In today´s episode of Agents Influence, host Jason Cass interviews Brent Kelly, Vice President at Sitkins Group. Having known each other for about a decade, Jason and Brent share a candid and open discussion about what Jason refers to as the biggest lie that agents tell each other in the industry, that somehow the more carriers that they have, the more people they will be able to help. Learn the problems of trying to be everything to everybody, why prospecting is more necessary than selling, how to prepare to be the agency you want to be, and glean knowledge from their strategies on how less can equal more in the long run.

Episode Highlights:

• Is Brent Kelly an iPhone or Android user?  
• Does Brent Kelly love to win or hate to lose?   
• Has Brent grown the most from skill or luck?    
• Jason Cass introduces this episode’s topic.  
• Brent Kelly introduces himself and discusses the 80/20 Rule.
• Brent addresses the big lie of needing to be everything to everyone.
• What do you want for your agency? What type of clients do you want? What type of agency do you want to sell one day?
• What is the law of compensation and how does it apply to insurance agencies?
• It is really hard to meet or exceed something that you haven’t documented.
• Nothing happens until you have someone to sell to.
• All progress starts with telling the truth.
• Do the hard things today to make life at your agency easier later.
• What are the benefits of C.P.A. (Constant Prospecting Activity)?
• Most pipelines are really a database of hope.
• Jason shares a story of two owners bringing home over a half a million dollars a year.
• What are the five rules for decision-making that Jason uses?  
• Have the clarity to know what you want to be when you grow up as an agency.
• Change is hard in the beginning, messing in the middle, and easy at the end.
• Your freedom comes from implementing structures for success.

3 Key Points:

1. Never let a profitable producer subsidize an unprofitable producer and never let a profitable account subsidize an unprofitable account.
2. The Law of Compensation requires there to be a need in the marketplace for what you do, your ability to do it, and the difficulty there is in replacing you.
3. Jason Cass believes you should be prospecting 55% and selling 45% because if you keep prospecting then you won’t run out of people to talk to.

Tweetable Quotes:

• “We get trapped in the fact that we are doing all this stuff and we are running a million miles an hour. But now we realize we have a little money, we have a little security, But now we have no time.” – Brent Kelly
• “If you market to all, you market to none.” – Brent Kelly
• “When you say ‘yes’ to something, you are automatically saying ‘no’ to something else.” – Brent Kelly

Resources Mentioned:

• Agency Intelligence
• AIBrainshare.com
• Brent@Sitkins.com

• Advertisers:
  • Lightspeed Voice
  • Rocket Referrals
  • Marble Box
  • Agency VA