What to Expect from Producers at This Time

The past few months have been filled with ups and downs for producers. Although some firms are seeing sales numbers return “back to normal”, that is not the case for all companies. Sales numbers are usually a good indicator of success, but now that your producers most likely aren’t making as many new sales (though they may be better off for retention), what should you expect from them? Perhaps you’ve furloughed some employees and have brought them back with your stimulus check (even though your usual workload has not returned). So, if they can’t perform their main role of selling, what expectations should you have for your producers? Here are some aspects to consider:  

Measure your producers’ performance based on other assigned tasks, like marketing and sales admin work 

While you may have experienced a decline in your usual workload, this doesn’t mean there aren’t things that need to be done. You have a lot on your plate and your producers can be valuable assets and help in other areas of your business, particularly if you don’t have a dedicated marketing person! If you haven’t bought into a viable CRM – a tool to help you as a manager understand their activity and build a list of prospects that will withstand the coming and going of producers – now may be a great time to research and execute on that. This will also allow you to organize and nurture those prospects in a multi-channel marketing approach.  

Do you need help entering information into your CRM or need someone to perform prospect qualification research? Knowing if the prospects they’ve been targeting all year are fully qualified (i.e. by meeting minimums in staff size, premium spend, and validating decision-maker names) is a key component of the initial stage of prospecting, and is often not given its due attention! Ask a producer to spend time on nothing more than qualifying their opportunities. When was the last time they identified and fully developed their “Top 50” prospect list? Even if you don’t have a CRM, they can develop this list in Excel and come up with a marketing & sales strategy for the balance of 2020. Even if that just means a “how are you doing” phone call out to current clients (outside of renewal season) or recent prospects. Your producers are not likely making as many sales as usual, but you can measure performance based on their progress with administrative, marketing, and sales tasks.  

The dedication and willingness of your sales team to work hard during this time is a good indicator of success 

We all know that this is hard time for everyone, but one thing you should expect from your producers is their dedication to do their best work. While you should keep your employees’ mental health in mind, you have to also keep your own mental health and your business in mind too. You should expect to have a sales team that is dedicated and willing to do hard work, despite the trying circumstances. Make sure your expectations are clear – let your sales team know what you are looking for! Having producers who care about your company’s growth, despite their altered roles, is an indication that you hired the right people for the job.  

Take creativity and flexibility into account – how are your producers transforming their roles?  

In one of our earlier blog posts, about strategy and innovation opportunities to come from the Paycheck Protection Program, we talked about how you can use this time to work on projects that you’ve never had the time for. Do you have a salesperson that is interested in and skilled at video production? Allow them join in on your marketing efforts and create a video for the company! Have your team propose ideas to you about how their roles can be transformed during this time. You should expect your team to have the enthusiasm and flexibility to take on new tasks.  

Your producers can also use this opportunity to learn something new! Encourage them to take online courses to get certifications. They may have never had time for this, so now is the time! According to Medium, “The goal of taking any sales course is to become an even more successful [producer] by learning new selling techniques, how to develop relationships with customers or prospects and most importantly how to close more sales.” Your local Insurance membership organization is likely pumping out more remote classes than ever, so also a great opportunity to learn new ideas in the industry. As your team takes on these new tasks, make sure to remind them that when things return to normal, they will be able to return to what they do best. 

Given the current circumstances, it is difficult to know what you should expect from your employees. Are they stressed? How are they handling life outside of work? First and foremost, it is important to foster an environment where your team feels comfortable sharing how they are feeling. They should also feel comfortable talking to you about their ability to handle the assigned workload. For producers, this time may be especially difficult because they not only need to adapt to working from home, but also have to adapt to performing different tasks than they are used to, while also attempting to close deals. They have also lost commission in this time, so this is on their mind too. Moving forward, consider measuring your team’s performance based on their ability to perform alternate tasks, their dedication and willingness to work hard during this time, and their ability to be flexible and propose creative new ideas for their roles. Even a few months into this pandemic, we are all still trying to navigate our new normal, so do what works best for you and your team! As always, MarketReach is here to support you during this time, with expert cold-calling services to help amp up the level of new business meetings that your sales approach may have been missing these past few months.