The insurance industry is intensely competitive – not necessarily due to the competition with other firms, but because it is difficult to find and attract qualified talent to fill the ranks of your firm. Insurance professionals are difficult to quantify due to the diverse skills that successful insurance agents need.
Therefore, it has become harder and harder for firms to find the professionals they need to keep their workforce fully staffed. You might be curious why this is. The simple truth is that the skill set required to be a successful insurance agent is much more challenging to cultivate than one might believe.
There are three essential qualities that an insurance professional needs to be truly successful.
Quality #1: Sales Talent
While some people might be hesitant to admit it, a core attribute of most insurance agents is that they’re skilled salespeople. The goal of any insurance company is to sell its best plans to its customers. So, when hiring an agent for your firm, they need to pitch a plan successfully and passionately to prospective clients.
Being a skilled salesperson does not come easily to everyone. Only a certain number of people possess the skills necessary to make clients feel at ease while gracefully steering them towards a sale. They need to be able to work with clients tenaciously and skillfully, even when faced with challenging and dynamic situations. Sales talent isn’t just about your bottom line – it’s a good indicator of problem-solving skills and self-motivation, too.
While being a talented salesperson is often a talent of a qualified insurance agent, it does not mean everything, which brings us to:
Quality #2: Handling Rejection
One word that insurance agents are going to hear a lot is “no.” A simple fact of the insurance world is that not every client will want the agents’ packages and turn down any upselling attempts. This makes being able to cope with rejection an essential skill for an agent to possess.
If an agent pitches a plan that the prospective client subsequently rejects, the agent needs to carry on even with a failed attempt under their belt. If an agent stops functioning and working with the same level of motivation and passion as before, then they become less valuable as an employee. The issue is that it is all too easy for an employee to be demoralized by a failure, meaning agents with the level of resilience and motivation that are so deeply valued are a rarity that requires a bit of effort to find and recruit.
Quality #3: Honesty and Integrity
Honesty is an essential trait for an insurance agent to possess and is crucial to a successful agent. If the clients cannot trust the agent attempting to sell them insurance, they are less likely to seek your firm out for continued business.
Unfortunately, honesty can be just as challenging to find in an employee as the other traits listed here. This trait is a significant core value that should align with your team’s values and ensures that they become an invaluable asset to your firm.
What Does This Mean?
You are probably wondering how these traits factor into the difficulty of finding the qualified agents you need. The answer is simple. Finding agents with all of these qualities can be remarkably tricky, and it can feel like you’re looking for a needle in a haystack.
This means that you will likely go through a vast number of agents that will not pass muster before building up a workforce that meets the levels of skill and quality you expect. Fortunately, you do not have to search alone. Preston & Company excels at finding and screening potential agents who can help meet your expectations for a qualified agent. So, if you need agents today with the skill to exceed your expectations, contact us today and see how we can help you.
