Recruiting the best sales agents for your insurance agency requires strategically attracting and selecting candidates who align with your agency’s mission, values, and long-term goals.
In short, it’s worth putting some thought into your recruitment campaign.
Below, I’ll outline steps you can use to recruit top-performing insurance agents and build a team that helps you hit your growth goals.
Define Your Ideal Agent
If you could waive a magic wand, what would your ideal agent look like?
Before you start recruiting, take time to define your ideal agent.
- Do you want seasoned agents who bring existing books of business, or are you open to training brand new agents?
- The best agents are great communicators with strong emotional intelligence, and the ability to build trust quickly. What soft skills best match your business model?
- Your best performing agents should share your agency’s commitment to the customer experience and perform within the standards of excellence of the agency. What kind of values do they need to possess to fit in your culture?
Write a detailed profile of your ideal agent recruitment lead and use it as a benchmark during the recruitment process.
Start with Your Current Network
Your existing network can often be one of the most powerful tools for finding top tier agent candidates, and there are a few ways to leverage your natural network in your recruitment strategy.
Ask for Referrals
Encourage your current agents and industry contacts to spread the word and recommend potential candidates. Top performers tend to know other top performers. Most importantly, if your sales culture is dialed in, your sales team will by far be your most effective recruitment source.
Engage on Social Media
LinkedIn is a great place to connect with agents who align with your ideal profile, but you have to stay consistent with your engagement. Join groups where insurance agents or those with sales experience in other industries are active and share content that showcases your agency’s ability to solve the common problems agents face.
*Tip – LinkedIn Sales Navigator is an excellent tool for targeting and the cost is nominal.
Participate in Insurance Industry Events
Attend industry conferences like MedicareCon, Medicarians as well as association events like NIAFA and NABIP to meet agents looking for new opportunities. These events are great venues to showcase your expertise and have candid conversations with those that are feeling alone in their current FMO relationship.
Referrals and networking often lead to candidates who are already vetted and have an appetite for working with a team that adheres to a high standard of excellence.
Don’t Underestimate Your Job Posting
Your job posting must be unique. A compelling job posting is key to attracting the right candidates as it’s your chance to sell your agency to potential new agents, and if it’s not balanced between thought and persuasion, you should prepare for dismal conversions.
- Clearly Communicate Your Value Proposition: What about your agency will improve the life of your prospective new agent vs. your competitors? Emphasize benefits like team culture, proven training programs, % of agents that succeed in your model, marketing support specifics and lead-generation tools.
- Be Specific: To avoid attracting an unnecessarily high number of unqualified candidates, be sure to clearly describe the sales job responsibilities, performance expectations, and required qualifications.
- Culture, Culture, Culture!: Include your agency’s mission, values, and work environment to help paint a picture that helps your candidates emotionally connect with the potential improvement to their life if they get hired. Candidates want to know they’re joining a supportive team that will maximize their likelihood for success.
Always Use Multiple Recruiting Channels
Reliance on a single source for recruitment leads is a sure fire way to disappointment. You need to diversify your recruiting efforts to cast a wider net.
- Job Boards: Use insurance-specific job boards like insurancejournal or other niche platforms where agents are actively seeking opportunities like Redbird Advisors. These industry specific sites are great as they are focused on your target audience and have defined agent followings and organic traffic. Indeed and zip recruiter are also good sources for placing job posts.
- Social Media Advertising: LinkedIn is a great platform for recruitment ads as well as Facebook and Instagram. You can also use these platforms to retarget your website traffic and convert those that have already interacted with your brand but maybe weren’t yet ready to tack action.
- Recruiting Agencies: Partner with agencies specializing in insurance recruitment to help you identify top talent. There staffing agencies as well as performance marketing organizations. If you go this route, you should be prepared to understand your acquisition cost if you plan on negotiating performance rates.
A multi-channel approach ensures you’re reaching a diverse set of candidates.
Leverage Your Reputation
The best insurance agents want to work for the best insurance agencies and the best agencies are definitively unique from a sales culture standpoint.
Build your agency’s reputation as a leader in the industry and the word will spread. I wrote an article on building a sales culture that may help you get started down that path if you’re not already there.
Here’s a fly by.
- Accountability. Clearly communicate the importance of accountability as a positive vs. a negative.
- Celebrate Successes: Shout from the mountain tops when there is a reason to celebrate your team.
- Engage with the Community: Host and sponsor events that demonstrate your agency’s commitment to serving the local community
A strong reputation will attract agents who are excited to represent your agency and more likely to succeed due to your company culture.
Conclusion:
Recruiting is tough in most sales positions, which makes things like your job post, company culture, onboarding, compensation and sales model extremely important.
Recruiting the best agents is an ongoing process that requires focus, strategy, and a commitment to building a team that reflects your agency’s values. You are certainly going to have to kiss some frogs, but that’s part of it that we all deal with. The key is staying consistent, remember, it’s sales!
Take the time to recruit thoughtfully, and you’ll build a team that exceeds your expectations, creating a culture with a high standard of excellence and success in your agency.
