Hello everyone! At this point we are all planning for 2016 and getting our agency goals in line. When we think about the new year the first area we start with is typically the personal, commercial, and retention goals. This is a great step and while it’s absolutely critical to our success one huge area often gets overlooked when we plan for the new year.
The area that often gets overlooked is the job descriptions of our employees. The reason I bring this up is because when we review the performance of our employees we should be reviewing them against their job description. Often when we work with agencies we find that this practice isn’t followed through as much as we would like but how can we truly grade our employees performance if it isn’t matched against their job description?
When I make this suggestion to managers and owners they agree with the statement and they will then dust off the job description and start applying the practice. However, notice how I used the term dust off? The reason I use this term is because literally most job descriptions have not been updated for years.
Job descriptions need to be updated on a far more frequent basis. The reason I say this is because if you’re making a conscience effort to modernize your agency you may find that the definitions of service change. Often times we hear from agencies that they provide great service. We dive a bit deeper and find that selling through service isn’t always happening in agencies and when we ask service staff why not, the number one response is that it isn’t their job.
That’s fair and we understand that but to dig even deeper we will speak to agency managers/owners and we break down how service staff can deliver a higher level of service through selling and in 9 out of 10 cases they agree and want to implement that immediately. We will check in weeks or months later and often find that the service staff haven’t really taken the proverbial bull by the horns and why would they? Their job description does not dictate it.
The landscape for an independent insurance agency is vastly more competitive than it was 10 years ago and with that being said we have to be open to adjusting and changing the job descriptions of our team. What dictates great service or great sales is still an ever evolving concept therefore our team has to evolve with the landscape.
Agency Performance Partners is committed to helping independent agencies evolve and we have helped update job descriptions for hundreds of agencies. Call us today and learn how we can help enable change in your agency! We are bringing the holidays early this year with our end of year special and you can learn more about it here https://www.agencyperformancepartners.com/promo/
