How to Grow Your Agency – Recruiting and Hiring

How can an owner grow their agency most effectively? Hiring and developing qualified staff is a key differentiator between successful growth agencies and their peers. For many owners an essential starting point begins with a focus on recruiting and hiring.

Agencies that grow faster than their peers prioritize revenue-generating activities. Growth can be achieved by developing new sources of business, increasing quoting/proposal opportunities, improving cross-selling techniques, rounding out accounts, earning positive reviews, and gaining referrals. To grow, it becomes necessary to add more capacity by hiring additional staff to help find new customers or service existing clients.

Developing a hiring process and following through with it is vital. Finding people that are both loyal and high quality is the goal of every agency in the country. With remote work options on the rise, competition for that valued talent is tighter. Here are some guidelines that successful agency owners use when finding and hiring top-tier talent:

1. Prepare their mindset – Understand that finding qualified staff requires an owner to proactively pitch an opportunity. For example, a top salesperson is extremely unlikely to walk into an agency and ask if they are hiring, much less respond to an ad or posting online. This means that an owner’s mindset needs to be geared toward active recruiting. An owner must always be recruiting and be ready to do the hard work.
2. Explain the role – Create a position profile that defines the role, objectives, how success will be measured, key responsibilities, core competencies, requirements, and expectations. Clarity early in the process reduces future potential conflict resulting from ambiguity.
3. Use a process – There are products that can help organize, track, and process applicants to postings online. Insurance agencies need to take advantage of them! Using technology can give an agency the perception of a successful enterprise providing an edge for recruiting. There are applications that will share job postings on multiple job boards. Other tools will manage and track the entire process and all communication right up to and through the hiring date. Two popular options are Ideal Traits (idealtraits.com) and Career Plug (careerplug.com). Like other recruiting sites, these two companies offer varying degrees of customization and automation to meet individual needs and goals.
4. Hire Methodically – Successful agencies take time and use a multi-step process to screen, interview, and filter candidates. Agency owners may be tempted to rely too much on their ability to “read people” without validation. Skipping steps throughout the process could result in a bad hire. Employment assessment services provided by organizations like PeopleSense Consulting play an essential role in helping owners understand if a candidate fits a position profile. The opportunity costs of time and money wasted on a bad hire outweigh the small up-front costs to properly assess a candidate. Sticking to a proven process will significantly increase the chances of hiring success. Explaining the hiring process to candidates has advantages. This may allow “unqualified” applicants to self-eliminate. Also, it provides an opportunity for a good salesperson to question and interview the agency owner.
5. Define the culture – People want to know who they work for. This means they want to understand the vision and mission of the agency. Candidates want to know why their work matters. Top talent will want to know what difference they will be making for the business and the world it serves. It all begins with how a business wants to be perceived in the market. Fit is critical. An average but consistent agent that fits in well with a team may be a better hire in the long run than a top producing agent that seems to bring pain and irritation in with every deal.

Even with a consistent recruiting and hiring process, what works for one agent may not work the same for another. Following the guiding principles listed above will increase an agency’s chances of success.