Page 59 - The UnCaptive Agent

32 THE UNCAPTIVE AGENT

offers several opportunities to the agency owner. Again,
as in the case of health insurance, the more policies you
sell a client, the stickier they get, which is incredibly
important to agency value over time. The life insurance
conversation itself with a client reveals information
about the client that is very meaningful, and which
holds the promise of deepening your relationship. Life
insurance commissions are also typically quite large in
relation to premium and are an excellent way of quickly
building positive cash flow in a new agency.
A very successful agency owner in our organization
told me recently that he makes more personal income
from selling life insurance than he does from his prop-
erty and casualty agency. At the beginning of his career,
life insurance was his sole focus, and adding the prop-
erty and casualty agency was a way of broadening and
deepening his income. His life clients fed the agency
for its first few years, but now the property and casualty
agency feed his life insurance production. He has made
a tremendous income from both directions.

What’s Your Value Proposition?

The value proposition of an independent insurance
agency has traditionally been a choice of insurance com-
panies and a personal relationship with clients. During
the last two decades, with the advent of comparative
rating systems in personal insurance, many independent
agencies have forgotten the importance of relationship
in their value proposition. They instead have come
to rely on price to sell policies. As many will learn to
their chagrin in coming years, you can’t win a price
competition with online vendors. You simply cannot
be cheaper than an algorithm. Those agents who have
focused on price and forgotten the value of deep client