Imagine a broker sales rep superhero.
What special qualities or characteristics do you want your best broker salesperson to have?
• A complete handle on product knowledge?
• Superior networking skills?
• A relentless dedication to work?
• Impervious to rejection?
Try all of the above.
“The main thing would be getting out and seeing people, and knowing the product,” Bruce Meadows of Roy Meadows Insurance Brokers Inc. said if his ideal broker salesperson. “[Knowing the product] is the hardest thing. All of these [insurance] companies are similar, but there are so many differences among them. If you had someone new who was really detail-oriented, that would be great, but generally I think the best would be finding someone who knows the product.”
For Luis Arruda of Regional Insurance Services, product knowledge and the ability to communicate a client’s precise needs to an insurance company form the basis of his two key attributes of great broker salespeople. (continued)
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“In my opinion, two characteristics go hand-in-hand: One is trust and the other one is mutual respect,” he said. “All the business dealings start there. To me it all comes down to the trust issue: Do you trust this person with your business operations, your bread and butter? Do you respect the opinions and the advice?”
Product knowledge goes directly go to the heart of a broker’s credibility, he added.
There are different schools of thought in the industry over what kind of knowledge is best. Sure, one can hire a great salesperson, but do you hire the salesperson from an industry that your brokerage wants to target – a sales rep who already has a wide pool of contacts and knowledge of risks in that area? Or do you hire the sales pro with an intimate knowledge of the insurance product?
“I’m not convinced that it’s better one way or the other,” said Mark Giardetti from Sound Insurance Services Inc. “But just over the past 12 months, we’ve hired two new people to our sales office that have extensive networking relationships from previous industries unrelated to insurance. And they’ve been two of our most successful people over the last year, just because of those contacts.”
The ability to network with clients has taken on a whole different meaning with the advent of social networking technologies. Some say more traditional forms of networking such as face-to-face meetings with clients are still a necessity for selling complex, custom-built commercial insurance policies. But for the more commoditized personal lines, communicating and networking with clients through different technology platforms is a highly prized skill.
“Our successful sales brokers here generally have the ability to really interact with a number of different technologies,” said Darryl May of KTX Insurance Brokers. “In addition to that, they are able to communicate in a number of different mediums. We’re not just talking to clients face-to-face anymore. We’re really dealing with them in email and chat and all of those different things….
“It’s a different knowledge base than maybe 20 years ago or 10 years ago. The workflows are a lot different. Those traditional soft skills still translate into good salespeople today, but the focus has shifted to other areas as well.”
Social networking technologies do not shut down. Nor should excellent broker salespeople, brokers say. The demands clients make of brokers in a world that never sleeps makes tireless brokers rise to the top.
Ryan Mitchell of Mitchell Sandham Insurance Brokers said his ideal broker salespeople would “basically live, eat and breathe sales and insurance.”
“In everything that they do, insurance and sales would be at the back of their mind,” he said. “So at any event that they are at, any party that they go to, any time they are travelling or out, there’s an opportunity and they are capitalizing on those opportunities.”
Giardetti said the best brokers will be relentless in the face of rejection. “The predominant characteristic I’ve seen in the best broker salespeople is the ability to take ‘No’ for an answer time and time again, and to keep going. If you hear no nine times out of 10, you just have to go back that 10th time.”
