One of the biggest mistakes your agency can make is not providing a continual improvement program.
You already understand that the modern consumer has changed. You already understand what this means for your agency’s business model – but do you understand what this means for your employees? With the way we communicate with, market to and sell insurance changing in a digital world, you want to be sure that your agency can thrive. The people who are directly responsible for that are your agents. Are you providing them with the training resources they need?
Developing an effective employee training program does not have to be difficult. You already have the tools to create is, the expertise to run it and the people to take it.
Effective training can mean many things, for your agency it may mean:
- Sales talk tracks
- Team visibility
- Defined responsibilities
- Technology training
- Work flows
- Consistency
- Communication
Once you understand what you are looking to get out of an employee training program, how can you implement it?
- Start with defining the needs of your company and your individual employees. Where are skills lacking? Where do your employees ask the most questions? You can easily gauge this by talking to your employees.
- Define the goals of your training – both short-term and long-term.
- Based on the needs and the goals, develop training modules. What type of training will you provide and how can you offer it? Can you create a hierarchy and group training goals together into training sessions? Sure you can!
- Determine where your employees will fall into all of these different training modules – how can you get everyone on the same page?
- Create a schedule and get employee feedback on how to make that work – remember, you want to have their input as much as possible since this employee training program impacts them most directly.
After you’ve narrowed down what everyone needs and gotten everyone on the same page, be sure to continue with this model moving forward. All new employees should receive the same training!