The most profitable and successful businesses are lean. They sustain high efficiency and productivity while maintaining low costs. If you want to see your insurance agency’s productivity increase significantly, consider the following tips.
Hiring
Of course, you need to hire the right people. Look for highly self-motivated individuals who want to help your clients. They should have superior communication skills. Your employees should be adept at collaboration and willing to help others.
Training
Training is vital to employee productivity. Your employees must understand not only their jobs, but also the company’s processes and procedures. Distributing and training based on your insurance agency procedure manual helps your employees adapt to your company’s processes. Training also helps your employees unlearn tasks and strategies that will not improve your business.
When your employees understand your products, they are able to sell more effectively. In addition, you should train cross-selling techniques so your employees can determine what additional products or services may be valuable to your customers.
Staff Input
You may also involve your employees in your training process. For example, seasoned employees may give you ideas about how to make their tasks easier or more productive. Ask for suggestions and work together to create new strategies. You may even reward profitable ideas with monetary or other gifts, such as paid time off. You should also consider implementing fun sales and production contests.
Process Analysis
Follow several employees around on their daily tasks. Look for ways you can improve efficiency and make their jobs easier. Make sure they have everything they need to do their jobs. You may also analyze software or other automated solutions that could alleviate some of their tasks. However, automate carefully. You don’t want to sacrifice customer service.
Customer Focused
Many companies make the mistake of focusing all their efforts on gaining new customers. This practice often alienates long-term, reliable customers, who then go looking for an agency that values them. Therefore, focus on customer retention. After you have provided for your current customers, pursue customer acquisition. However, your satisfied customers word-of-mouth advertising may make acquisition easier.
Improve our business’ efficiency and productivity, and watch your business expand.
