Producers Lack Key Personality Traits Of Successful Sales People

Having assessed the potential and motivation of some 2 million applicants and employees, we have found that it takes a special kind of person to succeed in sales.

First of all, salespeople have a different way of looking at the world. They sense opportunities where others fear rejection. Where others see obstacles, salespeople see challenges.

But we have found that only one out of every five producers today view themselves, and the world, in a way suited to succeeding in the insurance industry. Thats because they come up shy when it comes to possessing the essential personality qualities needed to succeed as a producer.

Whether youre looking for a producer to bring in new business or service an existing book of accounts, we have found that the best producers today share three essential qualities:

Empathy: they tune into the needs of others extremely well.

Ego-drive: they are driven to persuade.

Ego-strength: they know how to bounce back from rejection.

It all starts with empathy. Empathy is the ability to pick up on the subtle clues and cues provided by others in order to accurately assess what they are feeling.

Empathy is not "sympathy." Inherent in sympathy is loyalty, which results in a loss of objectivity. Empathic people can recognize how others feel while at the same time viewing them in a dispassionate and objective manner. This critical quality helps producers understand a prospect while maintaining their own identity, purpose and objectives.

Empathy is most useful in the sales process for handling objections and mid-course changes by the prospect. Empathic salespeople can sense changes in prospects and adjust their presentations accordingly.

Customer-focused sales are inherent in the insurance arena, where the first sales should set the foundation for a long-term relationship.

The second quality needed, ego-drive, is an inner motivation to persuade others, to bring them around to your point of view. Individuals with a strong level of ego-drive feel that the sale "has" to be made and the prospect is there to fulfill both a professional and personal need.

To a top producer, getting a prospect to say "yes" provides a powerful means of ego enhancement. Such a producers self-image inflates dramatically by achieving that "yes" and diminishes, just a little, with each "no."

Although empathy and ego-drive are distinct characteristics, they are inseparable when it comes to sales ability. Think of ego-drive as the motive force for getting the producer to the potential customer and empathy as the guidance mechanism that helps the producer follow the prospect through the sales process until his or her needs are targeted.

Still, the name of the game in sales is rejection. Anyone attempting to persuade someone else is more likely to be rejected than accepted. To succeed in sales, a producer needs to have the resilience, ego-strength, to bounce back from the inevitable rejection. Ego-strength boils down to self-esteem. If producers fundamentally like themselves, failure can serve to motivate them to the next try. Individuals with ego-strength feel as badly as anyone else who fails, but rather than being afraid to try again, they look forward to the next opportunity.

While other qualities obviously help or hinder a persons aptitude for succeeding as a producer, without these three attributes, success is very unlikely.

We have found that the best producers possess these qualities, know themselves very well and believe in themselves.

So where do insurance executives find producers who are built like that?

The first thing to do is to stop pirating from your competitors.

Most insurance executives still view experience as the primary factor in attracting job candidates. The first place they look is their competitors backyard. Conventional wisdom is that if experienced professionals are brought on, they can hit the ground running. But the price can be high for taking this easy road.

Pirating is often simply a way of doing your competition a favor by re-circulating mediocrity. All too often, these experienced job seekers just dont live up to their claims.

How often have you come across people who have a dozen years of experience, which adds up to just one years bad experience being repeated twelve times?

In the end, effective hiring has less to do with experience than with potential.

We have heard company executives say that they cannot wait for an experienced producer to show up on their doorstep. They say that they need to find people who are relationship-driven and can keep themselves up and running. They need people with the drive, wherewithal and potential to succeed in the long run. Ultimately, they have told us, they find that aptitude to be far more important than experience.

We have found that one out of every four people in the general population has a better ability to sell than half the people currently in the sales profession. And in reviewing the performance of employees for thousands of agencies and companies, we have discovered that nearly 80 percent of those producers currently employed should be doing something else.

What that means is that sources of talent are limitless, if we are willing to stop relying on the myth of experience and start hiring based on potential.

It is far more productive to invest in someone who has potential to sell and teach them the insurance business than it is to continue the ghastly waste of time, money and burned territory that has characterized the revolving door of sales in the insurance industry.

Rather than what has been done, look to what someone can do. If you hire with this in mind, you will open many new doors, and discover talented people who can grow, develop and excel–and who will help to make your agency or company incredibly successful.

Herb Greenberg, Ph.D. is president and chief executive officer of Caliper, a Princeton-based human resources consulting firm. Caliper is a non-insurance company partner of the for-profit arm of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers Association.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, November 21, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.