Page 66 - The UnCaptive Agent

WHAT KIND OF AGENCY DO YOU WANT TO START? 39

An effective way to build books of business in com-
mercial lines is to focus on writing a lot of homogenous
business and becoming licensed in more than one state.
Regardless of which strategy you select, it’s important
to be intentional about it. That will allow you to build
a book of business faster through focus.

Building a Big Business with Niches

A related question is whether you will be a niche (or
focused) agency or try to sell a broad base of products
to a broad base of clients. Many new agency owners
start by trying to sell insurance to anyone who will talk
to them. While this may work with your family and
friends in the beginning, it’s a questionable strategy for
growing long-term success. In the first place, it requires
an impossibly large collection of insurance companies
to meet the needs of a very broad array of clients. It
typically forces you to go to the excess and surplus
lines market where commissions are dramatically lower
(and profit sharing does not exist). It also requires you
to become knowledgeable on a wide array of business
types if you are focused in the commercial lines business.
Trying to write everyone that swims past you ends up
slowing your growth and making success all the harder.
This broad-based strategy doesn’t work well in per-
sonal lines either. Trying to sell to everyone you meet
requires you to develop expertise in a wide variety of
personal insurance risk needs and collect a big selection
of insurance companies to be competitive. A much more
effective way in both commercial lines and personal
lines is to sell to niche markets.
The best way to select the niches that you will focus
on is to ask the insurance carriers that you represent
what kind of business they would most like to write and