15 Aug Problems Agencies Have with Growing Their Revenue
In his newest book, Agency Growth Machine, Randy uncovers these 6 problems and offer solutions to help you solve them.
1. Unmotivated Producers; lacking focus and direction
“Too many of our producers feel that if they make $100,000 a year, they are rock stars. I can’t get them motivated to go write more new business.”
If your producers are not motivated, whose responsibility is it?
It’s your responsibility to help them think about their goals, their future, their family and their retirement fund. And write down a plan of HOW to get them there.
2. Poor Time Utilization; avoiding high leverage money generating activities.
“Many of our producers are so engaged in servicing their small accounts that they never have time to go out and prospect.”
Being busy is not the same as being productive.
Did you know that if a producer would write 1.25 more of their top 20% accounts, they could say goodbye, and never miss, the 43 small, time-consuming, low-revenue generating accounts that bury them and their support staff in non-productive activities.
3. Poorly Defined Differentiation; making it difficult to stand out in a crowded Buyer’s Market.
“We say we are different because we’ve got good people, provide good service, have great carrier relationships and really care about our clients. Who doesn’t for crying out loud. We struggle with this.”
dif*fer*ent means “not the same, unlike”
To clearly show a prospect how you are different from your competition, your agency needs to convey a large enough disparity. What can you create a sustainable competitive advantage around?
Are you differences different?
4. Empty Pipelines; not enough new business appointments being set.
“We don’t have enough producers out prospecting and knocking on doors of new accounts.”
Producers who are motivated and confident from the inside out, they won’t produce. Goal setting alone to motivate your producers is a mistake. Instead, you need to build a culture around helping your producers double their personal income. It’s a strategy and it needs to be done consistently, over and over, until you drive results –full pipelines.
5. Not Getting Deals Closed; Incumbent Agent getting last-look and keeping the business.
Happens every week, another one of our producers had better price and coverage, but just got rolled by the incumbent. When I ask, ‘what are you going to do differently’, all they can say is…”if I were the incumbent, that’s what I’d want”.
The Wedge® is a selling model to bust the incumbent relationship and get the competition fired. Using information gained in the pre-call strategy, your producers now go on the sales call and leverage your differentiation in a powerful way to cause the prospect to discover they have needs that are not being met by the incumbent. Your producer creates a solution and wins the business.
6. Missed CROSS-SELL Opportunities; poor planning, lack of trust or respect amongst the team.
“We’re just barely scratching the surface…. Leaving a lot of money on the table and allowing the competitor to keep a foothold in the account too.”
One of the problems is access to opportunities. When was the last time a report was printed and distributed, so that all producers could peruse it and find cross-sell opportunities?
When producers have instant access to all accounts, they are able to partner up with other producers to cross-sell an account. For example, if the P&C is written but the health insurance isn’t.
The difference between where your agency is today and where it will be 5 years from now is in direct proportion to your ability to develop your sales team.
The iWin Agency Growth System was designed from the ground up to help Sales Leaders turn an average firm into an Agency Growth Machine.
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