Often I find myself just thinking what if? What if I could shave a few seconds or even minutes of each transaction? What does that do to my bottom line? How does it effect overall production in my agency? What does it mean for my resources? How does it effect my customers? What I really want to say is an effective management system being used properly has a ripple effect that goes layers deep into your agency. It literally touches every aspect of your agency metrics. Renewal and retention rates increase, new business production increases, customer satisfaction and referrals increase. The opportunities are endless. Taking the time to dial these systems in can be daunting to say the least, hours spent today could take weeks months and even years to pay off. It’s worth the investment and if you can find someone to help you integrate these strategies it’s even worth more than it’s weight in gold. Automation and technology are the key to operating an independent into the future. It’s gonna take managing more customers with less resources to keep an agency profitable. As we see the cost of labor, health insurance and other business expenses increase we have to do more with less. Running back and forth to a filing cabinet will ultimately bring down a great salesman and great agency. Take your most common reoccurring task: for example providing certificates for commercial accounts. In the not so recent past many of us would use the type writer or maybe have form saved In a file on our desktop. That average time to produce a certificate could be 10-15 minutes. Imagine the time lost each year when you can complete that transaction start to finish in less than 30 seconds with a proper management system. These are the innovative processes that separate the agencies of the future from the past. Keeping your staff moving on positive income generating task like binding policies re-marketing current policies will increase your bottom line well into the future.
