I’d like to talk about the importance of teamwork in an insurance agency. I just returned from a fantastic pheasant hunting trip to South Dakota. And As I watched the walkers, the blockers and the bird dogs working together, I realized that pheasant hunting is a team sport in which individual accomplishment is still incredibly important.
And that’s the same thing in an insurance agency.
In an agency, we really have three groups of players that contribute to success.
The first are account managers. Those are the people who make sure that customers you already have are happy and satisfied. They hem in the losses and make sure that revenue is stable. Those people are like the blockers who stand at the end of a cornfield to help prevent the pheasants from escaping when the walkers come after them.
Speaking of walkers, producers are the people who drive new business to your agency, just as a walker in a cornfield drives the pheasants before them.
And there’s another important player in the pheasant hunting game, and those are the dogs. The dogs do a lot of things. They don’t just scare up the pheasants; they also corral them and find opportunity where the birds have hidden themselves.
Who in your agency plays the role of the bird dog? Is it your insurance company’s marketing representative? Is it your current customers who provide referrals to you? Is it the well-trained customer service agent who asks current customers what else they can help them with besides the policies you already sell them? It’s all of those people and more.
At the end of our hunt, I listened to several hunters brag about all of the birds they shot and I realized that they were taking credit individually for something that really was a team effort.
Producers often do the same thing but we, as agency owners, need to understand that the reason they were successful is that we put together an extraordinary team that functions terrifically to keep customers, and to extend our business relationships with them to sell them more products. And to make sure they are happy and satisfied. And we work with our insurance company partners to drive even more opportunities into the waiting hands of the producer.
It takes teamwork to be successful in pheasant hunting and teamwork is equally critical in growing a successful agency. As you think about 2020, how can you increase the teamwork in your organization?