Recruiting Best Practices

[joshril]

I am starting a fairly aggressive recruiting campaign. I'm just opening the floor up to the board for advice on recruiting best practices.

I have had a few sub-agents, but never anything on a large scale.

I currently have 2 key agents in place as sales managers to help me train the new sales force. The are both setup to make a small override.

I don't want comments on why I shouldn't recruit. I know the pitfalls. I'm just looking for some do's/don'ts and best practices from those that have been successful during the recruiting process.

 

[J.R.]

I am starting a fairly aggressive recruiting campaign. I'm just opening the floor up to the board for advice on recruiting best practices.

I have had a few sub-agents, but never anything on a large scale.

I currently have 2 key agents in place as sales managers to help me train the new sales force. The are both setup to make a small override.

I don't want comments on why I shouldn't recruit. I know the pitfalls. I'm just looking for some do's/don'ts and best practices from those that have been successful during the recruiting process.

1) Use personality and sales tests to ascertain the potential of a candidate
2) Look at previous employment history
3) Do what you say you are going to do.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

You should recruit - especially if you're gonna train your agents to sell the right plans correctly.

I have recruited many agents and I can tell you it's near impossible to guess who's gonna make it and who's not. I've hired very upbeat agents with great phone voices and plenty of past sales experienced who never closed a deal.

I've hired agents where I got off the phone I said "not a shot in hell" and they write $15K a week.

That all being said, most of the interview needs to be centered around their financial goals and how they plan to achieve them.

If an agents is telling you then have to make $1,200 a week - has kids, stay-at-home wife and without $1,200 he's in big trouble we'd be talking about how he'd reach those numbers; buying leads, generating leads, etc...

Also, if you take the job seriously they will. If I ever hired again I'd have one week of training and a product test at the end.

Leads needs to be a lot of the conversation. Where you get into hiring 20, training 20, having 20 agents pester you all day and 2 write business is when the reality of this business is not discussed.

You can ask agents how they plan on generating prospects. If they say "Oh, I'm buying leads" then how many? You'd be surprised - a lot will come back with "maybe 10 or 15 a week."

So you're gonna put tons of time and effort into training an agent who wants to buy 15 leads a week?

If I were you, I'd go the exact opposite route as these "hiring mills" and position yourself as an exclusive "hard to get into" agency. Give top contracts, give insane training, daily webinars to support and only hire "the best."

 

[Sam]

Mike Stewart Sales Dynamics, Hiring and Developing High Performance Sales Teams<TITLE> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="test/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us"> <meta name="keywords" content="sales, Give them the sales assessment tests from Mike. Best $400 you could spend.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

More advice:

*Stay away from giving agents leads. Give 'em top contracts and leads are up to them. If you supply leads that's their instant excuse as to why they're not writing; "the leads suck."

*Explain that they're are running their own business and contracting through you is the difference between opening up their own sub shop or buying a Subway.

You can open your own sub shop and you'll have to wing it. No support, no help, no training, no nothing.

You can buy a Subway and get a lot of training and tons of support. However if you open that Subway you have to be driven enough to actually run the place.

Subway does not unlock the door in the morning for you, they don't hire for you, they don't deal with the fact that two people called out today and now your ass had to make sandwiches all day.

The bottom line is some agents are not looking to run their own business, they're for a "job." A job is a manager at Walmart - not insurance sales.

 

[HomeService]

Here's a good 2 step process:


1. Watch how Torchmark { Libnat and UA} does it....

2. Do the opposite.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Also, best way to recruit is mailers to currently licensed agents. You do not want to hire people who don't have their license yet.

Get a list from your DOI of all licensed agents in your state and design a nice letter - not postcard - letting them know what you offer.

 

[CHUMPS FROM OXFORD]

Do a thorough background check on all applicants. Determine why they left their last job.

 

[Ahnuld]

I always start at my state's DOI (department of insurance) and pull up the recruit's status, the companies with which they have contracted, their CE, years licensed, etc.

Also, if they have been or are presently assigned/affiliated to another agency, it is posted on their DOI status.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Biggest question?

Have you ever had a 100% commission job before?

A lot of pencil pushers tired of the office drudgery looking to get into the insurance field. They have a mortgage up the ass, 20K in credit card debit, three kids and getting into this biz will likely financially destroy them.

Second biggest question?

How long can you pay your household bills before you start receiving commissions?