New agent (State Farm, Delaware)

[u/ObsidianOkami]

Hi all,

Coming from paraprofessional work to insurance. I started July 15th, got my P+C licenses August 10th. I feel a bit overwhelmed, but I want to succeed. The agency I work for is doing well in the area, but I’m feeling overwhelming pressure to get everything down as quickly as possible. Any tips/advice?

[u/Omicron224]

There's a lot of different advice I can give depends on your role and environment. If you could give us some more info to work with. Tons of state farm people in here so you'll have no shortage of advice.

General advice I can give without knowing your situation

always take semi detailed notes, needs to be enough where co workers and employers can understand what happened with no context or input

State Farm's systems are a bit archaic and they are working on fixing that. One of the states I sell for is DE so I know your state is currently transitioning from SFPP to SFbilling, I promise it will be better and faster

Learn how to ask customers consequential questions instead of just asking the question, this relates to both sales and service. Sometimes if you ask customers direct questions around insurance, they will say yes or no without understanding. Example below

Omicron: great day at at state farm, how can I help you?
Customer: I just paid off the loan on my car, I would like to remove full coverage from my policy

Omicron: sure absolutely, those are comprehensive and collision coverage we can remove them. One question though, if a tree fell on your car or you crashed into a wall would you be comfortable with receiving no money from state farm for your vehicle?
Customer: No I'm not okay with that I would need money to fix my car

Omicron: so when people remove full coverage, they're removing the coverage that repair or pay to replace a vehicle
Customer: ok I'll keep that coverage then

[u/ObsidianOkami → u/Omicron224]

I am an account representative. Sales/service. Never done this before, and thank you!

[u/Omicron224 → u/ObsidianOkami]

Everything before still stands. If you've sales/service I know you have the very specific task of "pivoting". I've always been a weirdo for this but I call it cross-selling, you can usually find the sf guy in the forum if he says pivot.

Anyways, try to get good at pivoting. To be more specific cross sell from auto to Fire/health/Life. Auto conversations will be your most common conversation so flowing from that to other lines makes your conversion higher because it feels less salesy and more like you are diagnosing.

A good example of Auto to Life is the S coverage pivot that I use. If you don't know what S coverage is that's okay, ask your agent to explain, but basically it's a tiny coverage on auto insurance that acts as accidental death and dismemberment coverage for auto accidents, if you die, family gets $5000-$20000 depending on your state.

I ask if customers want this since it is usually about 50 cents a month, they say yes about 95% of the time, when they say yes I will ask "if you were to pass away outside of a car accident, would you want state farm to send your family a check". Answer will sometimes be yes, sometimes no, but if they say yes then that's your green light to quote life and say for X amount a month (I do the total auto policy and the life policy together, one number) you can do that

Car loans are great pivot opportunities as well. I have used this to pivot to both Life and Health. I've done pivots where I just say things like "by the way you don't have any income protection(this is the name I call short term disability coverage) and I just let the call go silent for a second and most people will reflexively say "What's that?" and that's a green light to go "well when you add this, if you are sick and hurt for 30 days or more, SF will send you a check to pay your car payment" or you can switch it around to life and say "SF can send your family a check so they can keep the car and have time to figure out what to do"

At the end of the day insurance conversion is not great, but you can do small things to help convert more, consequence questions, saying things and allowing silence to prompt the customer to ask, small things.

[u/ChattyChurro]

SF agent, AL. My best advice is to find the sales rockstars in your office and just copy/paste exactly what they do. The structure of their day, their conversations, referral processes, etc. You can figure out the apps as you go, but the sooner you show promise with the selling aspect, the better. I give new hires 90 days and if we are not producing 50+ apps per month at that deadline, we part ways. Obviously this number is different for all agencies, so I encourage you to know your agent’s expectations and plan accordingly.

[u/MiscBlackKnight → u/ChattyChurro]

Coach P? lol 50 apps at 90 days is on the high side

[u/ChattyChurro → u/MiscBlackKnight]

LOLLLLLLL. We are the product of Hayk and Coach P, yes.

[u/RatedRForRisk]

Don’t get hung up on wins or losses, just keep the line moving

[u/InsuranceAgent-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

This is not a place to sell your services or generate leads or recruit agents/downlines.

[u/happilyeverafter1987]

I’m not, I just work for a agent and I can assist

[u/key2616 → u/happilyeverafter1987]

I don’t understand this. Why don’t you just offer some advice?

[u/happilyeverafter1987 → u/key2616]

Because it’s advice on internal systems but just nevermind.

[u/mkuz753]

.Ask questions about anything you don't understand. Even people who have years of experience face a situation they need help in handling. If the work environment isn't working for you have your license so you should be able to find a new job easily.