Encourage Your Inexperienced Agent to Find a ‘Production Peer’

Inexperienced P/C producers frequently feel that they are working alone, lost in a sea of expectations. Their response, especially if they are young, is often to redouble their online activity. But today’s impersonal methods of contact are both a blessing and a curse. Texting, social media posts, and other digital communications are informative and instantaneous, but they also minimize person-to-person contact. Managers need to keep their new agents engaged in more than the virtual world; they need real face time as well.

Sales Peers

One solution is for an inexperienced agent to have an actual person, a “production peer” with whom to work. Sales peers are common across many industries and function to motivate others to do what’s necessary to achieve predetermined goals. They aren’t mentors, but fellow sales folk with a comparable level of experience and a drive to succeed.

If you have two or more new producers in your office they are, by default, “peers,” and can learn the business together. But when you have just one, an agency manager or principal isn’t a valid substitute. This is because new agents relate best to people who are in similar positions. So don’t try to be their work friend, instead encourage them to find an outsider to whom he or she can relate.

Pick-a-Peer

Suggest that your producer identify a few potential candidates and then choose from among them. [Tips below.] These sales professionals don’t have to be P/C agents. It may be better if they’re not. (If they are, make sure they’re distant enough not to be competitors.) All they need is some familiarity with our industry. Once one is chosen, let the two do their thing, while you simultaneously manage the agent, your way.

9 Things to Look for in a Peer

• Does not directly compete with the agency.
• At the same approximate age and stage in their sales career.
• Actively striving to achieve sales success.
• Selling to similar-sized commercial prospects.
• Is ethical in his or her business practices.
• Is readily accessible to the other, in person and via digital media.
• A decent personality so that working together is fun.
• Willing to uncover fresh prospects, both online and off.
• Open to scrutinizing each person’s sales successes and failures.

10 Peer To-Dos

• Institute a communications schedule. Decide when to meet in-person, on the phone, and digitally (text, email, social media, video chat, etc.).
• Set a variety of prospecting and sales goals for each peer. If management has already established these goals, use them instead.
• Establish career goals X years out. Identify where each peer wants to be, with the same employer.
• Track results versus goals and report these numbers to each other. Reporting to a peer, in addition a sales manager, makes success doubly important.
• Role-play to hone sales skills. These activities help participants to overcome any sales weaknesses noticed by the other.
• Explore digital and traditional marketing methods to cultivate a continuous flow of leads.
• Consider new and classic ways to cross-sell and upsell to existing clients.
• Discuss various sales techniques. Consider which are overly manipulative and which have value.
• Come up with practical ways to waste less time and to invest it in profitable sales activities.
• Review sales and marketing ideas from outside of each peer’s industry. This research compliments their own industry-focused resources.

Semi-Autonomy

Every new agent needs someone, other than their boss, to help keep them on track. The peer approach provides them with the rush of independence while still being tethered to agency oversight.