We recently wrote a six-part blog series on how to Spring Clean your agency. It was amazing the feedback we received, as well as how many agencies shared the posts with their entire team. As it turns out, many agencies are, well, downright filthy! Just like that one junk closet you may have at home, it is really easy for your agency to get a little dusty. This time of year is a great time to address some sloppy behavior and clean it up.

Too often you may hear how busy everyone is. We often start addressing this issue by reviewing what the team is doing. No doubt your biggest busy offenders are often the most disorganized. They have thousands of emails in their inbox, hundreds of open activities, and their desk looks like a forest fire hazard. Don’t even get me started on the number of icons on their desktop! How can you not feel overwhelmed, stressed and frustrated? Changing people’s organizational habits can be a challenge. But if we make it a team effort, we can get the entire agency in tip-top shape.

If you didn’t follow along with our series, you will get a nice little recap here. But be sure to check out our blogs and sign up to get our updates!

Agency Cleaning Tip #1: Clean Out Your Inbox

Why is the entire insurance industry a bunch of email hoarders? Seriously, agency after agency that I go to, I find thousands of emails in their inboxes. It’s like no one has ever seen a folder, never mind the MANAGEMENT SYSTEM they should be in.

There are several reasons we believe managing your email will help you better manage clients:

Everyone is busy and stressed, having 3654 emails looking at you every day is not helping
A lot of emails means that you look busy, but you’re just disorganized
You will drop balls and miss vital follow-ups and service requests
Email hoarders are often finger pointers rather than doers
You have a management system that documents your to-do list and documents. You can use Outlook for it.

It’s time to move tasks, follow-ups and documentation to Outlook. Too many account managers are using email as their task management system, rather than the actual management system the agency has in place. It’s time to break bad habits and make it an agency standard that there are no more than 50 emails (and that’s being generous) in your inbox at any given time.

So how do you begin? Start with a Spring Email Clean-Up Week.

Have a team meeting and ask everyone how many emails are in their inbox (you may be shocked).
Set a goal to clean out 100 emails per day until it’s reasonable.
Unsubscribe. We all get pointless emails, now is the time to get rid of them permanently.
Make sure the right people are getting the right emails. For example, E&S Markets often send updates to the person who bound coverage, not the person who may be doing the work. Let everyone know the person who should be getting the work, and don’t continue to forward it.
Create folders. This helps keep you organized on internal matters. Client matters should go into the management system.
Hold a weekly meeting to see if you can decrease the emails and make people update you on their progress.
Once everyone is at 50 emails in their inbox, celebrate!

Spring Cleaning Tip #2: Keep Activities Up To Date

I was recently at an agency that is in need of a culture change. We popped open the management system to see how “busy” people were. What we found were tasks that were due in 2014 still in people’s open activity list. So either we are screwed or people enjoy being busy. Now, no doubt this happened because no one was watching and people were allowed to hoard tasks. But you cannot feel organized with activities from 2014 still open and looking at you.

So how do we tackle this problem? Have a management system Spring Cleaning week!

Run an activity report of overdue tasks by person (you will find some people are worse offenders than others)
Hold an agency management system Spring Cleaning Week and set the expectation that you will be at zero by the end of the week
Have prizes and bring in lunch to make it fun
Anyone who does not participate you know loves looking busy…it needs to be addressed
Run reports weekly to keep an eye that it’s under control

Spring Cleaning Tip #3: No More Notebooks

Let’s start by explaining why the notepad hurts the agency:

If someone wins the lottery at lunch, it will be hard to dive in and provide the best service to their clients
You really have no idea what is on people’s desks to help balance out work
E&O, E&O, E&O
Duplicate entry means duplicate time spent
If the client calls back in with a question, there will be no notes in the system for anyone to jump in and answer them

Many Account Managers hold their notepads like a safety blanket, so this may be shocking. However, when they break up with the notepad, everything starts to work better. The best advice I have ever heard is to replace the notepad with a mini-whiteboard. Everyone has to put details in the management system in order to make more room on the whiteboard.

Spring Cleaning Tip #4: Clean Your Desk

When I see agents with piles of paper, folders, files and more, I know they are one of two things. Either they are a disorganized mess OR they like to display how busy they are for all to see, like a little fortress of protection. If everyone thinks they’re busy, then they can hide from more work. Wrong. You’re killing your mojo. It’s hard to feel accomplished when you have piles around you. Plus, it means two important things:

Not a single soul on the planet could dive into your desk if need be
I’m significantly worried what E&O nightmares are hiding in there

Spring Cleaning Tip #5: Two-Minute Rule

I have what I call the two-minute rule in insurance. If something comes in and you can do it in two minutes, do it and log it in the system. If it will take longer, then assign an activity. I love this rule as a leader and a manager. If I see someone with a bit of spare time, I can reassign them some duties. When it’s not in your management system, you are begging to be busy.

However, if it only takes two minutes, do it and be done with it. There is no sense in wasting the same amount of time it takes to log it as it takes to do it. We all need to get better at moving efficiently and effectively through our day. Emergencies and bottlenecks will happen. Let’s not get stuck or busy and move to being more productive!

Spring Cleaning Tip #6: Have a Strategy, Not a To-Do List

In my personal and professional life I see people walking around with these to-do lists. They are a mile long. To-do lists tend to make us all feel bad about our lack of accomplishment because we simply cannot get it all done in one day. Then we spend time each day reordering our to-do list for tomorrow. Get rid of it and have a strategy.

I hope you have enjoyed our tips – we enjoyed delivering them to you!

How Clean is Your Agency?

Kelly Donahue-Piro