Shaking off your “shimmy”
[No] agency can operate properly when different teams
are working independently, unaware of what others in their organization are doing.
By Kari Glennon
In our increasingly competitive industry, the quality of the customer experience can mean the difference between winning and losing business. Are your agency’s teams operating in silos, hindering collaboration and growth? Have you ever had producers turn away new business because you couldn’t provide adequate service? If so, your agency may not be aligned.
If you’ve ever driven a car that’s out of alignment, you know what I’m talking about. The vehicle seems to have a mind of its own! As you attempt to steer in one direction, it pulls in the opposite one. While this makes for a rough ride, it also creates wear and tear on the tires (and driver).
Similarly, no agency can operate properly when different teams are working independently, unaware of what others in their organization are doing.
When one team works in a silo, it creates problems for the entire agency. First and foremost, teams waste valuable time and energy when they are not aligned. For example, when you have multiple people from different teams working on the same project, there tends to be a lot of duplication of effort. Ultimately, this keeps agencies from capitalizing on efficiency and growth opportunities.
Is your agency aligned?
How can you tell whether your agency is in alignment? Here are a few signs that it may not be.
- Low effective retention rate. If you lost an account, would you know why? Were you simply outsold? Did you fail to advocate for your client or were they dissatisfied for another reason? If your effective retention rate isn’t where you want it to be, that indicates a lack of alignment.
- Friction between sales and service. Are producers making promises but failing to communicate them to the promise keepers (the service people)? If this happens consistently enough to create conflict between sales and service, it’s doubtful your agency is aligned.
- Lack of participation. Do you have people who are disengaged or who make a habit of not participating in meetings? We hold meetings to celebrate our wins and learn from our losses. You can’t improve as a team unless all members are actively engaged.
- Lack of clarity. As a leader, do you have a clear vision (i.e., formal business plan) that you can share with your organization? How does your team know their roles and responsibilities toward achieving goals? Successful agencies are aligned because they have clarity about their individual and collective roles.
Where to start
Organizational alignment is the key to overcoming many challenges and creating a cohesive, high-performing agency. It’s all about breaking down silos and fostering a culture of collaboration and accountability. This process starts at the top and works its way down to the producers and service professionals.
If you don’t already have one, your first step should be to create a one-page business plan. It should clearly define your mission and contain a strategy and actionable plan for achieving the goals you’ve set forth. A great way to start is by answering these three questions about your agency:
Where are you today?
Where do you want to be in three years?
How are you going to get there?
If your executive team were asked the same questions, how would they answer? Would you be aligned with your management team? Your sales team? Your service team? The goal is for all team members to share a common vision, goals, and values. That’s the agency culture. To maintain it, all team members must be on the same page.
In 2023, one semi-successful agency asked to work with us, but they only wanted to enroll their salespeople in our training program. It would have been a huge opportunity, but we declined because we need the entire agency (sales, service and leadership) to be aligned for us to be able to help them. We knew from experience that when the sales team speaks a language that’s different from the service team, it’s very divisive.
Furthermore, we knew that if we trained only one group of people, the agency would not get a return on the time and dollars invested and, ultimately, the experience would be frustrating and unproductive. As good an opportunity as it was, we let them know they didn’t qualify to work with us because they were not ready to align their agency for Best Version Possible results.
Organizational alignment must begin with the leadership team and go from there. That way, we can take the producers, service team and leaders through training together. Otherwise, they won’t be talking the same language or understand how they have similar goals but different roles in the agency.
Separate but equal
Being on the same page does not mean doing someone else’s job or expecting them to do yours. We all have unique abilities. For an agency to thrive, everyone needs to maximize their time doing what they do best—for themselves, their team and their clients.
At the same time, sales and service team members must also work collectively. Deciding how your teams will work separately and together requires that everyone understand, respect and trust what the other team does.
To empower the service people and give them a voice, we believe producers must stay in their prime zone (the Green Zone) at least 80% of the time and let the service people do their job without constantly interrupting them. The most effective way to accomplish this is to retrain your clients about whom to contact with questions.
If they’re calling your sales team with service questions, they’ll be directed to the service team anyway. Cutting out the middleman (you or your producers) by having clients contact your service team for support shows that you understand and appreciate what they do.
Certainly, there are times when the Red Zone is unavoidable, and addressing service issues is the only way to move forward. However, these disruptions should be limited to matters of utmost urgency.
Interrupting someone who is focused on what they’re doing and “in the zone” equals approximately 23 minutes of lost productivity, because that’s how long it typically takes to regain focus. As you know, lost productivity equals lost revenue.
Strategies for alignment
Besides creating a more harmonious and productive environment within an agency, alignment has other advantages/benefits. When sales and service are aligned, it increases capacity for producers and account managers by optimizing operations and improving customer satisfaction. As a result, it allows your team to drive revenue growth.
Keys to developing your agency’s alignment strategy include a shared mission, leadership participation, and a commitment to internal and external communication.
Communication. This is at the heart of building a collaborative environment rather than silos. We preach that producers and their service staff are a High-Performance Team (HPT) and that they must meet twice a week.
Monday’s meeting is the pre-brief (here’s what’s happening this week; here’s what I need from you; here’s what I have for you; be aware of these red flags, etc.). That way, everyone charges into the week on the same page.
At the end of the week there’s a de-brief. It doesn’t have to be a formal meeting; it could be a brief phone call to confirm that people did what they said they’d do or to discuss any sales or service problems.
We often see agencies that build silos solely because they have different lines of business. As such, employee benefits producers may not understand what is going on with their P&C counterparts. Many even have separate sales meetings.
While I believe there is a time and place for separate training when different products are being sold, if you’re cross-selling with another professional, you’ll be a better salesperson for knowing what your teammate is doing.
Being informed enables you to ask targeted questions and facilitates more intelligent conversations with prospective clients, leading to cross-sell. The more you know, the more you’ll come across as a competent professional.
Conversely, if you’re not aligned internally, your external communication can be confusing. For example, when clients receive duplicate emails because sales and service are not communicating, it makes the agency look disorganized and unprofessional. It annoys clients to receive the same message or be asked for the same information multiple times from multiple agency sources.
Being aligned keeps team members from stepping on each other’s toes and ensures that the agency looks competent in the eyes of the client.
Alignment is equally important when communicating with underwriters and carriers, if not more. Dealing with a neverending barrage of submissions and questions every day keeps them incredibly busy. They don’t have time to read submissions that aren’t concise, cohesive and complete.
If you’re not aligned, your submissions are likely to reflect as much and will never be top-of-the-stack. This directly affects how much business you win or lose.
Shared goals. Setting clear, measurable goals that align with the agency’s overall vision can unite teams and motivate team members. But it’s critically important that team members know their specific role in achieving those goals. As I mentioned earlier, “same goal, different role,” is a cornerstone of alignment.
Engaged leadership. It’s critical that leaders exemplify a culture of alignment by championing and participating in cross-functional collaboration. Having different teams with different behaviors and cultures is counterproductive.
A closing thought
Although everyone wants the value of their agency to increase, that’s not likely to happen when there’s misalignment. That’s because you can’t manage numbers; you can only manage behaviors. And that can happen effectively only when your agency teams are aligned.
While few agencies have the in-house expertise needed to align their teams and become more profitable, they’re often reluctant to contact a professional for help. I don’t understand why. Would you hesitate to take your car to a repair shop when it starts to shake and shimmy and try to get it in alignment yourself? Of course not! Similarly, agency alignment is best left to the professionals.
At Sitkins, we offer training programs focused specifically on company-wide alignment. We understand that aligned teams benefit from reduced errors, fewer duplicative efforts, and overall improved efficiency.
To help agencies achieve alignment, we have a new training tool for executive teams called Agency Executive Edge. The four-session program is designed to help agency leaders formulate a one-page summarized business plan complete with KPIs, strategies for achieving goals, and much more.
It’s sure to get your agency in alignment and on the road to success. Reach out to me when you’re ready to shake off your agency shimmy.
The author
Kari Glennon, a sales and marketing professional within the insurance industry with nearly 25 years of experience, is a senior consultant at Sitkins Group, Inc. The majority of those years were spent in the independent agency world. She has been an owner and partner of a firm, perpetuated her firm externally, and spent time as the chief sales officer for one of the largest middle-market insurance agencies in the nation.
Her true passion is to deliver strategy, inspiration, insurance knowledge, and coaching for independent insurance agencies. She is fluent in property and casualty, employee benefits, life insurance, and captives.
Kari lives in the Pacific Northwest. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, sailing in the Puget Sound, nature walks with her dogs and spending time with her three children.
