7. Accountability - Step 4 to Create an Automatic Insurance Agency

(1) Define performance success & failure., (2) Name rewards & consequences, (3) Coach team members & enforce standards.

Full (Edited) Transcript

Accountability - Step 4 to Create an Automatic Insurance Agency

So we have our agency vision clear. We know what roles we want our team members to play to help us execute our vision, and we're willing to compensate abundantly. If team members can get awesome results. Now, we need to create accountability. We need to make sure we're not just paying without getting results.

And the simplest way to do this is to keep in mind their roles. Going back to our example of the pilot and the flight attendant and the ground crew person and the ticketing person. Five a pilot. I would say the three most important things I need them to be able to do is to safely launch the plane, fly the plane, and land the plane. And so that's what I'm going to measure them on the measurements for the baggage claim person, for the person who's the flight attendant or the ticketing person are going to be different.

So if you're a multiline review expert, I'm going to have certain standards for you based on whether or not you can do three main things. My first one is going to be life and health quotes or bank quotes or annuity whatever else is you're selling. And I'm going to have different levels where I'm going to say there's a level that's outstanding, a level that's good, acceptable, unacceptable, and then complete failure. And for each of these levels, I'm going to show what that measurement would be. I'm going to say each of these has a specific target, and then I'm going to show what's the reward or consequence, if that's it.

So the first three levels, all bonuses are paid, and then the fourth and fifth, there's either a job review and then possible probation with no bonuses. So I'm being very clear about what I expect in this role. If you're already supposed to be a multiline expert, if you're an existing team member, or if I'm recruiting you, and you say, yes, I'll do. Now to do this job, great. Then I need to make sure that you're able to do this and perform this.

In addition, I'm going to have two other criteria. Now, you could change these based on your agency. This is what we found is worked. I'm going to have a certain number of multiline review appointments that I'm going to host within a week. I'm going to have a certain number, of course, of multiline sales.

Clearly defining what success and failure looks like makes it easy for this person to know if they can do this job, be if they need additional coaching and see if there's somebody that's coming to me, possibly to work with me. Do they even want to jump jobs to come work with my agency? Or perhaps is this going to be too much of an expectation? So I want these accountability factors to balance out the opportunity. I've painted this picture of this awesome financial opportunity.

I want to make sure I'm also painting the reality that if you can't perform, I'll be letting you go. In addition to that, I'm going to have production requirements and milestones. Now, the milestones come into place if you're learning the position. So if you're learning the position, I might week by week increase what I expect of you as far as activity review, appointments, and then sales. So the same criteria that constitute what you're supposed to be doing.

If you're new to the position, I'll let you ease your way in. But what's going to happen is, after a while, if I realize that I've now had five people I hired, and by week eight, they couldn't hit this target, I'm not going to wait till month six or seven to let them go. I'm going to realize, okay, you know what? The person who couldn't hit the target at week eight couldn't hit the target at month six. And so I'm gonna let go of that person earlier, and I'm going to tweak this when I start out, this is more of a hypothesis.

I'm not yet going to fire people off of it, but I'm gonna look to develop this and get the feedback from my best team members of what should this look like? What should it be like for a person who's performing well on a regular basis as they're developing in this role? Similarly, I'm going to paint a picture of the development requirements again. If somebody is new to the role, what do they need to learn by a certain time? What activities do they need to be able to complete and what measurable results do they need to be able to attain?

I'm going to look again to my team members who are good at these rules to help me design these. I might enforce them six months from now, a year from now, but I'm going to mention them now and mention this is the direction we're going. And the closer I get to tweaking my development requirements, my training program to understanding how to best get people to hit the results I want, the more I'm going to rely on these and then use these to enforce accountability. And then finally, each role is going to have clear responsibilities that you need to learn before you can move on to the next role.

If you remember when we talked about the automatic motivation, we talked about showing team members the possibility for them to advance within your agency and grow role by role.

In order to go from role number one, the retention role to, let's say, the auto fire growth role, you have to be able to do all these things. You have to know the position properly. It's not just of you sliding through or maybe hoping things went well in the agency. I need to verify that you're ready for the next level, and I'm going to measure that and train to that as well. So once we get our purpose clear, our vision, our role clarity, our motivation and our accountability.

We can start looking at our process and seeing are we best setting ourselves up to retain to acquire business to multiline. And the first step is to look at our retention and make sure that we're minimizing our lapses. We're maximizing the amount of our retention rate and multiplying our renewal income. I hope you find this helpful, as always. Look forward to helping you help more people and make more money in less time doing what you do best so you can better enjoy your family, your friends, and your life.

Thanks for listening.

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