Do you ever get the feeling that trying to successfully developproducers is like banging your head against a brick wall? Manyagency owners wonder how many times they have to spend $100,000,$150,000 or even $250,000 on producers that never make it beforeowners find ones that do. With the industry success rate ofdeveloping a producer at around 20 percent, why deal with theturmoil and problems a poor producer creates?

Many agency owners are familiar with this frustration. Theyredily understand the stress and toil a new producer takes on as anagency owner. To break this endless cycle of trying and failing,agency owners have only two other options: Give it up or do itright.

Give it up
Giving up may go against asense of propriety, but it is a perfectly legitimate strategy. Inbusiness, some strategies just do not work because the time,skills, money or tools are unavailable. In those situations, thereality “is what it is,” and giving up makes plenty of sense. Ifthe appropriate resources are missing, it does not matter ifsomeone gives 100 percent. Without the necessary resources, he orshe will still not succeed. The better strategy is to focus ongoals that fit the specific skills, resources and tools that areavailable. Most agency owners seem to believe they should bedeveloping producers, which is great if the tools, abilities andresources are available. If the agency does not have thoseingredients, then no amount of effort is going to achieve success.I find agency owners are much calmer, happier–and often wealthier–when they quit fooling themselves about trying to developproducers if they will not or cannot do it right. Do itright The other end of the spectrum is to commit to doingit right. Agents who choose this path also seem calmer, happier andwealthier. However, this option requires a huge commitment. Thefollowing is a brief summary of the four key ingredients to doingit right. 1 Proper pre-employment testing: Choose a test thatdetermines whether the person can ask for the sale, period.Although the “nice guy” stuff is okay, it is meaningless when itcomes to making sales. 2 Proper training: We now have some of thebest producer training programs ever available in the industry, andthese programs are a great place to start. These programs alone,however, are not enough. Too many owners send new producers off toa training program, and that's where training ends. Successfultraining is an ongoing process. New producers usually requiretraining for a minimum
of 2 years. “Once-and-done” is simply not enough. 3 The three Ms ofmentor, monitor and manage: Successful producer developmentrequires agency owners to commit to mentoring, monitoring andmanaging new producers. Rare is the agency owner who got into thisbusiness dreaming of the three Ms, but the three Ms are absolutelycritical for developing new producers. Sure, there are producerswho can succeed without the three Ms, but those producers aregenerally members of the 20 percent success rate. Can you bet yourfuture on those kinds of odds? Study after study has shown that newproducers do better with a mentor. A mentor is not a boss, nor atrainer. A mentor provides technical guidance and is a resource forprofessional growth. A mentor helps monitor the producer byassisting him or her with setting and accomplishing specific goals.A mentor also provides timely and helpful feedback. Managing is thebiggest part of the commitment and in most agencies, managing newproducer development is an area in which management exerts theleast effort.

For successful producer development, someone capable of managingproducers must be put in charge. That person must actively managethe entire process and hold the producer accountable for achievingspecific goals. Equally important, the manager also must be heldaccountable for the successful development of each producer.

If an agency does not already have a person capable of managingnew producers, bringing in an outside sales mentor/manager can be avery successful strategy. Even if an agency does everything elsecorrectly, if management does not put someone in charge and thatperson is not capable of doing the job, any success will be mostlyluck. 4 Owner execution plan: One of the major problems with “doingit right” is that doing it right is a long-term process requiring along-term commitment. The hard costs are spread out over time andmuch of the cost is ambiguous. The rewards, too, are distantbecause a new producer is not going to generate significant returnsfor at least a year or two. After the initial excitement wears off,it is easy lose the commitment and urgency for doing it right. Thekey to staying committed is to create an execution plan thatestablishes immediate accountability and rewards for the agencyowner. If an agency has partners, an execution plan is much easierto implement. This is because the owners can monitor each other'ssuccesses and failures and hold each other accountable. Singleowners have it tougher because they have no partner pressure andthey have no one to whom they
must answer. The outside mentor/manager mentioned above may help inthese situations, but even the best outside person is rarely thecomplete solution. The agency owners still have to be intimatelyinvolved, and the only way that happens is if he or she has his orher own outside advisors or peer groups holding them accountable,or they personally have put some “skin in the game.” Some examplesof this include owners who commit to paying $5,000 to a charity ifthey are not 100 percent compliant with the execution plan every 6months, or pledge $20,000 to a charity if they fail to successfullydevelop a new producer after 24 months. You might be wondering whyan owner would have to put up a bond like this when they alreadyare investing $150,000 in the hiring and development of a newproducer. The problem is the length of time it takes to develop aproducer. People need immediate rewards–or they need to avoidimmediate pain–to stay engaged in this lengthy process. I havefound that when such plans are created with agency owners, ratherthan trying to depend on self-discipline, which is most often thecase, the success rate for new producers
climbs exponentially. Both strategies–giving it up and doing itright–are legitimate strategies, and agency owners following eitherstrategy are more successful than those in the middle. The middlestrategy is a great way to ensure immense frustration and financialloss. Choose to either give it up or do it right and you will sleepbetter and make more money.