The New Sales Manager

Recently I had a conversation with Will Richard, an education consultant for The Society of CIC. We were discussing what agents need to do in order to be effective marketers. It seems that many agencies are having a hard time understanding how to best use the Internet as a marketing tool.

During our conversation, Will made a comment that got me thinking. He said that he believes the role of the traditional sales manager is going to change. For most successful agencies, a major success factor is a focus on sales. Some agencies even go so far as to hire a sales manager. In the past, sales managers have been responsible for motivating producers to sell more.

Enter the Internet. People today commonly use it to research and purchase insurance—a fact that will influence the new roles of the sales manager and producer.

“The new sales manager will be an effective Internet marketer and marketing system,” said Will. He went on to explain that the successful agency of the future will not rely simply on motivating producers to meet more people and sell more insurance. Traditional networking techniques that have worked well for many years are giving way to new techniques that don’t require face-to-face interaction.

This is especially true for small commercial accounts.

Selling vs. marketing
I teach a class called “Advanced Internet Marketing Techniques,” so I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching, learning, and then teaching other agents how the Internet can be an extremely effective marketing tool. The problem is that most agencies are not good marketers. They sell well, but they don’t know how to market.

Marketing is the process of identifying—out of the masses of people—those with whom you can create an interest in your product and service. The new sales manager will be a master at marketing so that prospects will flow into an agency.

The marketing skills you need to be successful aren’t hard to come by if you take the time to learn. As with anything, there are techniques and processes that work well—and others that used to work well but are no longer relevant.

I can count on one hand the number of agencies I feel are effective at marketing. This select group of agencies spends a tremendous amount of time learning, experimenting and testing, implementing—and then modifying and starting all over again.

Creating a stream of new prospects who are interested in your products and services will be a key to surviving and thriving in the current economic situation. Hiring more producers may be an outdated strategy. An additional strategy must be to work at learning how to market—and the Internet must be a key part of your plan.

I see great opportunities for agencies that are willing to embrace this trend, spend time learning about it, and then implement what is learned.