by Nick Beltramo, SalesScreen
Insurance companies have a problem: with most of their sales force employed on a 1099 basis, turnover has been averaging between 80-90% annually. So how can insurance agencies deal with this massive issue?
The insurance category has a massive problem: Turnover. With huge quantities of 1099s and very few employees on a salary pay scale, the insurance category sees unparalleled turnover. Some insurance agencies have even reported up to a 90% annual turnover rate within their 1099 employees. With most, if not all, of these 1099 employees being on the sales force, insurance industry sales managers face massive hurdles in training, retaining, and engaging their salesforce. If you have experienced any of these issues, sales gamification could be the solution you’ve been looking for.
What Causes Turnover?
Turnover has been a common issue across almost every industry over the past few years. With quiet quitting and the great resignation still very much resonating for many companies, we are seeing some of the top sales reps shift companies as their selling skills are more in demand than ever. But what causes these massive issues?
There are several contributing factors, and no two companies are identical. Turnover, especially in companies that utilize 1099 employees heavily, is usually caused by a lack of engagement, poor culture, disagreement with leadership, or a lack of potential for vertical growth. Many of these sales reps also get extremely burnt out, as they are expected to make hundreds of calls per day.
The reality is that for those companies experiencing the higher end of these turnovers, it is completely impossible to ask your managers to actively train such a huge group of the salesforce simultaneously. Think about it, if you were to ask your managers to train 90% of your salesforce from their first call through the end of their first year, do you think they would succeed? Even the best managers would struggle to keep just half of them by the end of that year.
The Solution
If you need to train sales reps, keep them engaged, and keep them performing their best, you need gamification. Sales gamification gives your team real-time access to sales reports, letting them see exactly where they stand with clearly visualized insights. This, in turn, helps build a culture of appreciation where people feel connected to your overarching company goals by celebrating every win, from sales to meetings booked along the way. Few things lead to more turnover than employees feeling left alone and unrecognized in the workplace, and insurance companies that have embraced recognition have seen drastic reductions in turnover rates.
Gamification is one of the most lucrative and intuitive tools for sales teams. It keeps your sales reps and agents fully engaged throughout the sales cycle and drastically cuts down the time your managers have to spend setting up coaching sessions and building sales competitions. This means that your sales managers can finally get back to the things they do best and make a difference in your overall sales strategy.
We interviewed Michael Mandella, the Regional Sales Manager at the American Income Life Insurance Company, who said,
“Our biggest issue was within the insurance industry. It felt like everything was 20 years behind. And we wanted to make insurance more appealing to a different type of agent. Most of the people we’re recruiting are millennials. If you want to grow as a company, you have to be able to appeal to the people you want to work with. And SalesScreen is providing us with an outlet to be able to do that.”
After just a year of using SalesScreen with his three teams, Michael reported,
“Over the past year, we’ve increased our revenue by over 250 percent! Plus, our agent retention is in the high forties and fifties, which, for an industry where the average is more like ten, is very high. SalesScreen has allowed us to take people that don’t have experience in the industry and show them that they can have success in the Insurance world.”
So what are you waiting for? Click here to schedule a demo to see how SalesScreen can seamlessly integrate into your sales force and get your team in the game.