Summary
Producer hiring keeps failing, not because there’s a shortage of talent, but because most agencies still don’t provide the training today’s salespeople expect. Younger generations see development as a requirement. Experienced producers want practical guidance that respects their expertise. Yet many agencies continue to rely on outdated “sink or swim” habits, hoping that a few self-motivated hires will figure it out on their own. The result is high failure rates and costly turnover. When agencies invest in real onboarding, sales training, and ongoing development, producers ramp faster, stay longer, and represent the brand with confidence.
Agencies that don’t provide sales training for their employee benefits insurance producers have a blind spot that’s wrecking hiring, retention, growth, and profitability.
Ask any agency leader responsible for maintaining a production team what causes them the most angst, and you’ll hear some variation of the same thing:
We can’t hire good producers. The ones we do hire don’t get up to speed and produce well. And the 12-36 month failure rate is insane.
When you dig beneath the surface, you find a common, predictable pattern that is costly, but probably not for the reason you’re thinking:
Producers expect training. Yet agencies don’t provide it.
The expense of the training is not the costly part. It’s the lack of investment in training that becomes so costly, resulting in bad hires, significant turnover, and reputational damage within the industry and the employer market. Failing to provide professional development is more likely the culprit of failed hires than a lack of talent, which is often touted as the primary issue.
Why are agencies and sales leaders not providing professional development opportunities?
They often believe it doesn’t matter, or, probably more realistically, they don’t know where to start.
The insurance industry has a reputation for having a “sink or swim” mentality, but today’s salespeople are looking for something else. They have little tolerance for employers who don’t invest in them. They see training as a basic and required expectation of employment.
With quality training that includes self-paced learning paired with small group support, people can thrive. When it’s weak or nonexistent, they bail.
Look at any review site like Glassdoor, Indeed, or Reddit, and you’ll see a mountain of candid feedback from producers and insurance agents, both negative and positive, outlining the sentiment:
👎 “Promised training, none delivered.”
👎 “Thrown to the wolves after a week.”
👎 “Little support or real skill development.”
👏 “They set me up for success with an extensive training program and continuing education, knowledgeable trainers and managers.”
👏 “There are opportunities for growth and great training to help prepare for your career.”
👏 “Training is awesome, and the people really make a difference.”
Do insurance producers really want sales training?
Short answer, yes.
Younger generations expect development as part of the job. Gen Z and younger Millennials (your current and future producers) see learning as part of the employment deal. They choose employers based on the promise of growth, and they leave when that promise falls apart.
Older workers typically don’t shout “give me training” in the same way Gen Z does, but they respond very positively when the training clearly helps them stay effective and respects their existing experience.
Across the board, salespeople feel that upskilling, training, and coaching would improve their job satisfaction.
However, don’t mistake a desire for training with the dramatized descriptions of employees looking for endless handholding. Our younger generations have rightfully recognized that they’re capable of doing pretty much anything with the right guidance.
But high school, university, and technical schools don’t prepare students with selling skills.
So it stands to reason that the employer must be the source of instruction. Yet, time and again, we see agency leadership abdicating this responsibility and expecting salespeople to come fully prepared and ready to sell.
Which blows my mind. If they didn’t learn it at school, then where? From another employer?
You hire salespeople to be the face of your brand, so don’t you want them to represent your brand in your brand style? Why would you want someone out there winging it under your badge, not selling well, and not following your company’s process?
Makes no sense to me.
Why do agencies assume producers don’t want training?
Agencies often claim that people don’t want training, but the data says the opposite. Across multiple sources, 70–80% of salespeople say they want training because it improves job satisfaction and helps their career. But most agents and advisors say training is either missing, inconsistent, or poorly executed.
It’s a lot of work to hire, onboard, and train producers. No argument here. Feeling overwhelmed and under-resourced is common.
And there are three primary excuses we hear regularly:
1. Leaders devalue training because they didn’t receive it themselves.
Many agency owners grew up in a different era, often bootstrapped and self-taught through trial and error. It worked for them, so they assume it should work for everyone else.
But today’s industry is different. The market is more complex, funding arrangements are more complicated, and consultative requirements are higher.
“Figure it out” is a recipe for turnover.
2. Insurance agencies don’t know how to find high-quality sales training.
There are two distinct types of training salespeople need that come from different sources:
- Insurance training – Benefits 101, 201, etc., as well as plan design and products, can be found from various sources, such as NABIP’s Online Learning Institute and direct from providers.
- Sales training – How to engage people through prospecting and sales conversations, and close new business, can be found within our MORE Sales System, taught on our Goose platform.
I’ve watched agencies claim they have training, but the offer to “ride along with Bob” is a far cry from actual training. Fun as Bob may be.
3. Agency leaders don’t believe people actually want instruction.
This one makes me laugh out loud with steep sarcasm. The numbers prove that people want it, and so do the sentiments.
Agency leaders, if you could hear the conversations that your producers have with us about the lack of training, you’d be embarrassed.
Producers absolutely want training, guidance, instruction, and coaching.
What happens when agencies don’t provide professional development training?
When agencies follow misguided ideas suggesting no one needs training, they fall into the most expensive trap in the industry: hiring fast and hoping someone “sticks.”
Estimates vary across types of insurance, with new producer failure rates as high as 70 to 80 percent, while some data show that nearly nine out of ten insurance salespeople are gone within three years.
Here are a few examples of crazy hiring we’ve seen:
- An agency hires 30-40 producers at a time and sees 90% of them leave during validation.
- An agency wants a competent salesperson and says they’re “going to hire six and see who sticks.”
- An agency collects random salespeople because they find folks who are available (wonder why 🤔) and hope they can “make it work” but dismiss most of them without training, coaching, or mentoring.
Agencies struggle to recruit, and they over-hire because they lack confidence in their hiring process; they skip real onboarding and training in the hopes that one or two self-motivated unicorns will figure it out on their own.
Unfortunately, a large portion of these hires may not have been bad, but they never had the opportunity to prove themselves because there was no development engine to support them.
Agencies that make training, coaching, and professional development a part of the producer experience at their agency take a significant advantage into recruiting and hiring. If you develop a reputation for helping people get their careers off the ground or help them move forward, you’ll have salespeople knocking at your door. Remember, people talk, in person and online. What are people saying about you?
If you want better producers, offer better training. Make it a core part of your operating system to help you hire more confidently, ramp up faster, improve validation, reduce turnover, and increase revenues.
Where can you get sales training for employee benefits producers and other team members?
Goose, of course! It's a professional development and sales training system for your insurance producers. Using a combination of self-paced digital learning and peer accountability cohorts, we teach and train producers how to engage buyers in quality conversations. Our industry-specific MORE Sales System introduces a significant upgrade to how producers sell, engage with buyers, and close deals.
Complete our analysis to determine if you or your agency qualify for our training community.
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Content originally published by Q4intelligence
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