Development:

After months of recruiting you finally found the ideal candidate!  They come with several years of outside sales experience, proven financial performance and executive level contacts in an industry that your agency wants to penetrate.  They even possess all the key characteristics that historically define a successful producer including a strong drive to achieve the sales growth and indisputable trust from clients that your agency vitally desires.  Here lies the real problem… You simply don’t know what to do with them nor do you have the time or resources to structure a formal training program to ensure they thrive in this new industry that by the way, YOU sold them on!

To protect your investment, consider the following components as you structure a training program for your new producer.

• Appoint an Agency Sponsor to direct and coordinate the training both internally and externally.  Ideally this sponsor should be knowledgeable in all aspects of the agency, has a natural coaching capability and is compensated on the success of the entire agency.
• Identify a Role Model to accelerate the new producer’s learning curve.  Choose a producer(s) that represents the culture and style you desire as well as the results you want them to achieve.
• Set clear expectations on new business goals over a 3-5 year time frame that financially motivates and rewards the producer. To ensure these goals are met, conduct regular performance reviews to keep them on track!
• Provide opportunities for both technical and sales training that include licensing, pipeline development, marketing & prospecting, consultative sales techniques and coaching.
• Equip them with tools to help them track sales goals, prospects and intelligently up-sell.
• Come attend a 2-Day Sales Training Event “Deal or No Deal” to help you fully define and structure producer development for both sales managers and producers.

When:    July 12th (8 – 5) & July 13th (8-noon)

Where:  Agency Business Solutions Headquarters, (Detroit Metro Airport)

For Producers:  Learn how to overcome the five bottlenecks that prevent most producers from building a million dollar book of business.  Whether you are a new or seasoned producer, you will want to attend – unless of course you are content with that 400K book of business!

For Sales Managers: Learn the skills and techniques that transform sales managers into extraordinary sales leaders!

Registration Fee:  $1000 per producer.  Complimentary to sales managers who attend with their producers.

Space is limited so REGISTER NOW and reserve your seats!

Recruiting

This series will be focused on bringing talent from outside the industry (“grow your own”) and the first decision when hiring from outside the industry is what level of experience you desire. This can range from college graduates to highly effective sales professionals with 10+ years of experience. Don’t take this lightly; this decision will dramatically impact your recruiting efforts, training efforts, and pay-back period. The trade-off is fairly straight-forward: It costs more to attract experience, but your probability of success is higher. We recommend targeting experienced sales professionals with at least 2 – 5 years of b2b sales experience and have found this to be a manageable investment with nearly a 70% success rate.

One of the most challenging aspects of recruiting is finding qualified candidates. Once you have decided on the experience level you require, we strongly encourage you to engage a professional recruiting firm. Look for a firm that is versed in social media and has experience recruiting sales professionals. While it is not as important that the recruiter have insurance experience, they must be able to articulate the advantages of a sales career in insurance. Unfortunately, many sales professionals still associate insurance with the mom and pop insurance office “peddling” personal lines and life insurance to family and friends. Your recruiter must help you overcome this perception to provide you the opportunity to show them the truth.

Finally, treat this as you would any significant investment or prospective client; attracting the right producer candidate has elements of both. Consider which industry you might want this individual to focus on and look for someone that has a background that might provide an advantage in this niche. Think about why this individual that is having success in their current career should join your firm; what makes your agency a good opportunity for them? Be thoughtful about how you will compensate, incent, and ensure the sales tenacity you want. While it is true the best sales people have an inner drive that makes them successful, the habits they need  are still developing early in their career.

We welcome your questions, thoughts, and experiences as to recruiting for the next Star Producer. Or, please contact us if you would like to discuss your next generation.

Reforecasting:

Most agencies prepare an annual budget and compare their actual results to it.  However, many agencies do not reforecast during the year.  It is important to forecast throughout the year – ideally at least once a quarter.  We recommend reforecasting after significant events such as receipt of contingent commissions or upon significant declines in revenues.  This allows Management to understand the impact and proactively address any issues.

Cash Flow Planning:

Cash is king so agencies need to keep their eyes on it.  Once you’ve completed a reforecast, you should take it to the next level and prepare a cash flow projection.  When you identify cash short falls in advance, you have more options to deal with it:  adjust producer draws, reduce staff, or obtain a loan while the agency could still be approved for one.  Identify a cash flow too late and your agency may not survive.

Balance Sheet Review & Account Reconciliations:

Agencies focus on their income statements.  However, your income statement is only as good as your accounting records.  To ensure accurate financial records, agencies should complete account reconciliations for all balance sheet accounts on a monthly basis.  The account reconciliation details what comprises the ending balance of the account.  The Accounting Manager should then perform a thorough review to understand significant fluctuations and challenge assets and liabilities (i.e., are there old receivables balances which may be uncollectible, are any liabilities understated, etc…?)

We often find that agencies are either not performing monthly account reconciliations or the reconciliations are not properly prepared.  So how does any agency owner (who is typically not an accountant) assess the accuracy of financial records?  If you have an audit, ask your auditors for a candid assessment of your accounting staff and the adequacy of their reconciliations.  If you don’t have an audit, consider hiring a local CPA to review your accounting records and balance sheet account reconciliations.  There are many high quality local CPAs who could perform these services at a very reasonable rate.

Here are some tips to raise your agency’s SEO ranking:

• Create key word phrases that are considered most valuable, specific and differentiate your agency from the competition
• Choose a targeted keyword phrase domain in your URL name to supplement targeted keyword phrases
• Submit your site to the three major search engines, Google, Yahoo & Bing
• Engage in Social Networking!  Facebook, MySpace Twitter, LinkedIn, Live Spaces, Yahoo Profiles and Wikipedia are just a few profiles that will increase your ranking
• Continually update your site’s content with regular blogs and comments that allows your site to be listed on well-visited blog sites

Overwhelmed by SEO efforts?  Rest assured that you can always outsource your SEO tasks to a SEC (Search Engine Coordinator) or call ASG and when and if ready, bring it back in house!   

Curious about your website’s ranking? Click Here to receive a complimentary SEO Fitness evaluation.

In a recent survey including many of the top agencies in the country, results suggested that agencies are taking significant actions to elevate their sales capabilities. More than half of the agencies reported that they have adopted a formal sales management / customer relationship management (CRM) tools and more than one-third (33%) now have dedicated sales managers. Perhaps the most startling survey findings related to the hiring of new producers. More than 80% of the responding agencies hired a new producer within the last 12 months and nearly 66% (2/3) of those new producers came from a different industry. While there may be many reasons, this large increase in non-experienced producers hints that agencies are looking for a different skill set than the industry has traditionally attracted.

Thank you to all of you who participated in the survey. The full survey results follow:

1. Average new commission generated per producer over the last fiscal year:
a. $75 – 95,000 (35%)
b. $100 – 199,999 (17%)
c. $25 – 49,999 (17%)
d. $50 – 74,999 (13%)
e. $200,000 + (2%)
f. Undisclosed (13%)

2. Minimum account commission for which a Producer is paid:
a. $2,000 – 3,999 (39%)
b. $4,000 – 5,000 (26%)
c. $1,000 – 1,999 (17%)
d. No Minimum (13%)
e. More than $5,000 (2%)

3. Agency has a formal Sales Manager Position:
a. Yes – 45% (60% also manage a book of business)
b. No – 55%

4. Agency uses a Sales / CRM Program (if yes, is the system meeting their needs?):
a. Yes – 57% (63% indicated the system is meeting their needs)
b. No – 43%

5. Which Sales / CRM system is being used:
a. 33% Sales Logix
b. 17% Salesforce
c. Other systems noted:
- ACT
-Brokerage Builder
-Marshberry Sales Portal

6. Agency has hired a new producer within the last 12 months (if yes, from within or outside of the industry):
a. Yes: 81% have hired
-65% of agencies hired from outside the industry
-24% of agencies hired from within the industry
-11% of agencies hired multiple producers from both inside and outside the industry
b. No: 19%

ASG Response:

A recent survey found that insurance companies face an average of 1,700 lawsuits a year, making insurance the most litigated industry worldwide! This suggests that the insurance industry needs to be more prepared than any other industry to handle the heavy burden of litigation. The new e-Discovery rules impact and challenge our agencies in that they must build an infrastructure that is able to quickly and cost-effectively search a multitude of information sources given very little notice. Most importantly, it also means they need to have a more disciplined set of policies in place to ensure they do not discard information that could be relevant in future litigation. Has your agency designed, implemented, and administered policies and procedures in the areas of data classification, handling, retention, and destruction in the event of a litigation?

ASG Response:

As reported in Insurance & Technology’s latest Digital Edition, cloud computing is the subject of considerable confusion and wariness on the part of insurance CIOs. But with that said, every major insurance agency has explored the option, in some shape or form, from software-as-a-service (SaaS) such as your AMS 360 online system to complete infrastructure outsourcing.

ASG works with many agencies that have adopted the online AMS 360 system. Most experienced a smooth transition and recognize the value in having their most critical system maintained by the same professionals who developed the program. Some early adopters had issues with performance or system speed, but we haven’t heard any agencies express these types of concerns in recent years. Agencies should be aware that they agency will lose some report customization capabilities, as the system provides a set of standard reports. Other items to consider include: number and relevance of any home grown systems, established interfaces between your in-house system and other applications, as well as the size and complexity of your agency.

Despite the reporting restrictions, most agencies have found the change valuable because it has allowed them to divest themselves of non-customer-oriented responsibilities. They can now focus more time (and money) on what they do best … servicing their customers!

We invite others to share their experiences and solutions with regard to online agency automation / management systems.