By: Kelly Donahue-Piro, Owner Agency Performance Partners

We are here, it’s officially 2016! Time flies. It’s time to get serious about insurance agency goal setting and where you want your agency to go in 2016. If you don’t have a plan then you need to shake down the person who does! No matter if you are an agency owner, producer, account manager or CSR everyone can set personal and professional development goals. Don’t wait for your manager or leader to bring them to you! Challenge yourself to be your best now by creating your game plan.

Also, we have created a handy goal-setting workbook for you to dive deeper into creating your 2016 plan. It’s a complimentary resource for all of our readers. If you’re feeling especially fired up, you can also purchase our goal-tracking thermometer when you download the workbook. Be sure to check it out!

Any great plan starts with three key components:

Vision
Goal
Strategy

“If you can’t see hitting the goal, stop and set a smaller milestone goal. You can’t get behind something you can’t clearly visualize!” — Kelly Donahue-Piro, President Agency Performance Partners

Vision

In my work with agencies, this step makes all the difference. Let’s take a non-insurance example. If I can’t imagine myself 10 lbs less it will make it awfully hard to get there. Why? I simply don’t believe! Recently I worked with an amazing Account Manager in New Jersey. We worked on account rounding and I heard every reason why people don’t want to have all their insurance with one agency. I asked her to try for one week to not think about rounding the entire book. Four weeks later she’s writing two account rounds per week, account rounding new business and she’s caught up enough to proactively call February’s renewals.

One month ago she couldn’t see that it would work. By asking her try it for a few weeks and getting a few wins, she could start seeing how she can add $20,000 in premium to the agency per month.

When thinking about your 2016 you need to make sure you can clearly see hitting a goal, not just picking one out of a hat. Random goals don’t make it to 2017. Your vision should make you:

Fired Up
Excited
Invigorated
Make your brain swell with ideas
Make you committed to knocking down challenges and getting out of your comfort zone

If you are an agency owner, don’t worry now what your team may think. This is your agency and you have to set the course on where it is going. We can work on the team to get on board in the next steps. Get your vision down pat of where you see yourself and the agency in 2016.

If you are struggling with seeing a vision, stop and ask yourself: what would happen if you opened a new agency today? What would it look like? Pick one or two things that you want to apply to your current agency and start there. FYI, if you are struggling do a culture check. Why are you struggling to see your agency’s future? If your agency is deflating you… then call me!

Insurance Agency Goal Setting

Goals are where the fear gets real. Writing down where you want to be in a year means it’s real. There is a real chance you may not hit it and then impending feelings of failure come into play. For many of us the feeling of failure is the worst. I say, let it go… just like Elsa! If I fail while growing, then great! If I’m not failing, I’m not trying hard enough (check out a previous blog for more on failure)! Don’t worry about it! You have just as big a chance to crush the goal as to fail on it.

For most people when you set your goal it can seem overwhelming. That’s why you need to break it down into:

Annual
Quarterly
Monthly
Weekly
Daily
Then per person

You will quickly see most goals are way more obtainable than you think. For most people they need to see a clear outline of what they need to do to hit the agency goals. For example, two account rounds per person every month can change a lagging PIF. One percentage point increase in retention can make a huge difference. You have to focus and finish! Our goal tracking workbook helps you break your goals down into yummy bite sized chunks!

Strategy

Now this is where the plan gets good. And where many people fall short. Telling everyone your vision and goals doesn’t get the job done. Execution does. How you’re going to get there is more important than the destination. This is where you need to craft your road map. To get the job done, focus on three key areas:

Leadership

Yes you, the leader, have to participate. It’s amazing…leaders who are driving culture or sales change their agencies. Leaders who have one meeting and barely bring it up for 90 days, well you can guarantee you are going to wonder why the goals are not being hit. You have to plan your time around running reports, giving high fives, reporting on the results, coaching lagging team members, celebrating success and troubleshooting the process. You can’t manage from behind your desk. You have to be part of the change you want to see in the agency.

“Your team will focus on what you personally focus on. Don’t set a goal via email or in one meeting, make it part of who the agency is from this day forward.” — Kelly Donahue-Piro, President Agency Performance Partners

Marketing

Marketing is not just for new business, it’s just as much for your current book. If you are looking to hit goals, you need a well thought out marketing strategy, outline of a budget and a plan of attack. Don’t burn all your marketing juice at the beginning of the year. It leads to marketing burn out which leads to no more marketing happening! Make a plan you get excited about. When people see resources being allocated to hitting the goal it ignites them! (PS: We can help with this! Sorry, it’s a new year and we needed a shameless plug!)

Training

So let’s say you want to boost the team’s closing ratio. You would need to determine the following:

How to track the closing ratio
Objection killers
Sales process
Coaching/Training*

*FYI we do all of this too

It’s not fair to set your team up for battle without appropriate training and role playing. Go have your calls recorded, you will see! If a CSR isn’t trained on how to handle a rate increase call, who’s to blame? If a sales person has not practiced objection killers, who’s to blame? We spend so much time training in insurance on technology and work flow that we forget to train on how to handle the customer. No matter what your goal, bring in outside trained professionals to help train the team on the best practices. It’s a fun day of team building and challenging ourselves to really think about what will drive the highest result. We have training day packages that start at $750 for a half-day and they include a workbook, Powerpoint, role playing and follow up call! If you are interested check out our credentials or contact us!

Conclusion

We know setting goals is important so be sure to download our goal setting workbook, its FREE! This will help you outline your vision, goals and strategy for rolling it out to your team. Plus there are pretty pictures of us on there! We understand that many agencies have never worked with an insurance consultant before. It’s ok, we like to think of ourselves as your partner. We can start with a simple training day all the way up to helping you define, design and launch your plan for the year.

Make sure to share your thoughts in our blog comments. Our readers love to hear what other agencies have going on!

Setting Your 2016 Vision, Goal and Strategy