You are an experienced and accomplished insurance agent with many clients, some of whom will buy again in the future. So why should you be concerned about constantly building your business? Well, there’s an old saying: “If your business ain’t steadily growing, it’s steadily dying.”
Always keep in mind the dynamics of any insurance clientele: Some policyholders move away and change agents, some die. Some policyholders lapse their policies, and some have bought their last policy. All of these situations can cause you to lose future commission income, renewals, and bonuses and lead to a downward spiral for your business.
For you to keep your income rising ahead of business expenses, you need a constant focus on building your practice. You must review the basics of building a client base and revisit a proven method of prospecting to revitalize it. Concentrating on just two main aspects of client-building benefits most agents: 1) Securing new premium pocketbooks each month, and 2) Capitalizing on satisfied centers of influence.
An example will best explain the premium pocketbook concept: If a married couple with three children buys five individual policies on each family member, the family represents one premium pocketbook at that time, not five clients. If there’s one source for the premiums, then count it as one pocketbook.
Agents who concentrate on adding four or more new premium pocketbooks monthly, mixed in among a steady stream of additional insurance sales to existing clients, will have a business that’s constantly growing, and they can more easily offset lost income from insured deaths, policy lapses, or policy replacements.
Next, capitalize on your existing satisfied clients. Some are centers of influence — people who are well-liked and whose opinions are respected by their co-workers and friends. These people are the best sources of referrals.
Five to 10 of your satisfied policyholders who are successful earners, are well-respected, and have a large network of friends in the area can refer you to quality referred leads who can create an endless chain of similarly successful people to see. Gatekeepers to the affluent, such as CPAs, tax and estate planning attorneys, senior law specialists, bankers, and trust officers, are your best centers of influence.
Centers of influence tend to have larger needs for life insurance, have more understanding about the uses of money, and buy larger life insurance policies. Agents who don’t put their centers of influence to work prospecting for them are walking away yearly from dozens of new premium pocketbooks and tens of thousands of dollars.
Growing a life insurance practice has always involved sifting through many prospects and working the law of large numbers. But once you’ve established a fairly sizable number of clients by focusing your activity on premium pocketbooks and centers of influence, you can accelerate your growth and more fully control the targets of your marketing and prospecting efforts.
Larry L. Cox is president of Cox Insurance Marketing Solutions. He can be reached at larrycox@metrocast.net.