How Your Agency Can Find the Best Place for the Right People

Joey Giangola: Mr. Mick Hunt, how you doing today, sir?

Mick Hunt: I'm good, Joey, how are you, brother?

Joey Giangola: Mick, I'm doing all right, sir. I'm doing all right. I want to know this before we really get anything too serious. Do you have, we'll say an irrational thought or behavior that you feel is maybe way too ahead of its time?

Mick Hunt: Oh, that's a good, good question. An irrational thought or behavior, no, I think a lot of things are starting to catch up. I'll put it that way.

Joey Giangola: All right. For me, Mick, it's very simple. When my kids yell at the Google Assistant, I tell it to like, "Hey, be nice." Just in case, because when they do take over the world, I feel like it's just going to all be on record, they're going to remember that. And they'll at least know that I tried to teach them to not be mean to computers. So you never know.

Mick Hunt: There you go.

Joey Giangola: A little ahead of its time, Mick, but I don't know. Maybe I'm just paranoid. But, Mick, I want to move all of this over to the world of insurance. And I guess the question that I have for you is when you look at things that we have maybe been consumed with over the years of terms of where the industry's going, do you think there's something that distracts us maybe unnecessarily when the way we've been doing it is just fine?

Mick Hunt: Yeah. I think a lot of talks of integrations, APIs, I'm not saying they're distractions, but from the agency owner perspective, there are things that we don't control. And I think a lot of time is spent on this integrating with my management system and this pushing here and this pushing there. When we really need to be focused on let's grow a business and everything that's going to take care of itself will take care of itself. Again, I'm not saying those things are not important, they really are important, but I can tell you a lot of agency owners forget that they are business owners and focus on non-revenue generating things. And I always say the word things because that's all they are, just things.

Joey Giangola: Yeah. So how do you combat that when they're obviously concerned with it's... I guess it's refreshing that they're concerned with time and the amount of time it takes for them to get information from one place to the other, it feels like maybe that's a success in it of itself, but how do you combat that sort of conversation with maybe what activities do you then refocus on and bring back to the table and say, "Listen, this is maybe a little bit more important right now"?

Mick Hunt: Your revenue generating processes or your revenue generating functions over your business, if those can be automated, if those can be integrated wholeheartedly, you should focus on those. But I see a lot of agents that are focused on, where my notes go and how I label this file, and it doesn't go here with the downloads and it's just like, yeah, it's important, but it's not earth shattering, it has nothing to do with the revenue that you're generating. But your revenue-generating processes wholeheartedly automate those, get those as efficient as possible because at the end of the day, we should be focused on our customers and consumers.

Joey Giangola: Oh, Mick, I got to ask, is there a revenue generating process that you have seen automated successfully with decent results?

Mick Hunt: So at Premier Strategy Box, we focus on your new business process, so that's everything from, how do you prospect to how you close a deal and everything in between? Your new customer onboarding wholeheartedly can be automated. Explaining your customer journey to a new customer is groundbreaking. And then I'd say the biggest revenue generating process that you should automate and focus on is your renewal process. If you ask an agency owner or their staff, what's their renewal process, if they have one, it's usually we print out 30 days ahead on a spreadsheet and start calling. That's not a process, that's just a task. There's a big difference between a process and a task.

Joey Giangola: And that renewal one is big. And like you said, for the agencies that maybe are a little loose with that process to begin with, even taking that time up front to just do it once and then it's just there. What kind of words have you heard agents say once they've gone through that transformation process? How much would you tell somebody to maybe not underestimate the power of maybe spending a little time there?

Mick Hunt: Well, there's a lot of things that are going to happen. Number one, your staff is going to be much more efficient because there's an actual process. And if you're using automation for that process, you're saving them a lot of checks and balances, let automation handle that for you. Number two, you're going to get an actual increase in your retention and I don't care what your retention is. By having a process, it's just going to naturally increase because you're always ahead of what's going on. You're going to see slips and cracks before they happen because you're ahead of the process or you're ahead of the renewal.

So, you're going to see those things. And then what a lot of folks are going to see, and this is a big buzzword right now is organic growth. At your renewals, it's an opportunity to increase revenue. So if you're increasing your revenue per client, the best way to do that is at renewal because you have to have a conversation. So since you have to have that conversation at renewal, you might as well talk about the other items that your customer should have. And that's what separates advisors from insurance agents.

Joey Giangola: Maybe you want to dive in a little bit there, because what goes into that? Because we say "automate the process" and maybe they don't have a process, but what are some things that could go in there that, again, like you said, obviously bringing in what other coverages could we discuss? There's a lot of ways you could tee up this stuff and get them ready for the renewal conversation itself. Even scheduling the renewal conversation itself could be automated to a point.

Mick Hunt: And that's exactly it. So, depending on the lines of business that you have within your agency. So maybe on the commercial side, you start the renewal process 90 days ahead of time. And maybe that 90 days ahead of time, you're doing client tiering. So you got your VIPs, your A's and your B clients and you do something different for each of those tiers, but you're ahead of it. So at day 90, you're just making sure it's in the right tier. This is supposed to be a VIP, nothing's changed, it's still a VIP or this is A, nothing's changed it's still A, all that jazz. So you got your client tiering ahead. Then maybe at day 60, you're sending out an email automatically that says, "Hey, your renewal is upcoming. Has anything changed? Have your sales increased? Has your payroll increased? Did you buy new equipment? Did you buy a new building? Did you buy something? You're getting ahead. Has anything changed?"

And then maybe day 45, you're now scheduling that renewal appointment, you're scheduling that through automation, you've got Calendly and all these other great apps that you can integrate into a flow, into a process. And now you're engaged, your clients feel like they're prepared. Because I can't tell you when I own my agency, how many times I would talk to prospects and they only knew that their renewal was coming when that agent called and gave them the renewal bill. They were not a part of a process. And just giving someone a renewal bill, isn't a renewal process.

Joey Giangola: What's your favorite sort of spot to come in? Like you're working in fresh to an agency, what's your favorite place to look? You want to lift up the rug? What's the thing you're looking for and you're like, "Man, I really hope I can get into this with them"? Is there something that you go after right off the bat?

Mick Hunt: So I wholeheartedly believe in segmenting your business. I believe in having a sales team, whether that's inbound or outbound or a combination of both, a service team and then a renewal team. When you look at most businesses, forget the insurance agency. When you look at most businesses, you call customer service, you're calling customer service, you're not calling the sales team, it's a different person. It's a different commitment. To me, that's where in the insurance space we kind of lose.

So I look at, number one, having that segment of sales team, service team, renewal team, and then making sure you've got right butts in the right seats. So, if we know we're going to come in and say, "Okay, we're going to build and segment sales from service and renewals," we're going to stop people wearing multiple hats because most people aren't good at both. I've never seen a great sales person that's also a great service person, those details aren't what makes us great salespeople. And then I just want to make sure we've got the right people, so we're going to do assessments, we're going to make sure that people are comfortable where they are, because they're going to excel more when they're doing what they are best suited to do.

Joey Giangola: Mick, I've never really thought about this way until you've said it. Is possibly a part of the talent problem the acquisition? We always hear people are having problem finding people, is it maybe because we ask them to do too many things where that combination is a little bit harder to find? I've never thought about it this way until you've just said that and maybe somebody else has, but I don't know if you've ever looked at it that way.

Mick Hunt: No, I mean, that's exactly it, because we try to find the person with experience that can do a little bit of everything and that's not the way it should be. In general, people are skilled at what they're skilled at and they're going to do amazing at what they're skilled at. You didn't pay Shaquille O'Neil to shoot three points, you didn't pay Larry Bird to dunk the ball. And that's how we've got to build our teams, is putting people in the right positions to win every time. And I'm not saying it's just the insurance industry, there's other industries that fell at that, but we fell at that by wanting people to be a little bit of everything. When you talk to your staff and ask them to be honest, they will tell you, "I would much rather do this than that."

Joey Giangola: Yeah. There's a lot of truth in that. And do you find that a lot of agents or agency owners are hesitant to even ask that question, like what do you like, because even that honest conversation probably doesn't happen as much as it should?

Mick Hunt: Absolutely. Because with agents that we work with, we're the first to have those conversations with the staff.

Joey Giangola: Have you noticed once you started to go in there and start drawing lines in terms of skills and abilities, has that unlocked staffing opportunities? Have you seen that agency start to find the right people easier, faster, all of that good stuff?

Mick Hunt: Yes. Because number one, when you have that model of I've got a sales team, a service team or renewal team, it's much easier to build the job descriptions for that and the responsibilities that you want each of those folks to have. And when those responsibilities are lined out clear, number one, it gives clarity to your existing team and then it makes it easier when you're interviewing people to tell them exactly what their day-to-day is going to be like, exactly what you expect from them, exactly what their KPIs or their key performance indicators are. It's a lot easier to lay all of that out. And you separate yourselves from most agencies, and as we all know, most job descriptions look the same.

Joey Giangola: How do you go about conditioning an agency owner to deconstruct that individual and separate and draw lines? Maybe it's with the staff that they currently have, or if they're going out to create those new job descriptions, what are the things that you look for to get the right people in those right seats?

Mick Hunt: So I believe in DISC assessments, I believe that there are DISC profiles that say, "This is going to be a great salesperson. This is going to be a great service person. This person can do renewals." And so, we help agency owners understand the profiles of what those seats look like. And then we start matching the skill sets and the responsibilities to those seats. So I can tell you a great salesperson, whether they're inside or outside is going to have high D dominance and high I, on the influencer side. Your great service, people are going to be more S's. Your renewal people might be a combination of S and I, but it's understanding the components of what you're looking for and building that up.

Joey Giangola: And just to be clear, you're talking about personality assessments and tests and things like that, which again, would probably be another overlooked tool, I would imagine as well. How often do you go in and say, "Hey, listen, we're going to personality test everybody," and where we need to do that for?

Mick Hunt: Every time, because right butts, right seats. You can't do right butts, right seats if you don't know who the butts are first.

Joey Giangola: Well, at what point does somebody have to be able to accept these sort of changes? Because you've said a lot of different things that go against the traditional, like what an agency owner might want to do. Do they need to be in a certain place before they can consider this? Or how do you help somebody get to that place of wanting to consider these?

Mick Hunt: It's talking about the vision and what the agency owner wants. I mean, because honestly, most agency owners don't come to us unless they're looking for that change or not even that change because they don't know what change they need, but they're stuck at, "I've been in single digit growth or negative growth or no growth for the last X number of years." We go in and analyze and usually it's because you don't have clear functionalities on your team. Or conversely, if you are a new agent and it's like, how do I set myself up to do things dynamically day one, it's here's how your business should be set up. So it's usually those. I mean, if your agency is growing 20% plus every year and you don't have a need to change the foundation of who you are, then keep doing what you're doing, don't change for the sake of change. But if you're really trying to spur organic growth and by organic growth, I mean true organic growth like cross sales, up sales, referrals, you've got to start segmenting people into the right seats.

Joey Giangola: I'm kind of curious if you got something that doesn't involve sort of restructuring the entire team of the organization, if maybe somebody is on the fence like, "Mick, I don't know what you're talking about here, man. I need something simple." Is there something that you use as like a little test, like dip your toe in the water sort of thing like, "Try this thing first and I promise it's going to work"? Do you have something very easy?

Mick Hunt: Yeah. Function your renewal process. You can do that with whoever you want on your team or multiple people on your team. Build out a renewal process, but focus on cross sales, upsells and asking for referrals. You don't have to have true segmentation to do those three things, but those three things are what spark organic growth: cross sales, upsells asking for referrals.

Joey Giangola: Is there anything that you would say works better in... Again, because we all want to cross sell, we all want to ask for referrals, but I feel like there's a lot that is lost in translation. What are some easy mistakes people make one? Or do you think even just having it in the process as a game changer in and of itself?

Mick Hunt: Having it in the process as a game changer. I would say also reward those things. So we help agencies build reward programs. So reward asking for referrals, reward cross sell opportunities. And by reward, it doesn't always have to be monetary because everybody unfortunately isn't or I shouldn't say unfortunately, everyone on your team isn't motivated by money, but time off could be a huge motivator. We have agencies that have reward programs that are centered around working half-day Fridays. And here's what happens, once you get accustomed to working half-day Fridays, guess what you want to do all the time, half-day Fridays, especially in the summertime with your kids. That becomes what you're accustomed to and that becomes a motivator. So I would say build motivation, build a reward program around cross sells, asking for referrals and upsells.

Joey Giangola: Have you seen anything else outside of the box, outside of time off pay? Is there any other thing that you could toss into that little grab bag?

Mick Hunt: Oh, I mean you have office lunches, you have concerts, events, hotels stay weekend, anything, but find out from your team what motivates your individuals, and trust me, they will tell you when you ask and tell them where you're going, they will tell you.

Joey Giangola: All right, Mick, so you hit on something, it took us this long to get here. So a lot of the issues here stem from a lack of, we'll say maybe dialogue from employees.

Mick Hunt: Communication is a huge issue.

Joey Giangola: Give me a tip on starting that process, creating a healthy environment for that dialogue flow going back and forth.

Mick Hunt: So number one, you've got to be willing to have transparency. So if you are the agency principal, if you're agency leadership, you've got to be willing to engage in transparency, explaining the why behind the why. But here's a couple of things that you can do, have a biweekly or monthly internal newsletter that goes out to the team that talks about the happenings of the agency, "Here is our goal or standard for this month, and here's what we did." And spotlight a teammate. Spotlight someone on the team, talk about three great things that happen and then throw in a training dialogue in there as well. But just having that engagement can spark good communication. You've got to start somewhere. You've got to start somewhere. So if you're not having monthly team meetings or all hand meetings, start with that. Don't make the meetings, "I got you meetings." Make the meetings about something or about several topics and make it about the team. Because if it's all about you, it's not a meeting.

Joey Giangola: All right, Mick, I've got three more questions for you, sir. And the first one is what is one thing you hope you never forget?

Mick Hunt: One thing I hope I never forget is how to always make my kids love me and respect me. I have a great relationship with my kids and I never want to forget just that or lose that.

Joey Giangola: I'm not going to judge others, but that might be one of the better answers we ever had, Mick, so just know that, it's very good. I like that. On the other side of that, Mick, what's one thing you still have yet to learn?

Mick Hunt: Oh, you ask great questions, man. One thing I've yet to learn is how to continue evolving. I think I evolve when I have to evolve, but how do you continue? How do you continue a path to where you're evolving when you're not forced to evolve?

Joey Giangola: All right, Mick, last question to you, sir. If I were to hand you a magic wand of sorts to reshape, change, alter, speed up really any part of insurance, what's that thing, where is it going, and what's it doing?

Mick Hunt: So I'm going to counter what I said earlier about focusing on the APIs and integrations. If I could speed something up, it would be just uniformity in technology and the ability to integrate. Because again, right now it's out of our control as agency principles or people that aren't truly in the tech space, it's out of our control. If I had a magic wand, it would be all the management systems loved each other and they would work with any vendor that came to them with a great solution and great idea. That would be my magic wand is. Let's break down the walls so that our industry can't catch up to the rest of the world.

Joey Giangola: Mick, this has been fantastic. So I'm going to leave it right there.

Mick Hunt: Joey, I appreciate you, brother.