Top Sales Trainer Says: Insurance Selling Is Stymied By Risk-Averse Recruiting Strategies |
If you look at one of the great backwaters of the selling profession, it has to be the insurance industry.
It hasn't altered its recruiting and training practices for a century, and it is unlikely to do so anytime soon, because its very product is risk aversion.
Insurance, as everyone knows, is about pooling risk. Actuaries work long and hard to determine how many claims will be filed during a given period, and then they adjust rates to reflect those risks and to garner a certain profit.
When it comes to recruiting new agents, actuarial thinking also comes into play.
Knowing that a certain percentage will wash out, insurance executives do what they can to minimize the costs of these "accidents," these "claims" against profits, if you will.
So, they shift the cost of failure to the trainees themselves by offering straight commission positions or the tiniest subsidies they can get away with offering.
In an age of increasing copetition, especially from direct-marketing companies such as Geico, the traditional approach is bound to fail, says Dr. Gary S. Goodman, top sales speaker, best-selling author, and consultant to the Fortune 1000 and numerous insurance firms.
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