Insurance Agents: Focusing On Sales? You're Killing Your Agency...
Time and time again, I come across this same reality when coaching insurance agents – We all tend to focus on the SALES… rather than the ACTIVITY that LEADS to the SALES!
Most of you know that I am a serious numbers guy – Numbers don’t lie… and usually you can tell where there’s issues in your agency simply by looking at numbers.
For example, if your staff seem to have slowed down on their sales, hopefully you have setup a way to be able to track the number of calls they’re making, but I can almost guarantee the number of calls have probably dropped.
All of us as insurance agents know that insurance sales is a numbers game –
The more people you have to speak with, the more quotes you get, and the more sales you get – Obviously, right?
Most agents forget, though – Sales don’t just appear – Activity that you put in today, that phone call, or that quote that you’re doing today - may not lead to a sale for months…
...but it started with that phone call, or the quote.
It started with the activity that leads to the sales.
And, probably 99% of the time, here’s what USUALLY happens in an agency. In the first few months of the year, you set your goals for the year, you have the best of intentions, and then things come up.
Time goes by, March passes, then April passes, then May passes, and you realize… I’m NOT EVEN CLOSE to being on pace to hit the goals I set at the beginning of the year.
Why?
Because there are SOOO many things that can come up in an agency, and most agents become “reactive” instead of “proactive” and I know you know exactly what I’m talking about.
The issues come up, the claims, the compliance conversations, the staffing issues, the unhappy customers, the rate increases, and all of a sudden, you’re back to knowing that you have to absolutely KILL IT in the 4th quarter, or you’re going to have ANOTHER year where you didn’t hit your goals.
In January, let’s say you set your goals - it can be so easy to look at the fact that you have 11 or 12 months to get there, and your staff are saying the same thing, and that is DEADLY for an agency.
Do NOT do that! When you set your goals, don’t JUST set an annual goal –
Use that annual goal to determine what you have to do every quarter, every month, every week, every business day, every hour.
Work backwards to figure out what ACTIVITIES and HOW MUCH OF IT needs to get done every day in your agency, and MAKE SURE it gets done.
If you do that, the sales WILL happen – Why?
Because you’ve stopped focusing on the sale, and you’ve started focusing on the ACTIVITY that leads to the sales.
Chris Burkett has been helping insurance agents fast track the growth of their agencies for the last several years, using the most state of the art referral extraction methods. Feel free to reach out and connect with him right here on LinkedIn.