Who is the Most Valuable Player of your business or insurance team? If this person left, would it make your business or insurance agency suffer? Is it your partner? Is it your spouse? Is it a good friend or just an acquaintance? All great teams have a MVP. That someone who stands out and makes the team bigger than it would normally be. How do you compensate your MVP to be sure they don’t just leave your business? Let’s explore some safe guards to keep your business MVP on your team and in the game.
First, having a MVP in your business or insurance agency is huge. It can make the owners life so much easier and allow the owner time to work on the business as well as in the business. But if not properly compensated it can also be very dangerous as well. If your business MVP decides to leave and take valuable clients with them and become your competitor, it could have some disastrous consequences to your business or insurance agency. I highly recommend to seek a legal document from a good attorney with your MVP to put together a good no compete clause to try in build in some safe guards against that happening. I realize these safe guards are hard to enforce, but placing a legal contract in place can act as a good deterrent. However, the best deterrent is a good compensation plan. Sometimes money is just not enough to keep a MVP on your team. Consider adding some nice benefits to their comp plan such as extra vacation days, critical illness insurance, extra life insurance, short and long term disability insurance and even just those little extras. By extras, find out what makes your MVP really tick or what do they like to do outside of work. For example, if he is a football fan, surprise him with tickets to the big game for a job well done. If she is a big music fan, surprise her with tickets to her favorite bands concert. The more of these little extras you do for your MVP, the harder it becomes for them to leave your team.
Also, as a business owner you must consider what if your MVP were to die. This can be as financially devastating as emotionally devastating to the business or insurance agency. If you lose your MVP to an untimely death it can put your business or insurance agency in peril. For example, your MVP is your business partner you will need some type of a legal document explaining the buyout procedures for your partners family. You may consider your partner a great friend and have an amazing relationship. Do you have the same relationship with the spouse? If not, upon their death, the spouse becomes your new business partner. This is why it is imperative to have a good legal buyout agreement in place now before it is too late. Also, equally important is a good key man policy or term life insurance on the partner or MVP to have the money in place to execute the buyout arrangement. This will allow the family to be compensated and keep the owner from going into business with a spouse that may not know the business like the MVP partner knew it.
I have seen some very messy situations occur in many different types of businesses and insurance agencies by not having the safe guards in place. Take the time to sit down with a good business attorney today. This is too important to wait any longer.
“You can’t run sausage backwards through the meat grinder and get the pig back”. –Tim Wilhoit
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Tim Wilhoit is owner/principal of Your Friend 4 Life Insurance Agency in Nashville, TN. He is a family man, father of 3, entrepreneur, insurance agent, life insurance broker, salesman, sales trainer, recruiter, public speaker, blogger and team leader with over 26 years of experience in sales and marketing in the insurance and beverage industries.
Thanks Tim.
This is great.
Tim – This is some great advice that most business owners have not thought through. May I reprint this post and share it with my networking groups here in Phoenix? I saw Lynn’s comment and knew you must have had a great post, defiantly worth sharing!
Cassie, I appreciate your kind words. I would be honored to have you share my blog. Here is the original link and there are share buttons for all of the social media to make it easy for your team to share as well.Thank you!
https://yourfriend4life.com/who-is-your-business-mvp/
Hope he lets you share it Cassie. He posts some great things.
It’s true every business has a MVP. Taking steps to nurture your MVP to keep them on your team is wise advice, but also to protect your financial interest is the most important advice.
Great article Tim.
Jack, I really appreciate and value your feedback. It was an easy write for me, having lost a few MVPs in my career. I felt I could speak from experience from the school of hard knocks.
Unfortunately we all Have likely learned The hard way in one area or another!