Month one: the daily schedule that gets a new agent to their first five policies

New agents ask what to do all day. Here's the schedule that the agents who make it through month one tend to run, adjusted for whether they're on the phone or in the field.

7:30 to 8:30, prep. Leads loaded into the CRM the night before. Ten to fifteen appointments or callbacks confirmed by text. Quote tool open with the two carriers you'll use most. Coffee.

8:30 to 12:00, contact block. Phone agents dial. Field agents knock the morning route. No email, no training videos, no "quick" carrier portal setup. The only thing that produces a policy is a conversation with a prospect, and mornings are when seniors answer.

12:00 to 1:00, apps and paperwork. Anything written in the morning gets submitted before lunch. Same-day submission is a habit that saves you from the app that sits in a folder for a week and gets declined because the client's mind changed.

1:00 to 4:30, second contact block. Callbacks, second knocks, the afternoon appointments. Field agents: the 2 pm appointment set by the 9 am knock is the best appointment of the day.

4:30 to 5:30, tomorrow. Pull tomorrow's leads, map the route or build the dial list, send confirmation texts. Log every disposition. An agent who doesn't log dispositions in month one is working the same dead leads in month two.

Evenings, one hour of product. Not sales training. Product. Read one carrier's underwriting guide a night. By week three you'll know where an insulin diabetic or a COPD case goes without asking.

Weekly targets for month one: 500 dials or 100 knocks, 40 conversations, 10 presentations, 3 to 5 apps. Hit those for four weeks and the first five policies are almost mechanical.

What did your first month's schedule look like, and what would you cut?