Here at APP we are all about helping agencies and agents perform. One of my core values is to always strive to hit your personal potential. Now, everyone has different potential levels, but it’s important that we are always in alignment to do our personal best. Many agents are programmed to think about the task at their desk, not always the concept of performance. For the purposes of this blog, when we refer to agents, identify them as anyone with an insurance license.
These top 5 areas have been created by my 12 years of working with agencies across the US and Canada. While I don’t have exact scientific data, I would swear on a stack of bibles that these are the top 5 reasons that agents don’t fully reach their potential:
- They believe and cling to limiting beliefs.
- They stop learning and being curious.
- Fear of doing the wrong thing paralyzes them.
- This is a job to them, not a career.
- They never master how to maximize their time and control their day.
Reason 1: Limiting Beliefs
As we move towards the bumpy road of re-opening after Covid-19, we have all had some internal conversations with ourselves. What will change? What is working? What isn’t? (Maybe the conversations got more in-depth after a few glasses of wine!)
Limiting beliefs are the stories we tell ourselves to keep ourselves in our comfort zone. Now, some of us listen to them, and some of us challenge those limiting beliefs. The agents who confront those beliefs hit their potential. The ones that listen end up making excuses and stay in the safety bay. The reality is the stories we tell ourselves are sadly not that positive. When you can stand up to those beliefs and go outside of your comfort zone with the intention that you’re going to find a way and allow yourself to get bruised and learn, that is when you break through. Here is how to identify and confront your limiting beliefs.
- Label It: I love labeling things because it gives us a GPS system to what it is. When you start to hear all the reasons why something may not be good or work, say to yourself — this is a limiting belief. Then take the next step.
- Drive Facts: Once you have your label, seek information. Are there other agents capable of doing this? If so, how are they doing it? What are you missing? The internet is a great place. In seconds you can find the other side of the story your brain is not telling you. You can feed it new information to balance out the one-sided story.
- What’s the Worst: Write down the worst action you could take for your insurance career. Also, write down the best thing you could do. You have to do this both for if you do it and if you don’t do it. See, non-action has consequences too. When you start having a conversation with yourself, you can share new details.
- Permission: You have to give yourself permission for it to be awkward. Allow yourself the grace to learn and grow and get better. Imagine you break your leg and you have to go to physical therapy. They don’t just say, “now walk” — no, it’s about small improvements.
- Define Success: We all do a terrible job at stopping and identifying baby steps of progress. What this means is you should identify a personal reward for when you hit a baby goal — eat a cupcake, tell someone. No matter what it is, when you get the first indication it’s working, you need to reward yourself for going through the process.
Reason 2: Stop Learning
This goes directly hand and hand with the Reason 1. When you don’t believe in yourself, you most certainly don’t try to invest in yourself. In fact, you don’t even try to research all the reasons you don’t believe to find someone on the internet who says, “you know what, you are right.”
I am someone personally who loves learning about all of the things, so this one always boggles my mind. I listen to podcasts, read books, watch YouTube videos. So when I see someone who doesn’t have a craving for knowledge, I get super curious as to why. It generally falls into one of two reasons. 1) I’m a master at it so I can’t learn more, or 2) I’ve quit my job but I’m still working (meaning I’ve checked out).
Curiosity and the desire to learn are healthy, and they often motivate us. Without motivation we will not learn anything new. Look around at your team. Who is enthusiastically learning and who is checking in and out?
Reason 3: Fear of Doing the Wrong Thing
Especially for account manager agents, the fear of making a mistake is difficult to overcome. Due to the quantity of calls or transactions, we often think, OMG, this is going to be horrible for the next 20 calls . . . eeek! In addition, there can also be the fear of the unknown. Many account managers enjoy being craft masters where they know what to do and most likely what the outcome will be. Changing that plan can be unnerving.
This is where the idea of writing down what happens if you do nothing comes into play. There are so many ways to be uncomfortable. Oftentimes, people don’t think about the real discomfort of the agency shrinking or losing their position because they aren’t meeting their potential.
In some agencies, we give out the Awkward Award. This is where we actually praise the person who had the most awkward experience and recognize them for stepping out of their comfort zone. When you get recognition, you get fueled up to get back on the horse.
Reason 4: This Is My Job, Not My Career
This is unfortunately a common plague. A career is something that becomes a part (not the whole essence) of your identity. It’s something you enjoy, and you think about ways to improve and grow in the position. A job is check in and check out. Here is the challenge: when you have a job, it’s disposable. This job, another job — doesn’t matter — you aren’t working toward something bigger.
Now, you need worker bees — but you need worker bees that enthusiastically try to be the best at what they do. For the people out there reading this who are saying to themselves, I’m just here because it’s close to my house, I’m empowering and encouraging you to find something that makes you happy. Flat out — You will not be happy working 40 hours per week at some place you are going to only because it’s close to your home.
Everyone deserves to be happy, and your career plays into that. You may be doing something that isn’t your dream career as you get to your next step, but be honest on this! You don’t have to just plug in and plug out.
Reason 5: Mastering Your Day
We preach time management and I mean preach. Yet agencies still have processing piled up everywhere. People leave work feeling deflated because they can’t get to everything. While I strive to be a very efficient person, I also have a time management trap of taking on too much and being in the middle of it exhausted, unenthusiastic and, quite honestly, grumpy.
Every successful agent has to balance doing the things that are needed to be proactive as well as tending to the clients in front of them. The common fear is there is no time, that you can’t get to everything as it is. But when we look, we commonly see re-marketing done too often, agents not practicing first call resolution, and quoting over the phone gone out the window.
When I think about time, I think about how people don’t have time to work out, but they have time to watch tv. You have more control of the time than you think, but you have to have a plan and a strategy. The work can happen to you, or you can control the work!
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