43 Ways to Grow Your Agency:

The Three Dimensional Growth Program™

Activity – GET MORE CLIENTS

1.           Spend more money acquiring customers.  Do your math; determine the annual & lifetime value of a customer; be willing to break even or lose money on front end, step up to profit on back-end or through retention. 

2.           Strengthen or promote your guarantee.  Consider a service guarantee, a money-back guarantee (as the law allows) or both.  Promote it more.

3.           Develop joint ventures with people/organizations who can deliver leads.  Find people who have access to the market you want.  Trade for access to their list.  Trade for their influence.

4.           Increase amount/frequency of advertising.  Develop an Annual Marketing Calendar.  Install more RAM Cycles.

5.           Market through more media.  When you have a message that gets response, it’s usually time to play “Media Roll-Out:” take the same message and test it in more media.

§           Fax broadcast

§           Voice broadcast

§           Email

§           Display advertising

§           Yellow pages

§           Direct mail, letter

§           Direct mail, postcard

§           Direct mail, self-mailer

§           Website

§           Trade shows

§           Other

§           Other

6.           Increase your list(s) of prospects.  Buy/rent/trade for more lists and market to those lists..

7.           Segment your lists into “mini-niches.”  Explore different sub-groups in your list of customers or prospects.  Market to them separately.

8.           Develop new niches.  Examine your book of business for “hidden” niches.  Explore with carriers.  Examine personal affinities in agency.

9.           Strengthen your USP.  Make it stronger and/or promote it more.  Do more homework on what your market wants and demonstrate more vigorously that you can answer “why they should do business with you above any and all other options.”

10.      Improve advertising copy.  Improve your copy skills.  Hire a copywriter.  Get critiqued on QMail. Get critiqued by Michael.

11.      Get more testimonials.  Ask more.  Insert in every piece of outbound mail.  Contests.  Staff scripts.  Claims form.  Constantly publish examples as a way to educate your client base about giving them.

12.      Get more High Impact Publicity

§           Public Speaking.

§           Articles.  Newsletters, magazines, newspapers.

§           Press releases. Industry or general press.

13.      Add/offer new products/services that attract new clients.  What other products does your market have an appetite for that you’re either not offering or not marketing?  Test different lead products.

14.      Re-activate old clients.  Go back to your “lost souls” client list and re-recruit them to your agency.

15.      Expand your geographic boundaries.  Blow away old conceptions about your marketing territory.  High Impact Marketing extends your boundaries to the limit of your (next) state insurance license.  Get lists and media that extend the delivery of your marketing message.

16.      Qualify leads better up front or before the call.  Optimize the use of your/your staff’s time by screening out low probability prospects before or at the beginning of the sales process.

17.      Increase training for sales staff.  Sales or business training.  (CSR or Producer Coaching Program.)  Spend more time coaching, reviewing scripts, setting goals, creating strategies and establishing incentives.

18.      Make offer irresistible/sweeten the pot.  Offer more “non-insurance” services that nobody else offers.  Books, tapes, CD’s, videos, consulting, other services, as Risk Management tools or similar services.

19.      Generate more non-buying leads/develop “funnel.”  Offer more “secondary reasons to contact” and put them in your RAM Cycle funnel.  Free reports, consumer bulletins, checklists, articles, other information, etc.

20.      Create more perceived value.  “De-commoditize.”  Stop selling just on premium.  Emphasize the true cost of insurance program (premium plus deductible plus uncovered claims.)  Emphasis the unique protection they’ll get from you alone.

21.      Create more urgency.  Stress reasons to buy now.  Eliminate ex-date as an excuse.  (“Every day you’re not insured with us...”)

22.      Make it easier to do business with you.  More response mechanisms on every piece of marketing.  Longer hours.  Checks by phone to eliminate “second thoughts.”  Etc.

23.      Referral strategies.

§           Emergency Contact Program.  Generates massive list of “friends of clients” for nurture marketing program.

§           Contests.  Involve client base in high profile agency-wide referral contest, with prizes and publicity.

§           Referral Reward Program.  Establish “Quantum Process Design” to reliably “reward the behavior you want repeated:” referrals.  Smoke out the “social connectors.”

§           Upside Down Referral Program.  Ideal for commerical lines niche marketing.  Uses combination of outside list of industry prospects and indivualized direct mail.

§           Better training/management of staff.  Make referral-generation “non-optional behavior” and support it with training and management/monitoring/rewarding of behavior.

§           Other.

Activity – INCREASE CLIENT RETENTION

1.           Measure client retention by agency, class, niche, producer, CSR, A/B/C level, etc.  What gets measured gets done.  Set a retention goal and measure your progress in every aspect of agency management.  Use the IPS “Easy Million Spreadsheet” for agency planning and motivation.

2.           Develop annual client nurturing activities calendar.  Make decisions about what you’re going to do for the year. Delegate as quickly as possible and monitor performance.

3.           Develop New Client RAM Cycle of follow up communications.  Can be multi-media (letter, ZIPDRIP, fax, etc.)

4.           Improve “wow” effect/quality of service.  Most business-owners over-rate the quality of their service.  They have “blind spots” to inconsistencies, inefficiencies or the actual client experience.  Make a commitment to get an “outside view” (client feedback, “mystery shopper,” etc.).  Use Quantum Process Designers to design and control the client experience of your agency.

5.           Improve Welcome Kit.  Deliver it within 21 days of client acquisition.  Gifts, personal letter, introduction to staff, picture, free reports, bulletins, risk management tools, etc.

6.           Circle of Safety Personal Lines Book.  For personal lines clients or as a “no-strings-attached” gift to commercial lines clients.

7.           Circle of Safety Commercial Lines Book.  For commercial lines clients or as a “no-strings-attached” gift to personal lines clients who own businesses.

8.           Circle of Safety Client Newsletter.  Available every two months.  Personalize it by granting “authorship” to yourself and other staff members, recognizing “client of the month” and thanking clients for referrals.

9.           Circle of Safety Client 60 Second Postcard.  Available every two months.  Cheap but powerful way to nurture.  The world’s smallest client newsletter.

10.      Circle of Safety Commercial Lines Fax Newsletter.  Very inexpensive way to nurture commercial lines clients.

11.      Voice Broadcast.  Quantum Club delivers a sample voice broadcast script for commercial and personal lines clients every month.

12.      ZIPDRIP Broadcasts.  Monthly emails delivered for general clients, commercial lines, benefit and financial planning clients.  Most members under-utilize the powerful advanced features of ZIPDRIP, like multi-account marketing and autoresponders and simple, customized broadcasts.  Make a commitment to get training in this.

13.      Awesome Thank You Gifts.  People remember what’s unusual, dramatic, thoughtful.

14.      VIP Program.  If everyone’s a VIP, no one’s a VIP.  Analyze & segment your A/B/C’s (Platinum, Silver, Gold).  Develop a separate Nurturing Program – at least – for the VIP list.

Activity – GET MORE REVENUE PER CLIENT

1.           Create RAM Cycle™ cross-sell/upsell marketing systems.  Carefully analyze your marketplace for “maximum product sales” and compare penetration of existing book of business.  Monoline to multi-line.  Multi-line to all-line. Commercial lines to personal lines and vice versa.  Life insurance. Health insurance.  Financial advice/management.  Run the IPS “Found Money Back End Spreadsheet” for agency planning and motivation.  Constantly measure your policy-per-client ratio and your policy-per-client-per-individual-staff-person ratio.

2.           Make cross-sell/upsell “automatic” behavior.  Make upselling “part of the job.”  Spend more time coaching, reviewing scripts, setting goals, creating strategies and establishing incentives.  Monitor performance and deliver consequences/rewards appropriately.

3.          Sell higher priced products.  “De-commoditize.”  Stop selling just on premium.  Emphasize the true cost of insurance program (premium plus deductible plus uncovered claims.)  Emphasis the unique protection they’ll get from you alone.  (Everyone understands that selling higher prices makes more money...but continues to jump to “selling on price.”  Consider just the opposite.  Either sell higher with pride OR make price irrelevant with a combination of impossible-to-match value and irreplaceable relationship nurturing.  Get your RAM Cycle “robots” to deliver so much value before they’re clients that the emotional bond overcomes price considerations.)

4.          Go after more lucrative markets.  Some markets pay more than others.  Some pay more and require less labor.  Examine your book of business for “hidden” niches.  Explore with carriers.  Examine personal affinities in agency.  Look for distressed markets, carrier withdrawals, higher valued property, geographic differences and so forth.

5.           Charge fees.  According to state laws, agencies can charge fees from high-end consulting to sub-standard auto placement.

6.          Train staff to upsell/cross-sell better. Sales or business training.  (CSR or Producer Coaching Program.)  Spend more time coaching, reviewing scripts, setting goals, creating strategies and establishing incentives.

If you’d like more information about Insurance Profit Systems and its products / services, call (360) 574-2400.