Tag Archives: trends

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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.

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Google Trends

One way to maximize your Web site’s visibility on Google is to understand what words people use to search for information. That’s just what the Google Trends tool does. It shows you the most popular searches on Google in any given hour, plus a list of related news articles and blog posts that support the rise and fall of the traffic surges. If any of them affects your business, you’ll see it first here and will be able to react faster.

You can click on any of the keywords to learn more, including the hourly volume of searches, whether popularity is going up or down and (in some cases) where, geographically, the majority of the searches are coming from. You can also enter your own keywords to see where that search stands over a selected period of time. To access the tool, simply go to www.google.com/trends.

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One Big Trend for 2009

One of the most important jobs of an agency owner or manager is to look into the future and try to understand the trends that will influence the organization. As I tried to think about the major trends I expect to see over the next year, I realized that there is really only one: changes in how you communicate with your prospects and clients.

There are different labels being applied to these communication changes: Web 2.0, social media, blogs, and wikis, to name a few. The model most agencies currently use is based on a client purchasing relationship. With social media, you no longer just want prospects and clients who purchase products. You want to create long-term friends and fans. This change—from creating clients to creating fans—is hard to appreciate and understand.

But understand you must. This trend will affect every area of your agency’s operations. Here are just a few thoughts on areas that it might change.

Marketing: Marketing becomes less of a sales process and pitch and more of an open dialogue and conversation between you (the agent) and your potential prospect. Friends and fans of the agency will do more “marketing” for the agency among their peers than any marketing program could create.

For example, one agent sells boat insurance in 40 states. He has recently begun participating in a discussion forum for bass fisherman called BassBoat Central. He’s answering other users’ insurance questions, posting interesting information about insurance topics, and is becoming viewed as the boat insurance expert. He does not give a direct pitch to write their insurance. Yet his participation is creating “friends and fans” who will lead to increased business.

Client service: The trend of client self-service is well established and many agencies are already embracing this trend. An agency using social media tools will open up a conversation not just between agency and client but also between clients. An open forum where clients can post messages about how well you provide customer service would be one implementation of this concept. How scary is that!

New employees: Using these tools is second nature to the younger employees you will hire. They come out of college with these skills already in place. Yet, when they are hired by an agency, their access to these tools is blocked. In order to keep these new employees, the agency must undergo a mindset change as well as learn new management skills.

I am personally taking steps to learn and understand how this social media trend affects all of us. My first step is a new website for TAAR. The site has been completely redesigned and in the next few months, I will be introducing additional social networking tools that subscribers can use to easily communicate with me and other subscribers.

I’ve also established a presence for TAAR, as well as a personal presence, on many of the social networking platforms currently available. You can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr, LinkedIn, and my blog. I’m not sure yet which of these will ultimately be the best platform to use. But I am committed to experiment and learn.

A small, but rapidly increasing number of insurance professionals are also experimenting with social media. I think you should be among them. I am committed to helping you by sharing with you what I’m learning as I go through this process. Take a deep breath and dive in.

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Plan Now for Changing Demographics

The biggest expense in any agency is the staff. Of course, a quality staff is also the most valuable asset. Unfortunately, most agents I meet report that they are having a hard time identifying, recruiting, training, and retaining qualified staff.

This problem is not going to go away. In fact, it is going to get worse. Changing demographics are going to have a profound effect on the ability of your agency to remain successful. Here are some trends to consider:

  • The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a severe labor shortage by 2012—just four short years from now.
  • There are currently about 78 million Boomers who are beginning to retire in increasing numbers.
  • There are only about 48 million GenXers in the workforce to replace the retiring Boomers.
  • There are about 80 million Millennials (Gen Y) who will be entering the workforce in the years ahead, but most agency owners don’t understand how to attract or manage them.

Other businesses are facing the same problem and are aggressively implementing recruiting and training programs to bridge this growing gap.

Eye opener
Try this. Calculate the average age of your existing internal staff. Do the same for your producers. If your agency is like many that I see, the resulting number will be over 50 (maybe well over 50). What are you going to do when your existing staff begins to retire? How are you going to create an agency culture where a 20- or 30-year-old will want to spend his or her time?

There are some things you can do as you plan to fill this gap. These include:

  • Keep up to date: Are you providing the technology tools that younger employees expect? Keeping current can also create problems that need to be managed. Your existing staff has been doing their work the same way for a long time. Change always creates stress. Plan for the change so that you can at least minimize the stress.
  • Technology can be an advantage: Continually experiment with new technology tools to see which are worth using and which are not.
  • Outsourcing: Examine outsourcing as a strategic option. Outsourcing can take many forms, from carrier service centers to hiring an “employee” overseas.
  • Don’t pay lip service to training: Few agencies use the full potential of the technology they already have. Ongoing training always seems to take a back seat to other agency priorities. This is a mistake.
  • Try new things: Experiment with new recruiting tools. I met an agency last week that successfully used “help wanted” ads on CraigsList.com to find new sales talent. You need to go where the talent goes to find new employees. Don’t know what CraigsList is? Go find out.
  • Recruit second career retirees: Unlike their parents, when Boomers retire they often start second careers to remain active and engaged. These are mature people with knowledge and experience. While they may not want to work full time, they can be a valuable source of talent.

These demographic trends need to be part of your agency strategic planning process. Being open to new ideas and creative will help you weather these changes.

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Grey Googlers

Grey Googlers is the title given to a recent article in USAToday describing the growing number of older people who are turning hobbies into a source of income thanks to Google.

Jerry Alonzy is one example. He created a career as an independent handyman at the mercy of weather patterns near Hartford, Conn. He always made a decent income that rarely grew. Then he found Google, and his life changed. Alonzy, 57, now makes $120,000 a year from the ads Google places on his Natural Handyman Web site. In return for placing its ads on Web sites and blogs, Google pays Web publishers every time one of its ads are clicked. Those clicks help keep Alonzy and his wife living comfortably and talking about moving to Hawaii. All he needs is a laptop and a high-speed Internet connection, and he can live anywhere.

Alonzy can make this money because of Google’s AdSense program, introduced in 2003. Google created AdSense as a way to expand beyond search listings and onto hundreds of thousands of Web sites and blogs. Now anyone with a Web site can add the familiar “Ads by Google” text box somewhere on their site.

Folks who make the most money put in long hours setting up their site and feeding it lots of content. Google’s computers scan the content on Web pages to match it with appropriate advertisers. Articles on Alonzy’s Web site about how to keep mice away might result in ads for pest control services, while a recipe for turkey casserole at Cooks Recipes might generate ads for diet tips and beauty makeovers.