Insurance Recruiters Mistakes

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Examining some of the biggest mistakes made
by life insurance recruiters.

Insurance Recruiting 101

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What is the edge that experienced insurance recruiters and agency builders have that makes them successful? They have a system and do not operate in an ad hoc manner to help eliminate making the same mistakes over and over again.

This article will discuss some of the mistakes made by most rookie or inexperienced recruiters.

Knowledge is power, and you only get knowledge from some one who has walked the walk.

If you don't plan to take the 5 minutes to read through this mini training article, then you already are making one of the biggest mistakes.  

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Overview

Are you an insurance agent, agency manager or a life insurance general agent that wants to start building your own life insurance agency. I am sure you keep asking yourself. Where do I start, and how do I recruit? What type of insurance agent recruiting system should I be using?

Or maybe you are already an agency manager trying to build a successful insurance agency and are having some recruiting and retention problems. Not as easy as you thought it might be.

Do you build your own agents or do you try to hire from outside? Hiring agents from from other companies result in "what i call no loyalty agents". Additionally, agents hired from other companies may create problems within the ranks. They have a tenancy to try and change your system. 

However, if you are creating a insurance agent broker network and want that type of a challenge, that comes with that type of agency building system, go for it. 

I tried it both ways, and trust me, hiring new fresh people and training them the way you want allows you much more control and a stronger loyalty base. But you need to recruit quality not bodies.

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So, if you are an agency manager and would like some third party recruiting help, copy and paste this link  "An-insurance agents-career-opportunity"  and send it in an e-mail to any new prospective agents you are interviewing. it will help both you and the new agent. This could be your first step of your insurance agent recruiting system. When it comes to recruiting new insurance agents, we need all the help we can get.

Not such an easy task.

recruiting new insurance agents, which is the hiring and training of new insurance agents to work for you, sounds exciting. But the reality is, where do I get good people to hire. How do I go about doing this? Oh yes, and then there are the hours and hours needed to train a new agent.

Recruiting tip: Don't be wasting your valuable time on trying to make an insurance agent out of an unqualified recruit.

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Insurance-recruiters click here to watch this
short recruiting video

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Lets review the recruiting process

First off, You need to have a systematic check list that you will follow. if you do not have one, then you need to make one up. it is a list of items to help you make sure you cover all the key areas in the recruiting process and do it in a systematic order. Over time, i added and subtracted and revised my insurance recruiters check list.

Secondly, i had a "Welcome to our Team"  booklet i personally made up, that i would hand out to the person if i decided to move forward with them. it gave that person a list of things that they could expect from me and a list of things that I expected of them.

Note: both of these are separate modules included in our
agency building manual

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And of course, as an insurance recruiter, you need
to have people to recruit.

So where do you get names?

Who are the best people to recruit?

This is outlined in detail in our agency building manual module #1. It is a complete system that can provide continuous recruits and is just to lengthily to explain in this article.

As a footnote, I never had any success with people under 25, single people, or people going through a divorce or any other personal crisis. I will go through the reasons why in a separate article called insurance recruiting. Over time, and through past experience, I just never even started an interview with them.

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Learn how to use opportunity meetings to simplify your recruiting 
problems and maximize your recruiting numbers,
while saving you valuable time.

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But lets assume you have a new candidate, and you
are going to start the first step
of the insurance recruiting interview process.

Getting ready: I usually had a recruiting kit made up with brochures and information items that I used, as well as my check list in front of me when a new person came in to visit.

Running the recruiting interview

As an insurance recruiter, you must have a recruiting presentation that is presented in an orderly manner. This is where my check list helped.

When I started my agent recruiting process with a new candidate, the first and most important part of my initial interview was what I called a personal observation interview. Here is where I decided to move ahead with this person or not, and here is a general overview of what I was looking for.

• First of all, I had to decide if I liked this person, will s/he and I get along?

• What kind of image do they present? (remember they will be a reflection of you and your team. Do they dress neat, look good, smell good

• I then talk with this person to see if they are comfortable to talk to. If not, then they may have the same problem with selling to prospects. Remember, the most important aspect of selling is being able to communicate to strangers and make them feel comfortable.

• Another quality I looked for, is a person that walks fast. Someone that takes two steps at a time going up the stairs. I know this is far fetched, but after recruiting and training over 700 to 1000 new agents, almost all my top quality producers walked at a brisk pace.

• And I wanted to find out if this person has something to prove to his family, or to someone, or himself.(self commitment)

• Is this person an introvert or an extrovert? Introverts are not usually the "type A" people you are seeking.

• I also find out how much insurance they own and what they think about life insurance.

• And are they a good communicator. 

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Mistake number one, doing it the wrong way

Never be over anxious to sign up a new recruit, make the job hard to get, qualify them first, make them think about it, make them sell you on why they should be hired. I will expand more on this below.

Most insurance recruiters are in to much of a hurry to sign a new person up. What happens is they finally have a live breathing person that is really sitting down with them, to talk about an insurance career and this person says "I will give it a try". Now they do everything in haste.

They start selling all the positives to this person, telling them all the reasons this person should come into the insurance business, and make all kind of promises, and then try to get the person fired up to sign a contract. They are using their selling skills to sell this person on signing up and committing to come to work that day.

This is the wrong approach, because most inexperienced insurance recruiters do all the selling, when they should be doing the buying.

Stop right here.. Take a deep breath. You are saying "I should not be doing the selling." Then how do I hire anybody?

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Okay, lets do it the right way

After I completed the personal observation part of the interview, I decide at that time whether I want to move on with this person or not.

Here is where many insurance recruiters make their biggest mistake.

They end up hiring an unqualified person and then spend endless hours training this person, trying to make them into something they can not be. (Wasted Time) Remember time is money. (Read Insurance recruiting -103)

This is where the rubber meets the road. Do you have the guts to terminate an interview if it does not meet all the positives.

"Mr/Mrs. XXXXX, I want to thank you for coming in. I will get back to you in the next week or so after I complete the rest of my recruiting interviews. (Whether you have any more or not.)

I would then send them a "Thank You note for coming in, saying we are not interested at this time, but will keep your name in our file."

However, If this person passed my personal observation test, we then moved on to the next recruiting step,

Insurance Recruiters Tips and Techniques - the complete agency building system that i used to build a 150 person agency in 7 years. 

Insurance Recruiting -102. Determine if you have a Recruit!

Insurance Recruiting -103. Profiling Insurance Recruits?

Insurance Recruiting -104  Locating Insurance Recruits.

Best time of year to recruit   How to eat an elephant ?

Using opportunity meetings to recruit  The best system to use to recruit

Insurance Recruiting Ideas More tips on recruiting

Build a Plan to recruit insurance agents. Article 1 in a 3 part series. 

Insurance recruiters. Article 2, building a detailed plan of action

Best time of year to Recruit. Kick off new year with a bang. 

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Get detailed hiring and interview tips from a site built by a colleague of mine.

1. How to Hire Right Every Time?
2. Hiring Tips and Management Interview Questions?

Use these Practical tips for creating the best interview questions on how to conduct an interview and how to interview for the right fit.

Click here to Learn more from Suzie

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Click here for Free Insurance Industry Resources  
then click on the financial services link and the insurance link

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I hope this  insurance recruiters page will give you some ideas on the challenges that come with recruiting and agency building. You can also use our free insurance forum to ask recruiting questions.

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