Growing an insurance agency, like any business, is quite an undertaking, but with perseverance, determination, and a few agency building best practices, it is possible to take your insurance business to the next level — as demonstrated by the number of successful insurance agencies out there. Keep reading for some tips on how to grow an insurance agency as effectively as possible.

5 Insurance Agency Growth Strategies 

1. Hire According to Your Core Values

By focusing on personality traits and other soft skills when hiring, agency owners tend to find more success than recruiting individuals with an insurance background. These qualities are often hard to acquire by training and at the same time they’re vital to an employee’s success and longevity. 

Top P&C producer and FINRA-registered representative, David Tapia, built an agency from scratch into a successful practice with 7,000 clients and an impressively high client retention rate. 

As he continued to grow, hiring the right employees became a big factor in his agency’s success. “A successful action was not requiring new hires to have any insurance experience,” he says. Instead, his most important criteria has been hiring to his company’s four core values:

• Great communication

• Friendliness

• Service orientation

• Upbeat attitude 

“I figured I could train on insurance and sales, but I wasn’t going to be able to turn someone into something they’re not,” says David.

After David began hiring based on these key points, his agency grew and became stable with solid employee retention. “We also developed a strong company culture made up of really wonderful people,” he adds.

2. Focus on Retention

Hiring is only half the battle. Once you’ve onboarded your ideal employee, it’s up to you to implement effective ways to keep them happy and retain them — which is especially important in today’s post-pandemic workplace, where it’s still a workers’ labor-market.

In particular, it’s important to retain your salespeople in order to stabilize agency growth. Here are some ways to keep them engaged and satisfied at your agency:

• Pay good salespeople well with a competitive salary and benefits. 

• Keep them engaged and excited by cultivating a can-do attitude and implementing high-spirited games.

• Implement a formal training process that includes constant role playing to drill in the fundamentals constantly. If possible, set an example by participating in roleplaying yourself. 

• Listen to sales calls with ongoing correction and coaching to continually improve and sharpen their sales skills.

3. Delegate Properly

Perhaps one of the most challenging but also the most critical aspects of expanding an insurance agency is proper delegation — getting employees to do the functions of your business so well that you as the agency owner are no longer indispensable.

Delegation can only occur effectively when you resist the desire to take work away from others because you feel you can do it better. Instead, help others grow in their responsibilities with ongoing training and correction where necessary.

A common mistake when growing your agency is employee neglect. Proper employee management includes continual training and drilling.

By investing more time in supervision, retraining, and correction, while gradually stepping back from the front line, you can ensure that you get more work-life balance and sustainable growth in your agency.

4. … But Still Stay in Touch with Clients

Your business is an extension of yourself, and many successful agencies depend on the personal brand of their owner for marketing and sales. So while you may take a step back from the front line in many parts of your business, it’s important to stay in communication with clients. Let them know that your staff will be taking care of them along with you, so that your employees are empowered to perform their functions while clients’ expectations are managed.

In order to make clients feel like they’re still being cared for in the same way, train your employees to go well beyond what constitutes good customer service, as this is what it takes to get an abundance of five-star reviews. By hiring to the key core values of your company, as mentioned above, it will be much easier to cultivate this level of service.

5. Keep Marketing Consistently

One of the most important parts of expanding an insurance agency is generating a consistent stream of leads, in particular live transfers, which are generally higher-quality and more effective over purchased leads.

If your marketing budget is limited, you can still market effectively without spending a lot of money. Get creative with cross-selling and requoting using your existing book of business, post regularly on social media, and send out mailers regularly. The opportunity is always there — the average household has around five policies.

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