Why Agency Owners Must Drive Producer Growth

An agency owner in Alabama wrote me, “How come my producers don’t invest their own money to improve themselves?” He went on to say, “he was self-motivated” and was confused why his producers were not.

As we got deeper into the discussion I asked him, “if you were head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide football program, would you be asking these questions?” He hesitated for a moment and then said no, probably not.

Super performers are highly motivated and generally do invest in themselves. It would be unusual for you to have a sales team of super performers and that’s why you have to drive growth, because they won’t.

We Don’t Like Slackers

If you were head coach of a division one college football team what would be your expectation of all of your players?

I will bet your next paycheck, that any winning head coach has a set of standards and you meet them or hit the road. Here are a few of them:

• You must be at all team meetings.
• You must attend all weight lifting sessions.
• You must attend all film watching sessions.
• You must attend daily practice.
• You must attend class.

You notice the word must. It is synonymous with “driving” a process; they steer their team. College football coaches drive their players to improve.

If attendance at team meetings were optional, how many players would skip it?

If weight lifting was optional, how many players wouldn’t show up?

If studying film was not compulsory, how empty would the film room be?

If daily practice was “come if you want,” would you even have a team?

Hard Work Never Killed Anyone

Take this up a notch. In most programs, it’s not just about showing up, it’s about effort.

Nick Saban of Alabama and Urban Meyer of Ohio State are both perennial winners. Optional is not in their vocabulary. Here’s what they have on most of us. They are certain that they know what works. They believe in their game plan. They believe in effort. They believe that to improve you have to try hard, strain, put in massive effort. So they drive it.

They know their players have to be strong and in shape to compete. The know their players need to study their competition, so they have to watch film, and that will improve their results. They really want their players to hard-wire the playbook in their head, and that happens in practice.

What would happen if you had something you believed in so much that you drove your producers to role-play, practice and build skills? What if you were committed to helping your producers win more accounts, write more new business and grow their income. How hard would you drive your producers?

If you have a house full of account managers, most will leave when you raise the intensity and start driving success. How do I know? I have dozens of clients that have done it. They have reported that it’s the easiest way to get the non-ambitious to quit (you don’t have to pay severance or go through HR). Non-performers actually leave your agency and find a job that fits their personality. Pragmatic owners tell me that’s a good thing, win-win.

Won’t Do It Themselves

Average producers will not take it upon themselves to try harder and get better. If you want them to improve, you have to work it into the system.

Your system needs to include some very introspective and in-depth goal setting. You have to make them think about how much money they need to earn to fund the kid’s cars, college tuitions and weddings. Then make them calculate how much more they need to save to fund their own retirement. This is the basis for their motivation, the reason they need to sell more. By the way, most producers need to save $40,000 to $65,000 a year for 20 years to be financially independent. Most of them are underfunding their future by $30,000 annually or more.

Your system needs an outstanding sales process that works to win new business. Once you commit to one, you need to set-up systems where your producers role-play and practice. They will tell you they don’t need to practice, but you’d be a fool to listen. What athlete would go to a boot-camp and never practice again.

To drive your system, you can’t spend your life chasing spreadsheets unless you are still living in the ’80s. Most agency owners have found that off-the-shelf CRM tools never get used. I’ve got too many friends that have wasted money on CRMs thinking it would make a big impact, but it didn’t. No one used it.

Growth Equals Wealth

Only you know why you own and manage an insurance agency. If you own an agency to build wealth, you must understand, growth equals wealth. To grow organically, you need a team of motivated and skilled producers. If you want growth, you will have to develop it. To develop growth, you need a system and you need to drive it.