How to Build SOPs That Actually Stick

An agency owner emailed me this week asking if I'd send over our SOP manual to use as a sample. Same day, the same question landed in one of the ERIE Facebook groups. I've heard some version of it at every event I've attended this year. More of us are taking standard operating procedures seriously, which is good. 

I'm thankful I got started on this journey early. A coach named Joe Hagen with Freedom Through Systems, who I met through Xanatek and ERIE agency owner trainings, taught me the benefit of systems and standards before I understood why they mattered. That sent me down the rabbit hole, reading books like The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. We've always done a decent job, but I started really taking it seriously two to three years ago and doubling down. It's been one of the best decisions I've made. Slow to pay off, and the payoff compounds over time. 

Here are a few things I've learned along the way that I hope help you. 

First, keep your structure simple. Pick a handful of operational areas. We use sales, service, carrier relations, agency operations, and training. Then mirror whatever you already have. I match my SOP names to the task names in my management system, and I make sure those task names match my folders. One naming scheme, used everywhere. Do that and people can actually find things. Skip it and you get a junk drawer of files nobody opens. 

Second, think about how you capture them. There are a few ways. A Loom video walking through the steps is one of the best for the person learning. Another is talking through the process into an AI tool and letting it write the steps up. Either way, keep text as your base, because that's what AI can read. We have a chatbot that reads our SOPs, and that only works because they live as text. The catch with video: change one step and the video is outdated, and re-recording isn't easy. There's no right or wrong here, just trade-offs to keep in mind. 

Third, start where it hurts, or start where it's easy. The highest-frequency process is where inconsistency costs you most. But Joe makes a fair counterpoint: open with the hardest one and you may get stuck and finish nothing. A few easy wins build momentum. Both work. Just start. 

Fourth, write them with your team, not for them. The procedures that stick are the ones the people doing the work helped build. 

And treat them as living documents. The rule we use: any change to a process starts with the procedure, not the other way around. 

One side note on the manual-sharing question, since it keeps coming up. I'd skip asking other owners for theirs. They're proprietary, they usually hold confidential agency and client information, and they represent years of work someone put into fitting them to their own shop. If someone offers, great. But you don't need a borrowed template anyway. With AI, building your own from scratch is faster than adapting someone else's ever was. 

That's the foundation. Building them is only half of it. The harder part is getting people to actually use them, which comes down to how and when you release them and how you spot check. That's next week.