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It’s time to start working SMARTER — not harder with these 3 productivity hacks you need to adopt in your insurance agency.
Between following up with leads, delivering doughnuts to referral partners, spending hours cold calling prospects, knocking on doors, going to endless networking events, and just the work it takes in general to close a deal…
60+ hours a week became the norm for me and for the longest time it seemed like I’d never be able to get that number down.
But the good news is that it is possible… and without making significant changes to your business.
Of course, if you are willing to make big changes to your business, you could probably cut that 60 hour work week in HALF (probably much more…)
But still, adopting these 3 productivity hacks I’m about to show you can easily save you 10-20 hours per week depending on how many clients you have coming in.
Productivity Hack #1: Use a real CRM
Got some bad news for you… your Gmail inbox is NOT a CRM!
In fact, I can name a handful of agents myself that just keep the info in their inbox… then search the client’s name every single time they need to follow up with them!
And more often than not they end up losing track of the client, only remembering to contact them once it’s too late.
And neither is an Excel spreadsheet — trust me, I couldn’t even tell how many hundreds of hours I’ve wasted updating my spreadsheet by hand every day.
I’ve said this a few times before, but I believe one of the biggest mistakes that 95% of insurance agents make is not using a real, modern-day CRM.
Here’s a HUGE weak point for a lot of insurance agents out there. Many of them gather the data…
But never put it anywhere useful!
Moving all the info you collect over to a real CRM eliminates this problem completely…
PLUS you have the ability to keep track of where all your leads and clients are in the sales process!
For the longest time I personally used Pipedrive. Not only is it awesome, but it’s incredibly cheap at around $12/month.
(If $12/month is a “big” expense for your business… then honestly you have bigger problems on your hands…)
Pipedrive (or any reliable CRM) keeps your leads and clients right in front of your face, plus you can keep them easily organized by which phase of the sales process they’re in.
When I was using Pipedrive, I kept my clients sorted under each of these categories:
New Quote Request
Internet Lead
Needs Contact
Quote Sent
Follow Up
Win Backs
Pending Sold
SOLD
Once the client’s information is in our CRM, the funnel’s job is pretty much done. At this point we’re able to finally get down to what matters most: closing deals.
Sure, it might take a little bit of time to get things set up…
But personally, once I switched from an Excel sheet to Pipedrive, the time I spent managing client info was cut in half.
However, if you want to take another giant leap forward and save yourself countless hours per month, you can move onto the second of these productivity hacks…
Productivity Hack #2: Set up an email autoresponder
If you’ve been following me for a while now… you’ll know I’m huge on automation.
And a simple email autoresponder means that the moment a potential client gives you their information, an email gets sent to them automatically to begin the next steps.
Not only does this free me from having to email every single lead I capture (and I don’t have to drop everything I’m doing to go manually send out emails anymore…)
But also consider that in today’s world we all want information as FAST as possible.
It’s statistically proven that the sooner you can respond to a client and get the ball rolling, the higher your chances are of ultimately closing a deal.
In my own funnel, I use a system which emails the client and leaves them a voicemail for me.
It does this all automatically so that I only have to get involved when the client responds to one of those messages.
So I get to save myself lots of time AND increase my chances of selling policies to my new clients.
That’s a no-brainer if you ask me.
Now, the 3rd of these productivity hacks will be a test of how you see your insurance agency... Is it a business or just another job?
Productivity Hack #3: Hire a VA (Virtual Assistant)
I believe that there’s a certain level of entrepreneur you need to be in order to really make it as an insurance agent…
Because just like a “normal” business…
Your success depends on how well you market yourself, bring in new customers, and then retain those customers.
This is why I say the most influential book I’ve ever read is “The E-Myth” by Michael Gerber…
Because it helped me realize I was treating my agency like a job…
Where I was working “in” it, instead of “on” it.
Now, there’s nothing I hate more than wasting time on the monotonous tasks I’m no good at.
A lot of insurance agents (and business owners in general) look at hiring a VA as an expense…
But that is totally the wrong way to look at it!
Here’s how I see things:
Think of all the time it takes to do things like prep quotes, send out COI’s, take inbound calls, update payment plans, update addresses, and on and on the list goes…
All of this administrative work prevents me from doing two very important things:
- Getting on the phone to CLOSE DEALS
- Spend time doing the things I love (like golf, time with my family, and mentoring my students in Fully Covered)
Don’t worry, I myself It took a loooong time to make this leap and feel comfortable bringing someone else on board.
Plus, when I was starting up my agency I was on a total shoestring budget…
So shelling out the measly $7 an hour it cost me to hire my first VA felt like I was taking a huge risk.
However this turned out to be one of the smartest decisions I ever made…
The ROI I’ve gotten from that $7 an hour is ridiculous. It’s probably 1,000X
Imagine what would your ROI be if, for that hour you just bought yourself with that $7, you were on the phone closing 2-3 new policies?
It’s probably massive! Especially when you consider the opportunity cost of being stuck doing the administrative work yourself.
Sure, you can save a few bucks now by being a one-man show… but what’s that really costing you in the long-run?
Look, I get it.
The old guard teaches us all the ways they used to make a killin’…
So we expect that they’ll work for us too if we keep working at things hard enough.
But with the internet, social media and all the modern-day tools we have available to us…
It’s time to start working SMARTER — not harder.
Just because insurance agents 20 years ago could bring in 6 figures a year by knockin’ on doors doesn’t mean we can too.
Plus trying to resist change is always gonna be a losing battle…
So don’t be afraid to question those old-school methods and see what you could be doing different.
That’s why I’ve decided to publish these top productivity hacks I’ve been using for my own insurance agency for several years now.
It’s time to go against the traditional way of selling insurance.
If you feel like you’re not with the times when it comes to how you run your agency…
Then the good news is that you’re not alone.
The insurance world is at least 100 steps behind what’s going on in marketing and online business these days…
And so if you’re sick of things like shared leads, door knocking and networking events…
The Fully Covered System is a SOLUTION to all of that.
Just click the link below to discover how it works:
Nato owns Guajardo Insurance Agency. He learned the lessons he needed to learn so that his agency avoided the traditional ups and downs of lead flow and sales. He created Fully Covered to do just that. A methodology and system that provides predictable and automated online leads to insurance agents that have a passion for helping people.
Today, Nato runs his business together with his wife, Angelica, without the stress of finding the next client or worrying about if there is enough money in the bank. Plus, he gets to protect clients with our Agency and protect his peers through education and systems that took years to figure out on his own.
