Change is never easy, but it’s a constant in our lives. Whether you’re striving to improve yourself, your business or your contribution to those around you, you won’t get far without a shift in mindset and behavior. Let’s explore what business leaders can do to plan effectively and engage team members in the change process.
Working within the current external environment
Insurance agents face inflation in both the products sold and in the cost of services you consume to run the agency. Adapting your strategy will be necessary including looking at cheaper alternatives to marketing. Those may include social media or more grass root efforts in the local community. Networking can be the cheapest form of advertising, and face to face interactions have more impact than an advertisement.
If inflationary pricing is impacting customer premiums, make sure you focus on service to the customer and achieving their objectives. Obviously bundling products can spur costs savings to the customer and likely increase incentive compensation for your agency. Your pricing may not be the cheapest so sell them on service and the ability to deliver what they are asking for. Overall materials price increases may spur additional coverage needs to make sure that customers are fully covered for growing replacement costs. Give your customers choices to make on coverage limitations so that they feel like they are more in control of the price.
Interest rates are rising but you can still access cost effective working capital if the need arises to help you stay on pace to achieve your growth objectives.
Bringing the team on board
Much of the changes that occur with the carriers you work with are out of your control. Adapting to those changes may be easier in an independent agency as you can shop policies to various carriers. But that takes a lot of time and takes focus away from new policy generation. Be clear on your expectations of retention and new business goals for your staff.
In a captive environment, you don’t have the ability to shop another carrier, so ensuring that your staff is aware of premium increases and changes to requirements that may impact revenue or incentives is important. Take time to communicate with your staff about those changes, how it impacts the goals for the agency and how it impacts what you need from them.
Knowing your team
The team around you is one of the most important factors to your success. It is that team and getting them to believe in the change that you’re implementing that’s going to make the difference. But to do that you may need to appeal to each member in a way that is meaningful to them. We each have a bias towards a certain type of motivator. Whether it’s appealing to the mission of insurance, appealing to a need for self-improvement or financial gain, appealing to the customers that you’re serving or the organization that you’re a part of, you need to understand how each of your staff are motivated. If you’ve learned the different types of profiles from programs like Predictive Index or Myers Briggs, you know that two individuals performing the same job can operate and be motivated in very different ways. Some may just need the overall goals with free reign on how to get there, while others may need a more specific roadmap. Adapt your approach accordingly.
Change is about the “how” not the “what”. As the leader in your organization, you will drive the “what”. Engaging your team in the “how” will allow for broader perspective and more buy in towards the goal. Don’t make the change effort a fire-and-forget scenario. Make sure you are supporting your staff along the way by setting up the regular cadence of a dialogue with them. “Hey, what is the progress we’re making? What are the hurdles you are experiencing? What do you need from me?”
The key to success for making change happen is to start the change, versus just planning to change. Step zero gets you nowhere. You have to move to step one, two and three.
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