2022 Six Step Success #4: Training — Why What Your Team Knows Determines What Your Agency Can Do

Every agency owner wants a high-performing team. Few of them have made a clear plan for how their team gets better. Training is the answer to that gap, and it's one of the most consistently under-resourced parts of most agencies' operations.

The reasoning behind under-investment in training is usually one of two things. Either the owner doesn't have a system, training is ad hoc, happening when problems surface rather than proactively, or the owner has concluded that training is too slow and would rather hire experienced people. Both positions are costly. Ad hoc training produces inconsistent performance. Dependence on experienced hires limits the talent pool, raises costs, and doesn't build organizational capability.

The Training Investment Equation

The ROI on training is difficult to calculate precisely, which is part of why it gets under-funded. But the rough logic is clear. A producer who becomes ten percent more effective at closing has increased revenue contribution without increasing head count. A service specialist who can handle a more complex set of client situations without escalating reduces the load on senior staff and on the owner. Training is a force multiplier, it makes existing resources more productive.

The complementary argument is about retention. The research on employee retention is consistent: people stay with organizations where they're developing professionally. An agency that invests in its people signals that it considers them worth investing in. That signal matters for retention, especially in a labor market where experienced insurance professionals have options.

Jason's estimate is that most agencies should be investing meaningfully more in formal training than they currently do, not in the sense of expensive outside programs necessarily, but in terms of structured, scheduled, documented development activities that produce real skill improvement. The question for 2022 planning is: what does a real training program look like for your specific team, given where they are and where you need them to be?

What Real Training Looks Like

The difference between real training and the simulation of training is specificity and feedback. Real training targets specific skill gaps with specific content and measures whether the skill improved. Training simulation involves presenting information to people and calling it training.

The most common form of training simulation in insurance agencies is the information meeting, a gathering where the manager presents updates, product changes, or compliance information, and everyone nods. These meetings have their place, but they don't improve skill. Skill improvement requires practice with feedback, and practice with feedback is hard to schedule and uncomfortable to conduct.

Role-play is the most direct form of practice with feedback for sales and service skills. It's uncomfortable because it exposes gaps in front of peers and managers. It's also the most effective way to build conversational skills quickly. An agency that runs regular, well-facilitated role-play sessions, focused on specific scenarios that are genuinely challenging in the current market, will develop sales and service skills faster than any other approach.

Beyond role-play, there are a few categories of training that Jason highlights as particularly high-value for 2022. Coverage knowledge training is one, agents who deeply understand the products they sell make better recommendations and have more credible conversations with clients. Process training is another, staff who internalize the agency's processes deliver more consistent experiences. Objection handling is a third, the specific objections that cause quotes to not convert deserve dedicated practice time.

Building the Training Calendar

The practical 2022 planning step Jason recommends is building a training calendar alongside the operational calendar. Not a vague commitment to "do more training" but a specific schedule: what topics, when, in what format, with what expected outcome.

A reasonable minimum for most agencies is one formal training session per month. The format can vary, role-play one month, coverage knowledge presentation with Q&A the next, guest speaker from a carrier on a relevant product change after that. The content should be driven by what the performance data shows is most needed, not by what's easiest to present.

More frequent, shorter training is often more effective than less frequent, longer sessions. A thirty-minute focused role-play session every two weeks produces more skill retention than a two-hour quarterly training event. This is consistent with what the learning science shows about spaced practice, frequent, distributed practice outperforms massed practice for skill acquisition.

The Manager's Role

None of this works without a manager who sees training as a core responsibility rather than an optional activity. In owner-operated agencies, that usually means the owner. The willingness to schedule training, show up to facilitate it, give honest feedback, and follow through consistently is the difference between an agency with a training program and an agency with a training aspiration.

The good news is that the skills required to facilitate effective training are learnable, and the habits are buildable. Making training a structural part of the agency calendar, rather than something that happens when there's time, is the single most important step. When it's on the calendar and protected from displacement, it happens. When it's optional, it doesn't.

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