Agency Intelligence

What if you could keep existing clients happy and attract new ones all at the same time? That is just one of the challenging part of the job being an independent insurance agent. Between sales, services and client happiness you can easily get lost chasing one of those three tails. Making sure you know which […] The post Are You Giving Clients Something They Can’t Buy? appeared first on .

There are a lot of things that can happen when you buy another agency, but there’s one thing you can have total control over. Buying an established “book of business” as we like to say is a decent way to grow your agency. But a lot can happen during that process to determine it’s overall […] The post When Two Agencies Become One appeared first on .

When we as agency owners and managers take the time to learn about the natural skills of our staff and new hires, we can create an optimal work culture for our agencies. Whenever we talk about improving our agencies, we often relate back to the customer experience and neglect the importance of the staff’s role in the customer […] The post Hiring the right people for your agency and nurturing their natural skills appeared first on .

It’s an age old questions that never seems to have an answer that lasts long enough to keep anyone happy. There’s an easy answer that you can start using today and there’s a more advance answer that you’re really going to have to be serious about email and marketing in general to be able to […] The post When’s The Best Time to Send Emails? appeared first on .

If we don’t, there won’t be anything left to control. Sometimes you have to do something out of pure necessity even before you have it completely figured out. That’s where the insurance industry currently stands when it comes to improving our current system sharing information and streamlining processes. It’s not the overall difficulty of the […] The post Doing the Easy Things Regardless of Who Controls It appeared first on .

If you try too hard to set goals, the action of setting them becomes a goal itself. As agents we’ve been born and raised in an environment that welcomes interruption. Whatever is standing the closest to us or whoever is screaming the loudest usually gets our attention and ultimately distracts us from “that thing we […] The post How to Set Simple Goals That Get Results appeared first on .

When we say “run your agency like a business” we’re keeping our end of the advice by providing you with the most valuable resources to build your agency business. In this podcast, we’re lucky to have Skip Weisman, a former CEO of five different Major League Baseball franchises. This experience gave Skip tremendous insight and skill for building high-performing teams in the workplace […] The post Run Your Insurance Agency as a Business and Communicate to Motivate appeared first on .

If a policy can’t support the value expected by the client, something has to change. It doesn’t matter if it’s the policy (see commission) or the client. Giving away foolishly unsupported value will have you cleaning out your office faster than a custodian with an abnormally small bladder. Before you start throwing hard objects at […] The post The Danger of Clients Demanding Unpaid Value appeared first on .

I know you know his name. His name is synonymous with success. He knows the insurance business and has made a ton of money helping insurance professionals make a ton of money. On June’s 23rd’s Thursday Mastermind Call, we had the pleasure of having Jeremiah Desmarais join us for our GROWMastermind meeting that we had on […] The post LinkedIn and the Key to Writing Business Insurance appeared first on .

Is it possible for three corners of our industry to look each other in the eye at the same time?That’s what it’s going to take if we’re ever going to sort through the technical, logistical and practical problems creating a uniquely standard “one time system.” Currently agency management systems don’t have the proper demand or financial incentives to take action. Today Joey talks with Nate Waite about the work he’s doing to bring this system closer to reality and the players in the process who aren’t.

We are honored to have Dave Frees on our podcast to teach us some things about enhanced communications. If you haven’t heard him speak, just take a look at his bio below to understand that depth of his impact. In this podcast we get a teaser on some very powerful approaches in communicating, persuading and […] The post Insurance Agents – Communicating, Persuading, Influencing appeared first on .

There is no final destination for how your agency does things, there’s just a current state of being.Tell me if this sounds familiar, you want to improve the way things are done in your agency but you get so over whelmed with the best way to do it. So much so you end up doing nothing. Not only do you NOT build that new system, but your now so distracted by your inability to build that new system you stop focusing on your sales goals. On top of it all you realize you need to start saying no to the wrong prospects to make room for the right ones. Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us. That’s what Joey talks to Troy Thompson from Pinnacle Insurance about today. The importance of viewing your systems, processes and wow factor as a continued work in progress that never fully complete.

The last time Jason and Joey went to head to head, Google Hangouts was a big thing and they talked about The Internet of Things (IoT). In this Grow Show they talk about the customer experience and what it means to stand out and separate yourself from other agencies. And guess what? It has nothing to do […] The post Is Your Agency Connecting Its Decisions? appeared first on .

Two years ago, we first released our podcast with Chuck Blondino, where he uncovered some very important statistics on agencies across the country. To date, we’ve gotten over 5,000 downloads on that podcast. Chuck is the Director of Agency Capabilities and Programs at Safeco and studies the performance of agencies and how they grow. And it’s no hearsay when […] The post The Growing Gap Between Agents Who Do and Agents Who Don’t – Stats from Safeco’s Chuck Blondino appeared first on .

Impossible is nothing! – Muhammad Ali In this podcast, Jason talks about the different types of organizational cultures. As agents, we’re exposed to the sales and service cultures and he argues that sales cultures are inefficient and why a service based culture retains customers, which achieves growth beyond a sales driven focus. Is he wrong, or is he […] The post Sales Cultures and Why They’re Inefficient appeared first on .

Do you think any good business would keep selling a product if they always lost money on it? Why are you any different? Blindly selling any and every policy someone asks you for is becoming a more unhealthy recipe by the day? Knowing the margins, (commission – time = profit) on each policy you sell and market will make sure you’re always preparing a healthy dish for your agency. Not only will that vital information drive most, or all, of your marketing decisions, it will help you identify who you’re targeting and/or what improvements can be made to increase your margins. Joey talks with Erin Attkins about how they make these smart decisions in her agency and how they’re trying to improve those processes.

All time isn’t created equal, if you keep treating it like it is than you’ll always be out of control. You have to be able to react, but not nearly as much as we’ve been taught. Reacting to the wrong things will lead to an unpleasant cycle of order taking. The only thing stopping you […] The post Are You Controlling Your Day, or is it Controlling You? appeared first on .

This is podcast #4 in the “Times of the Young Agent” series. This is a bit different. We’ve invited Billy Van Jura back to host our podcast to interview Ryan Sautman and Travis Etheridge, partners with Jason Cass at the newly formed The Insurance Alliance. Like other young agents, they are tweaking the definition of the “independent insurance agent,” and they do so by distinguishing between salesman and advisor, captive and independent. They’ll tell you where they see opportunity as young agents and how they plan to capture their market going forward.

In this series, we are discussing “these times of the young agent,” and in this podcast, Jason Cass gives a heartfelt solo on his own experience navigating his way from a budding agent to an agency owner. He goes deep into his own trials starting his own agency, and points out the challenges of balancing “old” wisdom with new ideas.

We are looking at these “Times of the Young Agent” and for this episode, we are proud to have, for the first time ever,  an interview with a dynamic duo: Lisa and Will Lemanski, owners of Meiers, Lombardini, and Lemanski Insurance in East Lansing Michigan. We are also proud to interview Lisa Lemanski who was just awarded National Young Agent of the Year by the IIABA this past weekend in New Orleans. Their advice as young agents couldn’t have come at a better time.  These are agents who are turning the perception of insurance, insurance agents, and the insurance industry to meet today’s conscientious consumers.  They view themselves more as educators and counselors of insurance rather than sales people and they’ve cut out all the fat; meaning all the things that were a waste of time and a waste of marketing dollars. Listen to the podcast to see how you should be spending these resources.