Refreshing Advice for How to Recruit and Retain Insurance Agents

Don’t Confuse Multilevel Marketing with Recruiting

Building a successful team requires leadership. To recruit and retain top producers, you must look for disciplined agents and remain invested in their development.

This week, we speak with Raza Begg, executive director for Experior Financial Group. He and his wife Imrana, also an executive director, are the company’s first six-figure earners in the US.

Raza’s career path is not what you might expect—born in Pakistan, he was first an international Latin ballroom dance competitor on the US National Team before eventually becoming an agency owner. His journey from dancer to agency owner is one caused by near tragedy and driven by a passion to help others and leave a true legacy for his family. It’s his commitment to these two goals that led him to become a top-producing insurance broker and agency owner with Experior.

“MLM gives recruiting a bad name”

As any insurance broker will tell you, recruiting and retaining good agents is a challenge. So naturally, we wanted to know how Raza built his team. That’s when he revealed the true source of his success—his passion for teaching and coaching.

Like anyone with minimal to no experience, new agents need help building their confidence. Unfortunately, Raza notes, there are people running agencies who lack the empathy to understand that their new recruits need to be nurtured and encouraged. About these so-called leaders, he says, “You either care or you don’t.” He’s rescued quite a few agents who have been left floundering by recruiters who don’t.

Exasperating the problem are uncaring brokers engaged in multilevel marketing. They bring in agents (i.e., “recruit” them) to sell insurance, but not for the sake of building a team. For every sale an agent makes, the broker receives a transaction fee, and the more agents a broker has in their downstream, the more money they make. So as long as they can keep attracting agents, they’ll stay in business.

Contrast this model, Raza suggests, with hiring agents you commit to training and nurturing for several months until they can start producing, at which point you may get an override payment. It’s a way of building a team that requires genuine leadership and a longing to see others succeed. This is his approach, and it has served him and his agents well—many now own their own agencies.

You can hear all about Raza’s philosophy and much more in his interview. Listen for what he says about every agent’s potential to own their own agency and to heed his warning about understanding your ownership of your book of business.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.