Become the Leader of Your Agency
By: Jim Groninger, President & Co-Owner Groninger Insurance Agency
Do you know how to lead your agents effectively? There is a big difference between managing your employees and providing leadership for your agency. Be the Captain of the ship. The captain rudders the ship and points it in the right direction. As the leader, you are a valuable resource for your agents; someone they can turn to for support and draw from your wealth of knowledge in the insurance industry.
The principles of selling never change. It is all about providing value and a satisfying a need. Prospects meet with you because they are reconsidering their current insurance situation or they are looking for additional coverage. Remember that the relationship you have with your prospects is two-way. They need the services your agency provides and you need them to generate revenue.
Being a leader doesn’t just stop within your agency. To continue to grow in the insurance industry you have to write as much business as possible. You want to be the insurance of your community. Take our agency for example; as an independent insurance agency located in Northumberland PA, we want to be the local authority on Pennsylvania homeowners insurance. Our goal is to be the leading provider and the first insurance resource members of our local community think of when they are in need of reliable home coverage or additional policy endorsements. Not to mention that we should always strive to round out our clients and be a comprehensive source to service all of their coverage needs.
As the leader of your agents, you need to determine the strengths of your employees and unify them into a cohesive unit. If you believe your agency can be doing more business, you need to recognize that you should step in and offer advice, teach, coach and encourage your employees to get the most out of their strengths and improve upon their weaknesses.
Lead by example. Go on sales calls with your agents and see how they interact with prospects. This is a great way to write more business because if your agents start to lose the prospect you can step in and teach by example. Also, you are giving your agents a first-hand account of how they should handle things like objections, indecisiveness and potentially difficult questions.
Rather than cultivating the competitive individual success of agents, create a culture that is more dependent on teamwork within your office and recognize individuals within your team. This can change the morale of your office and help to define your employees’ roles within the agency.