How to Lead an Insurance Agency: Share the Metrics
Agency leaders, this one’s for you. All this week we’re diving into exactly how to lead your agency, and today, we’re talking all about metrics.
“But the biggest thing in there that I think is important and I wanna dive into for a minute today is share those [metrics’. I don’t know why so many agencies are afraid to do that, but in the spirit of transparency and being open with your agency, I think a lot of that’s going on right now, I think it’s huge to share in that and to let your team know what’s going on, where you’re at.”
At your agency, you probably already keep track of your metrics. But are you sharing those metrics with your team members? More often than not, we see that leaders are keeping their metrics to themselves.
And instead, we have another leadership strategy around metrics for you to deploy.
But let’s step back for a moment: this series is for agency leaders, owners, and managers, and it’s designed to help you properly lead your agency. Because unfortunately, most of us did not learn how to lead our agency from other seasoned agency leaders.
No, instead, most of us studied something like marketing or sales in school, and kind of stumbled into insurance. And as we discussed yesterday, in order to be an excellent agency leader, leadership must be experienced.
So that brings us to today’s video about metrics, and why it’s so important to share them with your team.
Why Metrics Matter
Why do metrics matter at all at your insurance agency? Well, we know that metrics can tell us critical information about the state of our agency, like if there’s traffic coming from your social media or Google page, and what’s happening online. But it’s not just online stats: key performance indicators can be measured, as can new business, retention, hit ratios, loss ratios, you name it.
And all of these things should be measured at your agency, without a doubt.
We say: if it can be measured, measure it. And if it can’t be measured, there should be a goal around it.
What do we mean by a goal? For example, let’s say your goal is around your social media traffic. You can look at last year’s metrics, and have a goal next year to hit more than that. You can set goals for aspects of your agency like website hits and YouTube views, but you can also do it for metrics such as new business.
If you want to increase your new business, set a goal for retention, for your hit ratio, and for your loss ratio.
But leaders shouldn’t only be setting these goals, and measuring metrics. They should also be sharing their metrics with their team.
Sharing the Love
We find that at many agencies, leaders are afraid of sharing metrics, for one reason or another. Maybe they’re nervous about how those metrics will be perceived, especially if there is a dip, or if goals aren’t met.
So they end up keeping their metrics to themselves, which ultimately, might be doing more hard than good.
Instead, leaders should definitely be looping in their team members on what’s going on.
Sharing metrics is crucial for your team members to understand where your agency is today, what your goals are, and how you operate as a leader. That transparency can also go a long way in getting buy-in from your team members and for building morale.
But let’s say you’re still uneasy about sharing metrics. Keep in mind that you don’t have to share hard numbers. Instead, you can share percentages with your team.
For example, you can say things like:
“We went up 12% in our new business.”
“Retention went up two points.”
“Our new business is down 5%.”
Even if you keep the hard numbers to yourself, sharing metrics is crucial for effective insurance agency leadership. It shows your progress, your struggles, your goals, and can help everyone feel like they want to pull weight to share in the success.
Incentivizing Success
If you want to get started sharing your metrics, a great idea is to have weekly or biweekly meetings where you share the numbers. These meetings can help your team feel connected, and get motivated to grow. They’ll get together, see the numbers (or percentages), can discuss them, and will get excited about success.
But success isn’t always a motivator on its own, which is why leaders should definitely incentivize success. If you’re setting goals for growth and everyone is hitting the mark, that should be celebrated.
When your team members see that there are incentives for certain metrics, they’re much more likely to want to put in the extra effort to reach those goals. And when they do hit their growth goals, they’ll get to enjoy their successes and celebrate their wins.
At the end of the day, leaders should definitely be measuring metrics, and they should definitely be sharing those metrics with your team. Your team wants transparency, and they want to know exactly what’s going on in their agency.
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