The insurance industry, along with the world at large, is transforming and advancing at an unprecedented pace. For an insurance agent to stay competitive and succeed in this ever-evolving market, it is essential to engage in ongoing education and continuous learning.
In our fast-paced, digital, and global economy, fulfilling state requirements to pass the licensing exam and complete the licensing process is merely the start of a lifelong journey of frequent training to keep up with trends and provide exceptional service to your clients.
.
As an agent, obtaining license should not be the end of learning for you or your agency. Instead, it signifies the beginning of a journey to truly learn and grow so you can be and advisor to your clients. A wise agency owner ensures that agents fulfill ongoing education requirements, consistently stay informed about new insurance products, and enhance their licensing education with courses in additional subjects like insurance sales, customer service, financial services, and more.
Here's a challenging question for you: do you currently provide training programs for the insurance agents at your agency? If not, it's crucial to take a moment and seriously consider this. Pre-licensing education and courses offer future agents the foundational knowledge needed to begin job searching and start their careers.
However, this doesn't equate to a comprehensive education. Online training for insurance agents can often be completed in just a few weeks to prepare for an insurance exam. Do you believe that a couple of weeks of online courses are sufficient to cover the complexities property and casualty insurance? Can you expect your employees to understand the details of and evalution of the insurance industry without continous training?
The benefits of offering insurance agent classes within insurance agencies are proven. Offering in-house training to your agents can demonstrably help you meet your company’s goals, increase sales, and reduce agent churn.
Let’s talk now about how to train insurance agents.
What do you want your agents to excel in? Insurance companies are always putting out new products and updating their policies, and insurance carriers often offer free training on their own products. Maybe you want to start there.
Or perhaps your agency specializes in a certain type of insurance, and you want your best agents to know it inside and about, so they can better help customers. Then creating specialized courses might be the way to go.
Another point to consider is that if you want your agents to grow and develop into the future leadership of your company, you should train them for it. Leadership education is incredibly valuable to a company since it will light a fire under your most ambitious employees, who will then push the company forward.
Once you have determined what you want to achieve with the training for your people, be it increased sales, better leadership skills, or something else, it’s time to start planning the training to achieve it.
For example, if you want to increase sales, consider educating your agents in all the newest products, as well as niche and more obscure offerings. Complement this with sales and customer service training, perhaps also some etiquette and definitely a few sales psychology lessons, to equip them with all the right tools.
Your agents have demanding schedules, so it's important to make training accessible and convenient for them. The era of rigidly scheduled in-person classroom sessions is long gone. Training should be provided with a flexible timetable, ideally divided into brief segments, and preferably accessible online. Consider producing videos, recommending reading materials, and organizing short discussion sessions at a convenient time, ensuring they last no longer than a typical meeting.
Really effective training programs that make a difference in a company’s bottom line have 3 things in common:
You want your agents to learn continuously, and to build their skills and knowledge over time. Training should be carefully planned to include all desired topics and to teach them with increasing depth as time goes by. Remember to not only teach knowledge but also train skills.
The online boom has uprooted the traditional in-person learning system and replaced it with on-demand training. In most cases, your agents should not all have to take their lessons together, at the same time, in a room, facing a trainer. Speakers are a great addition to your training plan, but the bulk of it should be offered online, in small units, and be available all the time.
Don’t teach for the sake of learning. Make sure that the training you offer is designed towards meeting your corporate goals, and also think about your agent’s own goals and how to help them reach them through continuous education.
A successful training program should include mentoring to impart experience and provide context to the theoretical knowledge acquired. Establishing a mentoring program in your company is straightforward, allowing senior members to dedicate some time to guide eager young agents, assisting them in refining their goals and enhancing their skills.
There are excellent training programs already available, and you don’t have to create your own if you don’t have the time or the inclination. One of the many perks of joining SIAA is that you get access to many top online training programs for your agency.