An uncontrolled wildfire is burning through talent in the financial services industry. The retention rate of new producers, observes a LIMRA International study, still hovers around 15% after 4 years. That means that only 1 out of every 6 salespersons your company hires today will still be on the job in 4 years.
What a waste of human capital and financial bench strength! By some estimates, nearly $200,000 is spent on recruiting and training each producer during their initial four years–an investment that is lost when promising talent leaves the industry. But we need to be mindful of research conducted by Robert Cooper: 80% of people depart because they dislike their boss, not their employer.
Who's listening to that message?
Although prospecting is essentially the same as it was eight decades ago when Dr. Solomon S. Huebner crafted his vision of "Human Life Value," the reality is that today's sales champions are not wearing Brooks Brothers suits and spending hours training young agents. They often pass that responsibility to their Learning and Development departments.
Many, but not all of today's top agents, are often too busy to sit with the new recruit and when they do, they're co-managing their Blackberry. They are sometimes too busy listening in on a webcast from corporate to join the newbie on a prospecting call when a meaningful critique could take the agent from unproven to accomplished. In essence, leaders are overloaded … and then they wonder: "Why did that person walk? That new agent had so much opportunity to grow with us!"
Our industry is starving for successful producers to replace our aging workforce. LIMRA reports that the average age of a life insurance producer is currently 56 and may be 60 by the end of 2010.
So how do we achieve greater retention? I submit to you that a three-pronged effort is required to extinguish this wasteful conflagration of resources. We must focus on better recruitment, affiliation and social networking, and increased education.
Recruitment
While some detailed surveys/personality instruments can provide insight, relying on a multiple examination profile to make your next hire is not only unsound, it may be dangerous. The candidate interview, and preferably multiple interviews with multiple associates, remains the single best periscope as to whether a person has the personality and persistence to be a shining star at your agency. I wonder how many CEOs or Million Dollar Round Table Top of the Table performers would pass the multiple examination tests being advanced today by some for-profit companies. 80%? 30%?
We also need to look at college recruiting. This industry should be proud that Northwestern Mutual has, for the past several years, achieved the notoriety of having the single best college recruiting program of any company, in any industry, in the United States. What's in their secret sauce? This industry needs to benchmark from within.
