How one brokerage president got his brokers to sell more

One brokerage’s sales increased by 12% in six months after the company president shared sales numbers with the broker team for the first time. 

That data transparency changed the trajectory of his fifth-generation brokerage, Zac Sutherland, president of Sutherland Insurance, shared with attendees at the Young Brokers Conference in Niagara Falls earlier this month. 

“This one goes back to when I first started my management journey in the brokerage. At this time, our salespeople had never seen their numbers, so there was a lot of hidden data,” he said.  

“I asked to run the sales meetings,” said Sutherland. “I showed up with all of the numbers on a PowerPoint presentation for our entire staff.” 

At the time, the brokerage faced three flat years of no growth. 

“There was contentment; we had an aging staff who were at that point were very happy with their book and size,” Sutherland said. “There wasn’t the accountability cycle that was pushing the current people to be their best.” 

Despite initial resistance and concerns from management, the brokerage saw 12% growth in half a year with the same staff “just by giving them a little bit of visibility to what they were doing and allowing us to coach the right people,” said Sutherland.  

Ultimately, the brokerage found a way to harness its data to improve broker performance.  

But it didn’t stop there. 

Sutherland explained how he’s been able to keep that momentum going. 

He rallies team members behind the brokerage’s goals by incentivizing growth and setting reasonable targets.  

“This year, we were targeting 15% organic growth,” he said. “So, when we came up with that goal amongst our management team, we [went] back to the staff, and I reverse-engineered everyone’s goals to hit that target.” 

Sutherland and his management team told the staff their goal was to grow by 15 points. But they set the target at 7.5 per cent.

Then, they told staff that for every dollar earned above that 7.5% target, 95% would be returned to the entire staff through profit sharing. 

“So, they were just as heavily invested in getting that 15% — [because] more just meant more for them — as we were,” said Sutherland. 

The brokerage has grown by 17.3% since setting that target last year.

“Give reasonable targets to the people you want to achieve it, and then incentivize it accordingly,” said Sutherland. “That was the big lesson and win we had that really made a big impact on what we were doing.” 

Now the brokerage has full dashboards, scorecards and key performance indicators (KPIs) attached to every role, Sutherland shared. Through that, all staff can see the organization’s growth and goals.  

“[It’s] an alignment of the incentive; what are we trying to achieve?” he said.  

Feature image by iStock.com/DNY59