5 Ways to Encourage an Effective Team Meeting
Teams meet for various reasons. Most of the time, team leaders hold meetings to discuss things that need to be accomplished, worked on, or to share something important. At an insurance agency, meetings can be a little bit different. With agents being in and out of the office regularly, it’s hard to nail down a specific date and time that everyone can be in the office and have time to meet. This is why team leaders must be able to effectively hold conference calls as well. Below are a few ways to conduct an effective team meeting or conference that will leave you insurance agents feeling confident and up to date.
- Only hold meetings or conferences when necessary.
- It’s already hard enough to get all of your agents to be in the same place at the same time, so only meet when it’s necessary. Don’t just hold a meeting because it is out of habit; hold a meeting when there is something of importance that needs to be communicated. That being said, many team leaders feel that having a meeting on a bi-weekly/monthly basis is the best. There may be times that come up when some of your insurance agents can’t be in the office at the time of the scheduled meeting. This is when a conference call would need to be used. Make sure all of the insurance agents on your team know there is a meeting ahead of time so that they can plan accordingly.
- Have an agenda and clear objectives.
- This tip goes hand-in-hand with the prior advice. Creating an agenda and focusing on your objectives will help to ensure that your team meeting is actually worth the time of the insurance agents on your team. When multiple people are trying to communicate at once, it’s easy to get off topic. This is why having an agenda with outlined objectives is so important. Before every meeting, create a plan that describes all of the objectives that will need to be discussed. Doing this before each meeting will help you to keep your thoughts in order and your agents on task.
- Give your meeting an end-time.
- Hosting meetings that last for hours on end is a no-go. It’s important to understand that an insurance agent’s job is very demanding. If they aren’t meeting with clients, they’re going over new plans/products, so it’s essential to understand that their time is valuable. Having your agenda will help you to determine the amount of time you will need to ensure that all of your objectives are discussed. That being said, if you happen to run over time in a meeting, do not get offended if one of the agents points it out. Like mentioned before, their time is valuable, and when a meeting is set to run for a specific amount of time, they most likely have things that must be done after it.
- Offer Solutions.
- Meetings are held to discuss various topics. Some of those topics may be about success, and some may be about failures or areas that have room for improvement. Either way, you should always offer solutions to your insurance agents. It should not be solely up to them to come up with solutions for problems. Before a meeting, the leader should create solutions to the issues that will be discussed throughout the meeting, but they should also take what their team has to say in consideration as well. Listening to everyone’s ideas is essential to ensure clear communication within the team.
- If you host a conference call meeting, ensure everyone is included.
- When you host a conference call and still have people meeting with you in person, it can be easy to forget about your agents on the call. Make sure to remember they are just as much a part of the meeting as the agents who are there with you live. Be sure to include them in the discussion and ask for their input.
Meetings don’t have to be a time that you or your agents dread. They can be a time of learning, sharing ideas, and growth if they are done correctly. Use the tips listed above to ensure that your meetings are productive, time-bound, and worth your insurance agent’s time.
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