Trying To Roll Out New Tech? Start With ‘Why’

Few brokers have bested the challenge of motivating agents to adopt technology—and with a revolving door of new tools, overcoming that challenge appears a fool’s errand. There are solutions that impart a positive effect on agent adoption outcomes, and they start with one question: Why?

It’s not the product, we try to sell the ‘why’, not the ‘what,’ it’s not that you can now do electronic signatures—it’s that now it makes it easier for your customers to transact with you no matter where they are. It eases the pain on [the agent].

Tailoring that ‘why’ is critical, personalizing the value of a solution is absolutely key to getting that buy-in and when that personalized ‘why’ is realized, it is a huge asset in your downstream recruiting and retention efforts.

Often communicating the ‘why’ is best done in bite-sized sessions.

You need to address the agents how they want to learn, and I believe you really need to do that in smaller groups, not in large classroom settings. You can do it periodically and be creative, for instance, organize sessions with 20 agents at a time, each of whom brings brown-bagged lunches, also require agents who voluntarily submit to an eight-week training course to see the program through to completion.

If you commit them up front, it helps with accountability. I think agents appreciate that, ones that struggled the most, once they got it, they were the most appreciative. They needed that little nudge.

Because everyone has a different way they prefer to learn, we find we have to offer it all and then some. Webinars, recorded tutorials, in-office training, on-demand training for whatever group will take us whenever, even getting down to one-on-one with our trainer. If they adopt it, it’s worth it in the end.