Stop Running Your Business Like an Insurance Agency!

You want more business, you want more business, you want more business. I get it. All of us do, but here’s the problem. You’re running your business like an insurance agency. You got to cut that out. That’s the topic of today’s article.

The Approach is Wrong

So here’s the deal. We all want more sales. I get it, but the problem is that the average insurance agency out there is running their business like an insurance agency. That’s a problem. The deal is we’re not an agency and until we sell a policy.

You Have to Sell Insurance to be an Agency

My fundamental belief is that until we get the order to bind, we write coverage, and we have policy administration to do, we’re not an insurance agency at all. We’re a sales organization. That’s the thought process you have to have.  If you think that way, your habits are going to change.  Your investments are going to change in terms of where you put your time and energy. You will change the resources you use.  For example,  your technology stack is entirely different. Here’s why:   I don’t know of a single sales organization out there that runs their organization off of an agency management system. Because they don’t, agency management systems are for insurance agencies.  Do you know of a high performing sales team from a Fortune 500 company that is using Applied to run their sales processes?  NO!  They are using a CRM.

Sales Organizations Use CRMs

CRMs are for sales organizations. As long as we’re clear on that, we can continue down this road.  You need a way to organize and track who’s going into the top of your funnel.  Do you know who is going all the way through the buyer’s journey to the bottom of the funnel?  How do you ever get enough data to improve your processes? How do you know what marketing efforts you need to replicate? How do you know how to help your salespeople? Maybe they are missing something in a followup stage. Perhaps they’re not hitting enough volume in their cold calls. Maybe their email template needs tweaked a little bit. All of this stuff is stuff you can help them with when you run your agency like it’s a sales organization because it is.  You can transform the way that you think and quit running the front end of your process like an ages-old agency. You can adapt like a 21st-century sales organization, you and your team are going to kill it in commercial insurance.

Employee

Why Employee Ownership is the Key to Sustainable Agency Growth and Talent Retention

In an increasingly competitive commercial insurance landscape, agency owners are struggling to find long-term solutions for succession planning, talent retention, and business perpetuation. Many have considered private equity sales, others offer limited equity to top producers—but a growing number are discovering a more powerful alternative: the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP).

Read More »
Captive

Captive Insurance as a Business Continuity Plan: How Strategic Advisors Protect and Grow Their Book of Business

In today’s competitive commercial insurance market, your book of business is under constant attack. Competitors are targeting your best accounts every day, just like cybercriminals probing a website for vulnerabilities. If you don’t have a plan to defend and grow your client relationships, you’re leaving yourself exposed.

Read More »
Sales

How to Reverse Engineer Your Sales Funnel and Crush Your Q4 Insurance Production Goals

As we enter the fourth quarter, many commercial insurance producers begin to panic. Whether you’re behind on your goals or just trying to hit that final sprint, the Q4 crunch is real. But the producers who consistently win don’t treat Q4 as a Hail Mary. They plan with precision, reverse engineer their goals, and execute with ruthless consistency.

In this post, we’ll break down how you can reverse engineer your sales funnel, identify your revenue gaps, and finish the year stronger than you started. Whether you’re writing workers’ comp or cyber liability, these strategies apply across all middle market verticals.

Read More »
wholesale

Mastering Wholesale Partnerships: Submission Strategies, Underwriter Relationships, and Technology Tools for Middle-Market Success

In today’s competitive insurance marketplace, middle-market agencies must leverage every available advantage to win and retain business. One of the most underutilized yet powerful resources at an agent’s disposal is the wholesale market. By establishing strong partnerships with wholesalers, agents can access capacity, expertise, and proprietary programs that are often unavailable through direct channels. However, success in the wholesale arena requires more than simply submitting risks and hoping for the best.

Read More »
Client

How AI-Powered Workflows Are Transforming Sales, Marketing, and Client Communication

In the fast-paced world of commercial insurance, where every hour counts and every interaction matters, producers and agency owners are turning to artificial intelligence not as a replacement for human connection—but as a force multiplier. AI tools like ChatGPT are no longer just novelties or futuristic concepts. They are strategic business assets, helping commercial producers streamline workflows, scale personalization, and reclaim valuable time.

Read More »

Responses

Killing Commercial Login