Help Young Producers to Think Beyond the Internet

Veteran Agents Have Much to Teach Their Successors

Today’s youngest agents crave to be online. It’s no surprise since they grew up in the Internet age. Their experiences include playing video games, doing schoolwork, surfing, communicating via email, and texting and social media. It’s this endless tapping on real and virtual keyboards, combined with their boundless enthusiasm, that makes them so desirable as producers.

To sustain relevance over the long-run, agencies need to employ younger producers to attract, sell and retain longer-term insurance buyers. These new hires no longer need just a desk and PC; they require the tools to connect from anywhere. Instant two-way communications, via apps and mobile websites, is their métier. But, linking your agency’s survival to youthful web veterans has a price.

Side Effects

Aside from the costs of developing and maintaining a viable mobile presence, the offspring of the computer age can come with baggage. The headline of John K. Mullen’s March 16, 2012, Harvard Business Review blog posting states it succinctly: “Digital Natives are Slow to Pick Up Nonverbal Clues.” In it, Mullen cites sources that suggest that people who grew up spending tons of time on computers and the Internet may have difficulty understanding what a person thinks, as they don’t easily recognize key signals or readily express empathy. Essentially, they are weak in business social skills and short on eye contact.

It’s likely that you have participated in frustrating encounters with young professionals accustomed primarily to online communications. A few moments of small talk during a telephone or web meeting, or in actual meetings, before getting down to business seems impossible, and entirely unnecessary to them. This inability to interact can be costly to the agency when selling or servicing insurance voice-to-voice, much less face-to-face.

Agency Approaches

Young, technologically competent agents are needed to keep your agency relevant and growing organically in the post-PC era. So what can you do?

One solution is to help younger producers to market and sell to others like them online. This way any social deficiencies are less noticeable to their digital clientele, if spotted at all. You can even set up a distinct agency operation for them with company service centers fulfilling the day-to-day needs of its insureds.

A wider approach is to help them become fully rounded producers. Let them start off doing their digital thing, and then wean them offline gradually. Not entirely, of course. Just enough so that they develop a healthy person-to-person skill set to compliment their online prowess. Invite them to accompany classically trained producers who thrive in the field to learn by watching. For agencies without mentors readily at hand, perhaps this is something that agency sales trainers can build into their curriculums.

Learn From Each Other

Young agents, with years of online experience and a yearning to remain contemporary, have plenty to teach their elders about digital interaction. But to be fully developed P/C agents, they need to be equally adept at insurance and interpersonal communication. Seasoned producers possess well-honed prospecting and sales abilities that are highly effective in connecting with and selling to buyers one-on-one. These old-school lessons can be taught to younger agents, but for them to take, the students must be willing to learn.

The Future?

If once ordinary interpersonal skills are allowed to die out with the retirement of baby boomer producers, how will tomorrow’s online-only independents differentiate themselves from the direct writers? Will they just be little GEICOs? Is this what being independent will ultimately become?

Topics Agencies