Are you Truly Busy or Tragically Inefficient?

We have reached a moment in our nation and our industry history where there is a lot of self reflection going on.
 
Shuttered in to our homes , 80%+ of us are under shelter in place or similar orders.
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Tens of thousands of Insurance Agencies have begun their transition to mobile or virtual offices and are being faced with a stark reality right now.

Check out this photo of 24 year old Insurance Agent James McGuire. 

It's gotten pretty stressful. 

A LOT of the success many Agencies have seen thus far has been due to the ability to manage and run a business where the phones are ringing, employees are present, customers visit, and calls are being made.
 
That ability to oversee and hold the team accountable has become significantly more difficult.
 
At this point the way you set your business up is looking either brilliant in hindsight (if you have planned to work virtually and have a digital game) or it is currently scrambling to put a plan in place.
 
What are your employees doing? Tougher question for some Agent owners reading this… what are YOU doing right now?
 
We have asked in Insurance Soup, our free group with over 31,000 Agents and Brokers, how many calls, texts, and emails Agents send out on a TYPICAL day when the office WAS open and things were normal…
 
Answers ranged from 20 calls to 200 calls a day depending on role, size of Agency, set up, etc….
 
Right now those numbers are DRASTICALLY different.
 
But let’s not focus on NOW – We all KNOW that now really really sucks in plain English…
 
But again – lets focus on when things are normal because what we are about to dive into gets amplified in times like now.
 
The main thing to accomplish on ANY given day is to get through your goal of revenue producing or preserving activities.

​It is literally the highest and best use of your time.
 
The teams goals are always the same, effort wise – you want X quotes a day which statistically turns in to Y dollars in premium a month. Typically happens when each employee makes an average of Z dials.
 
You know your numbers.  You DO know your numbers, right?
 
But then you get to the office… and everyones in their emails.
 
Responding to the exact same types of emails they get every single day… typing out very similar responses each and every day…  bogging everyone down for their first 40 minutes of the day.
 
This one has 7 voicemails to return and only 2 look like good conversations.
 
That one is buried in their social media again… they say they are not.. but you see the reflection of their monitor from your desk and they definitely are.
 
The other one had to randomly leave early because their daughter caught a tummy ache and wants to come home from school.
 
You wound up with that old man who loves to tell you about his childhood and smells remotely of pungent French cheeses  at your desk AGAIN for an hour because he always comes in to pay in quarters and likes to “deal with the owner”
 
Before you know it… the day has gotten away
 
The guy with 7 voicemails does not start reaching out to his leads until 11:18am and has more interruptions coming.  He finishes the day with 57 dials.
 
The one buried in social media is only going to make 21 of the 100 dials you expect
 
The one who left early made 30 dials but shes out.
 
And you lost an hour to Lindberger cheese man and just got an email about this new CRM webinar you wanted to check out so you're losing another hour in an hour. You’ll make 41 dials by day end.
 
400 dial goal as an office… and 149 dials were made – 3/8 to goal – 37.5% worth of revenue driving activities complete.


Now we are all home… and our kids are here… and all the distractions are amplified… our kids want a snack…. They want another snack… The world is scared… your kids want another friggin snack… people are not super available… and your kid wants to know if the Easter Bunny is real..
 
You see how the already difficult goal of staying on task IN office is now significantly amplified at home.
 
So it leads to the question – have you and your Agency ever really been BUSY or are you just inefficient?
There are Agencies out there that are crushing it that realize the daily distractions that can derail an Agencys days, weeks, months, and years.
 
Agencies that have been well prepared for times like this simply because they believed in amplifying their Agencies reach leveraging technology and automation.
 
Agencies that are sending out north of 1000 calls, ringless voicemails, text messages, and more EVERY SINGLE DAY independent of what their employees are doing.
 
(When you are sending out 1000 messages a day, a meager 4% response rate rings your office line 40 times a day – or once every 12 minutes for 8 hours.)
 
Hundreds of Agents in Insurance Soup are using Agency Elephant for such efforts and despite working from home with all the distractions are still finding their phones blowing up mid crisis.

- itCompound that with the effort your team actually gets around to making when not bogged down in service or distrac.. SQUIRREL!
And now youre cooking with gas.
 
That same automation can be applied to the front end marketing efforts you are out there making on social media.
 
A well worded post or ad can result in a TON of comments from people looking for more information and time is of the essence to help them while you have their attention.
 
Many Agents fail to monitor comments effectively and even more do not know how to conduct a conversation on social media with a stranger without being salesly.
 
A chatbot managing your efforts makes sure you are putting your best foot forward each and every time and conducting those conversations in real time when the prospect is interested – giving you the data you need to quote them and close the deal.
 
It’s literally why Tacobot was created.
 
Tacobot conducts full conversations with prospects commenting on posts and ads and does really cool things like reading drivers licenses for auto quotes, fetching public information on home quotes to reduce questions needed for an application, shopping a life insurance policy and allowing for submitted business, and more.
 
It takes conversations you struggle to manage or in many cases even miss out on having and converts them to actual quotes.
 
You should check it out – www.buytacobot.com  - Its truly revolutionary. 

Right now this article may be having you nod your head. It may have you taking a dee breath. It may be frustrating you for your current situation. It may have you celebrating the wise moves you have already made for your Agency. But right now you are feeling something.
 
Since the outbreak; at Insurance Soup we have been completely slammed with Agents trying to figure out how to become drastically more efficient, hold team members accountable, and Agents asking us to help them create their own lead sources.
 
Career Agent Concepts had its best month since November and our Black Friday deals.
 
Agency Elephant brought on a record new number of users.
 
Tacobot released a new skill that has a whole new crop of Agents leveraging this unique technology.
 
Back9 has more life agents than ever signing up so they can easily sell life insurance from home.
 
And CIA… cap off to Taylor Dobbie… despite a real economic and human disaster… and moving offices this month… just brought on more Agents the last 30 days than any other in our company history.
 
If you are struggling to figure out how to get the amount of work done necessary to not only sustain but continue growth during these trying times, reach out.
 
The Insurance Soup has a ton of tools that make Agents bigger, better, faster, and more than they were the day before.
 
The time to look in the mirror and ask the hard question is here.
 
Are you Truly Busy… or are you Tragically Inefficient?
 
If you are Tragically Inefficient….
 
Let’s chat.