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Establish "Set & Track" Goals
for Every Agency Producer »
As an agency principal or sales manager you have undoubtedly set
mental goals for each producer you’ve hired. However, as time passes and your
attention is diverted to other matters, your agents are often left to manage
themselves. With certain individuals, this is desirable. But, they are the
exception. Most new and veteran producers need and want to be actively
supervised. This includes the setting of specific prospecting and sales goals
and regularly tracking the progress made to accomplish them. And since the
"secret" to successful personnel management is consistency, if you decide to
establish and monitor goals for any individual producer, you should do it for
every P&C agent in your office, including yourself, if you’re still active in
sales.
Here’s how to go about it, using Set & Track™ producer software ...
GOAL-SETTING
The place to start this
process is where all sales start: prospecting. When setting goals for these
pre-sale activities, always take into account the common elements and distinct
differences for each major line of insurance. For example, direct mail, email
marketing, telemarketing calls, contacts made, and premiums quoted are common
across all lines. However, only personal, commercial, and group have x-dates or
the equivalent. Life insurance does not. Therefore, Set & Track™ lets you
set an agent’s prospecting goals to include each of the following:
 | Marketing activities |
| Successful contacts made |
| Renewal dates collected (appointments made -- for life
lines) |
| Quotes or full proposals presented |
Additionally, you should recognize that since personal lines
generally requires a larger number of prospects than commercial (or group) to
generate favorable results, the anticipated hit ratio of quotes delivered to
sales made will vary greatly by line. Also account for variances based on a
given producer’s experience level, sales skills, and target markets.
Accordingly, you should negotiate separate sets of prospecting
goals for each agent, for each major line that’s sold.
Next, use Set & Track™ to establish goals for each type of sale. In
personal and life lines, you can set goals by policy type (auto, HO, term,
etc.). In commercial, you can set them by account size (small, medium, and
large). The goals you'll be able to set includes the number of annual sales,
written premiums, and written commissions expected from the agent.
Sale counts help to establish the relative spread of
production desired. This is important if you don’t want an agent to sell too
many auto policies, for example.
When it comes to written premium and commission goals, Set
& Track™ centers your setting and tracking around the latter. Premiums are
how companies are paid -- not you. And for simplicity’s sake, you can optionally
set all goals for new business only. This makes the tracking function easier and
provides a very accurate gauge of what your producer is actually doing.
Including renewals in the process complicates
what is otherwise a very straightforward process. Besides, you can easily
monitor renewal activity through your management system (or by reviewing company
reports) and take immediate action if you spot a retention problem.
However, if you don’t want to leave renewals of out the equation -- no problem. Set & Track™ lets you include them along with new business to make up the
agent’s total commission goal. But it also sets prospecting, sales, and premium
goals solely for new business. This dual approach lets you monitor both.
Final goal-setting tips >
| Establish annual goals for a period of three years at a
time. This gives everyone involved a long-term sales plan.
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| Don’t dictate goals to your producer. Negotiate instead.
Give each person the time and opportunity to share their ideas and to sign on
to the final goal agreement. After all, they’re the ones doing the actual
selling. Set & Track™ provides an optional goal agreement form with
room for you and your agent to sign. |
TRACKING
Regardless
of how carefully you set a producer’s goals, they’re valueless unless you
regularly monitor them. The ideal way to accomplish this is to schedule
individual weekly meetings with each producer. Require agents to submit Set &
Track™ self-reporting forms to you for past week -- for each line of
insurance sold. These reports make it easy for you to enter weekly results
into the software's tracking grid for the given week. It'll take you only
a minute or two to enter in these numbers. The self-reports track ...
| Number and type of prospecting activities performed |
| Number of sales made |
| Premium dollars booked |
| Commissions dollars booked |
After you enter the information into Set & Track™ from
a producer's tracking report, the program automatically updates the totals and
percentages-to-date and compares them against the annual goals you’ve
established. Print out an activity report and to discuss and review with
your producer. Also view or print out a graph to share with your agent.
Final activity-tracking tips >
| Recognize that your producer is entitled to a bad week or
month. That’s why you should work on meeting predetermined quarterly goals --
not weekly goals. Set & Track™ automatically organizes your
goal-setting and tracking by quarters for you.
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| Use the weekly get-togethers with your new or veteran agent
to focus positively on meeting the goals for the quarter -- even if
last week’s results were disappointing. Expressing continuous negative
feedback to an agent is very self-defeating.
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Ideas for Use
