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If you stop making these mistakes, you're likely to make $50,000to $100,000 more a year.

Winning Strategies

Producer mistakes are costly and avoidablE

Duck these "don'ts" and get out of "stall mode"

By Roger Sitkins

You've probably heard that history has a way of repeating itself. This is certainly true within the ranks of independent agency producers. If you're among them, no doubt you've also heard: "If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got." These days, I'm not so sure about that.

While I can't deny that history tends to repeat itself, I have found that in this business, doing what you've always done no longer gets you what you've always gotten—it gets you less! That's because the marketplace and economy are changing, marketing methods are changing, and your client demographics are changing.

So if everything is different from what it used to be, why would you continue to operate as if nothing has changed? This brings to mind a favorite quote from Albert Einstein: "Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." Unfortunately, that's what average producers do—which I guess is why they're average!

In our Producer Training Camp, a primary goal is to get producers to "quantum leap" their careers by 10 years. Basically, we share with them all of the mistakes that we've noticed average producers making over the years so that they won't repeat them.

What follows is a list of universal, career-stalling producer mistakes.

• Quoting anyone who asks. When someone you've just met asks you for an insurance quote, how do you react? Do you quickly comply? If so, you're "practice quoting." You must stop doing that and learn how to qualify your prospects. Establish some rules of the game with them and explain exactly what it will take for you to do business with them.

• Writing part-time clients. This ties in closely with practice quoting and occurs when a prospect requests a quote for a specific coverage, such as a businessowners policy on a small office building or his personal auto or homeowners insurance. Are you writing such policies on an `a la carte basis without demanding that these individuals become full-time clients? If so, be aware that these part-time clients generate lower average revenue per relationship and lower retention.

• General practitioner vs. specialist. In any profession, specialists will always make more money than general practitioners, whether they're working in law, finance, medicine or insurance. While I wouldn't suggest writing only one class of business (and your marketplace may not allow it), you should focus on writing just a handful of business types. Specializing in certain businesses will establish you as an expert in those industries for their specific insurance and risk management needs.

• Empty pipelines. To succeed in this business, you have to make sure you're doing everything you can to reach out to prospects every day/week/month/quarter. Pipelines don't fill themselves! We encourage our members to have regular "Blitz Days." It takes some preparation, but it requires setting aside only a day or two every quarter to get on the phone and prospect.

• The service trap. Your job is to sell insurance, not service it. Service work is the agency's responsibility. Don't get caught in the trap!

• No calendar control. We advocate following the "Producer's Perfect Schedule." As such, Monday is your preparation day, which should be spent getting ready to play the game (low-risk practice, sales meetings, meeting with your High Performance Team, catching up on paperwork, etc.). By devoting Monday to preparing for the week ahead, you should rarely have an appointment set for this day. However, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday should be spent out on appointments. You should always have a full calendar.

• No requests for referrals. Producers should be working on (a) under-promising and over-delivering with their clients and then (b) asking for referrals. When I present seminars, I'm always amazed at how few producers ask for referrals. Usually, out of the 50 to 500 people in the audience, fewer than 10% will say that they ask their clients for referrals. And if they're not asking for referrals, you can be sure they're not asking for introductions, either.

• No presentation rehearsals. If you look at the best sales organizations worldwide, presentation rehearsals are mandatory—yet in our business, they are sporadic at best. If every opportunity or event deserves your very best, how can you not rehearse or practice?

• No sales skills training. Many producers go to a short sales training program (either specific to an industry or generic) and consider themselves trained. They never do any follow-up. I recently read an article about the return on investment for sales skills training, and the return was over 300%! Obviously there's a direct correlation among growth, profitability and training.

• Insufficient networking. One of the most successful agencies we've ever worked with requires its producers to attend at least one networking event per week. Whether through newspaper photos or paid advertising, their people and agency are always in front of the public. So when the people in their town think of insurance, they think of this agency. People elect to do business with people they know and trust. Your next great client is not looking through the Yellow Pages or googling your name. These prospects would prefer to meet you in person at a networking event or be introduced via referral.

• No trade-downs. Trading down is one of our most important strategies for producer growth and profitability. At least once a year, you must do an 80/20 analysis and decide whether the bottom 20% of your accounts go to a new producer or elsewhere in-house to give you more time to sell.

• No MAS or TAS. Establish a minimum account size (MAS) and targeted account size (TAS). In establishing MAS, you make a conscious decision never to write a piece of business that generates commission income of less than (fill in the blank). More important, your TAS establishes what you're going after.

• Insurance is their sole solution. If insurance is the only solution you provide, you'll always be known as a commodity salesperson. The next generation of producers is all about providing solutions for the client's Total Cost of Risk (TCOR) and dealing with emerging risks. Based on a client's risk assessment, insurance should be only one of the solutions a producer provides—not the only one.

• No sales meetings. The hallmark of an effective sales meeting is that every producer emerges a better producer because of something he or she has learned, shared or practiced during the meeting—they are actively engaged with their sales leader and other producers. These meetings should not be gripe sessions or involve reading aloud from company bulletins. The meeting should have an agenda and a purpose, with a focus on learning and improving.

• No story/message. You must have a unique message that differentiates you from the competition. It must be something that you absolutely believe in; something that says: "Here's why we're different, and here's why you should deal with us."

• Poor relationship management. In every agency, producers have to manage five kinds of relationships: clients, prospects, insurance carriers, fellow team members and centers of influence. But often producers fail to do this. For instance, they don't profile their clients or implement ongoing campaigns with their prospects and centers of influence, and they don't thank their team members or their company underwriters for doing a great job.

• No risk assessment. When meeting with prospects, producers often just "Look, Copy, Quote and Pray" without doing any risk assessment. Rather than looking for gaps in the existing coverage and identifying emerging risks, they simply quote based on what the current agent has provided. We're firm believers in using The Rough Notes Company's Producer Online, which has a risk assessment tool built into it.

• No service calendar. Many producers make promises to clients but never provide a service calendar that outlines specifically what they'll do and when they'll do it. They offer nothing for which they can be held accountable.

The bottom line

How many of these bullet points hit home with you? Are you making some of the mistakes that can hold you back? Unless you stop making them, you're going to plateau way too early as a producer.

Remember, the more mistakes you make, the less money you'll make. But if you stop making the mistakes we've discussed, you're likely to make $50,000 to $100,000 more per year. Which will it be?

The author

Roger Sitkins is the founder and chairman of Sitkins International.

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