If you’re like most agency owners, you have big dreams for your agency. You want to see it grow and thrive as you help more clients and earn more revenue. However, dreaming and doing can be two very different things. To set and achieve your long-term business goals, you need a systematic approach.
1. Be Specific.
You want to grow your agency. Great. But exactly how will you do that? What are the specific metrics you will target? For example, do you want to …
- Add more new clients?
- Increase the number of policies or the average premium per client?
- Retain a higher percentage of existing customers?
- Expand into new line of business?
- Specialize in a specific niche?
- Add more locations?
2. Create a Timeline.
When creating a long-term plan, it’s common to think about where you want to be five or ten years from now. However, your goal can’t just focus on the distant future. You also need to think about all the years, months and even days in between.
Break your goal into bite-sized chunks. For example, if you want to build a $5M book of business in five years, think about where you need to be one year from now, two years from now, and so on. Then break it down further – what will you have to do each month to get there?
3. Map Out the Required Actions.
Let’s say your goal is to build a $5M book in five years, and you’ve created a timeline to book $1M by the end of the first year. What are the actions that you’ll need to take to achieve that goal? You’ll want to carefully assess past performance and use data to make fact-based projections.
For example, you may want to determine:
- What is your mix of business between commercial and personal lines?
- What is the average value of commercial lines policies sold?
- What is the average value of personal lines policies sold?
What percentage of leads become quotes? (commercial/personal) - What percentage of quotes become customers? (commercial/personal)
Hypothetically, let’s say you are a commercial-only agency. You’ve determined the following information based on your past performance.
- Your average commercial policy value is $50,000.
- 50% of commercial quotes become customers.
- 25% of commercial leads result in quotes.
Here’s how that might break out, applying your metrics:
- To reach $1M, you’ll need to write 20 new accounts at an average of $50,000 each.
- 50% of quotes become customers, so you’ll need to quote 40 businesses.
- Only 25% of leads become quotes so you’ll need to generate 160 business leads.
- If you work 50 weeks this year, you’ll need to speak with an average of 3.2 commercial prospects each week to achieve your goals.
To generate an average of 3.2 new commercial prospects each week, you’ll also need to map the distinct sales and marketing actions that will be required. Your numbers may look much different than this example, which is for illustrative purposes only.
This step represents a critical stage of your goal setting process, so it requires some serious thought and an honest assessment of your results to date. The best predictor of future success is past behavior so make sure you use past metrics to predict future performance.
4. Monitor Daily, Weekly and Monthly Progress.
It’s important to measure success every step of the way. Don’t wait until the end of the month to discover that you missed your goal. Ideally, you should monitor daily and weekly progress on your required actions. Create checkpoints along the way so you can determine whether you’re on track. One bad month might not be a big deal, but if you’re consistently falling behind, you’ll need to figure out a new strategy.
5. Celebrate Milestones and Set Stretch Goals if Needed.
Don’t wait until you achieve your end-goal to celebrate. Set mini-goals along the way and plan a meaningful reward, so you’ll have something to work toward. If you discover that you are achieving goals faster than expected, don’t get complacent. Instead, set new goals or move on to your stretch goals. This is a good time to aim high. Don’t be afraid to be ambitious.
Need Guidance?
Do you need help achieving your business goals? When you join Heffernan Network Insurance Brokers, you remain independent and you keep ownership of your own book while gaining carrier and market access and the technology, administrative and business development tools you need to achieve your goals. Learn more.
