Page 101 - The UnCaptive Agent

74 THE UNCAPTIVE AGENT

client’s insurance with several of your most competi-
tive carriers every single year. We do this in our agency
because I absolutely hate losing a client to another
agent, especially when that client has quoted a carrier
we have in our agency. Many agents tell me that this is
too much work. I view that sort of statement as ridicu-
lous and naïve. Keeping a client with a little bit of work
each year is far easier than finding a new one, and this
is especially true in personal lines where comparative
raters make the work fairly quick and easy. Our results
over two decades? A ninety-five percent retention rate
and millions of dollars in additional agency income
and value.
If you re-quote every year, it is imperative that you
share those results with your client. This is part of prov-
ing your value to them. You should point out that, as
an independent agent, you have lots of choices, and you
shop the market for them, so they don’t have to. Simply
re-quoting every account every year is worth about ten
percent in retention increases, in my experience.

The Sales Plan

The next plan that deserves your attention is the Sales
Plan. This plan demonstrates to you, and the other
people who will read it, how you’re going to sell the
insurance policies to the clients you intend to attract.
It’s really, as much as anything, a numbers exercise.
When I started my insurance career working as a
life insurance agent for The Guardian Life Insurance
Company, I made thousands of cold calls after I ran
through family and friends that I could talk to about
insurance. I had little choice but to call orphan policy-
holders who were those people who used to have a life
insurance policy but no longer did. That was frustrating,