Rob's Secret Sauce

I’ll make this one short today as I’m a bit under the weather.  Today, I want to share a little bit of my secret sauce to finding. developing, and retaining top-shelf insurance sales producers.  I get this question all the time from hiring authorities and even recently from an insurance association. 

The Sauce:

Finding Your Producers:

ABL (Always Be Looking):  Good sales people are all around you during your daily personal life as well as professional life.  Be aware.  Stop looking at your phone and talk with people.

One of my best placements was when I found myself sharing a table at a crowded Starbucks with a young college graduate.  He was a West Virginia College State Championship wrestler.  He just happened to be in my hometown interviewing with a local bank.  He communicated very well, listened intently, and had an impressive personal presence.  All traits of a successful sales professional.

That same day, I introduced him to one of my local insurance clients and a month later he was selling insurance for them.  He remains their top producer ten years later.  I knew from the minute I met him that he was a sales guy.  He just didn’t know it at the time.

Non-Compete Timing:  I like to identify insurance producers who are almost two years removed from their former insurance brokerage firm.  This way, they will be able to (legally) contact those former clients and move them over to his/her new firm.  The success rate for doing this is typically around 25%.  But it is probably enough to cover their cost during the initial two-year validation period.

Non-Insurance Firms:  For those clients who have top-notch training programs and mentoring, I have had a lot of success finding insurance producer candidates working at similar sales-oriented firms such as PayChex or ADP.  Others include financial service brokerage houses such as Northwestern, Merrill Lynch.  Real estate agents fall into this category too.  But this requires a firm to have a robust internal training and mentoring program. 

Assessment Testing:  Sales profiling is very accurate.  Benchmark your successful producers to find out the skills and attributes that have made them successful in your firm and then look for these same attributes when you test your candidates.

Developing Your Producers:

Tandem Hiring:  Several of my clients hire producers in tandem (two at a time).  We have found that two similar new hires will not only help each other out, but will compete against each other too.  Lots of success doing this. Most national consulting firms do this as well.

Mentoring:  You may not have a formal training program or infrastructure, but you can always outsource this by hiring a sales trainer or coach in your specific niche.  This must be followed up with an assigned mentor to work with this producer in the early stages.  A new producer will learn a lot from just accompanying a senior producer on a few of his sales calls.

Know the Numbers:  Sales has always been and always will be a direct function of activity.  The numbers don’t lie.  In my recruiting office, we track activity (phone calls, emails, meetings, client proposals, social media, etc.) on a daily basis posting the results so everyone in the firm can also track the weekly and monthly status.  No one wants to be in last place!  I learned this from COSTCO.  They so something very similar and post the results on a large board so that employees and customers can observe.

I put a similar system in place for a client of mine and they grew their sales by 43% the following year.  Activity was up 76%.

Retaining Your Producers

Top sales professionals are motivated by one thing: Making Money.  It’s really that simple.  The way to retain your best sales people is to put them in a position to be successful and can make a lot of money. 

Make sure the compensation structure (salary/draw plus commissions) is consistent and crystal clear in everyone’s mind.  Come up with something and then stick to it.  You want to lose your top sales people?  Change the compensation plan!  There will be bum-rush to the door.

Additionally, make sure you provide them with enough CSR and Account Manager support.  Good sales people want to sell, not become involved in the support and service part of the business.

Provide them with the marketing tools as well.  Is their market niche shown on the company website?  Do you provide them access to business databases such as Zoom Info, etc.?  Do you provide them with a newsletter tool so they can market themselves and their niche? Is your relational database platform easy to work with and track prospect activity?  Do you reimburse them when they attend industry conferences? 

The above are just some of the ingredients to my secret sauce to finding, developing, and retaining top producer talent. 

If you are an existing client or potential new client, you can email me anytime to set up an appointment to discuss in greater detail.  rhoughton@mrfairfax.com

Rob