Insurance Recruiters 

Every article on this website is like a mini-training school. use the nav bars on either side of this page to locate your area of interest or subject you need help with.

Insurance Recruiters - Building a Plan to Recruit - Part 2

---

insurance recruiters rule number one - you must first create a businessman's mindset on how you are going to develop and build a daily plan of action to recruit insurance agents.

In our 1st article we talked a about the most important secret on how to hire people by using the basketball team approach. If you have not read that article , then you need to do so before you go on. In that article we also indicated that we will discuss the right way and the wrong way to recruit. this is what this article is about.

---

So Lets first look at the wrong way to recruit insurance agents

The wrong way to recruit:

here is what usually happens with a new waana be manager who just started to recruit and is wanting build an agency. They begin doing what i done, till i learned the right way. they fall into the trap of just hiring anybody, just so you can say you hired someone. this is usually what happens with the inexperienced recruiters. they just end up hiring anyone so they can feel good about themselves and they can say "i have finally hired a recruit" They used (step i) in the basketball team analogy i referred to in the part 1 article. 

they run their recruiting interview, they ask that person if they would like to start selling insurance and the person says yes, i want to sell insurance, and then they hire them. not very smart. they violated the most important recruiting rule as i have outlined and explain in my agency building manual, which is they probably done all the selling and done none of the buying. 

most wanna be insurance recruiters/managers can do this all day long and just hire anyone breathing because the recruit said yes. (maybe 1 out of 5 people they interview). But all this does is have you spin your wheels and you end up with no real qualified agents, causing you nothing but headaches. 

then they fail. Why? because you did not go through the proper qualifying process to find the right people. When they fail, you start to fail and get discouraged. 

not only do you spin your wheels, but you do the greatest dis-service to that unqualified person and that is causing him/her great financial pain for him/her and their family, because that person can not now make enough money to pay their bills. 

You hired someone with out having a complete detailed plan of who to recruit, how to hire the right people and how to train and monitor a new agent. 

Recruiting the right people is an art. It is a process, and a responsibility as i have laid out in my Introductin to agency building e-book. This
e- book is part of our complete agency building manual. 

---

The right way insurance recruiters should use to recruit insurance agents:

In this scenario, the insurance recruiter uses (step # 2) of the basketball team approach. 

So lets look at how this should be worked if your an insurance recruiter and agency manager wanting to recruit and have 4 new quality agents producing by year end.

First of all we need to collect data from your record keeping system. As you work your plan, you need to start keeping accurate records so you know what numbers you need to use. (Openers - interviews - Contracted - licensed - completed training - failed)

however if your a new manager and don't have any recruiting records yet, i will provide some numbers for you to work with. Keep in mind these are for new inexperienced agents.

trying to hire existing agents is another story. 

Lets examine step one.

First off we need know how many people will you will have to interview to get 1 person licensed and in training. the answer is approximately 13, and that is if your good at it, and i was good. I know what your thinking right now, and that is this guy is nuts. Trust me, if it was easy. everybody would be doing it and we all would all have big agencies. 

So if that is the case and you want to hire 4 new quality agents, that means you will have to interview roughly 52 people. 

Now the next question is how many people do i have to actually talk to (these are called openers) or people you actually ask to get one interview. This now depends on where you locate your names and how good you are. Lets say it requires you to ask 3 people to get one sit down recruiting interview. This means that you really have to ask (52 X 3)= 156 people if they would like to take a look at an opportunity with your company.

Either way, you will spend your valuable time with interviewing, processing and training. The wrong way gets you nothing. the right way requires a little more time and effort but will yield positive results in the long run.  

Okay now that we got that out of the way, lets walk through the other steps of what you need to include when you build a daily recruiting action plan. 

First, you need to find a quite place. No interruptions. Plan on 3 to 4 hours to start. You probably will need to do this for three straight days to build your first plan, which you will be able to use as your format in future years. 

Define and create your mission statement.

next you start working backwards. Establish major goals, timelines. This is how you create a insurance recruiting action plan or what is called a system 

Start writing things down on a yellow pad. What ever comes to mind. then sort it all out later.

Questions that insurance recruiters need to ask themselves are:

• If i want to hire 4 full time new neophyte agents. I need to interview 52 people.
• how many is that each month, each week, each day. 
• Where will I get the names?
• What kind of image do I want to project to new comers?
• Will they follow me.  
• Am i successful enough to project an image of success to recruits?
• What will my recruiting presentation and process be?
• Who can help me get these names?
• Who are best people to look for to sell insurance?
• What kind of recruiting format will i use to generate these numbers. 
• What type of product am i going to teach people to sell and recruit people to?
• How long does it take to get someone licensed?
• Who will do the training?
• What is my pre-licensing training procedure?
• What is my post licensing training procedure?
• Who will do joint work with new agents?
• What system will I use to monitor them for success.
• Do i want to hire neophyte or experienced agents, and if so what do i have to offer experienced agents (brokers) that separate me from the already experienced agencies and why should they join my team?

At this point, i can only touch on a few ideas. there is no way I can digress on each and every step that is needed to be a successful insurance recruiter. that is why i created a complete format that explains all these details in my agency building manual. That manual consists of 10 separate modules. Take a moment to view these 10 modules and read the highlights of each one. Those highlights define the things that you need to do to develop a successful agency building and recruiting plan.  

Most importantly, you need to understand that you need to have some definite goals and they must be tied into a deadline, specific days, specific numbers. The most important part of reaching goals is have deadlines and time tables that must be met. in other words, if your goal is to have 4 agents selling by year end, then the last one needs to be recruited no later than October 1st of the year. (takes 90 days to get them going). So at the end of month # 1 (January) of 9 months, you needed to interview 6 people. (52 divided by 9). By the end of 2 months (February), you need to have interviewed 12 people. 

In my case, at the beginning of every year, I would have charts and goals put on a large poster board and have them hang in my office in front of me so i had a daily reminder of where i was and what i needed to do. If you do not have something like this set up, then you should consider doing so. Carry a 3 X 5 card in your shirt pocket and update it weekly so you know if you are ahead or behind in your recruiting interviews, etc. 

So as you can see, If you want to be good at what you do, you must have a detailed step by step action plan. Unfortunately too many wana be insurance recruiters operate in an ad hoc manner and hope they will be successful and do not want to make an investment in themselves because they think it can't be that hard. And like i said in the beginning, if it was easy everybody would have big agencies. 

As my mentor once told me many years ago, unless you make an investment in yourself by spending money on material that will make you better, then you don't really believe in yourself or your opportunity.

---