Page 23 - The UnCaptive Agent

technologists, understanding how to apply a myriad of
rapidly evolving technologies to their business to remain
efficient and competitive. And with the extremely tight
market for agency talent, driven in part by an increasing
level of demographically driven retirements from the
industry, they must be accomplished trainers of people
as well.
These factors have increased the risks of entering
the business at the same time the floodgates of busi-
ness creators have been flung open. According to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, the ten-year business failure
rate is seventy percent (with only a fifty percent chance
of making it beyond five years). As our company, One
Agents Alliance, has created more than two hundred
fifty agencies in cooperation and partnership with entre-
preneurs, we have seen firsthand the importance of
entrepreneurial and business management skills in the
success or failure of new agencies. This critical impor-
tance, and glaring lack of capability, has led our own
evolution from market access provider to an agency
development and coaching organization.
To quote a current Farmers Insurance Company ad
series, “We’ve seen a thing or two and we’ve learned a
thing or two” about what it takes to build a successful
independent insurance agency. At OAA, we have built
training, education and coaching tools, programs, and
opportunities to support the needs of our member agen-
cies to help assure that they won’t become one of the
Bureau of Labor Statistics casualty numbers.
All of this leads me to answer the question, “Why
this book?”
Simply put, there isn’t a resource out there that
describes the thinking, mindset, skill sets, checklists,
and operational considerations one needs to launch
and successfully operate a new independent insurance