Inspiring Your Insurance Sales Team: Six Tips

It’s tough enough keeping yourself inspired sometimes. If you’re leading a team, it’s essential to keep them engaged and motivated to earn more money—both for themselves and for your business. Here are a few tips for keeping your sales team inspired—and sustaining your revenue.

Build a sense of trust. Nothing kills motivation faster than when your salespeople don’t believe you have the best intentions toward their well-being. They need to believe that you make decisions for the good of the team, and that you have their back on an individual level. Making an effort to build trust with each person on your team—even sitting down to ask each one what would help them have trust in you—is an excellent way to do that.

Tailor your management style. Everyone has a different work personality—and different conditions under which they do their best work. Instead of forcing your employees to fit your preferred mold, ask each one how they prefer to be led. Where one person sees micromanagement, another might see engagement and support. Have a conversation with each team member and ask questions about how they like their feedback, recognition, the pace of reviews and contact with you, and ongoing communication.

Know what your team members want. Not all of them want your job. Some may want a sustainable work-life balance. Others may want to open their own insurance agency sometime. Some are motivated by money; others by recognition. It’s crucial to understand what your team members are in it for—and not to judge the answer.

Establish well-defined, sustainable and possible goals. Goal-setting is an art. It’s crucial to set sales and follow-up goals on a monthly, weekly, and daily basis. It’s also important to know what’s possible—so your salespeople don’t keep missing their goals and getting discouraged. It’s also key to keep in mind that different team members have different capabilities—so the goals that work for one may not work for the other. Set goals for each member that challenges them and that are right for your business—but keep them achievable as well.

Establish a clear payout scheme. Not everyone is motivated by money, but even those who are more focused on other things will be thrilled with a sizeable bonus or commission. And salespeople tend to be competitive. It’s essential to make sure your commission payouts are accurate and easily predictable by your salespeople.

Give great sales tools. Your brochures, web content strategy, white papers, and other sales tools need to be on point—and they need to be in the hands of your sales representatives. Make sure they have the materials they need to back up the sale—well written, clear on the benefits of the products you offer, and focused on the kinds of prospects they actually meet with.

Frequently, the key to motivation is to tailor your strategy to each person. This may or may not be feasible, depending on the size of your team—but the more you can individualize your management style, the internal goals you set, and your relationship with each team member, the better. Work hard to build trust and understand what motivates each team member, and you’ll be in a much better place to inspire them to do more.

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