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36 pages

English

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This book is a quick and easy read, but the meaning can have major impact on how you do business. Troy Korsgaden gives you the steps to take to increase your book of business quickly.

Insurance industry expert Troy Korsgaden's latest book teaches agents how to transition from a "generalist agency" structure to what Korsgaden calls a "specialist agency" structure to increase efficiency, retention and revenue. Korsgaden created the system to advance agency growth in all lines of insurance, versus just the traditionally heavy lines such as auto.

"If it seems overwhelming to change the entire organizational structure of your agency, understand that it does not have to be overnight. You are going to grow your agency over time, with each step growing out of the one you took before, and with each new step funded by new revenues generated from the last."

– excerpt from the Forward of Specialization by Troy Korsgaden

Sujets

Economics

Business

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Publié par	eBookIt.com
Date de parution	21 février 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781456607906
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0350€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Specialization
The Master Key to Agency Transformation

By Troy Korsgaden

Copyright © 2012 by Troy L. Korsgaden

Editorial services for this book provided by Laura Belgrave, editorial consultant for publishing professionals.
Design and production by Jim Pietras & Asssociates.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used in whole or in part, or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, without written permission from the author.
For information or bulk purchase, please contact:
Troy Korsgaden
TKSystems
Central Park Professional Center
1700 West Walnut Avenue, Suite A
Visalia , CA 93277
Phone: 800-524-6390
Fax: 559-625-4990
Web Site: www.tksystems.org
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0790-6

Acknowledgments
Specialization could not have been completed without the help of family members, friends, and professional associates, all of whom helped to shape my work into a book I hope readers will find compelling and immediately useful.

Among those whose contributions I would specifically like to acknowledge are: Lindy Sullivan, for her help in shaping the content into a useful guide; BJ Anderson, who has been my discussion partner, daily editor, and all-around good friend; Laura Belgrave, for her creative input and final edit; Tracy Dunagan, for her keen proofreading skills and the final proofread; Jim Pietras, for his graphic design work; the staff at Troy Korsgaden Insurance in Visalia, California — the “Ultimate High-Performance Team,” and Sharon Jansma, my office director and “leader of the band.”

— Troy Korsgaden

Foreword
As a new insurance agent more than 25 years ago, I struggled like every other insurance agent. After many years of this, I established systems that literally transformed my agency into one of the most successful in the nation. One such system is what I call, “Specialization.”
Through Specialization, I changed the organizational structure of my agency from a team of generalized sales associates to a team of specialized associates; this was key to building my agency, and I hope I can persuade you that, through Specialization, you can do the same.
Now, if it seems overwhelming to think of changing the entire organizational structure of your agency, please understand that you don’t have to change overnight. You’re going to grow your agency over time, with each step growing out of the one you took before, and with each new step funded by revenues produced by the last. The truth is, it won’t take much of your time to make the organizational transformation I recommend in this guide. In fact, in the long run, the changes you make will actually free up a lot of time you’re currently putting into running your business.
This guide will lead you step by step through the entire transformation process from transitioning from a generalized agency to a specialist agency. You will be amazed at how these structural changes will provide a foundation for unprecedented growth.

Section One
Introduction
Inventing Specialization
When I first started my agency back in 1983 I was young and confident. On my first day, my manager, Jay Green, said, “Here — here’s a big book of business for you,” and he handed me the phone book! Jay told me to call everyone in the city and ask for the opportunity to be his or her insurance agent. Young and wide-eyed, I started dialing for dollars. As dumb luck would have it, I actually got some appointments and sold some insurance. I sold some auto, a few property policies and even a few life policies. However, it didn’t take long before the focus of my attention turned to service and away from marketing new business. The immediate effect was a drop in sales and flat, or in my worst months, even reduced revenue. Out of fear, I started dialing for dollars again.
My phone work had an immediate positive effect on new business, but once again my focus turned to servicing the policies I had written. This cycle of sales and then service continued for almost seven years until finally I committed to hiring some help. The role of my first employee was to help me make outbound calls in order to drum up new business and to create some kind of consistency in my service appointments. I’ve written a lot about this particular position, my “relationship manager,” because it was held by a part-time employee, but netted me full-time results in production and retention. My relationship manager set so many appointments that the paperwork multiplied along with the sales, and suddenly I found I needed a real, full-time customer service representative.
I’m sure you know how challenging it can be to find a good employee, so you can imagine how long it took me to find my first full-time staff member. But I finally found someone I thought would work out and I began the training process. Trying to teach my new employee everything I knew about the insurance business took a long time, but pretty soon there were two of us selling policies, and the agency saw a jump in revenue. That’s the good news. The bad news? After awhile, I realized we were back to doing more servicing than selling. Only this time it wasn’t just me, it was me and my employee. Both of us were spending all our time processing paperwork and fixing problems. No matter how long or hard we worked, we were just barely managing to keep the paperwork under control. I decided I needed to hire yet another employee to take up some of the slack.
But truthfully, I’d pretty much had it with training. Out of sheer impatience, I decided not to put in the time it would take to teach the new employee everything. Instead, I was just going to teach her auto. Since she only had to come up to speed on one line of insurance, her training went quickly and in what seemed no time at all, she had become a profit center — she was earning enough to pay her salary and also to repay my investment in hiring and training her. She was so successful, in fact, that I ended up turning all the auto business over to her. Without realizing what I’d done or what it would mean to my agency, I’d invented my first specialist. And what a blessing it was, turning all the auto over to one employee! Since I didn’t have to spend time on auto anymore, I had more time to attend to other parts of the business, and so did my other employee. Selling time increased for all of us, so of course sales did, too. Service time decreased, and so did the sense that work was out of control. Best of all, revenue took a leap forward.
That was the beginning of the transformation that took my agency to where it is now — one of the most successful in the business. Sure, I took some hits over the years as I worked out the kinks in what became my new organizational model, but it was clear from the time I trained my first specialist that I’d stumbled over a way to build my agency beyond my wildest dreams. I wish I could tell you that that change grew out of a shrewd piece of business analysis, but to be honest, the organizational system I developed came about mostly because I’d become so frustrated and impatient. I tried a quicker, easier way to run my agency, and it turned out that my new system represented one of those rare instances in which taking the easy way out pays off big time. That’s how it worked for me, and in this guide I’m going to show you how my specialist model for agency organization can work for you, too.
Generalist Agencies Versus Specialist Agencies
What do I mean by a “specialist model for agency organization?” It’s pretty easy, really: Specialization means training each employee to develop a deep expertise in only one line of insurance, with just enough knowledge of all the other lines to recognize a sales opportunity and to pivot to it. There’s more to the concept, of course, and I’ll get to the nitty-gritty details in the next chapter, but that’s the basis for my entire system.
When most agents train their employees, they try to teach them everything there is to know about the insurance business — to make them into junior agent clones. Every person in the office is expected to be able to sell and service each and every line of insurance. That kind of structure, in which every staff member is a generalist who knows how to do everything, means that not only does the agent have too much to learn and do, but so does every one of his or her staff members! You know what this kind of agency looks like because almost every one you’ve ever walked into looks the same. The agent has one or two overworked employees struggling to keep up with paperwork piled on their desks and on shelves all over the office. At the same time, they’re trying to take care of all the different aspects of customer service. The phone rings and someone in the office has to interrupt the paperwork he or she has been working on to answer questions for an unhappy client. Meanwhile, the agent is nowhere to be seen — he or she is out running around trying to make new sales. Everyone working in the agency is taxed because there’s too much work to be done, too many details to get everything done correctly, too much paper piled up to avoid missing some deadlines, and too few profits being made.
A specialist agency is different. If you’re lucky enough to get to see one, you’ll see a high-performance work team in action. The office positively hums with activity. The receptionist is juggling incoming phone calls and greeting clients who like to walk in to pay their bills because it brightens their day to chat with her. The fire account executive is about to close the sale of a homeowner’s policy, after which she’ll pass the paperwork on to her fire customer service rep for processing so she can move on to her next sale. The commercial account executive is out, finalizing details on a large deal with a local manufacturer, while at the same time his commercial customer service representative is finishing up