Rich Gray
Well-Known Member
The trainers my insurance agent coworkers and I get sent by the client are not insurance agents. Every year we get gobs and gobs of new insurance agents (we are set to double in size from 500 to 1,000 next year), and experienced agents also attend training. The trainers need help from insurance agent managers on insurance agent topics. The managers are also there to make sure that no one falls asleep. These trainers write just about most of the insurance agent training material . . . without being insurance agents.
Being trained how to do a job for 3-5 days at a time, by someone who does not know how to do the job, who also wrote the training material, where you need a license to practice the profession . . . is crazy stupidly boring . . . and teeters on the brink of insane.
The training sessions are often filled with wildly useless filler nonsense when we could be getting training in areas that are quite vitally important. After all we are insurance agents and we have insurance agent questions . . . that the client's trainers almost always cannot answer.
For example, they do not train insurance agents on how to how to fill out an application. Filling out an applications is a CENTRAL PILLAR to being an insurance agent. We fill out an application EVERY TIME we sell an insurance policy! Selling policies via filling out applications is literally our job!
We have multiple types of applications, and multiple ways to submit applications (emailing a PDF, emailing a scan/picture, using one of multiple computer programs, using a government website, or a combination thereof). Doing the wrong thing could, during busy season, cost you 20-60 minutes. This is no joke. All the different types of applications have different rules . . . that they do not cover . . . that they do not even know that they should cover.
Not knowing that insurance agents need training on filling out applications, or not preparing for the fact that insurance agents fill out applications . . . breaks my brain. Yet we get training on topics like body language . . . we work in a call center. A central reason why I work in a call enter is to avoid body language (it can be draining to read and to mimic, and it is restful not dealing with it). This situation is super crazy over the top nuts.
When I received the first training I was drastically unimpressed. I had hope for the next round of training ~8-months later, and I was overwhelmingly unimpressed. Each time the training gets worse . . . they just cannot answer any of the important questions. As time goes by the training sessions that center on being an insurance agent become more and more unproductive and repetitive.
I pointed this out, and it looks like we will have help from a trainer who is going to learn to be an insurance agent (or is an insurance agent who will help train us). I am hopeful.
Being trained how to do a job for 3-5 days at a time, by someone who does not know how to do the job, who also wrote the training material, where you need a license to practice the profession . . . is crazy stupidly boring . . . and teeters on the brink of insane.
The training sessions are often filled with wildly useless filler nonsense when we could be getting training in areas that are quite vitally important. After all we are insurance agents and we have insurance agent questions . . . that the client's trainers almost always cannot answer.
For example, they do not train insurance agents on how to how to fill out an application. Filling out an applications is a CENTRAL PILLAR to being an insurance agent. We fill out an application EVERY TIME we sell an insurance policy! Selling policies via filling out applications is literally our job!
We have multiple types of applications, and multiple ways to submit applications (emailing a PDF, emailing a scan/picture, using one of multiple computer programs, using a government website, or a combination thereof). Doing the wrong thing could, during busy season, cost you 20-60 minutes. This is no joke. All the different types of applications have different rules . . . that they do not cover . . . that they do not even know that they should cover.
Not knowing that insurance agents need training on filling out applications, or not preparing for the fact that insurance agents fill out applications . . . breaks my brain. Yet we get training on topics like body language . . . we work in a call center. A central reason why I work in a call enter is to avoid body language (it can be draining to read and to mimic, and it is restful not dealing with it). This situation is super crazy over the top nuts.
When I received the first training I was drastically unimpressed. I had hope for the next round of training ~8-months later, and I was overwhelmingly unimpressed. Each time the training gets worse . . . they just cannot answer any of the important questions. As time goes by the training sessions that center on being an insurance agent become more and more unproductive and repetitive.
I pointed this out, and it looks like we will have help from a trainer who is going to learn to be an insurance agent (or is an insurance agent who will help train us). I am hopeful.
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