Insurance Failures – Get Off the Struggle Bus
If there’s one thing that everyone can agree on, it’s that no one likes to fail. Failure can have a big impact on us personally, but it can also have a big impact on an agency as a whole.
“Failure- it’s one of those words that we all hate, no one likes to fail. But when you’re wearing failure like a winter coat in the summertime, it has an impact on your insurance agency.”
When we’re working with insurance agencies, sometimes we walk in and can tell that unfortunately, failure is part of the culture. When agents feel like they’re failing, drowning, and not hitting their marks, we take this as a symptom that the agency has no target and no plan. We always ask: “What’s the last win you remember celebrating?” If the answer is “I don’t know,” or “I can’t remember,” then that’s tough.
As a leader who is running an insurance agency, you need to step up to celebrate wins, even if they’re just little benchmarks, because it’s not fun when we’re only focused on failures. Here are some things to keep in mind, to shift your focus away from failure:
Who defines failure?
What exactly is your definition of failure, and who is deciding if you fail? If you consider failure not hitting a goal, but there really was no clear goal, then yes, you might feel like you failed. When we feel like failure is really heavy, we need to focus on the little things we did that actually moved the needle forward. If something was just a hiccup, then it’s definitely not a total failure.
Are we in facts or feelings mode?
It’s important to identify if we’re operating from a standpoint of facts or feelings. Facts might look like: we didn’t hit our goal, but we’re going to do better next time. Feelings might look like: I failed, so I’m a loser. That feelings approach is the one that we need to punch in the face, because it has no place in our agency, or in our lives.
Buckle up, buttercup
The truth about running an insurance agency is that it’s not always going to be rainbows and butterflies, even if your business is wildly successful. There are going to be difficult times and there are going to be mistakes, but those mistakes should not define you or your work. Instead of focusing on failure, we should focus on solutions, and celebrate even baby steps.
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