The Walk of Fame - 5 Hiring Hacks for P&C Agency Success | Insurance Agency Playbook

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Transcript

Craig Pretzinger: 0:00

Good afternoon, fellas, how you doing?

Jason Feltman: 0:02

The Walk of Fame five hiring hacks for C agencies success,

Craig Pretzinger: 0:09

what a great way to follow up the walk of shame.

Jason Feltman: 0:12

This is a fantastic way. So now we're going to, we're going to help speed this up, right?

Craig Pretzinger: 0:17

Oh yeah. Because if you can eliminate the friction, and then add on strategies that will actually work at your agency.

Jason Feltman: 0:25

So let's take what we learned from all of those mistakes. And let's dive into number one of five.

Craig Pretzinger: 0:32

But first, insurance dudes are on a mission to escape big hiccup by our agents.

Jason Feltman: 0:39

How? by uncovering the secrets to creating a predictable, consistent and profitable agency Sales Machine.

Craig Pretzinger: 0:47

I have Craig Pretzinger.

Jason Feltman: 0:49

I am Jason Feldman. We are agents. We are insurances. Number one, slow down to speed up.

Craig Pretzinger: 1:00

Oh,

Jason Feltman: 1:01

what do you feel about that?

Craig Pretzinger: 1:03

Slow down to speed up? Well, I think we need to fire fast hire slow. Ooh, we talked about the biggest mistake being that we don't do that right like that, that we're, we're too quick. We're trying to move. It's drilled into us, right? It's the pace of our society. And we need to, we need to pull back. And when you actually get yourself into that flow state where you're where it's working, we have a flow, and there's constant candidates coming into your funnel, it changes it right? You don't have candidates as a scarce commodity. When you have an abundance of them, all of a sudden, now you can pick and choose, when you have enough, or even too many people in the agency, you have a lot of options, right? You don't have to get this person you can go for the best of the best instead.

Jason Feltman: 1:50

Yes. And pro tip, if you are firing someone, the best way, the most empathetic way to do this is to have them self select out. How do we do this? One of my favorite things to do is get real clear on exactly what we expect. Have the conversation. This is what this role needs. This is exactly what is needed to be done daily. And if it's something that they don't want to do say, hey, we have these KPIs that you need to do every single day, you've agreed to do them, but you're not doing them. Is it something you actually want to do? Or is it not? Because if you wanted to do it, you would do it? And if you didn't want to do it while you're not? So is this the wrong position for you, but you need to be honest with me about it.

Craig Pretzinger: 2:33

Right? Make it about the KPIs not about the person.

Jason Feltman: 2:37

Yes. So you get them to come to the realization that they don't want to work with you. This is a great move. It's one of my favorites. And then it's their it's their decision, rather than yours.

Craig Pretzinger: 2:48

Yeah. And for anyone who watches Curb Your Enthusiasm, you could always voice the truth. Yep. All right. Number two. Number two, culture is king. Love it. Yeah, we got it. We must involve our team, we must create a sense of camaraderie there. You've probably found if you if you're running daily meetings, how much that's helped. But culture is king. So when you involve your your team interviews, when you involve your team in the selection process, now, they have buy in not only to the process, but to the candidates as they come in.

Jason Feltman: 3:27

Yep. And Napoleon Hill, wrote a book. And he talks a lot about this concept of a mastermind. Thinking Grow Rich, right? Was that it or last class? Well, one of them has mastermind in it. And so the idea is this is you take two people together, and it multiplies. You know, one plus one equals three. In other words, and so when you're able to build a good team that are all rowing in the same direction, like the Lakers have the what was it? The late 90s Set the Laker time. Well, whatever.

Craig Pretzinger: 4:02

But I think the 80s late 80s You'd be magic and everybody was like, Yeah, well, what about Kobe. Oh, Kobe. The recipes of yes, that was 90s Yeah.

Jason Feltman: 4:15

But like it's so true. Like if everybody better

Craig Pretzinger: 4:18

the GA or if you have a good

Jason Feltman: 4:21

culture in your agency. It's going to expert like exponentially get better. Like the all boats are going to rise with rising tides. Right. So yeah, even though it's really important to have the right culture. It will drive your agency.

Craig Pretzinger: 4:36

Yep. And it makes it fun. Yep. Like with with the team shows up somewhere where they like to be that's It's good, right? You're gonna get more productivity out of them. They're gonna enjoy themselves. You're making them have a better life. I would much rather well I would much rather by team go home and when they're talking to a family, they say they love what they do versus I hate getting up every morning right like that. That's not good. rate. And if they hit Get it up every morning, it's probably going to become something that you may feel the same way. Because if it just has that energy of the workplace is Doc rate

Jason Feltman: 5:10

100%? Yeah. So number three skills over experience.

Craig Pretzinger: 5:19

You Yes, we, we need to look at Skills At Work ethic, at drive, way more than experience and knowledge. Because we can always teach knowledge right there get to gain experience. Actually, if they're, if we're able to mold them now, and they haven't ever done this, then the experience that they gained will only be through our lives, and they're going to be much more effective at our agency.

Jason Feltman: 5:48

Yeah, I've always seen that drive. Just that like, that drive goes so much further than experience in an agency. It's almost as if, if they've been an agency for a long time, they're like, a worn out shoe. There's not much soul in that. And I did. I did that.

Craig Pretzinger: 6:18

That's good stuff.

Jason Feltman: 6:19

Yep. So number four,

Craig Pretzinger: 6:21

number four, due diligence is a must. Oof. Yep. We talked about background checks, I'm going to talk about it again. So we want to have the strategy of looking, you've got to look at those at at their, at the full package at do that due diligence, we're going to look at the resume now resume tend to have some colorful exaggerations at times. So be mindful of that and really dig into that resume in the interview. We that's due diligence, right? You're you're asking questions about the resume? Not? Are you sure you weren't here for this? You know, no, but you know, put them in a situational question involving that work. And try to figure out if they're being as honest about what they what they said they did, as it as they say, on their paper, we want to also make sure that we do assessments, whether you do a DISC profile, or you do sales strength, whatever you do, we want to you're gonna get you're going to be gathered information, right? It's almost like you're, you're the doctor of hiring. And you're gathering all of your intel to make that diagnosis and the diagnosis is hired or not hired. Yep. Chad. General,

Jason Feltman: 7:33

I think it's very important to so we talked last week about checking references, but due to having assessments is so key, because you need some sort of constant. That's why we asked a lot of the same questions in interviews, even if they're ridiculous just to see the response. So that we can understand like the the different responses per person, the only way that you can tell if the response is is wild, or maybe it's tamed down or whatever is just pitted against other people. So same with assessments assessments, it's not a set in stone type thing. But if everybody's getting asked the same questions, you can see how they'll answer them against the other people that are coming into your agency. So assessments are key key quantifies,

Craig Pretzinger: 8:21

yeah, well, you're able to set that just like anything else, any other process, you're able to create that benchmark, and then know where somebody lives compared to that, because every agency is different at different profiles may be performed better at different agencies, too. So like we say, what the folks will tell it is it said either additional metrics is their benchmarks. It's the same thing with everything we need to determine, you know, what would you go to the gym? If you have a trader? They're gonna figure out, what are your base? What can you lift, right? How much could you curl? How much can you benchpress I'll all the different things, because now we're gonna be able to track and measure growth.

Jason Feltman: 8:57

Yep. And then the final one,

Craig Pretzinger: 9:00

I love number five, because we talked about how so onboarding like a pro, you've got to onboard like a pro. Remember, when somebody starts this is their impression of their new career. So if they walk in the door, and right now you're building the plane as it's taking off, they're not going to have the best feeling, right? They're going to have this like, what the heck, I'm not sure about this. Like, think back to a job that you started, where somebody was vastly unprepared for you just start and what you got out of that job and how much you were, how much you really contributed, versus somebody who took you and mentored you told you what was going to happen. And then all of those things happened according to plan. Right? It's the difference between an amateur hour and being a professional. So it will take you a little time. A little time to think things over Yeah, scary. That's a song to take a little time. Yep, yeah. So I don't grass, though it's gonna take it'll take some time to put that together. But once all this stuff is there that it's the same thing over and over again, right you can make live videos you can do whatever you need to to automate it. Because a lot of this stuff can be automated doesn't mean you need to explain how to log into the computer 4000 times for each person just you have a video to make a system but look at

Jason Feltman: 10:23

it this way if you can cut down what takes three months to happen sometimes in some agencies six months to happen if you can get it down to like a month think about how much money you're actually saving. Because if the person so there's two points to this first one if the person can do what would normally take them three months in one month, and they're 5000 a month that means you just save $10,000 By being able to slim that process down to a one month area so that's number one is that you'll save money number two, is that a players like a to be with other A players, they like to be on a winning team going back to like the Kobe reference, right? Kobe wanted to be on a winning team didn't want to be on a bunch of crappy people teams. You know, that's why he was. Yeah, that's why is it the Lakers. So when you offer onboarding that is like a pro like, here's the process this is what is expected of you every single week. Well, now that person if they aren't a player feels very confident about this new job where you might have lost them if you just had them sit down and shadow somebody else and kind of be bored. You don't need to like challenge. You want to be able to challenge your new people a little bit from the get to see if they're the right person. And you know what, if you challenge them, and they're the wrong person, they expected to shill because that's what a lot of agencies provide as a office that's that you just chill. Well, good. And they leave right? Well, now they left within the first week rather than six months later, and they didn't do anything. So again, it's gonna save you money.

Craig Pretzinger: 11:59

Yeah. So you'll want to kill it. You don't want to kill it, or jealous.

Jason Feltman: 12:03

So that's it. So we had slow down to speed up cultures King skills over experience, do your due diligence and onboard like a pro now? Lakers. Yep, you want to get your agency? Take your agency higher. Go higher.

Craig Pretzinger: 12:19

Go higher. Ed. It's possible Kobe was on the Lakers because of the Taco Bell that Shaq would give him. I don't know. It's just a theory. But if you like what you heard, make sure you subscribe. Throw us a comment or like whatever, you know anything. We appreciate it. Thanks for listening.