Insurance Recruiter 

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Insurance Recruiter. Understanding what not to do.

Insurance Recruiting -102 - Decision Time.

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As a insurance recruiter, you have arrived at that point where you are going to have to make a recruiting (gut reaction) decision.  "Do I move forward with this person or not?" Building a successful insurance agency requires some hard recruiting decisions. 

Okay, they passed the personal observation interview, and I liked what I seen up to that point.

Now What? Keep in mind I have not really made any decision to hire him/her. You must keep an open mind. Just because you like this person is not enough for a final hiring decision.

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So it is at this point that I move forward with the second part of my recruiting process. We are now going to find out what this person is made of.

• First off, I give the potential recruit a brief summary overview on the positives of coming into the business. (low key selling) Don't be overselling. Your company should have available some type of a recruiting presentation that you should use. If not, you are starting out with a big obstacle, unless you created your own professional presentation.

• After the above summary overview, I then (hard) sell all the negative things about the business: (evening work, takes a couple years to get established, starting and building your own business, a 100 percent time commitment, tight budget in first year or so, Get paid to generate prospects, etc.)  I want to let them know the negatives, and if they know all that, and then come back for the next interview, you know you have someone that has a strong belief in themselves and understands the reality of having to do the things successful people need to do. Unfortunately, most life insurance recruiters are reluctant to get into the negatives, and even scared to bring them up.

• Upon completion of this interview, I then hand them my "Welcome to our Team" Module #3 e-book  and briefly review the contents and then ask them to take this home and review it in more detail, then write down any questions or concerns that they may have so that we can discuss them at our next interview. I also make the following comment " If you do decide to come into this business, you will probably be grossly underpaid for the the first two years, but if you make it, you will be grossly overpaid for the rest of your life.

• And then in closing, "I say, When we do get back together, and if you think this is a career you want to embark on, I am going to want you to sell me on why I should hire you and bring you onto my team. Why do I do that? Because I am now going to find out what kind of selling skills this person has. I am going to be the toughest sale they will ever make.

• Additionally, Mr Recruit, If we decide at that time to move forward, I will want to sit down with your spouse and go through our career opportunity with you and your spouse, so that they know what we are about to embark on, and they can ask their questions. (If you recruit someone and do not get the wife's support, you immediately created a failing situation for you and the recruit.) 

• Professional and experienced life insurance recruiters understand how important this spouse interview is. She must be on the team.
  

At that point, we set up a tentative closing interview date to decide whether we will move forward or not. You don't want to be telling this this person that they are hired or you are ready to go forward with them.....It is important to let them wonder if they will be hired or not. I then follow up with a Thank You letter to them, confirming our next interview.

Play down the the positives, re-emphasize and explain the negatives. Then make them wait and think about it, and then have them come back and sell you on why you should be hiring them.

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Does your company have a system in place to help you
perpetuate and build an agency?

I realize that most companies have some recruiting tests that the new candidate must take before they will consider hiring them. Those written tests, in my opinion are just one part of the recruiting process. I only gave these tests a 30% weight towards my total recruiting decision on a possible recruit. 

As I mentioned, factors such as that person being compatible with my personality, my thinking, how fast they walk, what is their natural market, how they communicate to me and how comfortable they make me feel when talking with them, carries more weight in my final insurance recruiting decisions than anything else.

Another key aspect of recruiting has to do with the type of recruiting program your company has in place. Does the company provide any incentive programs for existing agents to help the team grow as life insurance recruiters?

Many companies strictly rely on the life insurance general agent, agency managers/district managers or general managers to do all the work, and that is their mentality, rather than embracing the entire team and getting all the agents involved in the recruiting process to help  the agency manager or general agent to recruit new insurance agents.

I was able to build a 150+ person agency in 7 years because I used my new recruits and my existing agents to recruit for me. Why, because they had an incentive and a reason to do so. I will brainstorm and shareome of these ideas in a separate topic page  called (insurance recruiting 104).

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