PRODUCER-RELATED ISSUES
Agencies profit when experienced agents
provide on-the-job guidance to new producers
By Michael J. Weinberg
Growing up, I looked up to several sports heroes and dreamed of playing like them. Sadly, I never came close to a professional level of play in any sport. Catchers like Yogi Berra and Elston Howard, and hitters like Hank Aaron and Mickey Mantle never had to worry about my breaking their records. Even though I never fulfilled those youthful fantasies, I have never forgotten the role that my sports heroes played in inspiring me to emulate their play in my own Little League games.
Perhaps I am just a fantasy kind of guy, but I also had "heroes" when I entered the world of sales. Life insurance greats like Ben Feldman and Joe Gandolfo, and general sales gurus like Frank Bettger, Napoleon Hill and Og Mandino were superstars whom I looked up to when I first began in the insurance business. And, whenever I could, I went to sales seminars to listen to any of the greats who might be touring in my town. Hearing someone in person was better than just reading that person's book and, like with my sports heroes, I tried to emulate these great success stories by incorporating their winning habits into my life.
But the beauty of the insurance business is that there usually is a superstar(s) in almost any office--a person whom we can talk to and learn from, not just observe from afar and then try to emulate. Those superstars may be individual producers or perhaps the agency owner who has had such a successful career that it merits both study and replication. And because they are real, down-to-earth people who work in your same environment, the opportunity to have one of these veterans serve as a mentor is a real possibility.
I was first introduced to the "mentor" concept at a St. Paul seminar for sales management. The St. Paul consultants suggested pairing a veteran sales professional with a new agent. The benefits include giving the new agent first-hand field experience with a seasoned professional, and providing the new agent with a sounding board (the experienced agent) for both problems and opportunities. Part of the theory is that a "fellow" producer, especially one with a great deal of experience, might have more credibility when coaching and counseling a new agent than would the agency principal who is funding the new agent and may be preoccupied with recouping his or her initial investment as quickly as possible.
The mentor concept works especially well in an agency that is either too small to have a full-time sales manager, or an agency where the sales manager is too busy to go out on every appointment with each new agent. Ideally, to fuel the process, an experienced agent is assigned as a mentor to a newly hired salesperson and the mentor is paid an override on all of the business written for a period of time--usually for the first three years. And, pairing a new agent with a veteran potentially solves what I believe to be the greatest expense in hiring a new agent--that of the lost opportunities that a seasoned professional would sell.
One of the great benefits of pairing a new agent with an experienced agent is that it helps to remove some of the unfriendly competition that may exist between the new and old guards. In our agency, we used to divide our sales force between the new and the experienced for reporting purposes, which seemed to always have a disastrous effect. When the old guard was selling well, the new guard seemed to become discouraged, thinking that they could never equal the sales successes of veteran agents. Yet, when the new guard outperformed the experienced agents, the experienced agents became angry and embarrassed. There just didn't seem to be any perfect solution other than the implementation of a mentor system.
In my own career, I was fortunate enough to join my present agency at a time when David Stanton, who is now my partner, was charged with hiring and training new agents. For me, David always and still remains the perfect mentor.
When I first started at Gateway, David took the time to teach me the parts of the business that I did not know and to serve as a sounding board whenever I had a new idea, prospect or potential sale. I never made a large sale without first presenting it to David, to bounce the concepts off of him and get his feedback. And for me, David always served as a grounding agent who would help me see through the fallacy (and sometimes lunacy) of my often off-the-wall ideas and schemes.
Even today, many years later, when I like to think of myself as a seasoned sales professional and as an experienced agency owner, I still find myself relying on David as a mentor as well as a partner. For me, this would be a very lonely business without someone close, whom I unconditionally respect, to help me see things more clearly at times when the facts may be a little fuzzy.
My suggestion is that with new agents, the best "training" that you can give them is to pair them with a mentor inside your agency who does not have to replace the sales manager in his/her role. I think that the sales manager typically has a big-picture role and often does not have time to go out on appointments with each agent each day. A mentor, on the other hand, can take the newly hired agent on his/her appointments, give the agent a feel for what they do and how they do it, and offer advice as the new agent prepares to meet prospects.
Compensation for the mentor can come as a percentage of new business sold and does not have to be a large sum of money. The other advantage for mentors is that it can cause them to be a little sharper and to brush up on their knowledge and techniques, knowing that someone is counting on them for help and guidance.
Our agency has an informal system of mentoring, with the experienced agents always trying to help and encourage the less experienced ones. We are contemplating paying an incentive override to supervisory agents in remote offices. I'd like to hear what other agencies are doing to mentor new agents. *
The author
Michael J. Weinberg, nationally known columnist, speaker and seminar leader, is the managing director of Gateway Insurance Agency where he spearheads the agency's marketing/sales and automation efforts. He invites reader participation and feedback through his e-mail address (mweinberg@gatewayins.com).