Recruiting — Planned, Purposeful Activity
By William Willard, CLU, President
Market Planning-Plus

Recruiting is the only management function that won't come to you. You must go to it!

Recruiting is to sales management what marketing and prospecting are to selling. Like prospecting, recruiting involves identifying sufficient numbers of qualified individuals who, when successfully put through selection and training, will become valuable members of your agency. Like the producer who fails to prospect, the manager who fails to recruit will end up in a very tight bind. Thus, like marketing and prospecting, recruiting has a direct impact on your agency's growth and profitability.

The Line Forms to the Right!

Sales managers can never tell when the inevitable is going to happen. Agents terminate, retire or are lost for any number of reasons. Thus, successful sales managers build bench strength, that is, ample reserves of qualified candidates waiting to join the agency. To have bench strength, it is important to do maintenance recruiting throughout the year, even after meeting your recruiting objectives.

Recruiting activity should be continuous, and maintenance recruiting keeps just enough candidates in the recruiting and selection pipeline to prevent you from being caught short by unexpected attrition.

A carefully planned recruiting system, coordinated with your agency's new appointment goals, can help you identify and attract a steady flow of people who are eager for the opportunities offered by you, your agency, and the Company. In this unit you will be given the knowledge and skills necessary to become a confident, effective recruiter.

The recruiting process may seem tough, and it can be. But it helps if you understand from the beginning that:

Recruiting is prospecting for new agents. It is a series of planned, ongoing activities, a continuous process that becomes a natural to sales managers as prospecting is to successful sales people. Recruiting and selection are actually two parts of the same process. When you recruit you'll be wearing a selling hat; when you select you'll be wearing a buying hat. And, effective recruiting and selection can make training and supervision much easier.

So, Who Should You Look For?

As you might suspect, knowing who you want to bring into the agency, and knowing how to identify them are very important. Before looking at candidates profiles and an organized recruiting system, though, we should define two terms you'll be hearing a lot "prospective candidates" and "qualified candidates."

Prospective candidates are like "suspects" in the selling process. They're people from various sources, whom you have access to, but who may or may not be eligible for the career, or even interested in it. Qualified candidates are people who fit your agency's profile of a successful producer, who achieve satisfactory scores on LIMRA's Career Profile (CP), who are interested in pursuing a career with the Company and your agency, and whom you want to continue in the selection process.

Taking care in identifying and screening prospective candidates is crucial. Your initial recruiting activities should provide a steady, abundant flow of names from a variety of sources. As mentioned, however, the higher the quality of people generated by your recruiting sources, the higher the quality of candidates you will funnel into the selection process.

Candidate Profile

Until a machine is perfected which can clone top producers, candidate profiles are a good way to begin identifying the type of people who are most likely to do well in our business.

Candidate profiles are general descriptions of the backgrounds, characteristics, skills and abilities of the leading producers in an agency. They enable agency managers and sales managers to focus on men and women who will be compatible with the Company's target markets and otherwise be a good fit with your organization.

Candidate profiles are also especially useful when working with centers of influence and nominators. These people are willing to recommend prospective candidates, but the more clearly they understand who you're looking for, the more effectively they will be. With a candidate profile in mind, centers and nominators will be able to identify prospective candidates much more quickly, easily and accurately.

Candidate profiles may be somewhat different from one agency to another, depending on the location, market and specific clientele being served. For example, an agency specializing in the medical professional markets may wish to appoint people with different backgrounds than one doing most of its business with an agribusiness clientele. And an organization targeting the individual and family markets or small-business owners may be looking for people with entirely different backgrounds.

"Success Factors"

People who fail in this business often blame poor training or inadequate super-vision, and, sometimes, they're right. It's more likely, however, that they simply lacked one or more of the basic character traits of successful producers.

Successful producers have many different personalities and styles; yet, they all have some essential things in common. We call these character traits "Success Factors":

Empathy - Agents must genuinely like being with and helping people--and it's got to show! Empathy is a critical ingredient in needs-oriented, relationship-based selling.
Ego - Empathy develops a prospect's trust and confidence; ego closes sales. Agents must be sensitive when dealing with prospects and clients; but, at other times, top producers are focused almost exclusively on their businesses. You know you're talking to potential winners if their eyes glaze over when the subject drifts off themselves!
Courage - The meek may inherit the earth, but few survive in the insurance business. The most successful producers are risk-takers who'll approach anyone at any time, and deflect rejection like water off a duck.
Effort - A demonstrated capacity for hard work. The theory about working "smarter, not harder" is a dangerous one to put to the test. If you have a choice (and you do), look for people who work hard, smarter can come later. Many people have sales potential and pleasing personalities, far fewer have the sustained will and sense of urgency it takes to succeed. Top producers are self-starters who drive themselves to success by consistently putting forth their best effort.
Ethics - Doing the right things for the right reasons. This includes a belief in the value of services performed, genuine desire to act in the client's best interest, and the willingness to improve one's professional standing through continued education.
Financial Achievement Drive - The need to measure one's success (at least in part) in terms of income, net-worth or lifestyle.
Entrepreneurial Drive - The desire to run a successful, profitable business.

One other reason for low retention rates is that in the rush to recruit, sales mangers often forget the difference between "Success Factors", which agents and advisors must bring to the equation, and "trainable skills" and other characteristics that can be developed later. There's no way to train someone to be genuinely empathic, for example, and no skills-building program can ever give people the instinctive courage they need consistently to make calls and face-to-face contacts, despite turn-downs and brush-offs.

Trainable Skills and Other Characteristics

With good coaching and support--and lots and lots of hard work--most people who have the "Success Factors" can learn the rest. Let's first consider some skills and other characteristics inexperienced candidates should either be able to demonstrate or convince you they can learn or otherwise acquire. Then, we'll look at some things experienced candidates should be able to demonstrate before being considered.

Inexperienced Candidates should have the following characteristics, skills and abilities. In no particular order, these are.

Sense of Urgency - Successful producers don't put things off until tomorrow. For many people, a sense of urgency comes naturally. For others, it's something that can quickly be acquired. In fact, in the selection process candidates are asked to complete a series of time-phased activity assignments that test their interest in the career and (by extension) their sense of urgency.
Self-Promotional Awareness - In a world inundated by junk mail, "spam" e-mail, the telephone and other culture clutter, agents must demonstrate that they are superior in their field to get prospects' attention. Producers must be masters of self-promotion, able to blow their own horns in appealing ways that say: "I'm good; one of the best. I want to prove it to you, and I can!"
Market Potential - Candidates must have relevant experiences or relationships (or, third-party influence) that will enable them to identify and develop markets. While marketing is a trainable skill, a new producer without at least one natural market usually needs more than the usual amount of time, support and natural sales ability to get off to a fast enough start.
Academic Background - A background in marketing, business administration, advertising, banking, public relations may be better suited to our business than the sciences or liberal arts.
Communication Ability - Candidates must be able to express themselves clearly and simply, avoiding the techno-jargon trap so many professionals fall into.
Self-Confidence - To build rapport and confidence in others and motivate people to act, a candidate must be self-confident and have the ability to take charge.
Relationship Skills - Candidates must be able to work with people, listen to and understand their problems and concerns, and respond appropriately.
Computer Literacy - Number-crunching software, the Internet and e-mail have become essential marketing and selling tools. People who are hopelessly low-tech start this career under a severe handicap.
Time-Control Ability - Candidates should be able to prioritize activities and plan their time, and have the potential to become self-managers.
Ability to Take Direction - Candidates must be self-starters who can work alone without daily supervision; but they also must be coachable; that is, able to learn and follow new procedures and methods. This is very important in pre-contract and initial post-contract training periods.
Goal Setting and Planning - Candidates need to set realistic, long- and short-term goals, and be willing to work long hours to achieve them.
Professional Image - Image may not be everything, but it's becoming more im-portant in today's competitive selling environment. People can't sell if their grooming and clothing are not up to the professional standards of their target markets. Have you established "image standards" in your organization? Do you enforce them?
Financial Stability - No matter how much financing is available, sales results are the bottom line. Our business has its peaks and valleys. People with strong financial underpinnings usually have a much better chance of survival in the early stages of their careers than those who lack this support.
"Job-Disturbable" - This is not the same as being "job-disturbed." Candidates who are job-disturbed may just be running away from one failed career, and using insurance and financial services as a stepping stone to another. You may be underwriting their job search. Those who are "job-disturbable," on the other hand, may see the career you're offering as their path to professional prestige, higher earnings, or some other personal goal.

In LIMRA's Career Profile testing series and your Company's selection process and tools, including your pre-contract training program, you have the most sophisticated techniques available to screen people before offering them a contract. With these management tools you can identify Success Factors, training skills and other characteristics in prospective candidates.

It's one thing to identify trainable skills which new agents are expected to learn; it's another to have the learning systems in place to help new appointees live up to these expectations. Agencies that neither train, supervise, nor support new producers effectively find it virtually impossible to attract top-quality recruits. As a result, they remain on a recruiting treadmill, continually seeking to replace one marginal producer after another who had potential, but who left in bitter frustration.

Experienced Candidates should have these additional characteristics, skills and abilities:

Flexibility - Experienced candidates should be flexible enough to accept the marketing and selling systems used by the Company and your agency, while putting aside their "established" marketing and sales approach, if it is appropriate to do so.
Technical Knowledge - Experienced candidates should have a good working know-ledge of insurance and investment products, and how they're taxed.
Marketing Ability - The ability to identify and develop markets, to build and maintain a client database, and make repeat sales.
Sales Skills - Experienced candidates must be able to demonstrate sales skills that are appropriate to the markets in which they'll be doing business. Joint sales calls during selection and pre-contract training are strongly recommended.
A Documented Sales Record - Experienced candidates must have verifiable sales and persistency results which meet your selection criteria. Hardcopy support is a must.
Making the Change for the Right Reasons - Why hire other managers' problems? Joining your organization should be a positive move for experienced producers, not a way to escape a pattern of failure.

One Size Does Not Fit All!

We can talk about candidate profiles and commonly shared success factors, trainable skills and other characteristics. But we must also realize that the most successful producers shape their careers to fit their personalities, not the other way around. One thing is clear to anyone who knows this business: there are no cookie-cutter agents.

The markets, sales approaches and techniques agents and advisors adopt are usually consistent with the way they prefer to do business. Successful producers develop the same "core" skills--marketing, selling, client-building, business management--but they all don't develop them the same way.

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