March 22, 2018
Expanding your agency and growing your top line revenue is something that every successful insurance agent should have a relentless obsession with. Adding more home and auto insurance clients and increasing your commercial and life insurance sales should be what you think about and what you focus on 100% of the day. The following are 15 concrete strategies you can utilize to grow your agency top line revenue. Refuse to Lose Selling insurance is a contact sport and requires that your sales people relentlessly pursue new policy sales. A ‘refuse to lose’ agency philosophy means that your producers will pursue a sale with passion and a competitive spirit. It means they sell the value of your agency and carrier relationships and it means that they attempt to overcome all objectives. It further means that they follow-up with every prospect until the sale is closed. Keep sales funnel overflowing Unsuccessful agents will ‘take a break’ from their marketing initiatives or insurance lead and calls purchases and tell themselves that they want to work what is in their funnel. This is a mistake. To be successful and grow your top line revenue, you need to have your ‘foot on the excelerator’, 24/7, 365 days a year. Buying or selling insurance isn’t a seasonal activity. There are a multitude of reasons for people buying insurance and you need to be in front of them, when they are shopping. Don’t limit your geography Some insurance agents that sell home and auto insurance are stuck in the 1970s and earlier. They have the mindset that they want to sit down with their clients, to visit their home and develop a long term relationship with them in person, and over a cup of coffee. They want to limit their sales to the 5-10 mile geography around their physical office or home. This is a mistake. If you are licensed to sell in the entire state of Florida, sell home and auto insurance in the entire state of Florida. Why limit your top line revenue to the people around your office. Sell where you are licensed and if you can get licensed in multiple states, you should do that! Use automatic reminders Your follow-ups with prospects is a critical part of growing your agency sales. Using an automated reminder system or CRM is an essential tool to make sure that your insurance prospects do not fall through the cracks. You should also use automatic reminders to reach out to your existing clients to speak with them about additional products. Your goal should be to have every client have two or more insurance products with you. Clients with multiple products will be less likely to move their business to another agent or carrier. Task management Are you and your staff doing things because they have always been done? Are you or your team creating and reviewing reports because someone told you it would be a good idea. Every task that you and your team are doing that doesn’t involve closing a sale, takes time away from growing your top line revenue. If you and your team are doing things that are not directly tied to growing your clients and revenue, Stop doing them. Just stop. Mindshare Does your staff come to you throughout the day with issues that they can handle themselves or things that no one should be focusing on? Do they take up your time asking about things that have no direct impact on the primary task of your agency; growing and maintaining a large P & C insurance book of business. If they are, tell them to immediately stop. Tell them that they are wasting both your and their time on trivial issues. Tell them that they should focus on what is important, growing the agency top line revenue and that they will simultaneously grow their personal ‘top line’ with higher commissions and pay. Positivity A negative, defeatist attitude will take down your team. If you find that your team is not confident in your auto and home insurance products and your ability to close sales, you need to work with them to increase their positivity. Do not be afraid to encourage negative people to find new employment. You will not grow your agency top line revenue if your team does not believe it is possible, achievable and doable. If you believe it, you will achieve it! Turn off the outside noise If you go into any office, you will see more than a handful of people looking at their phone, texting, posting messages online and more. Distractions take away from your ability to focus on writing more insurance business, making more sales and growing the agency and your top line revenue. If you have an open wifi network in your office, close it down. If you see your staff on their phones, tell them to put them away. Explain to them that they need to focus their efforts on quoting, following-up and writing new insurance business. They will make more money and the agency will grow faster and stronger. Invest in your agency and yourself Investing in your agency and yourself comes in many forms. One direct investment is purchasing home and auto insurance leads and calls. Some agency owners believe that their staff should work their ‘circles of influence’ for leads and sales, rather than investing in their success by purchasing leads or calls. This is a mistake and will only prevent the growth of your top line revenue. Producers will have bigger or smaller circles of influence, you should not allow this fact to limit your sales. There is no better investment than purchasing good high quality insurance leads for your producers. Establish stretch goals The only way you are going to achieve and exceed your goals is to push harder and farther everyday. If you want to double your monthly revenue or book of business, shoot to triple it. Then break that down to monthly, weekly and daily goals. Once you have done that, determine what you need to invest to get there. It may require investments in additional people, office space, computers, phones and leads. Invest in yourself and your agency to achieve your goals. Do not let fear of not achieving your targets hold you back. Reputation “Show up early. Treat people with respect. Perform at the highest levels.” Grant Cardone What people think and know about you and your agency impacts your ability to excel and achieve. If you are known as an auto and home insurance superstar, your clients will want to refer others, your clients will have confidence to purchase multiple products from your agency and you will have better success with your insurance leads and calls. Measure your results Making smart decisions about how you invest in your agency is essential. You need to have processes in place to measure how well your leads are working, how often your producers are quoting, their close rations and more. The key is to not allow this to take away from day-to-day activities which are related to sales and growing your book. Your time spent on non revenue related activities should be minimal. Once you know the results of the various programs you have underway, you can allocate more resources into the ones that are producing more top line results. Utilize multiple strategies and tactics “Never depend on one action.” Grant Cardone There are agents and agency owners that will implement one particular sales strategy at a time and if they don’t achieve their desired results, will stop and try something else. They do this with marketing programs, with sales strategies, products and more. Insurance agency owners or producers should always have multiple programs underway at any given time to assure their success. When you have multiple tactics, strategies or programs underway at the same time, if one falls short, the others may exceed expectations. Recognize results Your team will focus on, what you focus on. If you are recognizing sales, upsells and bundled product sales, your team will sell more. If you are focused on revenue growth, your team will be focused on revenue growth. If you are focusing on expenses and are negative, your team is going to focus on the wrong things along with you. When you are growing sales and revenue, you should recognize and reward those results within your team, they will work harder to help you get to the next level of achievement. Get in the door Growing your top line revenue is about making sales. It is not about margins nor profitability. Many agents will focus all their time on getting business that they believe will result in higher long term profitability, without really knowing if their activities can have a direct impact on that. Agents will spend all their time trying to sell homeowner insurance which they believe is more “sticky” than auto insurance but in doing so will miss out on hundreds of opportunities to sell more auto insurance. A better strategy is to get in the door with a sale, regardless of the product, then bundle and upsell other other insurance products.
“Being obsessed with business expansion is critical to success—it’s senior to strategy, pricing, timing, competition, or people. Place every ounce of your energy, time, money, and other resources into growing your revenue. Prioritizing the top line is more important than good margins. Shift your energy into offensive spending and investing. Make, raise, or borrow enough money so that you can reinvest 30% to 40% into expansion.” Grant Cardone
Agent Ethan Kosmin Generated over $200,000 in premiums during first year in business thanks to Contact Concierge.
A look at some surprising facts and shocking statistics from the insurance lead industry.
