6 Producers. Zero Hires. $2 Million in New Revenue. Here's How.

Most producers in the middle of your agency have never been asked what they actually want from their career. Not once. And it's costing you more than you think. 

In a 10-producer agency, your middle six already generate more revenue than your top performers combined. Randy Schwantz breaks down the math: if those six producers each grow their books by just 20%, that's close to a million dollars in organic growth without a single new hire. 

One agency owner proved it. Four of six middle producers hit that target, the agency added over $2 million in revenue, and nobody was hired to make it happen. If you haven't had a real developmental conversation with your middle producers lately, this is the episode that changes that. 

If this episode was helpful, share it with a producer or agency leader who needs it. 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey there. An agency owner called me on a Thursday afternoon. He was in his car. He had just left a meeting with his leadership team and he said Hey Randy. We just [00:00:10] made a decision. We're letting four of our producers go at the end of this quarter. And then I asked him which four and then he named them. And as he was naming them I was kind of doing the math in [00:00:20] my head because I knew his agency. I'd seen the numbers and the math told me something his leadership team had missed entirely. So I said Well before you make those calls can I [00:00:30] ask you one question. He said Yeah sure. And then I asked it and there was a long silence on the other end of the phone. And then he said Say [00:00:40] that number again. And I said it again. And then he said I'll call you back. But he didn't call me back that night. He called me back two days later. And when he did [00:00:50] those four producers still had their jobs.

Welcome to the Agency Growth Machine Podcast, where it's all about transforming potential into [00:01:00] profit. And now your host, Randy Schwantz.

Hey welcome to The Agency Growth Machine. I'm Randy Schwantz author of The Wedge and [00:01:10] creator of Bignition the only sales operating system built specifically for commercial insurance agents. You run a commercial insurance agency. [00:01:20] You've got producers at different levels with different books and different amounts of hustle. And today we're talking about the group most agency owners have accidentally written off. The middle [00:01:30] sixty percent. So let's go.

See every agency has what I call a producer distribution. You know you got the top twenty percent. Those are your hunters. [00:01:40] They wake up every morning just ready to go and they don't need much. Just get out of the way and pay them on time. And then you've got your bottom twenty percent. We're [00:01:50] not gonna deal with that today. I mean that's a different episode. And then there's the middle sixty percent. Six out of every ten producers. [00:02:00] The ones who are doing okay even though they're not setting the world on fire. They're not embarrassing anybody. They renew their accounts. They service clients. They show up. [00:02:10] But here's what most agency owners do with that group. They leave them alone. Not because they're satisfied. But because they don't know what to do with them. [00:02:20] See they're not broke enough to fix and they're not good enough to celebrate. So you just leave them alone and let them exist. But let me show you what those producers actually [00:02:30] represent.

So let's say you have ten producers. Your top two write one point four million each. They got nice books. That's two point eight million dollars. Your bottom two are [00:02:40] around two hundred thousand each. And the other six, your middle sixty percent, they're averaging around seven hundred thousand. And that's four point two million dollars from the middle. [00:02:50] The middle's already your largest revenue segment and you're treating them like it's a waiting room. Now here's the math that changes everything. What if those six middle [00:03:00] producers each grew their books by twenty percent over the next couple of years. That's an average of a hundred and forty thousand in new revenue per producer. Do that [00:03:10] times six that's close to a million dollars in organic growth without hiring a single person. The math's right there. The agency owners who find it [00:03:20] they change their whole trajectory.

So if the math is that obvious why don't more owners tap into it? Well because the middle [00:03:30] sixty percent confuse people. They're not failing they're not thriving. They're just steady. And steady doesn't trigger urgency. But here's what I've learned [00:03:40] about the middle sixty. Most of them never intended to stop growing. They didn't show up on day one saying Hey I plan to be mediocre. They just started writing [00:03:50] accounts, building relationships, renewing policies, and the years went by. So think about baseball. You've got a pitcher who's been in the rotation six years. He's not the ace [00:04:00] not the long reliever.

He's a guy who gives you six innings, keeps the team in the game, and wins eight or ten games a year. He's reliable consistent and almost [00:04:10] certainly underutilized. What would happen if that pitcher had a pitching coach who actually worked with him? Not just showed up on game day, but watched film, identified what was [00:04:20] holding him back, adjusted his mechanics. I mean we've seen it happen, Thirty-year-old pitchers become all-stars when the right coach finally invests in them, [00:04:30] Well your middle sixty percent are the same way. Most of them lack three things. And number one it's just a clear target. [00:04:40] Nobody has ever sat down with them and said By the end of next year I want you at one point two million and here's what it takes. Here's the [00:04:50] plan.

And then number two is a solid reason. What does growing their book by twenty percent actually mean for their life. [00:05:00] More commission, Yes. But more than that Does it mean they stop worrying about the mortgage? They put their kid in a better school? They build a [00:05:10] kind of security their parents never had? I mean most producers have never been asked that question by their agency owner and it's the most powerful question you can ask. And [00:05:20] number three is confidence. And here's what I mean by that. Confidence is not a personality trait. Confidence is what happens when you know what to do and you know how to do it. [00:05:30] Producers who don't grow often lack confidence in their differentiation. They don't know how to walk into an account and make a compelling case for change.

So [00:05:40] stay with me cause I'm about to tell you what that owner did with his middle producers and one specific move he made in a sales meeting that changed the culture of his entire agency. Here's what he did. [00:05:50] Three things. Number one he had individual conversations with each of his middle producers. Not a performance review. A development conversation. He [00:06:00] asked each of them, What does your life look like in three years if your book doubles? Let's figure out what that means for you specifically. That [00:06:10] conversation had never happened for most of them not even once in their career. One of his producers 12 years at the agency steady $800,000 book started [00:06:20] crying in that meeting. Not because anything harsh was said but because nobody ever asked him that question seriously before. He had a daughter who was gonna need some help with [00:06:30] college. A wife who'd been working part-time to stay home with the kids. He knew his book could be bigger. He just didn't know anyone cared and frankly that changed everything. And [00:06:40] the second thing he gave his middle producers something specific to sell. Not just Hey go find accounts. An actual documented proactive service [00:06:50] model, a service timeline deliverables clients would receive on paper. Measurable and trackable. Now [00:07:00] when a producer walked into a prospect meeting they weren't selling price and hope. They were showing what a relationship with this agency actually looked like and frankly the incumbent couldn't [00:07:10] match it because the incumbent didn't have it. They had a renewal call and well a holiday card. And then third he ran a different kind of sales [00:07:20] meeting. Not a status update. A training session. He'd pick one producer each week pull an account up from their book and say Walk me through how you'd grow this account [00:07:30] by 20 in the next 12 months. What's your strategy? And the producer had to answer in front of the team with feedback. Yeah it was uncomfortable at first but within six [00:07:40] months it was the meeting everyone looked forward to. Cause the result two years in, four of his six middle producers grew their books by more than 20. His [00:07:50] agency grew over two million in revenue and that was without a single hire. The growth was there the whole time. It just needed a [00:08:00] leader to unlock it. And those four producers he was about to let go? Two of them were in that group that grew.

Here's what I want you to do after this [00:08:10] episode. Pull out your producer list. Find your middle 60 and ask yourself When is the last time I had a real developmental conversation with any of them? [00:08:20] Not a review, not a coaching call about a specific account, a conversation about their life, their goals, their trajectory with [00:08:30] specifics. And if the answer is Well it's been a while or never. Well then you got work to do. And it's good work. It's the kind that [00:08:40] compounds. See the middle 60 of your team represent the single largest growth opportunity in your agency right now. Not the next hire, not the next [00:08:50] market, not the next technology platform. The people already on your payroll with a little investment a little direction and a leader who actually asked them what they want [00:09:00] out of their career. That's the agency growth machine.

Look subscribe and share this, but before you leave think about this for a moment. Commercial insurance [00:09:10] selling has gone through three eras and right now today your agency's living in one of them. Era number one is Selling 1.0. It's how your granddaddy did it. Three by [00:09:20] five cards. Yellow Pages. A metal box and wooden desk. The strategy was quote it hope you win it. No real system, no process, no differentiation. [00:09:30] Just whoever had the lowest number on renewal day and the best relationship won. Then era two came along and that's when Salesforce and HubSpot and Pipedrive. They all had big promises big beautiful [00:09:40] dashboards enterprise-grade everything. But do you know what it actually produced? Well a pipeline report your manager could pull on Friday and that's [00:09:50] it. The training lived in a binder. The technology lived on a browser. And they never talked to each other. Meanwhile the incumbent already has the relationship, already [00:10:00] knows the account, and always got last look. Selling 2.0 was about relationship building and consultative selling along with generic technology that slowed things [00:10:10] down more than it sped things up. And what it never gave producers was a system to win and grow a huge book of business. And then era three comes along. [00:10:20] We call it Selling 3.0 and this is Bignition. It's one integrated sales operating system where the methodology is the [00:10:30] technology and the technology is the methodology. Seven steps to seven figures training for producers. It's one platform. Goals are all tied in. Differentiations in that you can [00:10:40] prove. Appointment setting that's systematic not random. Pre-call strategy that's built to displace an incumbent not just to have a nice conversation. And a selling process anchored on [00:10:50] one brutal truth nobody else wants to talk about It. That that's the incumbent has to lose for you to win. And retention backed by documented [00:11:00] deliverables not vague abstract promises. And well results man you can measure them at every level. So it's three eras three tools [00:11:10] three completely different games. Which one are you in? Which one do you want to be in?

Look if you like this leave a review. I'm Randy [00:11:20] Schwantz. Go lock it up now and I'll see you in our next week.