Enhance your Agency & Build your Legacy with Kelly Donahue
In this episode of Get Savvy, we have Delta’s favorite client & Insurance favorite Coach, Kelly Donahue, as a guest elaborating on how agencies can enhance their processes and thrive to become legacies for generations which is one of her superpowers. Maintaining discipline and efficiency at an organization with few employees is comparatively easier because you can just handle it through bonding but when we talk about greater institutional strengths than it requires creativity and patience for the management to make the team sync and move coherently in the same direction regardless of employees’ diverse personalities and background, therefore she focuses on a specific niche. Healthy work culture is the key to success and it’s the little things that contribute to it like promoting incentives or setting goals, things that seem minuscule in nature but have a drastic impact.
Do you think feelings matter? If your answer is Yes, then think again because they don’t when it comes to agencies or businesses. Agencies should be operating on facts rather than feelings, when employees start incorporating their feeling of dislike for certain tasks, start mentioning their workload, or start highlighting their busy schedule this is where the productivity and progress start to collapse because matrices don’t focus on the reason behind a lag, they just evaluate outputs. Agencies should focus on improving their infrastructure and one thing that I gathered is that agencies should always segregate sales and services so that it doesn’t end up being a competition, it is mandatory for growth that both the aspects go side by side and for the management to take over when it comes to planning and implementation for a smooth ride instead of letting their employees just go with the flow.
Employees should be taught to “Eat the Frog” in the sense that they should set a goal for a day and achieve it whether they have a tough schedule or not because I know if I set my mind that I would do this task today then I end up achieving it but when I just let it be then I just think that there is always tomorrow, and the task keeps on getting dragged on. We all know that It’s not always easy to pass the reigns to someone else, especially when you know that you are well versed in that aspect. There is always resistance toward the suggestion when it comes from anyone other than you, whether it’s our personal or professional life. If you feel like your autonomy is being challenged after achieving it with dedication and hard work, there is always a rebellious reaction towards letting your autonomy go. So, in order for the Agency to accept external suggestions from professionals like Kelly, it’s important that the leadership implements the change and if leadership feel like as Kelly put it, “is negotiating with terrorists” then there is a saying on which I think leadership should act on which is, “If you can’t change the people, change the people”. But sometimes the problem isn’t arising from the team, it’s just the leadership who isn’t clear on the values and direction they want to be heading in and it takes efforts to bring forth the change and not just the suggestions. So, if an agency wants to succeed then synchronization of the leadership and the team is the key along with having a set value and vision for the Agency.
Whenever I think about growing a business the first thing that comes to my mind is how to get a surplus of customers but there is more to business growth than just new customers. Surprise to hear that? You are not alone; I was astonished too. After listening to Kelly I got to know there are Eight more ways to be specific to boost your business which include:
- Cross-selling
- Provision of improved coverage
- Getting rid of 10% of your bottom-tiered customers
- Being an active listener with your clients and carriers
- Having a progressive policy
- Budgeting
- Having a tech-stack
- Remarketing
After listening to this podcast, I realized that people normally move forward with such a monotonous mindset that they don’t even consider other means of evolving their business apart from bringing in new customers and increasing their sales. In short, if one wants to elevate their business then they have to focus on making each and every step efficient and be open to new ideas Just like in the movie Forrest Gump where the male protagonist manages to generate an income stream at the Airport utilizing an existing way in his favor, that’s what it means to be creative. One thing that you might have found a bit unorthodox would be getting rid of the 10% of your lower-tiered customers, right? The first thing that you must be wondering is how can that be beneficial for an Agency and how would they do it, right? Because I know whenever I think about Agencies, I consider them to prioritize their customers, but this is completely opposite to the image I have for the Agencies. There is more to it than it seems at the surface, It’s a way of positive reinforcement for the employees and a complete mood booster because the employees can get rid of their most exhausting clients and it makes sense because they can invest that time in other clients and can end up generating more business than they ever could with their previous clients.
Technology is overcoming each and every industry that I am aware of and I thought technology plays a vital role for insurance agencies too but I got to Know through Kelly that software is only efficient if you utilize it to the max and not just use 25%, there are thousands of agencies that are still using the old ways and still managing to make a profit and maintains their retention rate and that I think is the most important thing for Agencies for their business and image. Kelly develops virtual data and presents it to the Agencies to show them where they are lagging which motivates the team to fix the issue that’s holding them back, it just highlights the problem, which is holding them back, so they just start focusing on eradicating the problem in order to evolve as an agency. One more aspect that plays a major part in the equation of success is a strong leader who knows when they can put out fires themselves and when they need help to be on track, A strong leadership with the realization of the situation is always a good sign to analyze whether the Agency is staying afloat or not.
The real satisfaction for me after listening to Kelly is not just because she is a superwoman when it comes to helping agencies, but she is a strong believer in women’s empowerment, even though there is a good bulk of women involved in this industry yet there are still a limited number of women compared to men who own them, She motivates women to own their day and move forward by cross-selling an upselling and to own their days instead of just living through them. In addition to this, I find Kelly to be an inspiration not just for me but for women overall, she is so successful in what she does that hundreds of Agencies turn to her when they feel stuck, and she fixes them. Appreciation should be a must where it’s due. Not just for the powerhouses like Kelly but for every employee who is doing a good job because it’s not the pay that retains an employee but how you truly treat them is the deciding factor of their retention. It doesn’t mean that agencies shouldn’t focus on increased salaries, they should always focus on matching the employees’ salaries according to their growth, work, and capabilities. Agencies should always consider macro factors like inflation when deciding their employees’ paychecks. Appreciation is well and good but only when the paycheck is compatible too because we all know, ‘Action speaks louder than words and a good paycheck is one way of appreciation too So it’s a balance between words and salary.