Why 89% of Insurance Agents Quit Within 3 Years

Insurance Agents, in General, Aren’t Happy Employees

Here’s a crazy statistic for you:

“For every 100 people who will join the [insurance] industry this year, only 11 of them will still be in the job in 36 months.”

Why are 89% of insurance agents quitting within 3 years?!

There’s two disconcerting reasons: they don’t feel valued, and they aren’t supplied with the technology they need.

People want to see the results of whatever they’re doing. However, when insurance agents sell a policy, research shows they “rarely get to experience a client’s payout from the sale.” Agents know the benefits of insurance in general, but often times they don’t actually get to see their clients put their policies to use. They also don’t always get to see the performance of the agency as a whole. Both of these can play a role in an employee feeling/seeing their worth and their individual contribution to the agency.

In fact, research shows that 80% of finance and insurance agents feel they aren’t valued at work; they feel they are “only evaluated on what went wrong or could have been done better.” How can we change this for an industry that’s in desperate need of younger employees (as 1 in 4 agents will be retired by 2018)?

In addition to not feeling valued, insurance employees aren’t always equipped with the technology they need to succeed and enjoy their work. Computerweekly.com points out:

“‘Discretionary effort’ in psychology is the difference between doing the bare minimum to get by and doing your very best. Withholding the necessary tools or making them difficult to access can lead to employees feeling angry at having to waste time doing grunt work and create a perception that the project is not very important.”

As you can see, providing your employees with the necessary technology is incredibly important, both for their self-worth in their position and for your agency’s overall goals. When your employees see you place importance on their everyday tasks by equipping them with the tools needed, they’ll feel valued and will work harder.

Do you have the data?

It starts with having the right data to share with your agents and other employees in order to have meaningful team meetings and 1-on-1 evaluations. In order to do this, you need to have up-to-date data you can share in a visually appealing way with the team.

Regularly reviewing your team’s productivity is a great team-builder, but it also keeps your agency’s goals the focus for the team. When individual employees feel they’re working towards a larger goal for the team, this will help them see their value. In fact, “63 percent of employees reported that they wasted time at work because they weren't aware of what work was a priority, and what wasn't,” so goal setting as a team is crucial.

This is also a great time for team members to share their ideas while reviewing agency performance; one study revealed that 39% of employees “don't feel that their input is appreciated” at their workplace. You can do this in a team meeting or on a 1-on-1 basis so that everyone’s ideas are heard.

Do they have the tools they need?

What’s next? You need to equip your agents and employees with tools that make them feel productive and in-control of their work and, most importantly, help them succeed. Not only will it keep them on task, but they’ll feel a sense of ownership for their data. They’ll feel in-control in their role and will gain a sense of value from that.

If you’re a large agency, this might mean allowing your agents to access their own individual books-of-business through your agency management system (called Agent CRM users in AgencyBloc). So, as the agency owner, you’ll be able to see all of the records, but they’ll only be able to see theirs, along with their commission statements and their own dashboard activities and follow-ups. Having this kind of interaction with all of the client, prospect, and policy records will aid in 1-on-1 reviews like we discussed above, as well.

Many agencies are taking a step further, though, and providing more enhanced ‘toolboxes’ to their agents and employees to engage them more (making an agent or employee a full user of AgencyBloc vs. an Agent CRM user).

A few tools many agents appreciate within an agency management system include:

• Dashboard analytics → see your productivity and personalize your dashboard to see the data that’s important to you
• Automated workflow → setup automated tasks and emails to make your life easier and never miss a follow-up
• Email marketing → build a meaningful relationship with your clients and prospects

These are just a few features integrated in AgencyBloc that agencies have supplied their agents and employees. To see the full breadth of what AgencyBloc is, check out our overview video.

The Takeaway

In order to hire, and more importantly keep, insurance agents and employees happy and engaged at your agency, you need to do two things: be able to regularly show them their value and provide them with the tools they need to succeed.

To do this, you’ll need an industry-specific agency management system, like AgencyBloc. AgencyBloc is an agency management system that helps life and health insurance agencies grow their business with an industry-specific CRM, commissions processing, and integrated business and marketing automation.

Posted by Kelsey Rosauer on Thursday, July 13, 2017 in Agent Management

1. data management
2. productivity