10 Practical Ways to Pump Up Your Agency’s Volume

There are endless ways to grow your agency. Yet today, pretty much all you hear about is using social media and establishing a strong mobile presence. These biggies are essential weapons in your agency’s arsenal, but they can cast a shadow over other avenues of growth. Here are 10 other ways to pump up your book.

Local Influence. Broaden your local marketing efforts to augment and solidify your agency’s home field advantage. National operations are intruding (or soon will be) on your turf. Build your homegrown brand by continuously interacting with the people, businesses and organizations in your community. A digital-only presence keeps everyone at a distance and doesn’t adequately distinguish you from the economy-sized rivals who flourish in the virtual marketplace.

Geographical Imprint. Your insurance license works everywhere in your state(s), so why not expand your reach to attract additional prospects? Establish sales-only satellite offices, in selected locales, with all service performed at your main office or via company service centers. Support the satellites with aggressive geo-focused marketing.

Commercial Lines Target Size. Some small businesses you insure may grow into significant accounts – but you can’t bank on this. Hedge your bets by going after considerably larger accounts as well. Start by asking the small firms you insure to refer you to their top buyers and suppliers.

Lines Written. Broaden your marketing into key lines where you desire to grow. For instance, offer life and retirement planning services to P/C insureds and prospects. Delve into high-end personal lines if your agency focuses mainly on commercial.

Target Market Spread. If you are a generalist agency, expand into the solicitation of selected target markets. Work to become known as the go-to expert within each given field. Or if you have fully mined your current niches, seek out fresh possibilities, based on your personal interests and carrier strengths.

Staff Interaction. You’ll suffer the detriment of disharmony if you treat front office staffers like disposable underlings. These pros are indispensable team members and deserve to be treated as such. Professional intra-office mingling, joint attendance at continuing education classes and various industry events help to team build and engender mutual respect. A competitive base salary plus achievable financial incentives are vital to growth as well.

Education. You can’t know too much about insurance itself, plus its marketing and sales. Do more than just meet your state’s continuing education requirements. Get a professional designation if you don’t already have one, and keep up with the ever-evolving art of the promotion.

Sales Force. Add one or more inside sales professionals to handle online leads and the cross-selling/upselling of existing insureds. Then use the additional revenues they generate to finance the hiring of outside producers to go after new business accounts.

Cross-selling. Keep rivals at bay and pump up policies per account by identifying, soliciting, and writing the contracts your insureds are either missing or have insured elsewhere. Tech tools exist to aid this oft-underperformed task, including ATraC’s ProTraC software.

Upselling. The tenth (and easiest) avenue to pump up your book is by upselling additional limits and coverages on current contracts, when needed by your insureds. Start with umbrella/excess liability policies. Suggest increases to folks and firms with only the basic $1 million limit. Continue the upsell process throughout your book, with other policies, as part of your regular renewal reviews or within multiple, self-financing, upgrade campaigns.