There are only so many hours in the day. Is your agency spending the right amount of time on the right things for your agency to be successful and deliver a great customer experience?

When it comes to reaching your sales goals, you must know what it will take to get there.

What is your sales goal broken down daily and by producer?

What is your close rate and is there room for improvement to write more business?

How many quotes need to be completed and what is the expected time spent creating and communicating the proposals?

Where are you going to get your quotes from? Are you properly following up on quotes you have done in the past or previous clients that you can win back?

Are you maximizing the business you can get from each prospect?

If you need to prospect for more quotes, what amount of time do you need to set aside per day to secure those opportunities?

Are you leveraging all of the discounts and products available to you to build a policy that is priced the most appropriate for your prospect?

Now that you have an idea of the time needed to prospect, quote, and close to reach your goals let’s talk about the amount of time your agency needs to spend taking care of the clients you worked so hard to earn. You have to consider the crucial pieces of servicing a book of business in addition to those tasks that set you apart from your competition. You need to make sure you aren’t spending an excessive amount of time on tasks that can be automated or simplified. Many agencies spend 80% of their time helping 20% of their clients. It takes a concentrated effort to keep this from happening.

So, what are the critical pieces and how much time is the agency spending on each? Do you have enough team members to take care of these basic functions in a timely manner while creating an excellent customer experience?

• Payments
• Endorsements
• Incoming Calls
• Incoming Emails
• Incoming Texts
• Walk In Clients
• Company requests/notifications (Ex: Undisclosed Drivers, Failed Payments)

While the above list is not all inclusive you might be surprised that you do not see policy reviews or claims follow up in the critical bullet points. They are important; however, they are not part of the essential jobs that must be handled every day. Policy reviews, being personally involved with claims, attending community events, are all examples of ways that you can set your agency apart from others. But I challenge you to think about the time you are putting into these extra responsibilities that are not part of your fundamental activities for an agency to run properly.

When reviewing these extra activities ask yourself:

• What amount of time and energy do these job responsibilities take?
• Will this improve my retention and, if so, by how much?
• What is the probability of connecting with your clients?
• What other positive impact could these tasks have on my agency?

Now ask yourself:

• Would I be better off having team members putting their time and energy into sales instead?
• Would the agency be better off writing new business to outrun the estimated retention improvement from these optional activities?
• What is the monetary impact of focusing on new business over retention based on cost of acquisition and commissions paid to producers?
• Are there parts of your additional operations that could be streamlined or reduced, rather than eliminated, that would create a better balance for the agency?

There is not one path to a successful agency. The owners of the agency decide what the priority is for their agency but that does not mean that individual roles or functions should not be reviewed to change with the times. Clientele, advances in technology, communication channels, automation, and company expectations all come into play in making these decisions for your agency and adjusting as needed.

The one question that should be the foundation upon which you build your operation from is…..

What activities are mission critical for my agency to grow and stay in business?

Master those activities first and then you can add additional customer service efforts as you see fit.