The Agent Leader Podcast

Is your agency committed to being a true sales organization? Without weekly (not weakly) held sales improvement meetings, you aren't efficiently developing your sales team.  Brent talks agency leaders through three important parts of a sales meeting, what to include, what to leave out, and how to keep the impact going all week long so you can unleash the collaborative genius within your team....

How do you get your people to buy-in to new ideas or strategies in your agency?  No matter how good your idea is, if you can't get your team to buy into it, it's a failed idea. Let's talk about this and your agency. "How can you get more people to buy in?" It takes consistency, communication and collaboration. Because again, without it, no idea matters. To read the transcript or watch the vid...

Kevin Stipe from Reagan Consulting joins Brent to discuss main Challenges and Opportunities for independent insurance agencies.  Listen in as Kevin gives great advice on what he sees the Best Practices agencies doing. From building effective teams, heading into a recession, and the importance of getting people working together, Kevin covers it all on this episode of The Agent Leader.  To...

Tim Parenti from First Insurance Funding joins Brent for this episode of The Agent Leader. Listen in to Tim's perspective on how independent insurance agency leaders can move their business forward. Tim covers his view from the financial side of key struggles leaders are facing, how to build a long-term team, and how to find good talent outside of the insurance industry. Come for the great advice,...

What is the best version possible of an insurance agency? This episode is a recording of a live webinar hosted by Brent Kelly where he addressed this question.  The foundation for every successful insurance agency is alignment of leadership, sales, service and operations. Learn how to align the same goals with different roles, improve buy-in with your team, and how to get tangible results. Ge...

What’s the plan for your insurance agency? You’ve heard us say it before, but the #1 job of an agency leader is to develop their people. Now knowing that’s your #1 priority, what’s your plan for actually doing it? Brent will talk you through the importance of having a plan, and then some ideas of what you could do to expedite developing a plan. You know that good is simply not good enough for your...

Roger Sitkins is back for this episode of The Agent Leader to go over the Best Practices Study from Reagan Consulting. This yearly Best Practices study provides a lot of great knowledge and information, so we brought Roger on to get his reaction to it all. We'll discuss what the information means to you as an agency leader, and your agency. How do you digest this information? What are some things...

There's four areas to focus on that will make a huge impact in your agency. Want to hear what they are? Brent takes all the lessons that we talk about, everything we've learned from 40-plus years in the industry and combines those into four practical areas to focus on in your agency. Listen in for why these four traps are so important, why agencies get hung up on them, examples of success, and fai...

What does the Agency Leadership Institute and planning a 40th birthday party have in common?   Brent just experienced both events in one week, and found 3 lessons along the way that agency leaders can take away.    You've got to  Share your Vision Empower and Equip Your Team Constantly Improve To read the transcript or watch the video of this episode, visit https://www.sitkins....

Ryan Teubner, producer at Rich & Cartmill, Inc. joins Brent to talk about his biggest struggles, successes and advice for other independent insurance agents. Listen to Ryan share stories of his success at winning clients, having freedom to be with his family and how he operates on not being afraid, with a little luck mixed in. To read the transcript of this episode, visit www.sitkins.com/blog/...

Rick Fox, Head of Agency Sales for Vertafore, joins Brent to talk about how agencies can leverage the power of technology for relationship building with their clients. Listen in for tips on how to: - Get the best bang for your buck when your agency eventually gets acquired - Give staff 30% to 40% more time back, so they can go build more loyal customers - Making tech scalable for your agency - Mak...

The final episode in our 8-Part series of "Clicks", or breakthroughs, for insurance professionals is all about Leadership. As John Maxwell says, “Everything rises and falls on leadership.” We see this is true in all the independent insurance agencies we work with. The #1 job of any leader is to improve their people. If leading your people is your job, and your people are your agency’s best assets,...

Click #7 of our 8-part series of "Clicks", or breakthroughs, for insurance professionals is all about moving from Winging It, to having a Proven Process. During this Click, we focus on getting your agency set up with a proven playbook now, so you don’t have regrets later. After all, Yesterday becomes tomorrow unless you do something different today. To read the transcript of this episode, visit ht...

Click #6 of our 8-part series of "Clicks", or breakthroughs, for insurance professionals is all about moving from being Generic to Indispensible. During this Click, you're going to discover little things you can do quickly to establish your agency as unique and indispensable. A lot of agencies have different tools and resources. The question is, how many of them are actually using them? Listen in...

Click #5 of our 8-part series of "Clicks", or breakthroughs, for insurance professionals is all about moving from the Trivial Many to the Vital Few. Do you want more things to do in your agency? Probably not! Our goal is not to give you more things to do. It's to help you focus on the right things, the most important things, and to do those things more often and with more intention. As an agency l...

Click #4 of our 8-part series of "Clicks", or breakthroughs, for insurance professionals is all about moving from Renewals to Referrals. On average, about 90% of clients renew with insurance agencies. That's pretty great when nine out of 10 people are going to pay you money next year. The bad news is that less than 10% of those same people will refer another client to your agency. So 90% + renew,...

Click #3 of our 8-part series of "Clicks", or breakthroughs, for insurance professionals is all about Activity vs. Results. Are you running an activity-based agency that celebrates being busy, or are you a results-based agency that actually gets important stuff done? Roger and Brent talk agency leaders and producers through Red Flags and Traps in your agency, and how to fix them, in this "Click"....

Click #2 of our 8-part series of "Clicks", or breakthroughs, for insurance professionals is all about Teams and realizing you can’t do it all alone. You can try to go it alone as an agency leader, or you can build a team and equip and empower a team around you. Listen in as Brent and Roger share clues to this Click for agency leaders and producers focused on: • The Green Zone • Me, Inc and We, Inc...

#1 of our new 8-part series of "Clicks". What are these clicks for insurance professionals? They could be breakthroughs, busting through a plateau, or it's a mindset shift. We're talking about when you begin to do things at a different level to get the results that maybe you didn't even think were possible prior to that "click." Through the summer, Roger and Brent are going to share some of the cl...

Do you want to avoid the stinky commission breath? If you want to stand out, you want to become the point of comparison in your marketplace, then this episode of The Agent Leader is for you. Brent goes over what it means to have commission breath, and three areas that you as an agency, as a producer, can work on to develop, to make sure that you truly are standing out and not having commission bre...

Producer Jeff Jones of IOA joins Brent to discuss his clues to success with a multi-million dollar book of business. Listen in as Jeff discusses what he believes in the cholesterol of every agency or producer, and how you can avoid it. From his version of the 80/20 rule, to helping his clients move forward while striving for his own personal best version possible, there's plenty to pick up on from...

Long time client and friend Mark Carlson of T. Charles Wilson joins us today to talk about how his Expertise has brought a level of Ease to his niche. Learn from Mark's experience as an independent insurance agency owner and producer as he shares keen insight. If you want to learn about how to produce more business, and some of the challenges and successes that agency leaders go through, this conv...

Brad Rutt of HUB International joins us for a great conversation on being Deliberate, while also being Patient on his path to success as an insurance producer. Get ready to take notes as Brad shares his story of transitioning from a lawyer to a producer specializing in the cannabis industry, clues to his seven-figure new revenue year last year, and examples of things he'll never do again on sales...

Million dollar-plus Producer Barbara Galgiani joins us to talk about transitioning from a CSR to a producer on this episode of The Agent Leader podcast. Pick up tips to Barbara's success as she hustles hard to reach her new goal of doubling her million dollar status. We continuously talk to producers about owning a certain part of the marketplace, and that's just what Barbara has done. Success lea...

Get ready to take notes, we’ve got a new type of guest on today. Curt Vondrasek, EVP of Member Leadership Engagement of the ISU Network, joins Brent to share how he helps agencies create greater value in their network. ISU Network is the second largest in the country, with an average agency size of $3.5 million in revenue, and they’re focused on growth. Curt discusses how he works with the agency...