Most insurance agents and agency owners want to keep growing their businesses. If you’re wondering what the key ingredients are for agency growth, this series is for you. First, let’s learn how producers impact growth.
The insurance industry is currently experiencing a shakeup in its workforce. Many have gone as far as calling it a “talent crisis” as hundreds of thousands of the industry’s most experienced insurance agents and other staff are currently retiring. As the most tenured producers leave, agencies that want to grow have to prioritize bringing in new agents to sell insurance.
This can be done through a combination of finding and training people who are new to the insurance industry, as well as enticing experienced producers to move from their current agency to yours. There are pros and cons to each approach, and a combination of the two might be the best route.
While many of the most tenured insurance agents are reaching retirement age and making their exit, there are still a good number of early-to-mid career insurance professionals who may be looking for new opportunities. At this point in their careers, they might be looking for a better commission split, more flexibility in work hours and location, or better company culture.
Recruiting producers with a few years of experience, who’ve already obtained their insurance license in at least their resident state, and who have an existing book of business, can be beneficial to your agency’s growth goals. Sure, this approach may be more expensive upfront because you’ll need to buy that agent’s book of business from the current agency. However, you won’t spend time waiting on the producer to get licensed or have to train them from scratch on how to go about soliciting business.
If your agency has something unique to offer to experienced producers, you can leverage those benefits to entice already-successful insurance agents to join you.
The truth is, the insurance industry simply doesn’t have enough talent coming in to replace everyone who’s retiring. An obvious answer to this problem is to find people who’ve never worked in the insurance industry before and recruit them into it. This may be easier said than done, but it is possible. And though there are challenges to this approach, it certainly has its own benefits.
First of all, it might be less expensive on the front end to recruit a talented, but completely inexperienced, person into the role of an agent at your agency. You will have to spend time and money on their training and licensing, but you won’t have the upfront cost of purchasing their book of business. You also may be able to start them at a lower rate of pay and lower level of commission, while they’re learning the ropes of the insurance industry.
Another benefit to hiring entirely new talent is the ability to train them exactly how you want producers in your agency to be trained. You won’t inherit bad habits or baggage that might come along with a producer that’s been selling insurance for years already and is stuck in their own ways.
In part two we’ll discuss how choosing the right insurance carriers is key to your agency’s growth.
Thanks for reading our educational resource! Any above reference to a specific company, method, or product is meant for educational purposes only and is not specifically endorsed by Pie.
