Episode 343: The 90-Day Agency Reset: How to Decide What Actually Matters Next

Welcome to the Scale Your Insurance Agency Podcast. This podcast will give you all of the tools to scale your insurance agency and live life on your own terms. Wherever you are today, if you're stuck or well on your way to the success you desire with the right people, processes, and promotions in place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromso.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Scale Your Insurance Agency podcast. And in working with independent insurance agency owners across the nation, something continues to become very clear. And I have a question for you. Does your agency have 20 priorities? Meaning new business, retention, hiring, automation, producer, accountability, marketing, training, processes, workflows, and everything is urgent? You see, when everything gets equal attention, nobody, including your team, has clear direction. Look, you work hard. You work uber hard. Your team, hopefully, all of them work uber hard and not on their phones on the things that need to be done. Under your vision. But many times when there's too many priorities, nothing gets done quickly. And that's what we want to eliminate today. Super grateful that when everything came to a halt in our own agency, because over a 10-year period, our team was operating within a bonus system, and it worked wonderfully. Until the year came when three out of the 12 months they missed their team bonus. And in having a discussion with the team, trying to figure out what the heck happened. They said, Mike, we just don't have time to write new business. We are so consumed with taking care of our existing customers to our agency standards that we're afraid to ask for referrals, we're afraid to ask for cross-sells, we're afraid to do anything else to cause the business to grow because we can't keep up with the work that's already on our desks. They didn't have clarity of what actually needed to be done, the priority items. They did, but they just didn't have time to do it. It was at that moment that I knew, and the pressure was on me as the leader owner, right? The pressure was on. And so what did I do? I took immediate action. And I engaged with an expert who helped us redesign the plan for the agency. And we created a plan that had structure, that had clarity, that we could scale upon, that had unlimited potential. And within that plan was simply quarterly goals. And that's what I wanted to work on today is your 90-day plan. So remember this, like I said earlier, when everything gets equal attention, your team has no clear direction. So let's pull back and get clarity of direction for that 90-day window. Right? I remember uh one of our UPP members two, three years ago, said, Hey, have you heard out heard about the book, The 12-week year? I said, I have. He goes, Have you read it? I said, no. He goes, Well, I'm in it right now and it's phenomenal. So I'm gonna get together like a mini uh study group within UPP and we're gonna work on the book. I said, Great, let me know how it goes. He came back a while later and he said, Hey, the the group went great. We did a seven-week study course, the book was great, the group was great. I said, So what did you learn? He said, everything that happens in the future of our business is predicated on that 12-week period. I said, wait a minute. Like one quarter of the year? He goes, Yeah, exactly. And at that moment, it reiterated for me that we were on to something. Quarterly goals, quarterly goals, quarterly goals. And that's where I came up with the phrase the quarterly goals are the engine that drives the Ferrari. The Ferrari being your independent insurance agency business. The quarterly goals are the engine that drives the Ferrari, that sweet 90-day window. So let's focus on that. Yes, the bigger picture is out there. Yes, the one-year plan, the three-year forecast, the longer-term vision. But things are changing so fast. Let's stay focused on what we can control. And so today, let's focus on choosing the one to three outcomes that would make the biggest difference for your agency over the next 90 days. What are the one to three outcomes that would make the biggest difference for your agency in the next 90 days? Get everything on the table, and then make a decision. So it's going to take some prep work, list all the initiatives, the problems, the opportunities to come for attention. And this is exactly what we coach and teach. We get it all on the table, all the initiatives, everything that's going to move the needle towards the goals of the agency. And then we assign an owner to that goal. We assign an owner to that goal. And generally speaking, everybody on the team has one, two, or three goals. That's it. No more. We have a place where other things reside temporarily. We call it the parking lot. But that's those, the other initiatives sit there because we're working on the quarterly goals. The items that are in the quarterly goal space, because that's the engine that drives the Ferrari. Don't confuse a long list with the plan. Get it all on the table. Discuss with your team. Which issues are limiting our growth, our profitability, or our ability to serve our clients at the highest level. See if there's a way to get it off their plate. Just like my team said, we are afraid to ask for cross-sales, we're afraid to ask for referrals, or we're afraid to do anything else that would cause the business to grow because we can't keep up with the work that's already on our desks. And so that's one of the first things that we did is identify all that stuff. When we were done, we created a branding plan. We separated the sales and a service team. Then we created a plan for the leadership team with a clear, executable plan to grow and scale the agency. And then we designed the agency to identify how work, communication, and accountability would flow throughout the organization. Everybody was clear, and they had their one, two, or three things that they owned. And if they finish them up early in the quarter, no problem. We have things sitting over the parking lot. We will just plug something else in there. So which, you know, discuss with your team. What's limiting our growth? What's limiting our profitability? What's limiting our ability to serve our clients? And what happens if we left it unresolved for 90 days? Would it still be there? Would it still matter? You see, us agents with servants' hearts, guilty. Us agents with servants' hearts, we want to serve people. So when somebody says, I need help, what do we do? We help them. But it's back to discipline, like I learned from John Wooden, UCLI, UCLA icon, when I saw him speak live. Among many, many other things, that magical night, he said, discipline yourself. So nobody else needs to. It's discipline. Which improvements could we make in speaking with your team that would make other things easier? How can we make meaningful progress together with the people, time, and resources that we have available? And here's a quick hit from an agency that we work with. If new business is strong, which it is in this agency, but clients are leaving because renewals are handled too late, or there's no roadmap for renewals, or no strategic plan for your renewal system, that could be a problem. Generating more leads compounded the problem. You have a revolving door. Business in, renewals out. Business in, renewals out. No, we don't want that. We want business in, retain renewals. That's how we grow. So we moved to fix the renewal experience first. It's intentional. It's an intentional plan. By the way, I just have to add this. You know one of the things that, and there's two things I want to add. First, client segmentation or tiering. If you don't have your client segmented or tiered, that's the first thing you need to do. Once you get your client segmented or tiered, then you let's say in our agency, what we did is we segmented our clients. There were triple A clients, AA clients, and single A clients. Our AAA clients were our best. And you may have heard on a recent podcast that I did, one of our agents, Smartly, identified that 91% of his revenue came from 50% of his clients. 91% of his revenue came from 50% of his clients. And 83% of his revenue came from 25% of his clients. My first question for him: what are we going to do with that 9% of revenue that we want to get rid of? The difference between the 91 and 100, right? We pushed it to a processing team that just handles it. Their licensed team members focus on the renewals or continuing the relationship, as it said. So the renewals. Which ones do you handle first? The AAAs. Here's what I was gonna say. If you are not making phone calls to your very best clients to continue that relationship, you're making a mistake, in my opinion. Now, you might say, Mike, we just don't have the capacity. Okay. Do a sly broadcast call. Okay, the FCC, I get it. Whatever it takes, how important is it to you? It's not uncommon that I will position a team, I'll say, how many renewals does that CSR have right there? Or the account manager? How many renewals is that person responsible for? They are responsible for, let's say, 300 clients. All right. So divide that by 12 months. That's 25 a month. And there's 20 working days in a month. That's about one a day. They're not able to make one call a day. That's what I get. Silence. Darn right they can. Mindset. Our mindset's our skill set. So make sure that you're clear. Choose the one to three outcomes out of today. Choose the one to three outcomes out of today for the quarterly goals. That priority should include a result that you intend to achieve. Give you a teaching example. Improving retention is a direction. A measurable outcome establishes what success looks like and what done looks like and when it must happen, aka a deadline. So what does done look like and what's the deadline? So I'll give you a couple examples here. Here's a vague priority. We need to improve referral, improve renewals. We need to improve renewals. Here's the clear 90-day outcome. Increase qualifying renewals with documented outreach at least 60 days before expiration from 45 to 90 percent. Increase the outreach starting at least 60 days before expiration from 45 to 90 percent. If you're at 45 now, we want to get to 90%. By the way, side note working with agencies across the nation and my additional research and collaborating with data facilities within the industry. A phone call at 60 days seems to be a strategy that drives high retention. A phone call at 60 days. Here's the next big priority example for you. We need to strengthen sales. Here's the clear 90-day outcome. Increase monthly new business commission or premium, however you count it. Most of you is probably a premium. Increase monthly new business premium and fee revenue from $25,000 to $32,000 by day 90. Easy. Clear. Make sure you have clarity. To be terrific, you need to be specific. We need to get the owner or leader out of service. Great. Reduce routine service escalations requiring the owner. From five to one. Only escalate when absolutely necessary. Yes, these are just examples for you, but it's the thinking and the specificity that's the key. One meaningful outcome achieved is worth more than ten initiatives that never reach the finish line.

Finish strong.

Next, decide what stops. Decide what stops. Every priority consumes capacity. When you have priority too many priorities, you're consuming capacity of your entire organization. Choosing what matters requires deciding what will wait. And not making this a decision is always is also a decision. Choosing what matters requires making a decision. And to reiterate that, not making a decision is also a decision. So decide what stops.

Or the clients. May not be profitable. May not make sense anymore. May choose to defer some things.

Okay. Useful things that can wait until the next planning cycle, which is the next quarter. And then protect. Most importantly, protect that essential time. Make sure that everybody has time and capacity to do the highest priority, the things that matter. And it should be surrounding those three things. To give an example, I have in front of me mine, my quarterly goal list. I'm looking at it right now. It's in my hand. I have two things that I own on the list. One, build the team. That's my responsibility. Two, build the growth engine. That's my responsibility. I own both of those. And because I own both of those, I take it very seriously.

And by the way, how often do I look at those? Daily.

Freeing up capacity, blocking time on my calendar to make sure that I spend adequate time with those. Here's an example from one of our agencies on deciding what stops. They had got into our promotions training, got super excited, and started implementing a ton of promotional stuff. And you know what happened? They got results. The phone started ringing, they started writing new business, and all of a sudden, they didn't have time to take care of existing business. And other things started breaking down within the business. So we had to pause some of the marketing activities, which I am not a big fan of, by the way. And we we moved to fix that so we don't need to do that again. But sometimes you need to remove things that are redundant and other operational endeavors within the business to make sure that you are doing the priority things that matter. So the question is: what are you willing to stop or postpone that gives real outcomes a real chance? Meaning those one to three items on your quarterly goals. And the next item I have for you today is alignment. Alignment. In working with agencies, many times agencies aren't aligned in who's doing what, who's responsible for what? Many times agency team members are thinking, well, that's not my responsibility. So-and-so's doing it. Well, so-and-so is not doing it because they think it's somebody else's responsibility. Nothing gets done. And then the client says, Hey, I've been waiting for a phone call for the last three days. What's going on? And then they leave. Alignment. Everybody and everything must be in alignment. One accountable owner. That's why the one to three things has one owner. That owner is responsible for the outcome. They know the deadline. They understand who is doing what at every step of the way. By the way, that owner doesn't have to do all the tasks or work, but they need to know who's doing it. So they know the deadline, they know the desired outcome, they have total clarity on that. They know who's doing what, what within to get to done's status and the goal. And four, they always know the status. They can report to leadership at any point what the status of that goal is. Have a start. Baseline, a target, and a deadline. Make sure you do check-ins. We do check-ins at least twice a month and more often in our huddles. It's a simple dialogue like this. Is your goal on track or off track? If it's on track, great. Anything needed? Nope. If it's off track, hey, what's going on? What support do you need to get it back on track? And then you have your execution items to get that person back on track. And you find out what's needed in complete clarity to get that person on track with a solve on the spot and a deadline. So to keep the reset alive after that point, is there anything else blocking progress? What decision or support is needed? And what will happen before our next check-in?

So it's that simple. On track or off track? On track or off track.

Within the next seven days, if you don't have one to three items documented within some type of a system that will move the needle forward towards the goals of your agency, or if your agency doesn't have goals at all, that's a problem. Because knowing your destination is all you need to get there.

And if you don't know where you're going, there's no possible way you're ever going to get there.

Within seven days, huddle with your team. Make sure everyone has one to three priority items, not 20. Carve out the one to three priority items that they can and will do in the next 90 days. Okay. We just started Q3. Excuse me. We just started Q4. We just started Q4. Now's the perfect time. Carve out the one to three priority items that your team is going to do to get you to your agency goals. And then do weekly check-ins, on track or off track, on track or off track. But make sure that those initiatives are the right goals that are in alignment with not only what they do as part of their responsibilities for the organization, but they are in support of the agency's goals. Remember, your team can't execute 20 number one priorities. Choose the one to three outcomes that will move your agency forward. Make room in their capacity to get it done, do your check-ins and add accountability where needed. Because remember, accountability breeds responsibility. Accountability breeds responsibility. I hope this has helped you. Remember, if you've got 20 priorities, you've got no priorities. One to three. One to three. And if this podcast episode has helped you, please pay it forward. Please share it with somebody else that you know that may need to hear it, that may want to hear it. Because if you got value out of it, there's a good chance they'll get value out of it too. Just simply go to scale your insurance agency.com, scale your insurance agency.com, share that link, or there may be a link around this these show notes, and share them that link or both. Whatever it takes. We're grateful you're here. We hope this has helped you position your independent insurance agency to grow and scale like never before. I will see you at the top, and I'll see you on the next episode.

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