Running a business should be fun right? It’s more like a bi-polar coaster ride most days. The wins are great and the lows, well they are just that. What I find in most agencies is that the leader lacks excitement. Your team won’t be excited if you aren’t. You should be so excited to come to work every day that you have to jump up and down on your bed before you go to work. Think it’s impossible… it’s not.
There are a million things that can get you down in your agency, here are just a few common ones I see in my work:
- Google, Amazon, Walmart and more are joining the already overcrowded insurance space
- Can’t find good talent
- Don’t know how to market the business for success
- Partnership disputes hold back the smiles
- Team members aren’t focused on what leadership wants them to be focused on
- Carriers want more production
- We struggle with obtaining good data or lack the expertise to run reports
- Making the decisions that are good for the long run cause short term discomfort
Here is the good news, most of the hurdles in insurance are able to be overcome. But it starts with you, the leader of the organization. Even in the darkest days you need to come in with a big smile and the ability to motivate the troops. We find most discouraging issues within an agency start and stop with people.
We all have expectations of people and often our expectations are misaligned. We think everyone should think just like us, right? This alone can cause a lot of turmoil. If you want to be excited about your agency you have to open up communication. Talking helps bring alignment. Too often we see during our Agency Performance Assessment TM most frustration stems from people making assumptions that they believe are true.
For example, your agency wants the team to focus on gathering email addresses and updating contact information. So you set a goal, get 40 new or updated email addresses each month per person. Easy right? Your team immediately doesn’t like the goal. They feel it’s too high, people don’t want to give their emails, or we already have them all. You are not feeling so much like jumping up and down now right?
So you have two choices, abandon the goal or push through it. Share with the team industry data (good news, google has tons of great info!), share with them what you will do with the data and most importantly how this information will help them in their jobs. Then do something radical. Get on the phones with them and get emails. Show them that their perceptions are not a reality.
Too often we see agency owners stop when they get resistance. The only way to blast through is to run right into the myths.
We uncover these and many other situations. If you are reading this and feeling like you can identify, what are you waiting for? We will talk to anyone for 30 minutes about their agency and provide our insight! Call us or contact us today to book your call!
