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Agency Acceleration Lab is the podcast for insurance agents and agency owners who want to scale smarter, not harder.
Hosted by Alex Branning, each episode breaks down real growth strategies, marketing systems, and client retention frameworks that help you attract better clients, increase lifetime value, and build a more predictable agency.
If you're serious about building a high-performance insurance business, you're in the right place.
How Cody Askins Built a Million-Dollar Sales Team (And Keeps Them Performing)
Alex Branning:
Hey guys, I'm here with Cody, who has done a phenomenal job of building and motivating a team. And no matter what size your team is, I think what you're going to get is going to be super valuable. Cody, thanks for joining us. Man, you have a really good system in place for motivating your team. Can you walk through what that looks like?
Cody Askins:
Yeah, buddy. Happy to. Man, I remember not having a team, and it's so much nicer having a physical team. We have an operational side and a sales side.
From a visual standpoint, really quick, we have an entire sales team that's out here working every single day, 16 total sales reps, even waving behind us. And then we have our operational side of our business on the front side of our office.
A couple of things that we do, how we find people when it comes to a team. My three favorite ways to find people are either from internal referral, which we get a lot of. When your culture is right, you will start getting more internal referrals.
Second is from me posting about needing to hire somebody or fill a position on social media. I'll even incentivize people in posts, like, “Hey, if you find somebody who needs a job and we hire them, I'll give you 200 bucks cash.”
And then the third is from Indeed. When we hire from Indeed, we don’t spend any money. We don’t sponsor it.
Which leads me to onboarding. One thing we do when we’re looking through people is we want them to send a 60-second video of why they should be hired.
We also put them through an assessment. I built my own called CODE — Commander, Organizer, Developer, Empath.
Three of my top four sales reps did over a million dollars in revenue each last year, and three of those were Empaths. They’re phenomenal with people, they care, they’re loyal, and they’re competitive.That combination has crushed it for us.
One of the biggest things you can do is get them doing the job fast. The faster I can get them on the phone, the more successful they’ll be. Most people bury their team in weeks of training, shadowing, videos, guides. The more I put in their brain early, the less likely they are to take action.We get them dialing within the first couple hours.We also structure our sales team into levels. Level one, level two, level three.
To move up, you have to hit certain revenue numbers two months in a row. When you level up, your salary and commission increase. If you don’t perform, you can move backwards.
We operate more like a professional sports team. We love people, we’re a family, but performance matters.
We also do a daily all-team meeting at 7:30 AM where we share wins — personal, professional, financial.Then we break into sales and operations meetings. I spend about 20 minutes with the sales team every morning. Sometimes we role play, sometimes games, sometimes just talking.
We also have a second sales meeting in the afternoon.
And then one of the biggest things I’ve started doing is monthly tag-ins. I meet with every team member monthly, about 10–15 minutes each.We don’t talk about numbers. We talk about life.
I’ve discovered people dealing with depression, debt, struggles. And we’ve been able to help them.
That builds real loyalty.
Alex Branning:
I love that. We talked a lot about culture. Let’s talk about numbers.
Cody Askins:
Yeah, numbers are huge.
We have a sales board. Everyone puts their revenue up every day.If you don’t make a sale, you put a zero. When you’re competitive, you don’t want to put a zero.
We talk about numbers constantly. We recognize wins. We read out everyone’s numbers weekly.We track everything daily, weekly, monthly, yearly.
Transparency creates accountability.
Alex Branning:
What about someone not performing well?
Cody Askins:
Most of the time, it’s not skill. It’s belief.
I had a guy who left and came back because he said no one believed in him like I did. Low confidence, doubt, I worked on him as a person.We did things to get him out of his comfort zone.
Now he’s second in the office. It’s about the person first, then the skill.
Alex Branning:
Let’s wrap this up. What mistakes should people avoid when hiring?
Cody Askins:
Don’t hire just because you like someone.
Hire the right person.
Never hire on the first interview. It shows desperation.
Take time. Do assessments.
Be brutally honest. Don’t delay feedback.
If someone is late on day one, address it immediately.
Standards matter.
Alex Branning:
I love it. If you want to learn more, come join us at Power Players. Cody, thank you, man.
Alex Branning:
Thank you for watching. Take notes, take action, and subscribe. You won’t get value unless you implement.