To be an awesome agency you must set clear and measurable goals. How can we know when to celebrate when we don’t know where we are trying to go? Goals can’t be top secret and only revenue driven. They have to be something you can share with the entire agency. When done right, goals help clarify where we are and where we are going.
So why do many agencies not have goals? Here are a few of the common reasons I hear as an insurance consultant:
- I’d rather get a root canal than figure out how to run correct reports from my management system
- Most of my goals are revenue based and I don’t want the team to know our financial situation
- I’ve never really learned how to create goals
- We had them once, no one cared so I gave up
All real life bad situations can happen, however they don’t happen at awesome agencies. Awesome agencies make a commitment to their goals. They see them through to the bitter end; even through the pain of really refining your data in your management system. Remember there is no time like the present to get started.
We believe in setting SMART Goals. You may have heard of the term before:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Timely
Let’s drill down deeper into each point.
| Specific | Goals should be detailed. For example, you can’t say “revenue growth”. A better goal would be: To grow revenue in personal lines by:
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| Measurable | Yes, you have to be able to measure it. This means you need to relentlessly pursue data accuracy in your management system. Goals actually help with this! The more everyone looks at the numbers, the more they improve. So pull the report, share it with the team and show them how data entry issues really impact the agency. |
| Attainable | Only a few of us are super humans so don’t discourage the team with goals that are totally out of alignment. Also, if they have never had goals, it’s critical you start small and coach the team. For example, if you want your team to account round and last month 4 people did 2 account rounds, don’t set a goal for 10 each in month one. Instead ask them to double what they did last month. |
| Relevant | This one is a great one! If your retention is 95% lets not force an increase in retention, let’s set goals around new business to keep a sales culture in place. |
| Timely | You must set a time range. Most people respond well to a quarterly goal broken down by month, week and day on what they need to do to get there. Change it up from time to time so no one gets bored. |
Now that you know what good goals look like, get to crafting them. It’s incredibly challenging to know what you want. Don’t be surprised if this process takes a bit of thinking and rethinking. Don’t give up, we all need goals in an agency to know where we are heading.
Once you have the goals you have to share them. And then share them again and again and again. It will take the team a bit of time to adopt them, especially if you did not have goals previously. Don’t get frustrated. Put up a big whiteboard to track the goals. Have team meetings to work on strategies. Compliment the team members who are achieving. If your agency has goals but the team can’t recite them it means that you, as a leader, are not doing a great job motivating your team for success. Goals are just words on paper unless a leader keeps pumping oxygen into the fire to achieve them.
Here is how we recommend rolling our goals:
- Goals are announced in a meeting
- Provide the team written documentation of the goals
- Make sure the team understands exactly what they need to do personally to help achieve the goal
- Provide routine reports on the goal
- Recap the outcome
- If the goals aren’t attained, restrategize on them
- Provide rewards for a job well done!
This is one of the questions on our 10 Question Agency Assessment. See if you are a gold, silver or bronze agency today! As an insurance consultant we love helping agencies perform to the highest level!
