Use Digital Marketing to Attract Smart Young Producers

Young Hires Serve as Both Teachers and Student

In one way, today’s high unemployment rate is helpful in the agency business. It assists when it comes to recruiting new, youthful producers. There are tons of young, smart, educated people out there today who can’t find a decent job or any job for that matter. It’s at this point in their lives that a sales career in insurance starts to look pretty good.

Digital Skills

Young people love to communicate via text messages and Facebook. They are also familiar with other forms of social media as well as the latest Web-based activities. This digits-on insight translates into no less than three desirables for property/casualty (P/C) agencies, once you hire such an individual.

The first is instantly bringing a social media skill set to the agency. Every local and regional agency needs to conduct social marketing, and do it capably, even if it doesn’t immediately bring in or retain a single account. The second is Web skills. Not just surfing (which anyone can do), but the ability to make your agency’s site a destination and to support the agency’s producers by uncovering and utilizing online marketing and client retention resources. The third is acknowledging that the first two attributes are mere preliminaries to the main event: actively selling insurance.

Digital Hook

Even in a tough economy, many of today’s young people hesitate to accept a full-time insurance job, particularly one that requires a briefcase, tie, and face-to-face selling. So, use the coolness factor of digital marketing as your hook. Hire them as agents-in-training, where they’ll ultimately sell for a living, but start them off in the more comfortable world of producer support.

Most young people thrive in the wireless world. So, use their digital skills to fulfill needs at your office, while making it clear from the outset that their eventual job function is to sell.

Allow the trainee to begin their career by improving the agency’s online presence and management system utilization. As they develop your firm’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn accounts, Web site and more, they’ll simultaneously teach producers and staffers how to get more from your various investments in automation. Plus, they will learn the practical aspects of the agency business, including field sales skills. Essentially, the new hire becomes both a teacher and a student.

Follow the money

Fortunately, it doesn’t take a new agency employee long to see who makes the real money in the office. CSRs and other internal staffers may be competitively paid, but the principals and producers earn the big dollars. If you made the right hire, that person will be anxious to move on from digital marketing and producer support to the job they were hired for … actual production.

The sales skills that these young producers learn, while also enhancing your online capabilities, gives them an advantage over inexperienced agents at other firms who might jump instantly into sales. That’s because such cold immersion often comes with instant expectations, which are seldom met. And failure helps no one.

So, encourage the new agent to interact with your top producers so they can see that selling insurance outside of the office, mainly business-to-business, is not only doable, it’s lucrative. In a relatively short time, the right hire understands that he or she too can prospect, underwrite, propose and close. And they’ll be eager to try.

Do the Two-Step

Attract future agents with the coolness of digital marketing, and then tempt them with the rewards of production. This two-step approach might delay the new agent’s break-even point, but it also helps fuel their desire to succeed. Plus as a nice side benefit, your agency’s online proficiency improves. It’s a potentially win-win arrangement. And in a tough economy, that’s not too shabby.

Topics Agencies