Going to work knowing that you have a full work schedule ahead can be daunting. A day full of tasks like meeting with clients, contacting clients, keeping and updating clients’ records, following up on premium and claims payments, and so on. Not forgetting personal after-work tasks, like passing by the gym to get in a quick workout, taking your kids for their evening swimming classes, passing by the supermarket to do grocery shopping, and helping your kids with their homework.
If you aren’t careful, your schedule can easily become overwhelming, and you’ll find yourself so busy that you barely have time to relax. So, what can help you, an insurance agent, to effectively manage all your tasks at work and at home? A solution which will make it easier for you to manage your to-do list? This article talks about that:
To-Do List
First, what does a typical day look like for an insurance agent?
- Chasing down new leads through phone calls, emails, social media, SMS, or physically
- Making presentations to clients or groups
- Helping clients with claims, payouts, and other customer service issues
- Calling clients to update them when there’s an update in their policies
- Following up with clients to renew their policies or to pay their premiums, and so on.
You need to clearly make a to-do list for these tasks in order for you to tackle them successfully. For example, if you need to contact your client to renew their policy, you need to add a reminder and the due date for the policy on your to-do list, e.g.) “Call client Omollo to remind them about policy renewal.”
You’ll need a task management tool to help you create a to-do list. The ideal task management tool should already be inbuilt in your insurance management platform/ application. Having your to-do list and activity tracking centralized within the same system where you manage your policies, leads, and existing clients is a good thing because most of your insurance tasks usually have a correlation with these items. Also, when you have a central database all activity is kept on record in one place.
Working Through Your To-Do List
Using a good task management tool only helps partly in handling your tasks effectively. The real challenge is usually how you will actually get your tasks done by the end of the day, week, or whenever they’re due. This means that other factors like time management and prioritization skills also play a huge part in task management. So how can you ensure that you’ll have effectively worked through your to-do list by the time they’re due?
- Scheduling
An ideal task management tool will have a calendar that enables you to set particular times for checking and responding to clients’ emails. It also enables you to schedule times for clients’ phone calls and follow-ups.
In order to stick to your schedule, avoid distractions like scrolling through your social media feeds. Such distractions will take you away from the tasks at hand and cause you to fall behind schedule. They will also disrupt your workflow. As Gloria Mark recently found in her study titled “The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress”, it takes an average of about 23 minutes and 15 seconds for someone to refocus on their original task after a distraction. So, try your best to stick to your schedule.
- Leverage Automation
Automating some of your tasks or reminders is very important. When your schedule is full, automated reminders ensure that you don’t forget to do some tasks. Agencify has a Task Manager that helps you to manage your tasks, track your appointments, and touch base with your clients.
One scenario that stands out is with policy renewal communication. When a policy renewal date is approaching, automated reminders pop up on your activity list, then you can reach out to your clients to inform them that their renewals are due.
Conclusion
The key to successfully managing your day-to-day tasks and being more productive is to find out what works best for you. It could be starting with the small tasks then finishing with the big tasks, or vice versa. Regardless, make your to-do list achievable, and you’ll create time to reward yourself. It could be with a vacation, a personal hobby like hiking, or just a chilled weekend indoors.
To learn more about how Agencify’s task management tool works, reach out to us at dennis.njenga@agencify.insure
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