AGENCY OPERATIONS
IF YOUR AGENCY COULD TALK, WHAT WOULD IT SAY? One of the best questions I ever heard came from Andy Stanley, the founder and pastor of North Point Ministries in Atlanta: “What will your story be when it’s time for your story to be told?” Whenever I’ve asked this question at our senior leadership programs or producer programs, it tends to spur considerable thought. I can see that people are asking themselves, “When the time comes, what is my story going to be?” I think this question applies to you regardless of your role in the agency, whether you’re a leader, a producer, or any other team member. Although we may not be aware of it, we all are creating stories that someday will be told. Perhaps a better word is “legacy.” What legacy are you going to leave? As I’ve said before, eventually everybody leaves their business. Granted, most of my readers will be in this business for another 10, 15, or 20 years, if not longer. Why? Because it’s a great business that’s creating opportunities and freedoms that most can only dream of. To seize these opportunities and freedoms, however, you must act! As I’m sure you’ve heard me say in the past, “If you’re going to put the time in anyway, you might as well be great at it.” So here’s another question: If your agency could talk, what would it say? What would it say today, and what would you like it to say five years from now? Before you answer that, let me share with you the story of a Best Version Possible (BVP) Agency as it unfolds in my perfect world. It starts with asking “What’s it all about in your agency today?” The 3 Cs This is how the BVP Agency responds:
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FEBRUARY 2020
wisconsin INDEPENDENT AGENT
Here at the BVP Agency, we embrace several key themes, the first of which is The 3 Cs: Clarity, Consistency, and Commitment. Clarity means having a clear view of our vision. It’s what we want and why we want it, based on our understanding of the vision’s purpose and value. In terms of Key Performance Indicators, our agency and all of our team know exactly where we are today, where we want to go over the next three years, and exactly how we are going to get there. We know the resources and tools we need. We know the personal development plans for each team member. And we know our agreed-upon behaviors and strategies. We’re all on the same page concerning our business plan. In case you’re wondering how it’s possible for everyone to be on the same page, it’s because our business plan is on one page. Unlike most agencies, we have a single-page summary of our Strategic Business Plan that everyone can rally around. Further, we believe that direction and destination must match up. Because we have absolute clarity on our desired destination, we have to keep checking to make sure our current direction matches that desired destination. Just like an airplane or a ship at sea, if we get off track just a little bit and “stay the course” without recalibrating, we’ll miss our target by a lot. Consistency is all about our team members never deviating from our “agency’s way of doing business,” which is quite specific. We have documented processes and procedures that explain with absolute clarity (there’s that word again!) how things are done in our agency. We
