Cultivating Your Career by Playing to Your Strengths
How satisfied do you feel at your job? If you’re not ranking where you want to be with your insurance brokerage, the answer is likely “not very.” Job satisfaction is closely tied to opportunities for advancement. If you feel like you’re not developing professionally, the satisfaction and meaning you find in your work may plummet.
Fortunately, insurance professionals have more agency (pun intended) in their career paths than they think. Creatively using your talents, carefully crafting your role, and leveraging the resources available to you — as well as working for the right company — can have a big impact on your career, both now and years down the line.
Jason Pfaltzgraff, a producer at Texas-based The Nitsche Group, says it all comes down to who you work with. Obtaining support for routine tasks like phone calls, data entry, and other duties can be crucial to career advancement and boost overall satisfaction.
“Back office support was one of the main reasons I chose The Nitsche Group,” he said. “Once we’ve secured an opportunity, we simply submit documents to our team and move on to the next prospect. They provide all necessary marketing materials, technology and resources to help us agents and producers be our best selves.”
Getting the support you need to grow professionally can be difficult, however. To help insurance professionals understand how to nurture their careers, we enlisted our team of agents, support team, administrative staff, and supervisors to weigh in.
Tip 1: Don’t Look for the Perfect Job. Create It Yourself.
A lot of insurance professionals view their role and job duties as fixed. If their position includes tasks they find unrewarding, they feel like they simply have to accept those undesirable duties or look for a different job. For instance, some agents loathe the paperwork that comes with renewals, policy update notices, and the like, but they feel that there’s no way around it.
While paperwork is always going to be part of the job description, if you’re spending too much time completing and submitting forms, you’re not devoting that time to building your book of business and moving up the ranks.
However, that doesn’t mean you have to give up and start over at another job. It simply means that you may have to build the perfect brokerage position yourself. If there are parts of your job that you find tedious, tiring, or redundant, it may be possible to move these tasks off your plate so you can focus on more meaningful work.
If your agency or brokerage truly values your contributions, your bosses could be willing to help you develop your career. A successful agency coaches supervisors to nurture growth in the employees they manage. Part of that process is helping them identify a career trajectory that closely matches their unique talents and ambitions.
Your first step should be to list all the tasks you perform on a day-to-day basis and rank them by how satisfying you find them to be. Schedule some time to talk through your job duties with your supervisor and discuss the “how” and “why” of each task. There may be a good reason your boss is having you handle these duties, even if it’s not obvious to you. Or there may be a way to refine workflows or processes so that the tasks are less manual, repetitive, or unenjoyable. For instance, there may be technologies or new tools in which your team could invest to reduce errors on policy forms.
It may feel uncomfortable to have this discussion, but doing so will help you understand opportunities for career development with your current employer.
If your company isn’t willing to help you grow in your career, it might be time to look elsewhere.
Tip 2: Understand the Difference Between Busy and Productive
One type of task that typically gets ranked low by employees is anything that can be classified as busywork — that is, tasks that appear to be meaningless, redundant or unnecessary. Almost every position includes some of this kind of work. However, if you’re spending too much time on routine or mundane duties, it may be draining you of energy and swallowing up time that could be spent performing more fulfilling job duties. And that’s a shortcut to burnout.
‘If your agency or brokerage truly values your contributions, your bosses could be willing to help you develop your career.’
So how do you fix it? First, evaluate what factors are at work. If you constantly feel busy or overworked, it could be a sign of a time management problem. There may be tasks that could be better delegated to other team members — for instance, routine client emails. Or you may have a touch of perfectionism: maybe you’re spending an inordinate amount of time editing and revising emails. On the other hand, the root of the problem may be cultural: you’re constantly called into meetings and you have no idea what you’re doing there, for example.
Take some time to evaluate, and you should start to get a pretty clear idea of how to proceed. It may be as simple as taking a more hands-off approach to the work you delegate, or asking for clarification on your role in a meeting.
Try to clearly identify how what you’re doing contributes to your goal of winning more business — and spend the bulk of your time and energy on tasks that clearly do so. You may even find it helpful to carve out time in your day just for this kind of value-add work.
For instance, Joe Casanova, a producer at The Nitsche Group, recommends setting aside what some call the “golden hour”: the part of the day when you feel most productive and focused.
“I do my best to focus on prospecting and attending meetings when businesses are open,” Casanova said. “It’s not always easy, but I try to save my computer task items and networking for either before or after my golden hours.”
Pfaltzgraff agrees. He’s been able to focus on more valuable work by blocking out time on his weekly schedule for meetings, events and prospecting new opportunities. Dedicating that time to client-focused work — and sticking to that schedule — is integral to winning more business.
Tip 3: Use Your Talent for Relationship Building as a Career Power Play
Most insurance agents credit their success to their ability to build lasting relationships, both with clients and with employers. That knack for relationship development can also be the key to growing your career.
There’s always been a lot of buzz in our industry around networking, but simply rubbing elbows with other professionals — and potential clients — may not be enough to truly fuel your career. Instead, try to build personal, genuine connections (you might even call them friendships) with fellow employees, clients, other industry professionals, or anyone else in your network.
Be generous with your time and knowledge. Arrange a coffee date with that person who “just wants to pick your brain.” Extend a personal thank you to others when they help you. Practice active listening, and try to relate to others with genuine warmth and compassion. Doing so may just turn out to be the best career move you’ve ever made.
As it’s been said time and time again, people want to do business with people they like. As an insurance professional, you already have experience relating to clients — sometimes in times of extreme duress.
So, just take it one step further: offer the same empathy and guidance to anyone you encounter, regardless of their ability to further your career. Michael Dressel, another producer at The Nitsche Group, believes the key is listening and being sensitive to clients’ needs — no matter what.
“I’m always trying to learn about the other person and their company,” Dressel said. “I try to understand what their needs are and if I can help. If I can’t help, I will try to find someone who can.”
Even if you aren’t able to win over a prospect today, it pays to be generous with your time. As Maya Angelou once wrote, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Tip 4: Don’t Be Afraid to Take Risks
Typically, when agents talk about risks, they’re referring to their accounts, not themselves.
However, from a career-development perspective, risk-taking pays. Almost everyone in a job they love has taken a few risks with their career — in fact, most high-powered executives got where they are due to their high tolerance for risk.
If you’re weighing your career choices while supporting a family, however, you may feel anxious about going out on a limb jobwise. This is where carefully weighing the pros and cons can help.
Are you trying to decide whether to cut ties with your current brokerage? Are you thinking of pursuing another role that will be challenging, but will also require you to take on work with which you have less experience? What can you gain from making this change? What’s at stake?
Ultimately, some of your career success will always be tied to whom you’re working for, which is why it’s important to choose an agency that supports your goals — both for career growth and for personal development.
If you’ve tried the steps above and still feel like you’re not getting where you want to be, it may be time to take a really big leap: a job with a different agency.
When asked why he took the plunge and moved to The Nitsche Group, producer Richard Weinstein indicated that it was the culture that drew him to the company.
“In this day and age, it’s a rarity to find a company that practices what they preach and doesn’t treat their employees like a disposable resource. I wanted to work with professional, like-minded people that live by the motto, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you,'” he said.