The All Aboard Newsletter

In today’s newsletter we’re going to be covering the agency’s growth results for April, exploring how to improve your staffing through exit interviews, and we’ll talk a little bit about Life Insurance.

Lets take a ride!

Growth Update!

We were eagerly anticipating our April Business Metrics after our most recent acquisition.

On April 1st, we acquired an additional book of business!

This marks our 5th acquisition since January 2021 and was one of the healthiest books to date.

In September of 2022, we took an average rate of 25% on auto insurance

This rate was as high as 43% and as “low” as 17%

This has challenged our retention, but helped premium growth enormously.

When we agreed to buy this new agency, the premium was at $2.5million

By the time we took possession of it 5 months later, it was around $3million in premium

That growth was completely from rate increases

From March to April we grew by $3,463,245!

How is that possible?

Well, through an acquisition of course.

• $3,066,782 was growth from our Acquisition

• $396,463 was from organic growth!

After 4 years, and 10 months we’ve passed the $30 million in premium mark.

What’s better, is that we’re on pace to grow enough to max our Y.E Bonus!

Our goal is roughly 13,000 points, but we’re about 75% of the way there already!

Something to note: None of our current 9,289 growth points have come from auto this year.

As of April, our growth on auto is sitting at a flat zero!

With the large rate increase ending in April, we’ve been digging out of a hole, and after January, auto growth was sitting at -226 on the year!

This is just an added reminder why it’s so important to diversify the lines of business you’re writing.

Most of the growth for us has come from Home Policies, but about 1,300 points have come from PUP, Spec Auto, and Boats.

With two months remaining until our 5 year anniversary of opening, we can’t wait to see where we land in terms of size.

We’re well on pace - Now we just need to finish and get our numbers in line!

How to use Staff Turnover for Future Growth

Let’s face it, staff turnover is painful

But managing your turnover rate is absolutely key for growth.

Statistics show that roughly 25% of licensed insurance agents quit their job every year.

To compound the issue, the average tenure in the insurance industry is 18 months!

So, if you want to grow your agency, you must grow the size of your sales team.

You can’t do that if people are constantly leaving or getting fired.

So…

How can we boast an average tenure of 3+ years?

Well, because we actively look for critical feedback, especially when people leave the company.

In short - we actively seek out the areas in which we’re sucking so we can improve them

And we do this through Exit Interviews

Exit Interview Process

When someone quits or gets fired, they might not always be in a talking or friendly mood.

This means that there might not be a lot of willingness to provide feedback

But, maybe they’ll really want to give feedback (depending how mad they are!)

Regardless, its important that you get an exit interview done in one way or another.

Whether someone leaves voluntarily, or involuntarily there are a couple ways to get them to agree to give you feedback.

The first - Simply ask

We politely ask people for feedback on the way out, and most people are happy to share their thoughts

If they aren’t open and willing to share, sometimes we’ll offer to extend their severance pay in return for the exit interview. This almost always works.

When doing the interview, have them fill a form online, or have it conducted in person with someone other than their direct manager.

This is to give them a place to speak freely, especially if its about their boss (or you directly)

You want them to be as honest and forthcoming as possible

So its extremely crucial that you simply listen to what they have to say.

Don’t defend, justify, explain, or anything other than listen.

Ask clarifying questions if you need to - but be careful to keep an even tone and avoid leading questions.

The goal is NOT to learn about what is true

But rather, what this person perceived to be true.

The way that employees perceive the business and processes are almost certainly different than the way you view the business.

Its just as possible their thoughts and opinions are wrong as it is that those opinions are right.

We all have blind spots

So once they say yes, ask these 13 questions:

1.) Have you accepted a new position?

2.) What factors contributed in your decision to leave? What might have been done to prevent you from leaving?

3.) What makes your new role more attractive than your present job?

4.) Do you feel you were well equipped to do your job here? If not, what would have helped?

5.) What did you like most about working here and the role?

6.) What did you like least about working here and the role?

7.) What would you have changed about your role?

8.) How would you rate the culture of the agency?

9.) Were you comfortable talking to your direct manager?

10.) Did you have clear goals and objectives while working here? Did you feel those goals were attainable? Why?

11.) Do you feel you were given constructive feedback to improve in the role?

12.) How can we improve our training and development plan?

13.) Any other comments or things you’d wish to share?

How to use the feedback

First - Be willing to question everything about your agency and culture

When you’re just as willing to accept that they could be right as they could be wrong, you start the process of continuous improvement.

I’ll say it again - We all have blind spots

This feedback is a gift - So don’t waste it

Second - Sort out the emotion from the logic

Both are important

You might not believe what they’re saying is 100% true, but does it seem logical?

If it does - fix the areas where you’re operating in an illogical or inefficient way.

If it doesn’t seem logical, then ask why there might have been an emotional response

Then determine where that emotional response comes from

People feeling like working at your office is amazing is more important than it actually being amazing.

If people think working at your agency is shitty, you should want to know that and fix it (not be defensive).

It doesn’t matter how good the opportunity is in reality if people think it sucks.

So find those emotional triggers

Are they upset about the pay? Maybe they’re worried about paying their bills.

Do they complain about flexibility or lack therof? Maybe they don’t have childcare coverage or a way to get their kids to and from school.

Do they complain about lack of growth? Maybe they don’t feel intellectually challenged.

Find the hot button issues!

We do this with prospects in sales, so why don’t we do this with our employees and team members too?

The hierarchy of needs tells us what people need to self-actualize aka be their best self.

If we want our employees to be their best self, make sure the 4 levels below self-actualization are met.

A lot of these responsibilities fall on the individual.

Just recognize that for many people, work is one of the main ways people fulfill these needs (Money, Meaning, Growth, Camaraderie, Pride, etc)

Your exit interviews are a great place to start that examination and help where you feel you can.

The goal is not to satisfy these needs for them, just understand that work is a key way in which people fill these buckets.

On my mind this week:

Life and Financial Services

On May 1st, many of us around the country, Georgia included were given access to the new simplified issue life insurance product.

After talking with fellow agents

Well…….opinions are split.

Some people love it for the bundling and revenue opportunity

Others hate it because simplified issue policies tend to have a crappy persistence (aka retention) rate or they’re not the best product for the client

From my experience, while both of those things can be true….

They’re not facts

People have different experiences, and thats valid.

But personally?

We’re really excited that we’ve gotten access to it

Here is why:

For many agents, us included, life insurance has historically been a nuisance.

It’s been just “another thing” we had to do year in and year out to qualify for a bonus.

We often felt (and kind of still do) that pitching, writing, and issuing ALR was clunky

Add in that our products weren’t the best in-class and it starts to sound tough.

Most important though - Our LSPs hated talking about it.

Why?

Well, because its hard.

Especially if the LSP has never experienced a meaningful loss where a person didn’t have life insurance.

But these things being true (at least for us), we’re excited to re-focus on life.

And its for one simple reason…..

We are constantly looking for a machine to build

A machine that takes consistent inputs (Quotes), and turns them into easily predictable outcomes (Revenue)

The simplified life product gives us the means to do that

Here is what I mean:

The simplified issue term policy has accelerated and simplified underwriting

Its meant to be quick and remove the bottlenecks in the underwriting process

That means something like 12 questions and no bloodwork

While its quick and relatively simple for the agency AND the customer…..

The downside is that the it doesn’t give us growth points, the commission is 40% or so, and we get reduced production credit from it.

Not to mention the policy is actually pretty expensive for the customer too.

BUT its an option and tool in our toolbox

So how does the machine work?

In 12 months, you can convert that simplified policy to a permanent policy, once again skipping bloodwork and the medical exam.

This inspires the idea of a machine like so:

• Sell 10 policies per month

• At the 6 month mark, check-in and ask for 3-5 referrals + plant seed on conversion

• At 12 month anniversary of the policy, call to convert it from a term to a permanent policy.

Ultimately what you’re doing is creating a machine that churns out additional revenue every 6 to 12 months

Think about if you can execute on this

Step 1: You write a simplified issue term policy for a husband and wife at $500 per year each.

This results in roughly $400 of commission and production credit

Step 2: At 6 month mark, you ask for 3-5 referrals. One of these referrals converts into another couple at $500 each.

Again, you get $400 in commission and production credit

Step 3: At the 12 month mark, you convert each of those terms you wrote for the original couple. These are roughly $1,500 each.

This time, you get $2,400 in commission and production credit

The result is a machine that can turn one $400 sale, into a $3,200 sale.

Now envision you can do this 10 to 12 times per month?

See the machine and the snowball can pick up steam?

Of course this is easy to plan out

Hard to execute

But with numbers like these - Its worth exploring.

And we’ll be spending the next 7 months doing just that in our own agency in preparation for 2024 where (we believe at least), Life will once again be a requirement and a qualifier for Y.E Bonus.

Andrew’s Picks

Loser’s exist, don’t hire them. Find out more here: Link

Money doesn’t change who you are, it magnifies who you are. Some food for thought on how to stay self-aware and grounded: Link

Small daily actions compounded over time lead to massive results. How does this apply to sales? read here: Link

Have a question you want me to answer in the next newsletter? Submit a question here: Link

Next Issue: How to handle sales in a hard market

Anyone can sell on price

Hell, a computer can do that for you

So what happens when we take rate increases or you have tightened underwriting guidelines?

Find out what we focus on to keep momentum and how to keep morale high when then selling gets tough

P.S - We chose this topic specifically based on the survey you all did on the welcome email!

If you haven’t done the survey, it would help a ton! Find it here: Link