E&O: Are You A Good Agency Or A Great One?

E&O: ARE YOU A GOOD AGENCY OR A GREAT ONE?

by Curt Pearsall

Obviously, determining whether you’re a good agency or a great one is a matter of opinion. But whose opinion counts: those of you and your staff — or that of your customers? Curt Pearsall offers some core agency basics that you need to address before you can even consider the question of “good” or “great.”

In his best-seller Good to Great, Jim Collins states that to go from a good organization to a great one, you have to first get the right people on the bus, take the wrong people off the bus, put the right people in the right seats — and then figure out where to drive. Anything short of this and you won’t be able to achieve the status you desire. To become a great agency, you must have the right people.

We all know that the insurance industry is a great place to work — but let’s be honest — most people don’t grow up dreaming about a career in insurance. In fact, within Utica Mutual, I only know a handful of employees who actually went to school planning a career in insurance. Personally, I started out as a weekend radio disc jockey. When that wasn’t enough to pay the bills, I started selling insurance door-to-door for Combined Life. Then I went to Metropolitan, then to the agency side of the business, and so on.

That being said, it stands to reason that there’s a good chance that when you hire staff, they’ll need various degrees of training. Putting them at desks and assuming that they have all of the talents and skills necessary can be a huge mistake. The old days of, “Here’s your desk, here’s your phone, and here are the files. Any questions?” didn’t work then and don’t work now.

START WITH AN ORIENTATION
 
A good starting point for new employees is a solid orientation program. Most agencies have their new staff begin by sitting with staff from various departments (accounting/bookkeeping, receptionist, Commercial Lines, Personal Lines, claims, producers, etc.) to get a handle on the agency culture, the file structure, and various responsibilities. In many agencies, new staff doesn’t take calls and handle files for at least a month. Obviously, experience needs to be a factor. However, even when you hire an experienced insurance person, it’s important to remember that no two agencies handle business the same way. A brief orientation program can benefit even a veteran.

ONGOING TRAINING

We all know that this business is changing at a rapid pace — new products, forms, companies, etc. Keeping up requires an ongoing commitment to training. Discuss changes at your staff meetings; review the latest industry and company news. Also, create an individual development plan with a strong focus on training a part of every employee’s annual goals and objectives. When was the last time you asked your staff if they needed or desired training? Try it; you might be quite surprised at their responses.

QUALITY CONTROL

It’s good to trust your staff, but to trust without verification can be a formula for disaster. Someone in the agency must take responsibility for verifying that the staff is handling files and customers in accordance with the agency plan and goals. You need to know if the staff is doing what’s expected of them.

WEAK LINK

You also need to know if you have a weak link. If there’s an employee who’s struggling, and you can honestly say that you’ve done everything possible to help them, you need to make an unpleasant decision. Not only could the employee be holding the agency back from getting to the next level, they could be an E&O nightmare waiting to happen.