Author: Kelly Donahue-Piro

If you're like many agencies across America, you would love to embrace new ideas and improve your customer experience by embracing technology. However, all too often agency owners are met with resistance from the team in adopting modern strategies. For some they move forward, and the agency becomes a hostile environment, others don't engage simply because they understand the uphill battle they are likely to face and well, it's just easier to keep things as is… for now. So how do some of the top growing agencies in America get their team motivated and embracing technology?

Let's start this conversation by clearly understanding both parties' fears, uncertainties and doubts or as we like to call it “FUD." For the team member you are asking to change and adopt new ways of working they are fearful of not understanding it, being able to explain it to the clients and/or just making a mistake that costs the client, team and agency. This fear draws a great deal of uncertainty. For many insurance agency team members their job is to “underwrite" risk, so to them everything is a risk. This mentality has been built up over time unfortunately, so they see everything as a risk not taking (including new business, producers or even cross selling). For many team members they identify if they personally would like the new technology used on them as a consumer. This is where you hear things like “Well, I get too many emails as it is" or “I don't want people texting me" or even something as simple as “if I don't have the physical paper I won't know what's happening."

These are all reactions to their personal opinions vs. facts. The idea that 1 client out of 1000 may not be happy about a change or launch of new technology is where their mind focuses, rather than the 999 that are happy or neutral. Finally, we bring doubt into the equation. For most team members with reluctance they doubt that it will stick, be used or executed. If your agency’s culture is not driven to embrace new technologies and processes, it will have a ripple effect throughout your business – Business partners take it more as a recommendation for use of the technology than requirement. As you can see most of the resistance comes from short-term "today" thinking. They are concerned that the time it will take to learn something new will be such a disruption to their day-to-day operations and oftentimes set them back on what they consider an already grueling workload, that it's simply not worth doing. Staying the same is the easiest path until the world changes around you.

So how do you, the owner or team leader, overcome major resistance from your team? It all starts with a great plan. In working with the top agencies across the country we have found some significant strategies that help you earn adoption and buy in.

Assemble a Committee
As an agency leader you are online reading, being an active part of industry groups and listening to your peers. For many agency team members, they are far more isolated. So YOU see the “why" because YOU are immersed in it. You may also be trying to better the agency for the future but there could be some mainline technology issues that are holding your team back that you aren't aware of yet. Things like a faulty printer or scanner, the bridge between your management system and the companies not working; or the team not understanding the most efficient ways to run rating software. Why start adding more when you probably need to do a technology audit first to find the biggest challenges and start working on them? Once you clean up your operation you can bring ideas to the technology committee for review and consideration. You obviously have the final say however, getting everyone's feedback and buy in helps with the launch.

System Matter Expert (SME)
In your agency you need a SME for every piece of software or technology. This is your go-to person on this one area. They are in charge of updates, training and teaching people how to best use the systems. When there is an expert on the floor using the systems with the team, you get much greater buy-in. The team is happy to ask them a question rather than bothering you!

Launch Plan & Party
One way we often miss opportunities to effectively launch new technology is we have a meeting. We ask people to take an online demo and then expect it all to work. Your expectations are just plain wrong (sorry). You need to invest time in a launch plan as a team. What training will you take and when? What's the launch date? How many meetings will you have? From there you can plan a launch party. Why have a meeting? Meetings are boring. Instead have a launch party with balloons, music and make it exciting. When the team is having fun, the buy-in follows.

Accountability & Incentives
If you are launching something new there needs to be routine accountability to determine 1) Is it being used, and 2) Is it being used accurately? If we meet both of those criteria, we are winning. Nothing gets buy-in quite like incentives. Rewarding people for going out of their comfort zone, learning something new and adopting your way of thinking is completely reasonable. Make sure the incentive is something that they want, not just what you want. 

Most people don't love to change so when you announce change, you need to make sure you explain the why, the plan, your expectations and the incentives. Combining this all together makes for a winning launch.

Editor's Note: Kelly Donahue-Piro is President of Agency Performance Partners and Co-Founder of Agency Appeal. She is one of the dynamic speakers presenting at the March 14-15 ACT Meeting in San Diego!