Agency Growth Framework P&C Agents MUST Know | Insurance Agency Playbook

Welcome to another episode of the playbook! In this episode, Craig Pretzinger dives deep into the framework of a successful agency with the 5 Ps!

Purpose, being the reason why the agency exists, principles act as guiding lights, ensuring ethical behavior and aligning with the agency's purpose. Next is people and then processes followed by the last P which is performance.

Craig reflects on how these five Ps, combined with their Telefunnel strategy, contributed to their remarkable growth from 6 to 10 million in just under two years. 

Tune in for a fun and insight-filled episode of the playbook and keep listening to become a pro at insurance!

The Insurance Dudes are on a mission to find the best insurance agentsaround the country to find out how they are creating some of the top agencies. But they do not stop there, they also bring professionals from other industries for insights that can help agents take their agencies to the next level. 

The Insurance Dudes focus on your agency’s four pillars: Hiring, Training, Marketing and Motivation! We have to keep the sword sharp if we want our agencies to thrive. 

Insurance Dudes are leaders in their home, at their office and in their community. This podcast will keep you on track with like minded high performing agents while keeping entertained!

About Jason and Craig:

Both agents themselves, they both have scaled to around $10 million in premium.  After searching for years for a system to create predictability in their agencies, they developed the Telefunnel after their interviews with so many agents and business leaders.  

Taking several years, tons of trial and error, and hundreds of thousands of dollars on lead spend, they’ve optimized their agencies and teams to write tons of premium, consistently, and nearly on autopilot!

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Like what you heard? Check out our other episodes

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Transcript

Craig Pretzinger: 0:03

Hello, and welcome to the insurance dudes. Another playbook. This is Craig Pretzinger. And as promised, we are going to dive in to the framework that supports a thriving and income plus equity generating or growing agency. Are you ready? Let's dive in. Okay, we're back. This is Craig Pretzinger. This is the insurance dudes. And thank you for listening. Don't forget to leave a review. Give us a like all that kind of stuff. So share it with an agent. If they if they haven't heard of us, we'd really appreciate that. So but thank you for listening, and hope hope you find it helpful. So let's dive into the, into this framework. But first, before I dive into that, I want to just go to a quick backstory, because as I was, in the last episode, I talked a little bit about being gone. Without having reflecting on the freedom that's that's come about in the agency. Now, ultimately, I thought that the freedom that has been built here, with the help of a remarkable team, and a really good ops manager, and having some great support, I thought that this came exclusively from installing the tele funnel, and from buying the leads and just running the whole telephone process. I thought that was it. And and it is great, because that created the forward movement that there hadn't been before it created the volume, it created the winds that we we really hadn't ever experienced. But as I thought about so many agents that we've helped, we've had a lot of agents that have done awesome, done gangbusters, and then we had other agents that haven't been successful. And I really, that number one, it bugs me when somebody isn't successful, using something that that we talked about. And I know that we can't want it for people more than they want it that we can't walk everybody through some of the challenges. But I started to wonder what what differentiated the two, what differentiated the groups, right? If if two, if two sets of folks, one set is successful, the other set isn't successful. And it is and they're all of the other factors or parameters are the same, then what's the difference. And as I tossed and turned, you know, thinking about this, try not to think about work while I'm on vacation. But it's difficult because I love it. I realized that the environment that my agency had become, or the the environment that we'd we'd gotten in the agency supported the installation of the telephone. So what I mean by that, well, inadvertently, we had really optimized pieces of the puzzle that are necessary to foster an environment that's going to create huge results from the telephone, I would argue that anybody can get great results from the telephone call. But in order to maintain a successful and equity producing version of the telefono, all of the all of the pieces of the puzzle of the five piece framework need to be in place. So let's dive into what those five pieces are. The five piece and these are the things that I realized we had installed in the agency, and it was just a matter of putting the telephoto on top of it getting good with the telephoto, and then everything else supported that. So what are the five Ps? Five PS? First is purpose. That's your first P purpose. second P is principles, what are the principles? What is it? What are the guiding lights? The people who do you have working with you or for you, the processes in place, and then performance and performance being tracking and measuring and all those things. So these are, these aren't anything new. These are the components of an effective organizational management. And you could you could take any organizational management course. And I'm probably going to throw in the five Ps. But something had something came to mind as I was trying to understand what the difference was and is these things having these things in place. And it took us years and years to to realize how Pour in all of these pieces were. And I had taken it for granted because we we'd gotten these things done, but just didn't have the offense. So. But each one of these P's is crucial, was crucial in shaping the principal agency's operations, and getting us to where we needed to get with the goal. So I'm gonna go a little brief definition, and, and why it's important with each of these peas. And then we'll go deeper in an episode on each one of the peas moving forward. And then there's going to be one in between that we're going to talk a little bit about what stops us from doing it. And I have some examples from my past, where we couldn't quite get the things going. And as I look back, there's some ego involved with some of it. And I'll beat myself up a little bit for you. So you can have fun with that. So the first one purpose, what is purpose. Now, this is really important. And it's one of these things that we just talked about it in our elite meeting, which is the weekly call that we do for folks that have that are using the telephone on and affiliated with the intelligence so. But if you're not great, then here you go, here's some of that goodness from the meeting. And we're going to dive into that. So what is purpose, this is the reason why this is your reason why the agency exists, and the unique value of brains to your clients and to your team. Now, when I'm looking at organizational theory and bringing up this, this P, they didn't put team, but I think team is super important too. And in fact, it is one of the pieces, right? It's people, but we need to define the purpose around the clients that we serve. And the people that we serve, who are serving our clients as well, because they are our number one client, it's our people, if we have our, if we have our people dialed in, then they're going to want to be part of this. But I don't want to get ahead of myself and I just did. So what's the importance, you're clear, if you have a clear, well defined purpose, it's going to provide the direction that your agency goes, it's going to inspire your employees, and it's going to guide your decision making. So it's kind of your checks and balances. Because as you make decisions for your agency and what you're going to do, what you're going to allocate resources to how you're going to motivate your team, all has to be behind a purpose, right. So if that purpose is clear, everybody knows which way to row. If that purpose doesn't exist, or isn't clear. It's just hey, we're, we're here to give insurance. It's important to have the purpose, think about any organization has the purpose. Unfortunately, a lot of very large organizations are going to have purpose, they're gonna have all these things. They're gonna have the next the next p, which is principles, they're gonna have all these things, and maybe not necessarily follow them. Hopefully they do. One of the reasons why my wife left, the place that she had worked prior was the feeling that they don't quite follow the values that they're talking about. Now, do I know whether or not they do I don't know. But this is what I've what I've heard, I tend to believe what she says so. But it's really important, right? I think a lot of organizations come up with these things. Because it's, it's what you need to do, as a big business as a big corporation, but not necessarily utilize them in the spirit for which they were developed. Now, we're lucky because we run small businesses, and we have a lot more latitude and what we can do, we don't report to the shareholders, we report to ourselves and our team and our clients. So if we have a well defined purpose, that is something that our team can talk about with the clients. It's something that oozes from the language they use whilst they're talking to people. So think about this. So, here at the Pretzinger agency, our purpose is to serve clients, educate them in their insurance, and help them to make the best decision so that they're protected, right, we want to protect them and their family. We know that most people come to us, especially the ones that we're quoting with internet leads, and they don't have proper coverage. Of course, we have to meet them where they are. They want quick, fast, cheap, but we're always going to push for the purpose. So if if people understand that our purpose our passion is to serve them and protect them and their their families. Well, that's a lot better than Hey, we're here to get you insurance. We're here to serve everyone know we're here to serve families who care about, about the protection of their assets and their and all of the family members so that in the event, something terrible happens, it isn't as catastrophic, because you have the the insurance in place. I think it's important for you, as the agency owner, to sit down. And think about this. One of the things that I've learned in some of the coaching groups that I'm in and working with some really, really successful entrepreneurs, is how important this purpose is you have to have a purpose driven organization. And also think about organization, what does that mean, right? It's organized, there's an organization, it's not just madness, we're going to really, really focus on a lot of this. So I hope this is resonating. What's the second thing principles. So I'm gonna read this to you the core values that guide the agency's behavior and decision making the core values that guide your agency's behavior, and decision making. One of the, one of the core values that we have here is honesty, honesty, and ethical behavior. So this is going to get this is going to guide our agency's behavior and the decision making that we do, right. If I have somebody who is writing policies, and they're, they're not being honest on the application, and doing something that's going to make the rate better, something to manipulate, which, luckily, and gratefully, that isn't something that happens. But if it is that we you know, we can make a quick decision, this violates our agency's core values, somebody who violates core values cannot be part of this team. It's critical. Anybody who cannot follow or think about the core values must go. And again, it's not about the person anymore, it's about the values. So it's up to them, it's up to them, are they going to follow the core values, great. If they are awesome, that means we're all aligned. If they're not, sorry, we can't have anybody going rogue, because that's not going to help us, it's not going to serve our clients, it's not going to help push towards the purpose. Hope that makes sense. People people one of the most challenging things, right? We're gonna have a really good episode about this. And we're gonna dive into some really, really key metrics and different things all about people. But let's talk about that. This is, what's the definition of people? Why do you say it to yourself? And then I'll give you mine? Go ahead. I'll say you're gonna take us up. Yep, I didn't hear you. But this is what I'm gonna say is the team members who bring their skills, creativity, and dedication to the agency. So we want to bring people who can think we want to, we want to bring people that are skilled, and this doesn't necessarily mean they're skilled in insurance, it just means that they're skilled, in that they have the skill set, to be able to think critically, to be able to, to make decisions, somebody who isn't afraid to be daring, but understands and can follow the core values so that it doesn't do anything that goes against what we believe in. And we're always going to hire and fire based on these core values, right? So we're looking for people that bring the skills, creativity and dedication, really important, we can always get somebody to understand what insurance is they can understand the product knowledge, they can do all these things. But we cannot change. Or it's very difficult to change somebody's set of ethics, somebody's set of values. And so we want to find the same folks who have values that align with our agency, right? That's who we're looking for. One of the things we say about our people is our team at the Pretzinger agency is our greatest asset, they are our greatest asset, because if we don't have them, we don't have a business. We don't have an organization. Each member is going to bring their own unique skills and perspectives. But that align with the core values, right with with the, with the principles that we've created. So also very important, we'll get into the deeper, but that's the people now the processes, all right, what are processes. These are the systematic series of actions that dictate how the opera rate, how the agency operates on a daily basis, the systematic series of actions that dictate how the agency operates on a daily basis. Why is it important? Because well defined processes create the roadmap for handling all of the different scenarios, that ensures consistency in your agency. We want consistency, right? We don't want to hold Oh, my gosh, this thing happened. Now, most things take a similar approach. So we just have to create the different processes, so that we know how to handle every situation. And if we don't know how to handle a specific situation situation, that's fine. We're going to create a process once we once that situation arises, so that we can effectively solve it the same way every time moving forward. Right? I don't go to McDonald's. haven't been there in years, I was almost gonna go in Portugal, because I wanted to get a Royale with cheese. But I didn't. And think about McDonald's and and the way that they've they've created process to ensure consistency. What does it do? It creates that because there's consistency, somebody who loves McDonald's knows they're gonna get the same thing, whether they're in Tuscaloosa. Wherever Tuscaloosa is, whether they're in Tuscaloosa, or they're in Humboldt County, and they go to McDonald's are gonna get the same burger, they're going to same same quarter pounder, if they go. And for somebody who likes McDonald's, they go there, because they know they're gonna get the same thing every time. Imagine, if the hamburger was totally different every single time, it'd be going like two different restaurants. But that is the way it works, right? They've created this process that creates the same product, the same end result every single time. So we've created and established processes for every aspect of the operation. In doing so, it makes it very simple. It makes it very easy. When a situation arises on what to do. I remember for years and years, I was basically agency Google. And it was the Google for my agency. If somebody needed something, they wouldn't figure it out, there wasn't a process to look up, what they would do is, well, they'd come to me. So whatever I was working on, would be interrupted. And that's not a good thing, especially with ADHD, because by the time I finally am focused on something, they come and interrupt me, now I'm blown up for the next half hour, because I have to get refocused again. So really important for, for processes to be in place and to have the process to create the processes, that's when you're going to create that confidence in the team, the team is going to believe that that everybody knows what they're doing, because there's a there's a way to do it. And it really takes a lot of pressure off of off of me, as the agency owner takes pressure off of you as the agency owner, the more that they can look up and handle themselves, the better. So huge. And finally, the last P is performance. So we are going to constantly track and measure the different things that that we do the different tactics that we that we install in our agency, and everything that can be that can be measured, we need to measure, we need to track a measure so that we can hold people accountable and, and hit the results that we need to. It's like having your own GPS, right, it's the GPS for the GPS. So we do regular performance evaluations here at the Pretzinger. agency, we we look at ad metrics daily for the telephone call. And for service stuff to we're also looking at anything that we can quantify. So we take that qualitative piece out of it, we want to take the subjectivity out of it, we want to make it very objective. And then it takes emotion away because emotion is not a good friend of business. And anybody who's gotten angry at the, at at their, at their team are upset it really what I've learned is that I need to be angry at myself. And we'll we'll talk a little bit about that in the next episode, where we dive into the ego, just before we get into the first P and really go deep. So I appreciate you listening. Let's let's put a let's put a button and now we're going to stop and we will circle back on the next episode. We're gonna dive into the things that prevent the PS from being installed. But I can tell you right now, that these are the reasons that we were able to grow from 6 million to over 10 million in just under two years. And and it was it was remarkable that it was the perfect storm of having the right pieces in place so that when we put our offense on top of it, we were able to take off So appreciate it appreciate you listening don't forget to leave a review if you haven't if you have thank you and we will talk to you soon