The product only exists
on the worst day.
Everything an agency does for years is paperwork until the morning a client calls about a fire, a wreck, or a diagnosis. That is when the thing you actually sold shows up, and it shows up as a person on the phone, usually a CSR whose name is not on the door and who has had almost no development spent on her.
These formats are free, they fit an agency calendar, and nobody needs to have read the book first, including whoever is running it.
Where this comes from. Chris Sund is a keynote speaker and the bestselling author of You Are Capable of More. He has spent fifteen years running sales and service organizations, taking one company from a startup to one of the largest in its industry, so the material comes from carrying a number and a service team at the same time rather than from studying either.
What this is
not.
This is not sales training, it is not carrier product training, and it does not carry CE credit. Say that out loud when you schedule it so nobody arrives expecting hours.
Nothing here will fill a pipeline. It works on the person behind the activity, which is usually where a producer’s flat year actually lives once they already know how to quote.
Agency development goes to producers because production is measured. CSRs and account managers hold the retention that pays for everything and get a carrier webinar. This is written for both.
An hour on a slow morning, a session at the agency meeting, a cohort across ten weeks. Nobody travels and nothing closes.
No budget line, no vendor agreement, no license. Print it and run it. The material is free and stays free.
The concepts that land
hardest in an agency.
There are ten in the book. These four are the ones that get an agency quiet.
Leave People Better
Start here, and start with the service team. A claim call is somebody on the worst morning of their year, and the person answering it has been trained on coverage forms and never once told what her actual job is on that call.
Success is what you write. Significance is who is better because of you. In this business those are not competing ideas, because the agencies that keep clients for thirty years are the ones that got the worst day right.
Read the concept →Time Is Your Edge
The oldest problem in the business. Service work is urgent, visible, and never finished, and new business is important and can always wait until tomorrow. A producer with a decent book can spend an entire year fully occupied and write almost nothing.
This is not a calendar session. It is about the trade an agent makes twenty times a day without noticing, between what is in front of them and what fills the book in six months.
Read the concept →The Comfort Ceiling
A renewal book pays you whether or not you grow, which is the most comfortable trap in any commission business. Plenty of agents reached a number that was enough somewhere around year eight and have been maintaining ever since without ever deciding to.
Run this with tenured producers, and run it with owners. The same question sits underneath agency perpetuation, which is that a lot of principals have not built a successor because the agency is fine and there has been no forcing event.
Read the concept →Finish What You Start
Agencies start things constantly. The niche vertical, the referral program, the new agency management system, the marketing plan that made it to March. Individuals do the same with the designation, the class, the book they were going to work.
Run this with a team carrying a pile of good intentions. It surfaces something about how the agency operates about as often as about the person.
Read the concept →Four formats,
four calendars.
Same material, different levels of commitment. Start with whatever your people will realistically show up for.
The Lunch and Learn
All ten concepts at about five minutes each, with a full run of show and the exact question to ask for every one. Nothing to prepare beyond printing a page, and nobody needs to have read the book.
Works for: an agency meeting, a producer and service team session together, a cluster or network gathering, or a breakout at a state association event.
Open the Guide →The Book Club Guide
One session per concept, written so anyone in the group can run it rather than requiring a facilitator. Honest questions, one that asks more of the room, and a challenge to carry into the week.
Works for: a producer group meeting monthly, an account management team, a young agents group, or a principals roundtable. Everyone needs a copy of the book.
Download the Guide →The Boot Camp
All ten condensed into a day. Each concept runs the same loop: short teach, silent reflection, table discussion, decision. The group leaves with a written plan instead of notes.
Works for: an agency planning day, a cluster or network conference, a state association convention, or a leadership retreat.
Open the Guide →The 10-Week Program
The deep version, and the one built for perpetuation. One concept a week with real agency life in between, so people try something and report back.
Works for: a new producer class in months two through four, a service-to-producer track, or the people you are quietly hoping will run the agency after you.
Open the Guide →Running it
in an agency.
Things Worth Knowing Before You Start
Put producers and service in the same room. The temptation is to run it for producers because they are the ones with a number. Half the value is a CSR hearing a producer admit which of these they are bad at, and the other half is the producer hearing what the service side carries.
Not at renewal season. Whatever your concentration is, January first, July first, or a hard market renewal cycle, do not schedule development into it. Find the quiet six weeks every agency has and use them.
It does not count for CE. Say so when you put it on the calendar. People in this industry are used to any scheduled session carrying hours, and finding out afterward that it did not is a small betrayal that colors the whole thing.
Owners answer the questions too. Every guide is written so the person running it participates. In a small agency where the principal is in the room, whether they answer honestly determines entirely whether anybody else does.
Do not run it instead of dealing with perpetuation. If the real issue is that nobody knows what happens to the agency in five years, a session on personal potential will be heard as avoidance. That conversation is worth having on its own.
If You Are Building a Reading List Instead
There are separate pages of books for sales reps and books for customer service reps, with honest write-ups covering both halves of an agency. Most of them are not mine.
The highest level of success is helping others become more.
Or bring Chris
to the room.
State association conventions, cluster and network conferences, agency planning days, and young agent events. Bulk copies can be paired with a keynote so people leave with the material rather than the memory of it.
Bring Chris In
The keynote, a facilitated day, or bulk copies for a convention or an agency planning day.
Start a Conversation →The Comfort Ceiling Assessment
Twenty five questions across five areas. Runs on a phone in ten minutes, answers stay on the person’s own device, and it gives a room something concrete to talk about.
Take It →The Promise
One thing you have been putting off, with a date on it. A good closing exercise for a planning day, and it takes four minutes.
Make One →The Printables
Worksheets for all ten concepts, ready to print for every seat in the room.
Print Them →
When I’ve got something worth sending.
Just a story or an idea I picked up that I think will help you.
Sometimes that’s twice in a month. Sometimes it’s not for a while.