Randy Schwantz in Insurance Agencies
Menu
February 27, 2024 – 7 min read
Randy Schwantz in Insurance Agencies
Randy Schwantz in Insurance Agencies
Ignoring the capability gap means missing out on leveraging your most profitable opportunities. I didn’t come up with the term. It’s something I learned from Nick Saban.
If you want your producers to win, like Nick has won championship after championship, you’ll want to learn about how to close the Capability Gap. Let’s dive in.
If you can get 10 accounts with a total value of $500,000 in ARR, or 1,000 at the same valuation… Which would you pick?
In fact, add another 0 and it’s $5 million on 100 or 10,000 accounts.
Here’s what I see in our market: You need to choose between Marginal Growth and Aggressive Growth.
An operational mindset will chase the 10,000. They’ll look for opportunities in their existing portfolio to add another couple % on their revenue. They end up marketing, not selling. They focus on efficiency, on rounding out. They pick up a Marketing CRM and send out a bunch of automated emails.
The sales mindset in our market chases large account sizes. They opt for the 100. They chase down new businesses and add them to the portfolio. And they tend to grow a lot faster than their competition.
I’ve worked with hundreds of agencies for the past two decades.
And in that time I saw the aggressive agencies absolutely thrive.
They’re the type that understands the value of focusing on high-potential accounts instead of spreading efforts too thin.
They make sure to close the Capability Gap in their sales team.
The man is known for his unparalleled success in college football. But Saban’s philosophy isn’t about football; it’s about excellence. His relentless pursuit of improvement and his ability to foster mastery over mediocrity in his team offers a blueprint for sales leaders. It’s not the technology that wins championships (or closes sales), but the dedication to mastering the basics and pushing beyond.
And he did well – winning championship after championship:
His success isn’t about having the best players; it’s about making the best plays. For sales leaders, this means drilling down on what works and cutting out what doesn’t. It’s not about having more meetings or filling in more data; it’s about actionable insights and direct feedback that sharpens your team’s edge.
Your CRM is a tool, but your strategy is the game plan.
If you tell a guy go sell 10 cars and you get to go on a trip to Bahamas after he sells 10 cars, he’s gonna go home, sit in his chair, eat Doritos and drink beer. He’s not going to try to set a record for how many cars he can sell in a month.
That’s human nature. That’s normal.
As sales leaders, our job is to take people from normal human nature to be the best they can be.
Saban says that “Sometimes we assume that just because someone has talent, they want to be the best that they can be, but that’s not necessarily the case. Instead, you want to help your team to close the gap between what they’re capable of, and what they’re actually doing right now.”
He calls it the Capability Gap.
The capability gap is what you’re capable of versus what you’re actually doing.
So what we see right here, that’s a gap.
Closing that gap with our Producers is what sales leadership is all about.
To close the gap, we need to identify and control the variables that drive the outcome we want. Saban calls this The Process.
Now, it’s not about trying to control everything all at once.
It’s about controlling the most important variables that impact the goal, that you can actually have an influence on.
So what are the variables to winning in Middle Market insurance? Have a look:
It’s about:
Let’s look at this prospecting database. How important is that? Well, it’s huge! No prospects means no one to contact. Producers memorizing their service differences? Well without differentiation, you’re just like e-ve-ry-bo-dy else in this market.
Setting great appointments, can’t do that without a strong follow-up system. Running a sales process that ends up in BORs, being able to create a written service plan…
If we can close the gap on these variables, we’ll win a middle market. So how do we do that? Well, you can read all about it in my next article: How to actually get better results: Closing the Capability Gap in Middle Market Insurance.
Want to have direct access to those variables at your fingertips? Apply to work with Randy right here.
How The Wedge Sales Culture Drove New Business Growth
The Wedge Sales Culture is credited as the engine of this growth, and this case study explores how the agency has implemented and benefited from this process.
“Hire Producers with Confidence” Use Our Evidence-Based Interview Process to Eliminate Candidates Who Don’t Have GRIT
With my evidence based interview process you can be sure that your next hire has the GRIT to fight through walls and achieve success selling commercial insurance.
Growing Your Agency Just Got Way Easier
Do you want to work with me to grow your agency?
Take 90-seconds to complete this application
to see if you are eligible for a Growth Session.
How the Wedge Sales Culture Drove New Business Growth
The Wedge Sales Culture is credited as the engine of this growth, and this case study explores how the agency has implemented and benefited from this process.
“Hire Producers with Confidence” Use Our Evidence-Based Interview Process to Eliminate Candidates Who Don’t Have GRIT
With my evidence based interview process you can be sure that your next hire has the GRIT to fight through walls and achieve success selling commercial insurance.
Growing Your Agency Just Got Way Easier
Do you want to work with me to grow your agency?
Take 90-seconds to complete this application
to see if you are eligible for a Growth Session.