their talent they've been maximized their technology they stay on top of things right they're very intentional with how they they operate business and how they build relationships and how they uh instill culture in the agency so under 200,000 not so good 200 300 you're doing better obviously close to 300's better than down by 200 uh but if you get over $300,000 you're starting to be really systematic in some of these areas so I want to highlight this and I want to I want to thank you for being a listener if you've listened to all seven of these traps love to get your feedback um feel free to reach out to me or my team I'd love also know what topics you'd like me to cover on this podcast so again always reach out to our team if you go to our website there's a contact form there uh we'd love to hear from you but I want to thank you for being a listener to this podcast if this episode or other episodes have added value to your life your agency uh please leave a Reading and Review we appreciate that we want to continue to grow this platform I have some amazing guests that I'm going to be interviewing from different perspectives so excited to bring them on uh this podcast as well and also final reminder if you like to get your own best version customized plan a customized plan for your agency and again this is not something that's for fodder this looks crisp it's sharp it's impactful and we as coaches will walk you through it for your agency it it all starts by booking a simple phone call go to sitkins dcom Booka call sitkins docomo aall and with that I wish you your agency all the best in your success thanks so much for listening take care everybody
2024-09-06 22:04
