Andy Neary presents two essentials for insurance agencies: (1) explicitly identify the agency's ideal prospect—prioritizing psychographics (shared beliefs, decision-making style, cultural fit) rather than only demographics—and (2) establish a single, agency-wide, streamlined process that all producers use to convert prospects into satisfied clients. Fragmented, producer-specific approaches lead to poor-fit clients and lower revenue.
Chapters
Does your insurance agency know exactly who its ideal prospect is? One of the biggest exercises we do with our clients here at Complete Game is sit down and identify the ideal prospect. Brand identity. What is a brand identity? Well, it requires you and your agency to answer three questions very clearly. Number one, what problem does your agency solve for your ideal prospect? Number two, what is your process that you use that helps your prospects have success, helps your clients have success? And number three, what result does that process create? The success? Right. The destination. It's interesting, when we sit down with clients, many often don't know who their ideal prospects are. And this leads to two very big challenges that I see for most insurance agencies. Number one, they don't know who their ideal prospect is. They have 5, 6, 8, 10 producers all going after their own kind of prospects, and they're all doing it their own way. And there's no succinct, streamlined process to go track prospects. Now, here's the reality. Each producer could have a different type of ideal prospect. Right? In fact, in our industry, for a long time, demographics has been the key barometer of who your ideal prospect is. Right? We think about what industry are they in? How big are they? How many employees do they have? Can I get access to the C suite? Right. That's how most agencies have identified who their ideal prospect is. But that's not where the gold is found. The gold is found in psychographics. You see, if you go look at your favorite clients, the ones you love working with, the ones that let you do your best work, here's why you guys align psychographically. They believe what you believe. They stand for what you stand for. You love the way they make decisions. That's who your ideal prospects are. But here is the number one thing your agency has to to figure out, and that is what is your process that turns them from an unhappy prospect into a happy client? That process should be streamlined across your entire team so that if this producer is out going after his ideal prospect, this producer is going after her ideal prospects. No matter who they're going after, they funnel them back into one streamlined process. You see, if all of your producers are out on their own islands doing their own things, it's just going to lead to struggle, frustration, disconnect. They're going to be bringing in clients who are not a good fit for your agency, all in the name of revenue. So my advice for you is simple. As an agency, figure out, number one, who is your ideal prospect for the agency, and lean into psychographics. Why do they fit your ideal prospect? What do they stand for? What do they believe in? How do they make decisions? But number two, come up with an agency wide process that every single producer can use so you have a streamlined, effective strategy to bring in the right prospects into the pipeline so your producers can sell more. It can't be any more simple than that. That is the key. Quit letting your producers sit on islands. Create a streamlined process they all can leverage and I promise your agency's revenue will start going up.
