Let's talk about your sales support teams. Are they truly serving clients, engaging prospects, creating revenue, and helping to grow the business—or are they glorified data processors?
Data: A Menial Task
The insurance industry is data intensive, and that means a lot of data to be input and processed. Most agencies dump this work on existing CSRs and AEs because they are there.
Producers generally think in “ones.” They focus on a client or prospect until they achieve agreement. Then they hand over whatever paperwork was accumulated for the staff to clean up and process, so the producer can move to the next renewal or new prospect. Unfortunately, the staff can't think in “ones;” they're forced into extreme multitasking, which has been proven to be inefficient, unproductive, costly and a breeding ground for E&O errors.
Move the data processing elsewhere. There are numerous possibilities, from outsourcing the work to hiring specific processing people at a reasonable wage in relation to the work.
Improve Service
Although producers have a viable relationship with the clients, the true and deep relationship is actually owned by the servicing staff. They're the ones who have the regular contact and interaction with clients.
Free up your back-office staffing to serve, nurture and manage the client relationship with these six ways:
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Rethink the mindset. Lose the “drop box, gofer, dumping ground” attitude about your support staff. They aren't your cleanup team; they're your partners in success. Treat them as such.
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Shine the spotlight on your team. Integrate them into personal relationships with your clients and extol their virtues to those clients.
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Reevamp support staffers' job descriptions and performance evaluations to reflect their new responsibilities.
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Share the riches. As your ROI increases, spread some of the increased profits among the support staff. Producers are compensated for the revenue they bring into an agency, but without support, that revenue will decrease.
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Conduct formal and informal educational meetings to help the staff restructure their efforts to this higher value work.
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Require your producers to allocate time and effort to bring support staffers on client visits.
Business Growth
There is a direct correlation between the movement of processing and improved service to the growth of an agency. When the back office is swamped, producers innately limit the scope of their prospecting. The attitude is that they shouldn't waste their time on the big-fish prospects because they know the staffing doesn't have the bandwidth to provide the necessary service.
Increasing the capability and responsibility of the support team can overcome this self-defeating mindset. Successful agencies build their back offices with room for growth, instead of micro-managing staff to service the existing book.
Change is always difficult, but these changes can position your agency for a very successful future with a motivated and enthusiastic attitude among your entire employee base.
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