The True Power of Real-Time Insurance Sales Metrics

Agents For Agents: Goal Management - Part 1 of 2 | 07/24/2019
Featuring: Ryan Murphy

Every business day accounts for 5% of your monthly sales goal. Are you on track today?

Ryan Murphy, owner of Steel Key Insurance, has long been an advocate for adopting technology and supporting real-time sales metrics in the insurance industry. In an industry where filing cabinets and excel spreadsheets are still the norm, Ryan is forging a path forward, selling insurance by using the newest solutions on the market, and his success speaks volumes to their importance.

As Ryan and I sat down to talk, he began with a grim image of an industry stuck in the past, and the many tools he believes have the power to bring the insurance industry up to date. “I think our industry is years behind most others in adoption of technologies,” he told me. “The carriers themselves are behind on the data they’re looking at. They’re pushing out reports to their agent facing reps that are behind what I can see.”

So why does it matter if the numbers you’re looking at are from today, a week ago, or even a month ago? With the help of Ryan and a bit of research on the side, I’m going to break down the three main benefits of real-time metrics from helping you better manage goals to ensuring you never miss an opportunity.

Transparency For Your Team

“Real time metrics breed transparency,” says Ryan. “It allows producers to see where they’re at, where the agency is at, and set goals for themselves and where they want to be or where they want to go.”

Let’s look at a practical example of this transparency in action. In the following image, we can see the goal manager screen of AgencyZoom, our very own real-time sales metrics solution for insurance. In this screen we see the producer, Chris has currently sold $23,545 of his $55,000 monthly premium goal. At first glance that would seem a sizable amount for midway through the month. However, with the goal manager we can see Chris is currently only trending for $47,090 this month, well short of his goal.

Not only do real-time metrics allow Chris to see he is behind on selling insurance policies, but they also plot an actionable course moving forward. We can see on the left side of the dashboard that Chris needs to sell $3,955 in insurance premium today to return his trend to his monthly goal. If Chris continues to miss his daily goal, today, it will require even more work to catch up tomorrow. This real-time dashboard gives both Chris and his agency’s owner the power to spot him trending behind while there’s still time to correct his pace and have a conversation about performance or readjust goals if necessary.

That transparency can not only give agents the ability to make informed sales decisions and set realistic insurance sales goals, but can be a big motivator for producers. “On the producer side, it’s always up on their screens,” Ryan tells me, speaking of AgencyZoom, which his agency uses for real-time sales metrics and managing goals. “They all act as if they don’t care, but they do. Everyone wants to see their name in lights. Recently we partnered with another agency and we put them in our AgencyZoom and that has caused some competitiveness to occur. It affects some more than others. Even speaking of himself Ryan said, “I’m very competitive. For me I want to see where I’m at. It helps me to focus on my goal if I can see that I’m behind or others are ahead of me.”

Recognize Problems and Opportunities Early

Tornado sirens, medical screenings, a lighthouse on the sea, everyone knows the importance of these early warning systems. So why not give your agency the same protection? Do you know where your sales are today, are you on track to meet your monthly goals, and can you proactively correct if there’s a problem?

“In insurance, what you do today affects you a month or two down the road,” says Ryan, describing real-time metrics as a sort of early warning system for agencies. “I can show producers, ‘Hey you’re low on your quotes this month.’ And if we look a month or two later, you wrote less business.”

A recent article from Forbes Tech Council also speaks to the power real-time metrics provide agents, “Such capabilities allow these decision-makers to detect weak signals earlier than before, providing more time for corrective measures for outcomes that have not yet happened.” While discussing the quote, Ryan brought up an interesting story the perfectly exemplifies this power in action.

Your Competition is Evolving

As the conversation began to wrap up, Ryan and I shifted our discussion from competition within agencies to competition between agencies. We returned to the article from Forbes, in specific a section on what ignoring the power of real-time metrics could mean for your insurance agency: “If you’re not already connecting, consolidating and analyzing your data in real-time for your business to become a learning- and knowledge-based organization, you can be sure that your competitors will be soon if they haven’t already.”

“I agree, because I would view myself as one of the one’s rising above… The previous agency I worked for, who turned me on to real-time metrics was, out of ten thousand Allstate agencies, number 86 in the county. On the independent side of things, we’re small, just me and two other people, but for some of our companies, we’re their top producing agency.

Let's Recap

Real-time metrics empower goal management and can help your agency stand out from the pack. They provide an early warning into problems and opportunities that may otherwise slip by unnoticed and give producers the transparency and motivation they need to ensure they hit their goals. Ask yourself, today counts for 5% of your monthly goal, are you on track for the month?