How to Set and Achieve Your Insurance Agency’s Sales Goals
It’s a new year, so that means new goals and intentions for 2019. Many successful insurance agents and agencies use the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals method. While SMART goals are a great start, sometimes you need that extra push to follow through with your sales goals. Here’s how you can take your sales goals to the next step:
Step 1: Set Meaningful Goals!
If your goal doesn’t mean something to you, you won’t achieve it. Think about it, if you don’t care enough about it, why would you do it? So, think about why achieving your sales goal is essential to you. Instead of just looking at your insurance agency’s yearly sales goal, think about the big picture. Where do you want to be by the end of the year? Where do you want your sales to be in five years? Creating both big picture and yearly goals is helpful because it gives you a sense of understanding why you are completing the annual goals. Also, make sure your goals aren’t too easy. If a goal doesn’t challenge you and your insurance business, is it really worth it? If the goal is challenging, you’ll get more out of it and get ahead.
Step 2: Define Your Actions.
Begin this step by outlining exactly how you are going to achieve your sales goals. You can do this by utilizing our goal setting worksheet – click here to download! Breaking down your yearly sales goals can make achieving them immensely easier. You can do this with a relatively simple sequence:
- Quarterly: Every 90 days, reassess your goals. How are you doing with them? Are you meeting quotas? Should you make any adjustments? It is best to keep your quarterly priority list between three and five objectives.
- Monthly: Use your quarterly list and break those objectives down even further. It’s difficult to focus on multiple priorities at once, so creating monthly goals is a great way to help take that weight off. Distinguish what you will and what you won’t work on for the month.
- Weekly/Daily: Break down your monthly goals even further do that you can focus on what you need to be doing each week. By doing this, it will help you focus on what you need to do today to achieve your insurance agency’s sales goals. (i.e., calling prospects, setting appointments, scheduling time for marketing activities, etc.)
By breaking your annual goals using this sequence, you are determining how to get started with your sales & marketing goals today! For example, let’s pretend your insurance agency’s sales goal for the year is to reach $2 million in sales. That means for your quarterly sales, you should be at $500k, but you are sure that 60% of your sales will come from client renewals. Therefore, that leaves $800,000 in new clients you need to generate this year, or, in other words, $200,000 per quarter.
So, generate some ideas emphasizing how you will accomplish that! Will you increase your marketing efforts? Will you work with new products? Take some time to think about it. You can always reach out to your local Market Manager at Agent Pipeline and discuss the quarterly view in your marketplace. Perhaps a Medicare Supplement carrier is taking a rate increase, or a new product entering the market.
Step 3: Diversify Your Habits.
To get results, you have to place yourself in a different mindset. This requires you to change your habits. Purge all of the bad ones now, and replace them with new ones. The number one thing to do is change the way you work. You want to be the most efficient you can be, and here’s how:
- Don’t check your email first thing in the morning!
- No mindless web surfing – only search with intent.
- If need be, shut your office door. It’s not rude if you are actively trying to get work completed.
Now that we’ve gone through some bad habits, let’s discuss the good replacement habits:
- Start your day with the activities that will impact it the most.
- Learn to say “no” – it’s great to be helpful, but when those requests begin to derail your own work, it’s time to say “no.”
- Limit your distractions!
Of course, making these changes is easier said than done, but if you give it a shot, they can be extremely beneficial to achieving your sales goals.
Step 4: Be Aware of Your TIME!
To achieve your sales goals, you must spend your time on the right things. Seems simple enough? Well, we understand that it’s really not that simple, so here is a way to consider TIME with levels of importance:
Level 4 – Treasured: Treasured time is the time that is important to your happiness and fulfillment. By using your treasured time, you are investing that time on something that’s important to you and your well-being.
Level 3 – Investment: This level of time is exceptionally significant for achieving your sales goals. This time is utilized to get essential things done in the correct manner. In order to achieve your goals, you must maximize your “Investment” time.
Level 2 – Mandatory: This level of time is spent doing things you feel as though you are required to do. Examples of mandatory time could be: Mowing the lawn, washing the dishes, cleaning the house, etc. Mandatory time consists of things you must do, but the key to keeping things simple is to minimize it as much as possible. Find more efficient ways to do things, or even incorporate mandatory time with treasured or investment time.
Level 1 – Empty: Empty time is time spent essentially doing nothing. This includes activities like scrolling through social media, watching tons of TV, or simply just sitting. It is best to try to eliminate empty time as much as possible.
By tracking your time using these four levels, you can really understand where you are spending the majority of your time. Once you’ve monitored your time for a few days, you can reflect and reassess.
Step 5: Don’t Let Distractions Get to You.
Distractions are the main antagonists of goals. They will either make or break your goals, it all depends on if you can overcome them. The thing with distraction is that, for the most part, they’re avoidable. Here are a few common distractions insurance agents likely experience daily:
- Alerts: It could be a text, an email, or even a phone call – it’s still a distraction. Limit them as much as possible. If a customer service issue arises, prioritize them and tackle them as you can. You can also let Agent Pipeline help you with any escalated issues that may need to be resolved including commission & production audits.
- Open doors: Being available at all times can be a distraction. Employees or team members could interrupt your flow of work at any time. To limit this, create a time period where you want to be completely focused on work, and let your employees or team know.
- Workspace: Many insurance agents work in an open office environment, which can be very distracting. Do what you have to do to tune everyone out. This may mean listening to calming music through your headphones, or putting up a “do not disturb sign.”
There you have it. A simple five-step process to get you achieving your insurance agency’s sales goals in no time. Remember, the amount of work you put into this process will heed what kind of results you get.
Need a little more assistance in setting up and achieving your sales goals? Give us a call at 800-962-4693, and we would love to help you create a plan for success!
