29 Mar What is the Best Way To Find and Recruit New Producers?
Many insurance agencies struggle with finding and retaining good producers. Randy Schwantz of the Wedge Group discusses how to become the type of recruiter that attracts good candidates to your firm. If you can’t attract the best people, you can’t hire them.
Let's put some definition around this before we start trying to answer it. If you are Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance company where you have to find 2,000 candidates to get 1,000 interested in talking to you. And you ultimately hire 200 only to have to replace 180 of them the following year it's a different story.
But, you don't…. For you it's not a numbers game. So let's break it down into 2 steps…
Step 1. Find good candidates. You don't know if they will be good producers, but it starts off with finding good candidates. There are many ways to do this, you could run ads or hire a headhunter, but for the most part that is going to get you a lot of bottom feeders, people aren't successful in their current job. You'll waste a lot of time digging through resumes if you are not really careful.
One of the best ways to find good people is to ask around, tell friends, clients, vendors and staff what you are looking for. I would encourage you to meet with salespeople that call on your firm, you'll find a gem every once in awhile.
Step 2. Recruit them into your hiring process. To do that, you have to sell them on the insurance business. You have to pique their interest of what it would be like to be an insurance agent. You have to get them to imagine what it would be like working for you. When you build that skill, you'll be a killer of a recruiter.
Let's break it down into 3 questions…
Why the insurance business?
Talk about how this is an old industry getting older, that most of your competitors are still operating as if it were the 1980's and that is good news for younger talent wanting to make their mark. The opportunities are amazing now and will only get better as this generation of baby boomers retires.
Why your insurance agency?
Only you can answer this question. You need to get out a piece of paper and start writing out all of the good stuff that happens at your firm and how that would benefit a new producer. Do you have a strong sales culture? Do you train your news producers to be really successful?
Do you have older producers that will serve as mentors and help them? If you think that because your firm has been around for 50 years, it has good markets, good people and a good reputation… you might be describing 90 out of a 100 agencies out there. So, be a good student and dig out the really good things.
Why you as their leader?
Next is why you. There are plenty of Agency Owners that are insurance geeks, bean counters, nice people but they couldn’t inspire a hungry mouse to grab a piece of free government cheese. If you believe in salespeople, if you love salespeople, if you believe nothing happens until something gets sold, then tell your story. If you invest in resources to make your sales and service team better, be prepared to talk about that.
It's all of these things that make you a great recruiter.
I can name a dozen guys that when they get through telling their story, there are people that would jump from a third story roof to get a chance to work in their firm.
Become that recruiter and you're 1/3 of the way to building a tremendous and fast growing firm.
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