[Blog] Building a Winning Team

As a former high school athlete who now coaches kids basketball, it’s perhaps not surprising Stephen Pirch uses a sports metaphor to describe the way he has grown his successful Country Financial agency: Offense, defense and special teams.

“Offense was really production-based: growth mode,” he says of the game plan behind the 10-strong team he leads in two Missouri offices, in Lee’s Summit and Blue Springs (where he lives with his wife and four children). “Defense is our service and retention side, and then our special teams is really our ACR (agency contact representative), who is the secret sauce in setting appointments, making sure that myself and our associates are in front of people at all times.”

Starting out as a part-time producer while still a teenager, Pirch joined a Country Financial agency  full-time for a few months before launching his own at just 21. Coming into the industry with only a high school diploma, Pirch soon discovered that, just as in the sports world, natural ability and determination can take you only so far. At some point, you need a coach to help you hone those skills.

“I remember walking the streets door-
knocking and canvasing apartment complexes, just trying to do whatever we could to get in front of people,” he says of his early days (which included working as a server at Applebee’s, to supplement his income). Sharing an office with some other young agents who would bounce ideas off each other, “I didn’t know it then, but it was a study group.”

As business started to take off, he got so busy he didn’t have time to pursue the leads he was buying. “I kept looking at the stack of internet leads being like, ‘Gosh, what a waste of money. I don’t have time to work these.’ I realized I needed to figure out how to multiply myself. I needed to hire somebody.”

Reading Troy Korsgaden’s Power Position Your Agency provided critical input. Pirch recognized that if he was to grow, he needed to find more time in his day: “If I could pay somebody to help me on defense and help handle the service side of our business then I could go and focus on being on offense and growing my agency. That really helped me kind of start investing in my business and looking for an 18- to 24-month return, as opposed to an immediate return on a hire.”

Another important factor in his continued growth has been participating in Korsgaden Insights’s Practice Management. The program has expanded Pirch’s vision: “It’s really put me in a business owner mindset, where early in my career [it was about] just selling policies and providing for my family. Then I started hiring people and growing my team, and it’s crazy to think that [now] we help support nine other families in our community, and we are making a difference not only in our clients’ lives but in our team members’ lives.”

Pirch appreciates how the program promotes a growth mindset. “Troy says it best: you can’t start looking for a quarterback when they go down,” he explains. “You need to have a back-up on your bench or in your recruiting book ready to call up. You have to be constantly recruiting. Everybody’s either a prospect or a future team member.”

In addition to the vision-casting and action steps he has received through Practice Management, Pirch has appreciated learning from and with others in different parts of the industry.

“It was really great to see other companies represented,” he says of the Practice Management event he attended in Chicago, in 2023, “because a lot of the times I’m in a vacuum with other Country Financial reps. So, seeing and hearing the same struggles and concerns that other reps and other companies have in the industry really gave me a perspective and created energy and hope: ‘Hey, we’re not alone.’”

Pirch tears up as he speaks of a deeply personal dimension to his Practice Management involvement. Growing up as an only child, he recalls “you’re alone a lot of the time and you figure things out on your own.” Not having gone to college, he did not have the opportunity to experience the lifelong friendships that are often forged there. “But what Practice Management did is it created a fraternity, it created a brotherhood, and for that I’m grateful.”

Korsgaden Insights: What has been the biggest return on investment for you from Practice Management?

Stephen Pirch: That’s easy for me to answer. There’s that saying we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with and when we started our Practice Management study group, we had people [from] all over the country . . . Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota . . . we all were like-minded and we cheered for each other and we pulled each other out of the mud and the quicksand and we are still meeting weekly. I think that’s the biggest thing, just the mindset shift, surrounding yourself with positive, goal-oriented people, and Practice Management created that environment.

KI: What changes have you made in your business as a result of participating in Practice Management?

SP: The biggest impactful position that I changed was hiring an agency contact representative, a true, defined ACR whose only job is to set appointments, confirm appointments, reschedule appointments. The goal in doing reviews and meeting with clients is ultimately to meet with them under the right conditions and retooling our review process to 30 minutes or less has radically changed not only our efficiency on how many reviews we can do—we’ve opened that up to other team members as well, so we’re able to multiply our appointments—but also setting up the follow-up appointments so that next time we meet with a client it’s specifically oriented towards life insurance or towards financial planning, not just, “Why did my rates go up?” or, “I need an insurance card,” or “I need to add my kiddo to our auto policy.” [We are] seeing more people under the right conditions, resulting in more activity. We call it getting more at bats.

KI: Have your team members been involved in the monthly coaching sessions, and if so, what has been the result?

SP: Yes, our agency director, Monica, has held almost every role within our team and now helps with recruiting, training and creating more efficient processes. She has been a part of Practice Management in her own right—not with me in the group; she does it on her own—and she loves it. She has pages of notes. She gets excited when she gets off the call, she’s energized and engaged, and comes back with new ideas. We meet weekly, just her and I, and it’s been really good because then she gets to see behind the curtain of what I’m doing and we’re now unified and on the same page with what we’re trying to accomplish and she’s a little bit closer with the production team and service team because she runs production meetings and service meetings, so Monica has really gotten a lot out of Practice Management, not just me sharing what I’ve learned.

KI: It’s great to go to a meeting and get good ideas and to get motivated and inspired, but what has helped you take that good information and then actually put it into action?

SP: That’s a great question. I have always described myself as the visionary of the agency and Monica is my implementer. I wanted to call her my executor, but that didn’t sound right (laugh). After a meeting or after a Practice Management virtual or in-person meeting, we’ll have pages of notes and ideas. Then I will get with my team, Monica specifically, who’s the agency director, and start to download everything that I have learned and taken away. I realize I am not able to do this by myself. It’s so much impactful information. We will meet and go over what changes we can make or what can we implement that helps move the needle immediately and what processes are we able to make more efficient to allow us to scale more proficiently? Usually, after a Practice Management [event], we’re meeting a couple of times that week to debrief and then implement. It’s a two-person approach: I can dream it up and I can have the vision and then she comes alongside me to put it in writing and to put in the systems and to implement and then really check up and keep making sure it’s rolling downhill. The Practice Management book has been almost like my agency Bible, where I rely on that participant guide for making sure that I’m not missing something.

KI: Beyond your business, has Practice Management impacted your quality of life in any way?

SP: I don’t think there’s any doubt that my work-life balance or my emotional capacity has shifted, in the sense that I have a bigger team to handle the day-to-day operations. It’s really allowed me to slide into what I’m passionate about with financial planning and life insurance and being a dad and being a husband and being a good team member and employer. It’s taken all of these spinning plates that I have and it’s helped me delegate . . . I’m more focused on growing our team and operating in my specialized role. Going from being a 21-year-old kid trying to sell insurance to a 42-year-old employer of 10 people, with two office locations, thousands of clients, is beyond my dreams. It’s allowed [me] to be a better version of myself.

KI: What’s the next step in your organization, the next thing you look forward to implementing?

SP: I just hired another customer care person. My next hire will be an associate agent who’s focused on outside sales. Right now, we have a couple of associate agents who handle inside sales for referrals that are coming in from current client and business partners over the past 21 years . . . there is plenty to do—and so hiring an outside sales associate agent will allow me to further our footprint within our community.

KI: What else do you think people should know about Practice Management?

SP: For those people who have never been in a group of people or in a program that will hold you accountable and help you create an action plan to achieve those goals, it’s so rewarding because, especially for those who are more tenured reps, to expect different results while continuing to do the same things over and over is crazy. But what Practice Management does is it opens [you] to so much more potential, not only in the business. [For] myself, it has allowed me to think so much bigger. It creates a group of people that are like-minded and goal-oriented and who not only cheer for you but keep you accountable. My biggest takeaway that I usually will leave people with is, “Bet on yourself, invest in your business and the harder you work, the luckier you get.”