Page 103 - The UnCaptive Agent

76 THE UNCAPTIVE AGENT

for those policies, what your closing ratio is, and what
your income need is. The tool will tell you what you
need to do to get it. New founders find using the tool
incredibly useful because it breaks down the activity that
needs to be done to succeed. This allows the founder to
focus on that rather than sales and serves to reinforce
the high level of confidence every entrepreneur needs
to have in their ultimate success. In short, it shows you
how you will eat the elephant. Another section of the
tool shows the agency owner how long it will take for
a producer to validate (validation is reached when the
producer finally breaks even on the annual costs the
agency incurs in employing her). Many of our agency
principals use the tool in managing and motivating their
sales teams as well. “The Sales Forecasting Tool” is avail-
able to readers of this book by going to our company’s
website www.oneagentsalliance.net and requesting it.
One of the things you also need to think about in
writing your sales plan are how many policies you’re
going to sell each client. Remember, the more policies
that you sell, the more revenue per client, the higher
profit you will earn, and the higher your retention rate
will be. Agencies with higher policies per client count
also have a lower service cost per dollar of revenue,
resulting in increased profitability because they have
fewer clients to serve. One of the hallmarks of suc-
cessful independent insurance agencies is well-rounded
accounts where the agency is selling the client all the
insurance they purchase.
The average independent insurance agency focused
on personal lines sells 1.6 policies per client, where the
average captive agent sells nearly three. If you’re coming
out of the captive ranks with that skill set, just carry it
forward in your independent agency, and you’re going
to do very, very well.