Chicagoland SIA Blog

In the insurance business, there are a lot of things you don’t have control over — market conditions, what your competitors are doing and the economy, for example. But you do have control over what type of working environment you can offer your agency’s employees.

Feedback is critically important in any business because it helps employees identify areas in which they need to improve and to develop their skills. It’s especially important in the insurance business, where agents need guidance and support to succeed. Yet providing face-to-face feedback remains one of the most challenging aspects of managing other people.

It’s New Year’s Resolution time! What are your agency’s goals for the new year? Here are some ideas for helping your agency to grow and succeed in 2021:

How many Zoom meetings do you participate in each week? Probably more than you used to. The use of Zoom and other video conferencing technology has skyrocketed during the global pandemic as a way to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and as many businesses adapt to remote work. Unfortunately, all of those video calls can lead to “Zoom fatigue.”

Cultivating a strong personal brand can yield a lifetime of benefits. Yet many people mistakenly believe that personal branding is mostly about things like choosing stylish clothing and memorizing an effective elevator speech. They don’t realize that successful personal branding is less about how you look and more about what you do each day and the bonds you create with other people. The real power of personal branding lies in demonstrating qualities such as diligence, kindness, compassion and graciousness.

Is data security, online privacy and identity theft a top concern? If it’s not, it should be. More than ever, we’re seeing increasingly sophisticated attempts from hackers to steal information from organizations, and use it to commit identity theft and fraud.

How would you rate your listening skills? Listening to your clients — truly listening to what they are trying to tell you — is an important way to increase customer satisfaction and to help prevent misunderstandings, including those that can lead to E&O claims.

Yelp is growing in popularity by virtually any measure. The social review platform has an average of 77 million monthly unique mobile web visitors and an average of 37 million monthly unique mobile app users each month. While a business may have a strong social media presence elsewhere, by disregarding Yelp, it could be missing out on a vital opportunity to demonstrate top-notch customer or client service and to address complaints.

Has anyone ever asked for five minutes of your time? What is five minutes of your time even worth? If a client, employee, friend or significant other asked for five minutes of your time—do you have it to give? Or are you simply too wrapped up in your day and the tasks you need to accomplish to slow things down and make time for other people?