Join us as Craig Pretzinger discusses the first "P" in his framework for agency success - Purpose!
Craig emphasizes the importance of having a clear purpose, which is the reason why the agency exists and the unique value it brings to its clients. Purpose acts as the guiding light for decision-making and culture-building within the agency. The host also touches on the impact of a well-defined purpose on attracting clients and employees who resonate with the agency's mission. Learn how to reflect on your agency's purpose and how it aligns with your passion for serving clients and making a positive impact in your community and as an insurance agent. Join the IDudes and become the best at what you do!
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!
Well, hello there, Mr. Insurance dude or MS insurance do that. Alright, appreciate you jumping in here because we're going to be talking about purpose today. Last week, I tricked you. Or last episode I tricked you. And I said, I, we were supposed to talk about purpose then. But no, no, we had to back up because we had to talk a little bit about the ego, and how it may, it may be the thing that prevents you from installing the five piece, but I would suggest or I would encourage you to put some thought into that. And, and, and really look at that ego and see if it is preventing you if see if you're saying some of those statements that I ran over last time. But let's let's look at why purpose is so important, and how it's your why and what it's going to do to affect your agency. But let's dive in after the first song. Here we go. And we are back. Welcome back. It's the insurance dudes that is a great jingle. And don't forget, subscribe, like pound the subscribe button, I think is what the kids say. But we really appreciate you listening. So here it is the first one the first P which is purpose. And I need to pull my note up, because I have some things to go over here. So let's look. Let's talk about the purpose of of your agency. And let's define it. So it is the first part of the five P's. Now remember, the five P's is the framework. So five things were that we need to have in place, so that we can then insert a high powered offense into our agency, which is going to take us to the next level by getting us both income and equity, right, we want to focus on both not just the day to day, what we're going to what we'll be making and what we're going to pull home and what the cash flow is going to be, but also in growing the value of our book, so that it is worth more and more and more so that we can insure ourselves against reduced comp, right? Nobody wants their comp to go down. And it's, it's good that we don't, right. But we have to we have to offset. If our percentages on comp is going down, we need to focus ultimately on the equity in the agency, because that is going to be where we get our money back from our investment. And if we can increase income at the same time, at least paying for the inputs, then then we're winning. So let's define the purpose, the purpose is the reason why your agency exists and the unique value it brings to to your clients. Now we talked about this before when I went into it, but we are going to go deeper. So it is very important. This is one of those things that that for a very long time, I thought it was kind of a it's so it's not a measurable thing. It's not, it doesn't have numbers. I'm a numbers guy, I love numbers, I love data. And it is more challenging to really quantify purpose, it's more of one of those esoteric things that we have out there. But as we dove more into it as we as we, as we looked at the five P's as being sort of the agency operating system, like these are the things these are the ways that our agency is going to operate, they're the non negotiables. I realized that because these five P's were in place, if facilitated, putting that high powered offense on top, think of the agency with the five P's as the tank and the the the fire the high powered offense, whatever that is your marketing. In my case, the telephone call is the gun, right? It's the turret on top, that has just taken them down. So it's very difficult for that turret to work. If the tank is there, we need the tank and the tank is the five piece. So having that clear purpose was super vital for my agency, it changed things, it really changed the way that I did a lot of things. And then as I brought on, as we started to grow, and we were really putting some numbers down and having some incredible months 250 300,000 and premium it was it was it all goes back to those things that we put into place for the turret right for the for that power, because we could write a ton of business. But if we don't have all of these things in line, that I think it's more of a look. It's more of a short term play than it is a long term sustainable growth strategy. And that's what we want to do right is create the long term sustainable growth strategy increase the income and the UK Buddy, I know, I'm gonna say it, I've said it. And I'm gonna keep saying those things. Because I have to drive that point home, we can't just focus on creating more income, we have to, we have to increase the value of our book. So having a well defined purpose, it was super vital for the agency, because it allowed me to change the way that I made decisions. Because now I'm making decisions based on the purpose. And as we get into the principles that support the purpose, on the next episode, we'll talk more about that. But having a well defined purpose really allowed us to have a better understanding of the direction we wanted to go of the ways that we could inspire the employees, and, and really to guide my own decision making. And then ultimately, as I stepped out of the out of the out of the day to day decision making role, it it was that guiding light for my ops manager to make those decisions, right. So now I'm back more as a consultant type role, a marketing consultant, working on driving business or driving activity to the agencies so that then they can do those things that support the purpose, but everything, everything that we do has to support and be in alignment with the purpose, otherwise, it's a no. And what does that do for us, right? It, it helps. It really helps us differentiate our agency in the market, it helps us create a unique identity for ourselves, which is important. We want people to recognize us for our purpose, we want people to be attracted to working with us because of our purpose, if our purpose is to serve single moms who are struggling to make ends meet, because they have kids and don't understand how to make these purchases, on insurance. That's gonna resonate with somebody, right, that's gonna resonate with those folks, if if our, if our purpose is to, is to help people who try to purchase internet or purchase insurance on the internet, right, that's leads right internet leads to help them understand it's not just about a quick transaction, that, that it's about being served and understanding their insurance, and how our purpose is to help them recognize the the importance of the insurance, and recognize that what they currently have may not actually be protecting them, right being an educational component. So whatever it is, right, whatever that purpose is, we have to make sure that it's well understood. And that we use that purpose not only in our day to day, and making sure that all of the other pieces align with that purpose, but also that the purpose helps for the, for the employees that we have, and helps them to be more successful. Also, we're going to use that purpose in our hiring, right, so we're gonna play that purpose to our principles, we're gonna apply that purpose to our people, we're gonna apply that purpose to the processes, we're going to apply that purpose to our performance, so that all of it is this ecosystem, where everything funnels up and supports that purpose. In the same way that I was just thinking and reflecting just now. This is the way that this that the purpose was created. Our purpose here at the Pretzinger agency is to educate and help folks who, who are looking for insurance and don't have the right coverage, to help them understand what they need, and why they need it. So that their families are better protected. Now, as a purpose, really important that we then do all of the things in our agency to support that. So this was really important as the guiding light in our training, in our marketing, in our onboarding, in our interviewing in our hiring in every facet of the agency, it's important to ask, Does doing it this way support and align with our purpose. And as that purpose becomes more and more ingrained in the culture of the agency, the the people and team that we that we bring in, are going to further strengthen the culture because now we're hiring towards the culture. We're hiring towards that purpose driven culture that we've created. And while ah, all of a sudden there's a lot Buy in. And we have folks that want to get it done. Which is remarkable. That's the impact that you get, right? Because we've we instead, we installed purpose, we spent the time to lay down and navigate what was important to the team, what was important, and what they thought would lead to the biggest impact when talking with people who are getting quotes for insurance, impacting them, deciding to do business with us impact in their lives, and giving them the protection that they need. Instead of just doing quotes and pitching product, that's not our goal, our goal is to uncover and identify the holes that they currently have, and help to eliminate those so that they are properly covered. And then they get set and forget it. So having a clear purpose was was the first piece it was the first piece and this is my homework to you is to sit down and think about what is your purpose? What is your why? What is the passion that you bring to the table? And how are you going to use that passion to serve your clients and build this agency that makes an impact in your community and your state? For all the people that you're talking to and then signing up. So go home, think about that, or be at the office, just start jotting down some ideas. Think about it. I'd love it if you put some ideas in the comments. And of course, if you're listening in on the podcast forum, why don't you go ahead and put a comment in there. Well, as you're writing your review, we really appreciate it. So thank you next time we're going to be talking about the second P which is the principles and these are going to be the things the core values that that help to prop up and support your purpose. Thank you for listening. We really love you guys and appreciate you. We will talk soon if I can ever turn it off there we go. Bye