I believe that almost every person can DOUBLE his or her productivity at work.
Today, I’m going to share with you a process I have used over and over to vastly improve, double, and even quadruple the productivity of hundreds of insurance agency employees within a few months!
If you’re the kind of person who feels like your people are already performing well, you’ll be thrilled to see that often those people are the fastest to improve their productivity.
If on the other hand, you feel like some of your team are on “agency welfare” and you’ve had it. This is for you because you will have a process to make sure none of your people are a “tourist” on your trip to greater results.
And if you’re the kind of agency owner who has some high performers and some … well … not so much performers, you’ll love knowing you can bring up the consistency of performance for all.
There are 3 recurring challenges that get in the way of getting team members tied to productivity and profit:
- They tend to be trained for the job by the person who had the job before them, but that person may not have been a top 5 percent performer for that position as opposed to others in the country. As a result, your high potential person is not realizing high performance.
- If your team members are like most agency employees, they DO NOT understand that your top 20% of your customers account for; in you’re like the average agency owner, at least 60% of your profits. So they have not even begun to think about how they should spend time to keep, and get more of these top customers.
- Do your customer service and administrative employees think they do not have an important role which lead to more new sales, higher retention, increased referrals, and profits. If that’s going on that’s a real problem for you, and here’s the part you may not like, but it’s 100% true … IT’S YOUR FAULT for allowing this is your business.
EVERY Insurance Agency seems to have these same challenges that keep them from even higher productivity and profits.
I’m now going to give you 3 steps that will help you get some traction over the next few weeks on aligning each of your team members to productivity.
Step 1: UNLIKE so much of what is taught as “conventional wisdom” in insurance the best way to improve new business app production, retention, and referrals is NOT to simply quote more. I’ve helped over two thousand agency owners improve in all three of these key performance areas with HIGH PRODUCTIVITY PROCESSES and systems that work over and over that will attract top customers that will retain longer, buy more products, and refer more.
Step 2: Be careful to think that the next new “gadget” or “shiny object” is the answer to more profit or productivity per employee. Realize there are the top 10% activities (processes/systems) for EVERY position and job in your agency … AND … if your people know what they are and how to do those jobs as top 10% performers, the new app production, retention ratios, and referral numbers skyrocket to a miraculous level. AND your people feel GREAT about themselves because they go home each night feeling like a superstar!
Step 3: Instead of putting an overall employee improvement performance as a whole project for your entire team – start with the FASTEST PATH TO THE CASH in highest revenue producing jobs and get them the skills and the clarity of what success looks like in that position. If a sales producer can increase capturing referrals from 5 per month to 15 per month she should be able to easily double her new business app production that’s a huge impact move and more impactful than improving quality and quantity of a lower level operations position.
So, three things: First, don’t just simply quote more. Concentrate on attracting the “right customer” that will buy more, retain longer, and referral other right customers. Second, help each team member understand what the top 10 percent activities are and get them the skills to radically improve HOW they do those top 10 percent activities. And third, start with those positions that can have the most profound impact on your profitability fast so that you drive improved profits within a quarter instead of a year.
Keep in Mind: Every very successful person can tell you about the HUMILIATING moment (or moments) that defined their level of confidence and IMPROVED them so much more.
Here’s a few Hall of Fame examples …
Tom Brady – the 199th pick in the NFL draft.
Kobe Bryant’s “air ball game” in the 1997 NBA playoffs, which he shot 4 air balls at the end of 4th quarter, and 3 more in overtime.
Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.
Scottie Pippen, Jordan’s hall of fame sidekick, was team equipment manager as a freshman at lowly University of Central Arkansas.