The All Aboard Newsletter

I have a love/hate relationship with January.

January represents a reset. A restarting of all our goals, our metrics, and our priorities.

In some ways, that brings tremendous relief. The thought of closing out a tough year (every year is tough right?) and getting some reprieve from the pressure of deadlines is welcome.

On the other hand, we’re back to zero. Sometimes that can be exciting. Other times, stressful. Talking with agents across the country, its overwhelmingly seems like stress is at an all-time high, and excitement at an all-time low. 

No bueno.

And it’s no surprise. Agency owners all over the country, regardless of carrier are being hit with higher quotas than ever before. Commission rates are being cut. Yet, all the carriers want to do is talk about how much money we can make if we just write more.

Same story every year, right?

The reality is that WE get to choose what we do.

We don’t have to play the game that is given to us. We can make our own game.

We don’t need to keep up with the agents around us. We can run at our own speed.

We can if we want to, but we don’t have to.

Whether or not you can achieve this mindset ultimately depends on your ability to analyze your situation, set goals, and then execute on those goals.

So, to give you an example of what that looks like in action, that’s what I’m going to talk about today.

I will walk you through the goals I have for Peachy Insurance, where they came from, and why we chose those goals. Then, I’ll talk about our January results and the headwinds we’re facing.

Lets dive in!

2025 Agency and Sales Team Goals

If you’ve been reading my newsletter for while, you’ve heard me talk about the two main goals as they pertain to sales numbers.

I’ve mentioned them over and over for the past two years! But here they are in case you need a reminder: We always focus on two things:

• 20% Item Close Rate (Items/Serious Quotes = Item Close)

• 15 Quotes per person per day (Lines, not HH and not items)

I chose these goals because they are leading indicators. In a nutshell, that means focusing more on what drives results, than the results themselves. When an agent averages 15 quotes per day at 20% close, they write 62 items per month. Pretty good right?

I’ve coached over 20+ agents in the last two years and one of the biggest frustrations I have is around the Activity Pyramid that seemingly everybody uses. In theory, the concept isn’t bad – It’s a way to show your team what is important each day and give them multiple ways to win.

The mistake? There are many things on the pyramid that don’t actually drive results.

For instance – Why would I put sales on my activity pyramid? Sales are not activity, they are a result of activity. If someone gets 2 sales today and they have poor quote volume or activity is that ok? It sure as hell isn’t at Peachy Insurance.

Additionally, why do I care about call volume as a daily check box? Does call volume actually move the needle? It can, but not necessarily. If someone makes 300 calls, but gets 2 quotes because they didn’t overcome objections, well then that day is not what I’d consider a success.

This is why I’ve always focused on quote volume over talk-time, sales, calls, or anything else. And the 20% close rate is the guardrail to ensure people aren’t just throwing out bogus quotes to hit their numbers.

So when I looked at what I think goals are going to be for the agency in 2025, I didn’t like what I saw. It looked something like this:

Given the state of retention in Georgia (not good), I’m expecting to again need to max my NB points. With growth moving the goal post every month, and only about 81% of premium seemingly hitting the AAP scorecard, I estimate that we need to be writing about 751 items a month (in just GA, not including TN).

The truth is that we’re not currently in a position to do that, so we’ve gotta get moving and fast.

In 2014, I read a book titled The 4 Disciplines of Execution. It completely shaped how I looked at business, achieving goals, and measuring results. It talks about the 4 disciplines (stages) of driving behavior change. They are:

Peter Godley who many of you know normally runs 100% of sales, but with him on paternity leave I’m back in the shit.

Therefore, I figured it was as good a time as any to read this book WITH the managers, and come up with some goals together to ensure we’re doing everything we can to control our destiny.

After reading, here is what we came up with:

Agency Goal = Hit Elite by writing 751 Items per month 

Sales Goal 1 = Average 60 Items sold per producer

1. Lead Measure 1 = 20% Close Rate (Current = 18%)

2. Lead Measure 2 = 2.5 Lines Quoted Per HH (Current = 1.93)

3. Lead Measure 3 = 25% Referral Rate ( Referrals / # of Sales) (Current = 18%)

4. Lead Measure 4 = Average Premium per item of $1,000 (Current = $855)

Sales Goal 2 = Have 15 people contributing at goal (Current = 9)

1. Lead Measure 1 = At least 50% success rate on new hires

2. Lead Measure 2 = Class of 3-4 producers every 4 to 6 weeks

These goals, if hit properly, will ensure that we far surpass our number of 751 items per month needed giving us 900+ monthly.

Then, once GA sales is rebuilt (we’re at 9 people) we’ll work to get to 300 items per month in Tennessee as well (1,200 total).

There are goals on the service operational sides that contribute to the goals too, but I’ll talk about those in March or April.

We just rolled out this change in February, and its too early to see how results are going, but we know our baselines.

We’re not hitting close rate, Lines per HH, Referral Rate, or Premium per item…. Yet. But we have a plan to get there, a scoreboard, and accountability measures in place. I’ll give an update next month on how thats going.  

Note – I did not put 15 quotes a day here because that is a daily expectation at our office, not a goal.

This week’s edition of All Aboard is brought to you by:

Weaver Sales Academy

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Whether its time, skill, or not knowing where to start, I highly recommend you check out Weaver Sales Academy.

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Not convinced? Think about these numbers as it pertains to close rate and revenue…

In my agency, a producer is expected to do about 315 quotes per month. That means if they close at these respective levels, here is their item production and revenue to the agency:

With confidence, I can say that consistent training can add 5%-10% on close rate. From what you can see on the table above, that can be worth $3k to $6k per producer per month in revenue.

Not training your team consistently? Ask for help! Weaver Sales Academy is a great choice.

If you want to chat with Michael directly: Click Me

If you want to take advantage of the free resources: Click Me

January Results

January started off rough.  

As I talked about last month, we’ve had a bunch of turnover on the sales-team. Some people didn’t make it, some people quit, and one person retired. We ran with 13-14 producers all of last year, and we’re currently sitting at 9 (8 seasoned, 1 newbie).

There is tons of movement on recruiting and hiring, but new people are always “maybes” and we’re focused on what we have today while we build for tomorrow.

Even with these challenges, the calendar was favorable to us with 22 working days. And while we were running lean AND we missed our goal of 751 items (that we now need to make up later in the year), the team busted their ass and crushed results.

To finish with 633 items and average 70 items per person is something to be incredibly proud of.

The high-water mark was a producer at 107 Items and the lowest was 32 items (which made them eligible for a pip).

What makes me even happier with the result was that we were dealing w/ all of the TCPA 1:1 Consent changes and STILL were able to stay in the fight.

We moved all our forms over to 1:1 consent on January 10^th , 15 days before the rule was ultimately killed and our volume was CRUSHED. However, because we had planned, we had one of our SDRs calling mono-lines, another calling X-dates/Requotes, and two SDRs working the 100 or so leads a day (50% of what we needed) to keep the team busy.

We also saw the team lift their close rate from December. In December, we closed at a pitiful 16% and got that number to 18.2% in January.

The extra effort to find the quotes needed, and the work to close the sales combined to allow us to stand tall against the headwinds of January and deliver the type of result we desperately needed. We aren’t at our goal as it pertains to close rate, and if we would have been, it would have given us an additional 72 items which would have put us into the 700s.

We’ve got work to do, but we’re on our way.

Meanwhile, we have another problem brewing in GA…… Retention.

Our overall retention dropped to 82.5%, with almost ALL of that drop being attributed to Auto Retention (Home is still around 90%). Given the amount of rates we’ve taken in the last two year and the targeting/pricing decisions the company has made, we’re facing a big headwind.

Its so crazy, that our non-standard auto is retaining higher than standard auto. Let that sink in.

We put 740+ items into the book with add cars, but STILL went backwards on our monthly growth and for the first time in the history of Peachy Insurance, our “Written and Advanced Premium” actually went backwards by $20,000 in premium.  

I’m honestly shocked. 

It will be interesting to see if January was especially ugly (as it often is) compared to the rest of the year, or if this is a trend that will continue.  The good news is that our Earned Premium still grew about $400,000 as expected and as needed to recoup the revenue lost from the commission cuts that are being implemented in March.

With auto representing 60% of our items and 65% of our premium, we’re still overweighted on the auto side and need to continue to work on increase property and other line %s. That will help insulate us from the always volatile auto rates and help solidify retention in the future.

In January, we acquired New business at a 1.6 year breakeven (which doesn’t account for the first VC auto renewal, and with it, would be much lower). That means it takes 1.6 years to go into “profit” on all new business we right.

With an 82.5% retention rate, we have an average customer life of about 5.7 years (pain), so while I want to improve retention to improve customer lifetime, we are still healthy on the NB acquisition front. To be even more optimistic, January had three pay periods that inflated the number.

Ultimately, that equates to $185,000 of profitable lifetime added to the book in January alone. Cool stuff right?

February is pacing to be around 1.0 to 1.3 years breakeven (without the first VC renewal) which will make the number even better.

We have a lot of work to do everywhere in the organization, but we’re going to eat the elephant one bite at a time.

My big picture goal this year is to accomplish three things:

1. Write 751 Items per month to hit Elite.

2. Run at a 22% Profit Margin

3. Relentlessly reduce non revenue generating costs in the business

The first goal is to maintain the status quo (aka) growth with a little bit of profit.

The second two goals are there in case my mountain is too tall to climb. Regardless of Elite or Pro, Bonus or no bonus, the agency will be financially healthy in 2026.

I’m preparing the agency for a world where I am Pro, but doing the work necessary to stay elite (thats why I’m not including the first renewal in breakeven analysis). If we accomplish our goals and improve retention, profitability for the agency will explode.

Good things to come? We’ll see.

Until next time - Hope you learned something new!

Cheers!

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