Give your producers the resources they need to start hunting. Today.
The ViewPoint series this week deep dives into the phases of your next 90-day sales strategy on how to grow your insurance agency: Get a Grip! (Days 1-30); Build Momentum (Days 31-60); Sustain Momentum (Days 61-90) and Predictable Growth (Day 91+).
Today, we continue with Get a Grip! To realistically reach your organic growth goals this year, you should be evaluating your team – and their resources. Effective sales management and leadership development start with taking a deeper dive into your production staff to determine if you have the right number of producers to validate your growth goals. To do so, answer and evaluate a few key questions:
- Where are Total Commissions & Fees this quarter/this year?
- What new organic growth goals were set going into next year? Are they still achievable?
- What is the anticipated leakage/retention plan over the next six months?
- Current number of producers and what is the average new business production?
- What is the producer success rate for new hires?
Once you have some of the numbers, evaluate the relative impact. For example, let’s assume that you’re a $3.5M organization today in Total Commissions & Fees (“TC&F”), with an Organic Growth goal of 10% and a leakage rate of 8% ($3.5M – 8%/$280k, = $3.2M). If you want to grow organically by 10% ($350k), this means you need to write 18% in new business as a percentage of prior year TC&F after accounting for leakage, which equates to $630,000 in new business revenue.
Now, let’s assume that you currently have five producers on staff, who on average write $75,000 in new business. Simple math (5 Producers x $75,000 New Business = $375,000) quickly shows how far off the current team is compared to the established growth goals. Now that you understand the delta between what your production staff will likely write and your goal –you have two options.
Option 1: Hire and train additional production talent. In our current market – it’s definitely an option. However, will you see actual results to impact your bottom line?
Option 2: Enable your team to close the gap. In our opinion, this can be the quickest option to drive growth. Here’s how.
- Review production pipeline for each team member for quality focusing on:
- Year-to-Date plan vs. actual sales
- Fine tune sales goals according to your revised 2020 growth plan
- Identify “stuck” accounts from the last 3 – 6 months. Schedule team huddles with internal resources to brainstorm on how to re-engage with the prospect.
- Create an Activity Dashboard and Formulate Conversion Ratio Process
- Establish conversion ratio baseline based on the following metrics:
- Number of Calls
- Number of Research/Discovery Conversations
- Number of Virtual Appointments
- Social Media Engagements to Create Centers of Influence
- Number of thought leadership posts in social media. *Hint: Talk to your marketing team to create shareable content to help drive activity and conversations
- Number of webinars/symposium campaigns. *Hint: Offer Facebook town halls to answer questions for teams. Talk to your legal and financial teams on content they can help create and share
- Establish conversion ratio baseline based on the following metrics:
Most importantly, identify internal resources that can assist your production team. Are there senior producers in your firm that can provide mentorship? Maybe a team member that has retired would be available for some 1:1 coaching while the world is still on pause? How can you engage with your marketing, finance, and legal teams to generate content? Can you lean on your service staff by having producers trade down smaller accounts to a small business unit or house account?
The assumption is you want more out of what you have today to make a difference tomorrow. And we think it’s possible. Just communicate expectations with your team and give them the time and resources to make it happen.
Finding good talent takes work. The MarshBerry team can help you achieve your growth goals through recruiting and training solutions. If you have questions about Today’s ViewPoint or would like to learn more about driving your sales pipeline, please email or call Frank Cox, Vice President, at 616.426.8522.
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