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You’ve heard the saying, “If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” This rings true in many insurance and employee benefits agencies that tend to see agency issues from a single lens that can be fixed by relying on the familiar toolbox of solutions. However, most issues facing insurance agencies today are not insurance problems—they're business problems that need to be tackled with strategic, business-focused solutions.
Let’s explore the difference and see what business improvement strategies look like.
Have low sales?
Typical agency response: The knee-jerk reaction is to hire more producers—sometimes multiple producers at once. When onboard, the typical agency does not provide training or coaching, yet they hope the new salespeople can save the agency.
Over recent years, there have been a few additions to the mix of how to solve the low sales problem:
- Build a new website, double down on social media, or start a podcast (that may or may not be related to the day job)
- Attend more conferences and meet insurance colleagues (vs. potential clients)
- Add more solution providers to brag about all the free stuff they give away
- Attack carriers and design a new health plan
Some of these things may be the right answer, but the way they’re often conceived and implemented, they tend to treat symptoms and don’t dig into the root cause to determine if it’s the right and best answer.
Business solution: Instead of immediately expanding the salesforce or adding more activities to the agency plate to fix a low sales problem, first ask: What are our producers doing with their time? How skilled are they at selling? How have we prepared them to sell effectively and represent our brand with confidence?
Fix the foundation. The solution isn’t just hiring more people. It’s about creating a structure that makes sense for your agency and empowers your team.
- Remove non-selling activities from their responsibilities.
- Train them. Give them a branded sales process to use consistently.
- Build out a client experience and sales process that your team can rely on and feel proud to represent.
Clients not engaging with solutions?
Typical agency response: Buy more solutions, offer them for free, and skip over training for the internal team and clients. Hope the clients like them and deem them valuable.
Business solution: Evaluate the relevance of those solutions. How well is your team positioning them during the sales process? How well are you implementing the solutions, training clients to use them, and measuring success?
Focus on doing less but doing better and building a solid client engagement strategy based on thoughtful evaluation and intentional execution.
Have high client turnover?
Typical agency response: Hire more producers to replace lost business.
Business solution: Fix your internal structure and operations.
- Define your client experience.
- Establish high-performing teams to deliver on that experience.
- Weed out toxicity and implement clear processes and reasonable technology to meet your newly defined standards.
Instead of throwing more bodies at the problem, build a culture aligned with what you want your clients to experience during their relationship with your agency.
Things aren’t getting done right internally?
Typical agency response: Depending on the leaders' personalities, the response may be to add more team members to subsidize the underperformers, endure bad work, and, less frequently, fire the underperformers.
Business solution: Subsidizing and enduring are never the right answer. Firing may be, but not until you’ve evaluated your internal processes.
- What are your expectations? Is there clear training, communication, and documentation to guide behaviors?
- Are you providing adequate training for both the software and the workflows your team needs to follow?
Often, the underperformance problem is a training and communication problem, which the agency is responsible for solving. When you have employees, you are responsible for providing them with an environment where they can thrive and help your agency thrive. Rather than cycling through employees, focus on building their skills.
Behavioral toxicity in the workplace?
Typical agency response: Excuse it or ignore it. We have heard all the excuses for allowing bad behavior to run the organization:
- "They bring in sales."
- "Clients are attached to them ."
- "They’re good with numbers."
- "It’s our busy time."
- "It’s so much work."
- "We can’t find a replacement."
It’s a revolving door of justifications to avoid the hard work of turning things around, firing, or finding a replacement.
Business solution: Address the root cause of toxicity. Toxicity erodes the entire business, no matter how good someone is at their job. Establish a zero-tolerance policy for toxicity where either the behavior goes or the person goes.
Have employee turnover?
Typical agency response: Hire new people from the same recruiting sources using the same hiring techniques.
Business solution: Evaluate the root causes of turnover. Is it due to toxic behavior? A lack of training? Are there gatekeepers hoarding information?
People rarely leave because of the work—they leave because they feel unsupported or stagnant. Focus on fostering growth, providing training, and eliminating bottlenecks to advancement.
Get cozy with the basics
We’ve never met an agency that struggles with insurance, but we do see most agencies struggle to build a solid business foundation. That's why we exist, why we built Goose, your ultimate wingman, and why we wrote The Salesperson’s Guide to Growing a Business.
Agencies need strong insurance solutions and to stay current on the insurance and non-insurance options available to help clients build a robust benefits program. But without a solid business foundation, any new insurance solutions are adding layers to a weak structure that can’t support them.
Business basics are the foundation. Your agency can’t grow into the innovative powerhouse you aspire to be without first building and solidifying those basics.
What most agencies want is a magic wand solution. But what they really need is thoughtful work to build a thriving business. We’re not here to wave a magic wand. We’re here in overalls, and we look like work.
A client told me she looks at Q4i as the business equivalent of 75Hard, and she needs to fully engage with the hard work to get the results she wants. I took this as the highest compliment. 😀
Want to join the movement?
Content originally published on Q4intelligence
Photo by stevanovicigor
