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Analysis of Agencies with Revenues
Between $500,000 and $1,250,000
L
EADERSHIP
D
EVELOPMENT
“My parents probably wouldn’t have had
the confidence to enter into the buy-sell
agreement if they hadn’t given me the
ability to prove myself. Each time they
gave me a new responsibility, they
supported me but allowed me to succeed or
fail on my own.”
“Continuous learning is ingrained in our
culture. We pass around articles and books
that we read and share.”
“Leadership in our agency is not about
being ‘king of the hill’. It is more a matter
of helping each employee be a leader with me
in the areas where they have talents. If I
encourage them to grow and continue to
improve on those talents they are going to
demonstrate leadership to our clients.”
Best Practices
agencies intuitively develop leadership skills in their
people, partly because their size requires that they delegate and
share responsibility in order to be both an agency owner/manager
and producer.
They expect their employees to take responsibility for what needs to
be done in the agency and to accept ownership for what they do.
The owners include their employees in decision making and
encourage input regarding agency goals and objectives as well as
the strategies to achieve them. As a result, the employees also
participate in the rewards and failures of those strategies.
Ongoing personal and professional development is encouraged and
supported by allowing employees the time and the financial support
to obtain professional designations and continuing education.
B
USINESS
P
LANNING
“We open our income statement to our
producers every month at our sales meeting
and report to our staff quarterly on how we
are doing with our income and how that
affects their individual bonus and profit
sharing plan. We also report to them how
we are doing with regard to profit and our
goals and objectives on the
MBO(Management By Objectives) plan.
Then if there are areas that we need to
improve on we discuss how we are going to
make and implement changes.”
“Someone said to me that I needed to start
working on my agency rather than in my
agency so much. Now I spend one
afternoon a week working at home just to
work on the agency. Whether it is a
budget, or a plan or developing an idea, I’m
not inside the agency where I can get
disrupted.”
These agencies engage in and prepare business plans. Some are
very formal and others very simple.
Regardless of the style used, the agencies’ open style invites input
from everyone in the agency in setting goals and objectives for
production, service, and profits, which are then monitored and
adjusted periodically.
Often the agency shares its plan with its carriers to determine how
the agency will be able to work with the carrier in the coming year.
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