Our business is helping agencies develop and grow. The basis for that business was, in the beginning, being successful in doing the same thing ourselves. Since then we've worked with dozens of agents as they work to build their agencies.
One of the biggest mistakes I see new agency owners make is not focusing their efforts.
Recently I was talking with a new agency owner who asked question after question about market availability for one kind of prospect after another. This agent is spending all day every day learning the risk management needs of one kind of business after another. Then enormous time must be spent trying to find a carrier with the right appetite. After all of that this agent has trouble being competitive with the incumbent.
What an incredible waste of time and opportunity!
In addition to everything else, this agent who has access to a dozen or more of the very best insurance companies complains because the risks she is trying to write don't fit those carriers appetites and is therefore forced to try to write them with E&S carriers. Does anyone else see a problem here?
The way to build income, volume and success in a growing agency is to figure out what the insurance companies you do have can write competitively. Then go find the prospects for that! This is the easy way. It's a FOCUSED way. Finding prospects and then going to look for carriers is backwards, counter productive and a guaranteed recipe for frustration, slow grow and likely failure.