The Agent Leader Podcast

Unlock the secrets to skyrocketing your agency's revenue and client satisfaction by escaping hysterical activity! Roger Sitkins joins Brent Kelly to unravel the art of prioritizing top customers, managing the 80/20 rule, understanding revenue concentration, and much more. Whether you're struggling with client management or looking for ways to boost your profitability, this episode has got...

In this podcast episode, Brent Kelly discusses the importance of asking questions in order to improve communication, engagement, and connection with others. Brent emphasizes that asking questions is the number one skill to learn for agency leaders, sales professionals, and insurance service professionals. Listen in for four reasons why asking questions is important: (5:36) #1- It allows you to tru...

In this episode of the Agent Leader Podcast, Brent Kelly discusses the importance of aligning all aspects of your insurance agency - sales, service, leadership, and marketing. Brent emphasizes the need for three areas to align your agency and improve overall performance: Commitment (8:15) Culture (11:00) Communication (12:40) Listen in for examples of how sales and service, leadership, and marketi...

Brent Kelly dives into three reasons why Practice Quoting is Stupid in this episode of The Agent Leader. What is practice quoting? We define it as "the art of providing a quotation to an unqualified prospect in order to force the incumbent agency to lower their renewal price while retaining the account." Practice quoting is a waste of time, energy, and money for insurance agencies. Need...

Join us as we dive deep into the inspiring journey of insurance industry veteran, Kari Glennon. Brent and Kari discuss her background and experiences in the insurance industry, as well as some of the key challenges and successes she has witnessed. Kari emphasizes the importance of accountability in agency leadership and suggests using cohort management to tailor support and resources to individual...

In this episode, host Brent Kelly interviews Jim Koster, the Vice President of Sales for Property & Casualty at TRICOR Insurance to discuss the challenges and successes of building a growth-oriented agency culture. Jim emphasizes the importance of finding quality producer candidates, and investing in training and development to ensure their success. He also highlights TRICOR's success in i...

In this episode of the Agent Leader podcast, host Brent Kelly interviews Chet Rhoads, president and CEO of HUB Three Rivers. Chet discusses how his leadership tactics have helped double the size of their agency while maintaining a great culture. Listen in for highlights on organic growth, the significance of role-playing, and executing the right behaviors to further your career in the insurance in...

In this episode Brent Kelly interviews Harrison Brooks, a partner and consultant at Reagan Consulting, to discuss the growth and challenges faced by independent insurance agencies. Harrison shares success stories of agencies that have grown their revenue and offers advice on how to compete in the current marketplace. Harrison emphasizes the importance of being creative, equipping employees with th...

In this episode of the Agent Leader podcast, Brent Kelly interviews Mike Malinowski, the president and CEO of EHD Insurance. Mike and Brent dive into the challenges and successes of running a successful insurance agency, with highlights including: the importance of developing a sales culture within the agency the benefits of creating a separate business unit for smaller accounts. the value of cont...

In this episode of the Agent Leader podcast, Brent Kelly interviews Jim Welsh, the CFO of Winton-Ireland, Strom & Green (WIS&G), a California-based insurance agency. Jim Welsh shares his experience so far working with the Sitkins Group to improve their agency's performance, especially finding value in the holistic approach of our training programs. Get ready to hear how identifying and...

The recent  Best Practices Study  showed that the most critical issue facing independent insurance agencies today revolves around one thing, people. How can you find, develop, and retain the best talent?    This episode is a special replay of a Live webinar with Brent Kelly built to help show you how to: Get your sales & service teams working together; same goal, different roles. Increase prod...

In this episode of the Agent Leader podcast, Brent discusses the issue of treating everything as an emergency in your insurance agency. He emphasizes that not everything is an emergency, and treating everything as such can cost the agency time, money, and create culture issues. Brent shares insights from conversations with agency leaders in our coaching programs, highlighting the importance of def...

In this episode of The Agent Leader, Brent Kelly discusses the importance of becoming more interesting in order to be more successful as a leader or professional in the insurance industry. So how do you become a more compelling and engaging communicator in order to connect with others and build relationships? As Dale Carnegie said "to be interesting, be interested." With that in mind, wh...

The purpose of this episode of The Agent Leader is to challenge you and to encourage you to think bigger than you've ever thought before. As an individual, as a department, or as an entire agency,  so often we don't realize how limited our thinking really is. In fact, our limited thinking creates limited results. But, if we can think bigger, we have better behaviors, and our behaviors driv...

Brent shares areas of impact from his recent three-day Agency Leadership Institute hosted by Cincinnati Insurance and led by Reagan Consulting. Listen in for what great agencies from around the country discussed as their top areas of impact. Get ready to take notes and learn more on: Recruiting and training producers, having a culture of accountability, green zone focus, leading with excellence, a...

What is the greatest asset your agency possesses? Technology? Data? Insurance carrier relationships? Community involvement? Knowledge? Credibility? While all of these are great assets, the number one asset every agency has is its people. In fact, in the recent Best Practices Study, the concept of developing your people was mentioned 8 times in the opening section - with IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEOPLE!...

Brent is joined by one of our awesome members, Ben Zimmer, CEO and founder of Ethos Insurance and Risk Management. Ben is an excellent example of the growth-minded leaders we like to work with at Sitkins Group, and when you listen you'll know why. Get ready for an impactful discussion with Ben on what is working in his agency - that's been growing 20-25% YOY. As the episode title implies,...

What would you do if someone on your team made a mistake 80% of the time? Reprimand them? Possibly. Train them? It better be a lot of training! Release them? Hard to argue. When you ask agency service team members how many times a producer gets a service request or change 100% accurate and 100% complete, the first time, the answer is usually about 2 out of 10. In other words, producers make mistak...

How often do you or the people in your agency focus on things that, although they may be impactful, they have no control over? How much time, energy, and effort goes into anger, frustration, or anxiety wasted on others' mistakes that we can't change? Do others' actions impact you? Yes. But the bigger question is, do they control you? In this episode of the Agent Leader, Brent Kelly wil...

How can you make meaningful change in your insurance agency? Brent talks over four ways agency leaders can create greater buy-in with their agency teams. 7:30 - Having a Clear Vision vs. Confusion 11:08 - Having a Culture to support the Change 14:30 - Having Consistency vs Intensity 16:50 - Commitment vs Complacency If you're ready to make impactful change in your insurance agency and want to...

Are you simply making the easy choices in your insurance agency, that are actually making your life harder in the end? As we always say, if you make easy choices today, it'll make your life harder long-term. Brent challenges independent insurance agency leaders to think through five choices that can impact your business long-term. 4:30 - Choice #1, Does your agency have a Team Training and Dev...

Have you ever wondered what you could gain from producer training program? You're not alone, producers keep asking if our programs are right for them. Brent Kelly goes over the core strategies from our #1 program, ProducerFit, to help develop insurance producers. Get ready to take notes on the tips to success in insurance sales that Brent shares from our 8-week virtual program. Whether you&#39...

Brent is bringing some excitement and thoughts back to you, the audience, from two events he recently participated in. Great ideas are everywhere for improving your agency. The real challenge is how can you as agency leaders keep the intensity through consistency for change? One of the biggest frustrations we see in working with agencies like you is the fact that we start things, we just don't...

Brent highlights three shifts that insurance agencies can make to truly become indispensable in their marketplace. As an agency leader, or within your agency, your agency culture, what needs to change to get you to the next place? Follow along as Brent goes over three shifts you can make to transform into indispensable, along with some deep questions to ask yourself as a leader. Shift 1: Shifting...

Roger Sitkins and Brent Kelly finish their discussion on Service Capacity in Part Two of our Two-Part Series on Sales & Service Capacity.  Listen in as Roger shares how simply knowing your numbers can increase your service capacity, how to use technology to enhance client relationships, and KPI's to help you measure capacity in your agency. If you missed part one, you can catch it on our p...