Craig Pretzinger: 0:00

were odd. Hey, Mr. Jason. How you doing?

Jason Feltman: 0:02

Hello, Mr. Craig. Great. How are you doing?

Craig Pretzinger: 0:04

I'm doing very well. And I'm super excited about this episode. How about you? Good? Yeah, it's the walk of shame. Five hiring fails. Every PNC agent should avoid doing Oh, you know how I know how to you know, because I think both you and I have done all of these things. Insurance dudes are on a mission to escape be handcuffed by our agencies

Jason Feltman: 0:33

now, by uncovering the secrets to creating a predictable, consistent and profitable agency sales.

Craig Pretzinger: 0:41

I am Craig Pretzinger.

Jason Feltman: 0:42

I am Jason Feldman.

Unknown: 0:44

We are agents.

Jason Feltman: 0:45

We are insurances. Yeah, so let's get into one and the end of this is going to be really good. Is it that he has you have a surprise, navy? Okay, well,

Craig Pretzinger: 0:57

welcome everybody who's listening. This is the insurance dudes and we're all grateful you're here, I thought it'd be fun to take a little stroll down memory lane and look at five of the biggest mistakes that probably cost us 10s of 1000s if not hundreds of 1000s of dollars over the span of years of learning how to, you know, learning, right? It's the tuition. Yes. Yeah. So mistakes. Yeah. Yeah. So number one, number one, number one, this is this is fairly well, this is pre COVID 2019. I remember opening up that. So the first the first hiring Pitfall, so I opened up that second location, November 1 220. And it was the date that it's opening. And I had to hire fast problem, right? Well, we got to hire fast, especially quantity. So by grand scale was to do have 10 producers on day one, and, and have one manager running it. And I that was a really wonderful notion to think. But if I wanted that I had to start a lot, lot, lot earlier, and God through a lot more people, and also probably not had the the notion that some other person was going to be able to run that operation, or at least not in the beginning. So a lot of I guess false hopes in there. And what happened? Well, we so because we got so many people so fast. First the manager quit. So Oh, well. And then almost all of them left, we got down to two, and then basically had to do rehiring over the next couple months there. But I felt terrible that I was so frustrated. It was almost like you remember that was kind of like desperation? Because you don't you miss that window and you're in trouble.

Jason Feltman: 2:46

Yep. And I remember doing something very similar. Well, you know, even opening that our second agency, they give you the captive agency gives you basically a month to ramp up right that you can write policy. So within that time, they want you to have 10 people at the end of that month. And it's like, well, we know how anybody that knows about hiring knows that it takes a little time to get 10 of the right people take a little time. I love the constraint lights like constrained thinking, right? So like this exercise is great in a non real situation. But it was good in a real situation, because it taught us that like Okay, so you have a month. So we can maybe backdate this a little bit more maybe we could go a month before but how do we get 10 people in the seats? So then it's like the reverse funnel? All right, we need a ton of people, we have to prospect on a ton of different sites, we have to bring in a ton of people, how do we do this? Should we do group interviews? We did group interviews. And then it was like how many of those group interviews to the single interview to the coming into the agency to the training to the get them ready to sell on the phone? So a lot of stuff. It's a lot of stuff. And it pushed us really hard. And it wasn't easy. I mean, there were tears involved. There were lots of tears. So but but on a normal basis, this shouldn't be something that should be done. Right. This should I mean, you should not rush the process. I remember when I first started, and there's a few times that we needed an agent. But we waited until the previous agent was expiring. And that person, you know, we knew that they weren't the right person, especially this one that I'm thinking of in particular and she wasn't the right person. And she was causing just so much turmoil in the office. It was a bad vibe. It was there was a lot of tension. It put a lot of stress, not just me as the manager but the other teammates, right, because we kept them because we didn't have somebody lined up, ready to go and then it's like, Oh, should I get somebody to go and then by the time when she left then Like this rush to get somebody else in. And it's like we could have made this pretty easy that, you know, start the hiring process early that doesn't need to rush the process,

Craig Pretzinger: 5:12

though, you don't need to rush the process until you need to rush the process. And you don't want to get to that place where you need to rush the process. And then you need to rush the pot, right? And then you're in trouble. And I remember in my mind thinking, well, I could go slow. But if I go slow, I'm not gonna have anybody to write business. So counter intuitively, you start doing it incorrectly rushing at you create the cycle, because you keep getting bad candidates don't have culture. So that's one out of five. What's number two, that takes us right into ignoring the cultural fit? Oof. So it was so many times, and it is so much there's so much ego involved in this. It has to be right. Right. So I remember interviewing, what are you there's a bunch of them, but I can remember what in particular, everybody said Do not bring him odd. Do not bring this guy on. He is going to be problems. They knew him. They said it. But guess who's always right.

Jason Feltman: 6:15

But But what were you thinking?

Craig Pretzinger: 6:19

Well, I said they don't know what they're talking about. They don't understand the mechanics of this business. They don't write it off. They're just afraid. But you know, I made up every excuse why they weren't right. And I was right.

Jason Feltman: 6:30

What did he have that that you saw that you thought?

Craig Pretzinger: 6:33

Well, he was at the top of all the charts of the producers in the area? So I got bludgeoned by, by results. But what's interesting is they were right. And I think it's probably all fixed now. But there were a good two or three years where there were issues. Yeah. Could he write 100? Items? Sure. Were they 100? Great items. Were they 50? Maybe, right?

Jason Feltman: 6:58

How many other people wrote less, because they needed timeouts during the day bothered by the dude, like, you know what I mean?

Craig Pretzinger: 7:06

Yeah, that, you know, they'll take the leads, and start qualifying themselves. So they're actually birdie the leads that would have gotten properly taught to you by somebody else. 100%. Yeah. And if it doesn't look juicy enough,

Jason Feltman: 7:19

I think this is ignoring the cultural fit. An easy way to avoid this, and I didn't do this for so long, is to have core values, to have a list of core values that you evaluate each person against, so that it's clear, if you do not agree with this 100%. If this is not you, this is not the right job for you. And to make sure that you judge them based on and they judge themselves in self select in or out based on the core values on what you actually expect. Yeah, yeah. That's number two, what's,

Craig Pretzinger: 7:54

you know, what's interesting is is created the core values is another one of these processes, that is not the most delightful or fun or exciting things. Same as creating the process that you do for hiring, right, the onboarding, and all these different things. All are not the most sexy thing in the world to be doing. But once done, everything else will run. That's what we found, right? Is that it tended to run smoother. So number three, yes, of course. Number three, over valuing experience. So there's a few things here, right? I used to do this a lot, where we would only hire four licensed who had experience with our carrier. Talk about limiting your pool. Right? Terrible. And they weren't great at what they did. No, it's so interesting. You know, we get these people from another agency, and you think they'd be awesome. But alas, they were not why, if they were so great that they probably would still be at the

Jason Feltman: 8:58

other agency. Yeah, yep. Yeah.

Craig Pretzinger: 9:01

So it's important to not let insurance experience or especially carrier experience or having a license be limiting factors. Because what you do is you cut down that candidate pool, and you really prevented the opportunities that you did. And there are so many good people that we've brought on, that have come from other places, nothing to do with insurance.

Jason Feltman: 9:24

And it's that age old thing, whatever is easy at the beginning is hard at the end and whatever is hard at the beginning is easy at the end. And if you bring somebody on with bad habits from another agency, yep, it might be easy in the front in the beginning, because they know the systems they know you could just put them there but then you realize that they have years of experience of how to do things, somebody else's way, which usually is not the most efficient or the most profitable

Craig Pretzinger: 9:58

or are the most ethical?

Jason Feltman: 10:01

Yeah. And then so then untrained em in, that becomes really hard at the back at the back of it.

Craig Pretzinger: 10:09

Yeah, you're going to trade one way or the other, whether it's ungraded or traded, right? I mean,

Jason Feltman: 10:16

and training is the high cost. That is not an easy one. Usually two, it will spread. So whatever the little bad habits to cheat the system to take all the shortcuts, then they start training your current team, right? That's not good.

Craig Pretzinger: 10:33

Yeah. And talk about that. That's like the Trojan horse virus in the in the system there.

Jason Feltman: 10:40

Okay. That's number three, over valuing experience. I think we've all been there. You didn't

Craig Pretzinger: 10:47

want to the world of Trojan horse viruses, you seem to cut me off. I just wanted to move to the next. Oh, let's go. Let's go. So skipping reference checks. I'm guilty. Mr. Jason, you're guilty. Every person listening right now Guilty, guilty, guilty or innocent till proven guilty. So we're not going to do anything. But just remember, skipping the reference checks is something. This is something that is very simple to do. Right? You pick up the phone, make a big call, talk to somebody real quick shoot, you can even email if you don't want to pick the phone up. But failing to do that, especially when it's right there can cost you a lot of money. I remember brigade somebody on who was great in the interview, I thought was phenomenal. She was a manager somewhere else not in not an insurance. But I didn't check her background. Well came to find out when she got through licensing, no problem, but and licensing didn't tell me that she had a felony for racketeering. I don't know how she ended up getting the license approved. I don't understand. She worked through it herself. And then yeah, she was falling asleep at the desk. It was it was very interesting. So that didn't work out. And it would have all been solved. And there was a lot of pain to involve with that she was she was something. And so just making that phone call would have prevented all of that. Or running a background check. You know, you could there's plenty of companies do that. That's very inexpensive.

Jason Feltman: 12:17

But make sure that you follow your state's guidelines, of course, and,

Craig Pretzinger: 12:22

and we're not an attorney, or tax preparer, we only stopped at a Holiday Inn Express last night, Craig only plays one on TV. So I have a neurosurgeon, though, if you have any brain issues.

Jason Feltman: 12:32

Skipping reference checks, yes, it's a good practice. Just do it as some opening ask some different questions to do you think that they would be good in this role? Or what do you think they would struggle with with this role that they're being put into, like questions leading that you want to get some information? Not just did you like them? Do you think there'll be good? Of course, they're gonna say yes,

Craig Pretzinger: 12:54

it's the five mistakes. Maybe some of that will come up. Next episode. Oh, uh huh.

Jason Feltman: 13:00

All right. Well, there's one more correct.

Craig Pretzinger: 13:03

Yes. You could go ahead. You want to you want to take a stab at it?

Jason Feltman: 13:06

Yes. This is this is a big one. This is the I was really guilty of this at the beginning, and it's neglecting on boarding really, really bad. So I learned this the hard way. Because as I was hiring these people, as I needed them at the beginning of my career, I was noticing that, well, gosh, there's so many mistakes, like I would oversell the job, and they come in all excited. And then we wouldn't really onboard them. We'd sit them down and like, okay, and we didn't expect too little of them. So that by the time like, you know, you're a couple of months in and they haven't really done anything. You're like, Dude, you got to do something. And then it's like, wait a minute, I thought this job was like, you know, just chillin. But the lack of onboarding led to the wrong expectations, which usually led to the to them not working out.

Craig Pretzinger: 14:04

Yeah. I think one of the biggest failures that I saw was not being empathetic to an employee, like not understanding the need of somebody, if you're gonna hold them to a high level of accountability. You can't have them come in and have it be loosey goosey unless their personality type is somebody who would be an agent, right? Somebody like us an owner. So most people aren't in that category. Most people are good are working for you, because they're an employee, at least at this point of their life. So we have to create the structure, right? Yeah, that's what we found was if that structure is out there, they think it's just whatever you know, it's, Hey, do whatever you want here. That's fun. And when you start holding them accountable to dials, and quotes and premium and all these different things, all of a sudden, they're like, wait a minute, I thought this was Romper Room.

Jason Feltman: 14:53

Yep. Yeah. And you should you I know. Like one of the things that I think it's hard for Some, even my team and stuff it is to realize is that when you're bringing somebody in, it's like, I don't want to overwhelm them, right? Like I hear a lot of that are like I don't want, but it's very unsympathetic to let them know what the expectations are, if somebody has clear expectations, hey, this many phone calls this many times, I want you to do this this like, and you have a very clear outline. And the reason why I want you to do all this is by the end of the three weeks, and by the end of the first week, you'll be here and by the end of the second, like it gives them a very clear path. And it's actually very empathetic, to give them a clear expectation of what they need to do to be successful. Because when somebody comes into your team, they want to be successful. They don't want to not be successful. So like the more we can give them clarity, and know what kind of reps they need to put in to be successful, then they know how to attack it, and they can be successful, where when we don't expect that much from them, they won't get the results they won't expect much from themselves. And the next thing you know, you're gonna want to fire him.

Craig Pretzinger: 16:08

Yeah. And you're frustrated, and you're frustrated. Yeah, and if you haven't done the work, then you're probably gonna blame them.

Jason Feltman: 16:15

Yep. So, tz crag. Oh, I

Craig Pretzinger: 16:19

will tease it. You ready for this little tickle. Next week, we're gonna flip that script, we're gonna flip this script. We're going to show you five solutions. And it might not even be you next week could be at a couple of days. I don't know who knows the schedule, but it doesn't matter. The next episode will have the five solutions that are gonna make your hiring game. Super strong. Like this bicep.

Jason Feltman: 16:39

But that's it. Subscribe. We'll see you back. Say

Craig Pretzinger: 16:43

go to the YouTubes if you haven't