An average independent insurance agent devotes around 60% of his or her time to administrative activities and processes.
While these duties are necessary, they divert attention away from what is most important: serving clients, following up on new possibilities, and closing sales.
Learning how to manage your time and streamline your business will enable you to take your business to the next level.
This is one of the most crucial factors in the success of an insurance agent.
10 Best Time Management Tips for an Insurance Agent
1. Understand the Difference Between Being Busy and Successful
The first point, recognising the difference between being busy and genuinely achieving, necessitates a considerable mental shift.
While many successful people are — or appear to be — extremely busy, the association between the two is frequently exaggerated.
You’ve given yourself a lot to do if you’re busy. Being successful means that you’ve given yourself the correct tasks to complete.
You could, for example, spend 15 minutes debating customer service principles with a coworker, another 15 minutes attempting to figure out how to forward many emails at once, and a half hour replying to social media requests.
However, that hour may not have brought you any closer to success at work.
However, if you postpone those duties for later in the day — or another day entirely — you will be able to address action items that will help create short- or long-term success.
2. Be Strict About Prioritizing
It’s difficult to remain disciplined when it comes to prioritising chores because nothing seems unimportant in an insurance agent’s everyday job.
While this is frequently true, some tasks require more — and sooner — attention than others. You might wish to consider prioritising things like:
- Calling back interested prospects — even if you’ve already met your sales goals. These can serve as a comfortable cushion if your sales momentum swings the other way.
- Responding to questions from long-time customers. A seasoned client is like a “bird in hand” as opposed to “one in the bush,” aka twice as valuable as a prospect. Treating them so, instead of taking their business for granted, often starts with prioritizing your communication with them.
- Focus on specific future-proofing objectives. Planning for the future should come second nature to insurance agents, but the avalanche of daily tasks can easily overwhelm anything that’s not immediate. You can fight this by setting aside time for future-proofing endeavours, such as incorporating new technologies, updating your website and business social media profiles, connecting with potential business partners, and networking with other agents or business owners.
By strengthening the future of your operating systems or business prospects, you provide a little “insurance” to your cash stream.
3. Don’t Try To Save Time by Cutting Corners
With so many procedures and stages involved in the acquisition, servicing, and retention of policyholders, it can be tempting to cut a few shortcuts to save a few minutes here and there. However, this may result in less time — or potentially less money — in the future.
For example, if you believe you know the ideal insurance package for a restaurant owner because you’ve worked in that industry before, you may be tempted to give a new customer a canned response to a query.
It’s far preferable to spend the extra few minutes researching what’s required for that specific owner based on their exact business model, size, number of employees, location, and other criteria.
This can assist them to cement their business and save you time later on when you’re attempting to find answers.
4. Develop Stronger Calendar Management Skills
A calendar can be an effective time management tool. However, if not used correctly, it can be more of a distraction than anything else.
Here are some pointers to help you get the most out of your digital calendar management:
- Use only one calendar. If you have multiple calendars, sync all of them so you can see what each one details in a single view. Otherwise, you may end up scheduling activities in one that conflict with the others.
- Segment your calendar according to sales objectives. You can divide your calendar according to specific activities in connection with the sales process. For example, you can devote two hours every morning to following up on interested leads, then another hour to reaching out to existing clients to see if their insurance needs have changed. You can even set aside time for self-education around the sales process.
- Divide your calendar into zones that force you to hyper-focus on serving specific types of clients. For example, you can designate groups such as geographical areas, types of businesses, or long-term and newer clients.
5. Set Aside Time for Finding New Clients
If you increase the number of new clients you engage as an insurance agent, your personal marketing funnel will be more likely to generate high-quality leads.
While it may be tempting to focus on existing clients, dedicating effort to generating fresh interest can deliver a bountiful harvest of numbers-boosting leads.
For example, you may set aside 30 minutes per day to look for new clients.
It’s best to do this early in the morning or late at night when they’re more likely to respond to your attempts.
Also read: Top 10 Insurance Companies in USA
6. Cage Your Administrative Tasks in Specific Time Blocks
There are always “a thousand things to do” for insurance agents. Many of them are administrative activities, such as reading emails, filling out paperwork, or planning your next day or week’s meetings.
However, by putting administrative jobs in a time “cage,” you may hyper-focus on them for a short period of time before returning to revenue-generating activities.
For example, you may set aside 45 minutes each day at the end of the day to complete administrative work.
This prevents them from leaking into other time slots and impeding your productivity.
7. Start With Something Easy
Doing something simple can help you get your productivity going.
For some agencies, it may be ideal to schedule easier duties first thing in the morning because they allow you to get your creative juices flowing before tackling more difficult tasks.
Checking and replying to emails, answering simple queries from new clients, and completing paperwork for new policies are some of the easier duties on your plate.
8. Use Teamwork to Your Advantage
Working as part of a team entails more than simply assisting others. They are also there to assist you.
Even if you are accustomed to taking entire responsibility for everything on your plate, there may be various things that others may assist you with.
This includes both additional agents and administrative support personnel.
9. De-Clutter Your Workspace — Both Physical and Digital
Taking random items off your desk does more than just tidy things up; it also removes time-wasting distractions.
Your workspace, though, extends well beyond where you sit and rest your elbows.
It comprises your smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop, and cloud-based technologies that you use every day to help you stay productive.
Cleaning your desk every few days may not be enough to simplify these workspaces.
For example, you should minimise unneeded tabs in your browser, disable bothersome calendar alerts, disable unwanted pop-ups on your computer, and stick to a single antivirus solution (and delete any that keep telling you your protection is out of date).
10. Invest in Automation
Finding ways to automatically generate strong leads or using a customer relationship management (CRM) system to automatically expose people you need to follow up with are just a few examples of how you can automate your day-to-day duties.
To improve your time management, avoid the urge to put off automation until you “have the time” to find a viable option.
Automation is viewed as an investment in the future by proactive, efficient insurance brokers.
For example, if you spend an hour learning about an automation system, what you learn could save you 10 hours the next month. That’s a 1,000% return on investment.
Not bad at all. So go ahead and devote time now to save time later with automation.