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The All Aboard Newsletter

Every year February is a bit of a wild-card.

Once you get past the “new year, new me” vibes in January and settle back into real life in February, people often find themselves in a bit of a panic. Eight percent of the year is already gone!

Add in the fact that February is almost always one of the shortest months AND most inconsistent months of the year. Talking to agents around the country, some people had an amazing Feb, and others felt like they couldn’t get anything going.

And while the month was short, it felt long. Why? Well, we FINALLY got our goals for 2025…… and they were so much worse than pretty much everyone expected.

So today, we’ll recap how our new goals are going, what we’re paying extra attention to, and how we’re viewing the rest of 2025’s strategic plan.

Lets dive in!

Feb Results

February was OK.

Not great. Not even good. Not bad…. just OK. And while the numbers in isolation look pretty solid (all things considered), the issue is that we are treading water when we need to be ramping numbers up.

We’ve managed to increase our production per person AND increased close rate, but our quotes are down, largely because we’re down bodies.

Last month, I had mentioned that we’ve been having issues getting the team staffed back up. After talking with some other amazing agents at the Top Producers meeting in Charleston this week, it seems like finding reliable staff is a challenge we’re all facing.

Between flakiness from prospective employees and competition from other businesses and agents, its been hard to hook talent. For instance, in the last couple weeks we had four people accept offers from different companies. That literally never happens. We’ll need to do some reflection on why we’re losing out on people left and right.

Its not all bad though. We have 3 new sales people joining and we’re continuing to hire aggressively. One of our goals for the year is to have 15 people selling 60 items/mo. avg in GA and another couple people in TN putting up the same thing.

We’re far, far off from that goal as it stands today.

In February, we were able to write about 640 items with 9 people contributing. While our average per person is GREAT, the team is in desperate need of a retooling.

Here is what the team looks like right now:

• 7 Veterans currently writing business.

• 1 New person writing (Feb was month 1).

• 1 Person still training.

• 2 People waiting to start.

Then, in addition to these 10 people above, we now have two people on leave for various reasons. That hurts as both of these producers have big production capabilities.

Our work will be cut out for us in March and every month after until we can get back to strength. Hiring, and hiring well is one of the most important focuses for the team right now and it will continue to get significant resources.

Our plan is simple. Do not stop hiring until we’re writing 900 to 1,000 items per month.

And even then, we might not stop (Depends on Breakeven - more on that later).

People have all types of reasons why they cannot, should not, or will not hire more salespeople.

Here is the hard truth though: it often costs more money to keep the seat empty if you’re missing opportunities or hittable goals. We did this math last year and figured out that an empty sales seat costs us about $85,000 in revenue. Crazy right?

Keep at it!

Don’t stop hiring and work to hire in classes as much as possible!

New Sales Team Goals - Updates!

Last month, I detailed that we have a few new goals for the Sales Team based on the “4 Disciplines of Execution” model.

So, now that we’ve rolled them out, how is it going?

We set three metrics on the NB sales side as leading indicators to get to the production levels we need:

• Referral Rate of 25%

• Lines Quoted Per HH of 2.5

• Average Premium Per Item of $1,000

Here is how we did:

• Referral Rate of 31% → ✅ 

• Lines Quoted Per HH → 1.98 ❌ 

• Average Premium Per Item → $854 ❌ 

Eeek

Setting the goals is easy. Dreaming is fun!

But executing on those goals can be taxing and discouraging. Because when you miss those goals, its easy to doubt yourself, the goals, or your ability to achieve what you need.

Here’s another harsh truth….

The ability to execute is what separates the greats from everyone else!!! So we need to zoom out, remind ourselves that Peachy Insurance wasn’t built in a day, and we won’t be able to change everything overnight either. We WILL stick with it though.

Another lesson we’ve learned: Its easier to execute on the goal when you make the team working on the problem keep score themselves rather than doing it for them. So, I present to you, the new sales scorecard (below).

To help them keep score, we updated our daily Sales Scorecard that goes out to our agents every morning (seen above). This allows them to see where they are on each of their metrics (2.1 Lines per HH and 35% referral ratio) and we talk about these goals in weekly 1:1s so everyone is on the same page.

Second, we’ve moved to a two-huddle per day model. We huddle once at 8:45am and again at 2pm (everyone goes to lunch at 1pm). We borrowed a tactic from Vlad Cherchenko (Friend of NCC – Check out ISL!) where we have the team read off their numbers for the previous day, and where they’re trending on the month amongst other metrics.

 This has accomplished two things:

 1.) People are aware of where they stand and their trends every single day.

2.) We don’t need to nag the team about their activity levels - They’re sharing what they are 2x a day so they’re aware of where they are.

It was a bit clunky at first, and a little awkward too. But the veterans led the charge, and its turned into an accountability circle that keeps us focused and moving forward in a positive way.

When you want to go fast, you go alone.

When you want to go far, you go together.

The huddles with numbers are an example of the type of work we need to do together, so that we can go far.

Yes it takes time out of the day that could be spent calling, but this time spent is an investment, not a cost.

And speaking of cost, marketing has gotten expensive hasn’t it? That leads my to our sponsor.

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I know, I would have thought that a year ago too. Then one of my friends (the amazing Jessica Lyng) blew my mind. She has EIGHT billboards and gets a ton of calls.

Mind = Blown.

So when I saw AdQuick, I checked it out and found that it was a one-stop-shop for all types of branding and advertising.

Its a much easier, and better way to find ad space than calling around on billboard websites that look like they’re from 2003.

They have digital offerings too like radio and more. This will be something I’m testing and playing with over the next few months.

Zig when others zag.

Do yourself a favor. Click the link, check it out, it might be the best 5 minutes you spend today.

Goals/Planning (Breakeven Math)

So our goals finally came out for the agency.

Yea……..

I had forecasted some very high goals for us in anticipation of outrunning whatever the company was going to put out for us. That is usually what we all do right?

“Our goals should be higher than the ones the company sets for us!”

That has always been true…. until it wasn’t.

Turns out, I undershot the estimate... by A LOT. And you know whats interesting? It seems like agents all over the country did the same thing.

Crazy that all of us would be so wrong right? /s

I’ll be frank: Its becoming increasingly clear that the compensation structure is broken and flawed. The bigger the agency grows, the crazier and less hittable the goals become.

It used to be that you had an incentive to get bigger. More efficiency, more ability to post profit, etc.

Now?

Its almost like we’re being punished for getting bigger.

The bigger you get, the higher your goals become! And you might think, well “ok, yea, if you have more resources, then you can do more, therefore your goal should be higher right?”

And that would be true, except that a $15million, $40million, and $80million agency are being held to the same expectations (% of size to goal). That would be fine if everything scaled in a linear fashion. Any reasonable person knows that is not true in the real world.

Have a great year and grow a bunch? Awesome, you get rewarded with MORE WORK AND HARDER GOALS.

So many agents are asking themselves the question:

Does it really make sense for me to continue to invest in this business, or should I take my money out and go invest elsewhere?

And its a fair question. Because if you miss goals and then that results in lower commissions for compensation, there is no path back. The capital expenditure needed to increase production on lower revenue is just not realistic.

Trust is damaged. Confidence in leadership to fix the goals is low to non-existent.

Agents are starting to give up or not care.

Want to know the opposite of happiness?

It’s not misery…. Its apathy.

I’m not apathetic yet, but many others are.

I’m still engaged, still writing business, and still working to speak up about issues that require changes.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a captive agent, or an independent. People from all categories of agency ownership are feeling this way. And even if we don’t have the same exact challenges, many of us are seeing our commission %s compressed in some way, shape, or form AND are being asked for more production.

Like, really not cool y’all..

Not cool.

My plan for 2025 and company goals:

I am a believer in telling people what you’re going to do and then doing it.

We will continue to build and staff until September 1st. If we are not confidently on pace to hit goals as of 9/1, we will divest resources out of the agency, slow NB, and work to get the business in a place where its no longer growing, but very profitable.

My prediction is that many agents are doing that already, and its only March.

But what can we do?

Some people are going to speak up and lobby for change. Other people won’t feel comfortable with that, and that is OK. But my ask and advice is this:

If you’re comfortable speaking up, do it. Take a stand, make your voice heard, and back your claims up with data. Help them help you. The more specific the examples, and the greater the quantity of those examples, the more likely you are to get a change made.

I feel fortunate to have some great relationships with corporate leaders. I feel that those relationships are strong enough to all parties to speak freely.

Not everyone feels the same about their relationship with leadership and if you’re unsure how to broach those subjects, let me know. I’d be happy to give you some advice. You can raise concerns and push on those concerns in a professional way. Advocate for yourself. I’m here to help!

In the meantime, the ultimate answer of what to do comes back to math. For me, that involves two things:

1.) Reducing Operational Overhead as much as possible.

To put this into context, this is us reducing costs on technology vendors (shopping for alternatives), drastically reducing office storefront ($100k a year in savings), and optimizing operational (non-customer facing) payroll and responsibilities.

2.) Getting our New Business Breakeven timeframe to under 1 year w/ no VC renewal.

Here is an example of Breakeven for February:

As you’ll see above, we ran at a 1.3 year breakeven in February.

Ultimately, thats a number I’m pretty happy with. The issue however is that we are in a state where we’ve taken 163% of rate in the last 3 years and Retention has fallen off a cliff.

You might ask: How does retention affect breakeven? Thats only NB right?

It doesn’t affect it directly, but it does affect what makes our breakeven “good” or “bad.”

18 months ago, we were sitting around 87% retention. Now we’re at 82.50%.

To put that into context, at 87% retention, a customer sticks around for 7.7 years. At 82.5% retention, that customer now only sticks around for 5.7 years. Two years of renewal commissions…. pooof, gone (pain)!

As retention drops, the customer lifetime drops too, and that requires a lower and lower breakeven if you want to be profitable.

Therefore, my goal is to be at 1 year of breakeven or less because that does two things for me: First, it gets my profitable life for each item to around 5 years. Next it builds a financial buffer for me if I lose the first enhanced renewal comp (by falling a tier on segmentation).

The point here is that it isn’t only about your breakeven period (lower = better), but rather important to note that the higher your retention, the more you can spend to acquire a customer (because you’ll get the profit back later).

One last note of emphasis here: On the graphic, you can see that we lose $86 for every item that we write.

We are currently writing about 640 items, and we need to write about 1,000 per month to hit the top tier. Lets break that math down:

If we lose $86 an item, and we need to write an ADDITIONAL 350 items per month, that means I’ll see my cashflow drain an additional $30,000 per month at the current rate.

When they changed our commission structure, it lowered our monthly commissions by about……. $35,000.

You see the issue right?

We have $35,000 less to spend than in 2024 AND we need to spend in a way that will cause us to lose $30,000 a month to to write enough business to hit the new goals.

Really not sure how we make that math work…

This math matters, and its ultimately the math that I think corporate leadership has no visibility around and isn’t thinking about. There is a disconnect between the goals that are being set, and the amount of money agents need to spend to hit those goals.

My goal over the next few months is to close that knowledge gap, and hopefully impact some change. We’ll see.

Important to note…

Remember that when you run these numbers, everyone’s goals and results will be different. I have a buddy who spends 3x as much as me on marketing. His cost per item on marketing is CRAZY high compared to mine, but his staff cost is a lot lower. His retention is also higher, so it can make sense.

If you’re wanting to know what these numbers look like for you, let me know and its an exercise we can always do together.

Closing

There is a lot going on, big goals to hit, and many choices to make.

Just remember that as you face a new year, with big goals, you’re not alone! Agents all over the country, from every carrier are feeling pressure.

The industry is in a tough spot right now, but if you ask for help, you’ll usually find it. There are so many great groups out there online. Find your tribe, get some help, and help others.

Until next time, cheers!

Three ways I can help you:

1.) If you need leads, calls, or data analytics - We’d love the opportunity to show how Next Call Club can help you grow faster and more profitably than before.

2.) Curious about your own numbers how they relate to Lifetime Value (LTV), Year 1 Cashflows, and Segment analysis? I help agents with this in my 1:1 Consulting Program!

3.) Want to sponsor this newsletter? Lets talk about whether you’re a fit to reach 1,000+ agency owners every week!

As always - Thank you for the support! I’m looking forward to bringing you insights, ideas, and actionable strategies multiple times per month! If you enjoyed this newsletter or it gave you value, please consider sharing it with a friend!

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