Give your producers the resources they need to start hunting. Today.
Last week, MarshBerry hosted our 8th Annual, and first ever virtual, MarshBerry 360 Summit. On the final day of the series, the focus was on how it’s time to realign your initiatives by looking at the next 90-days to set your firm up for organic growth success.
This weeks ViewPoint series deep dives into the phases of the 90-day process: Get a Grip! (Days 1-30); Build Momentum (Days 31-60); Sustain Momentum (Days 61-90) and Predictable Growth (Day 91+). Today starts with step one – Get a Grip! As your teams continue to pivot into a virtual environment – take time to evaluate your production staff to see if you’re providing them ample time to sell.
The first part of this process may encourage trading down smaller accounts to a small business unit, or a house account. For many producers, the idea of trading down a small account out of their book of business is unthinkable. These are the clients they’ve hunted on, opened the door to, built the relationship with, and closed. After all of that work, they’re supposed to just give them away? Short answer: yes. As long as you establish the long-term vision of creating time and capacity for the producer to hunt more new business to grow a larger book of business, the conversation is relatively easy because data validates your decision.
Typically, according to MarshBerry’s experience, we’ve found that the bottom 20% of a producer’s book of business only represents 1-3% of their revenue and the bottom 40% only represents 4-6% of their revenue. In comparison, the top 20% of the producer’s book of business represents 80% of their revenue. As the producer then begins to hunt on new, larger opportunities, the number of closed accounts needed to replace the revenue of the transitioned accounts greatly decreases. The figure illustrated shows a book of business breakdown of an actual producer that has supplied us data on their book of business.
Trading down smaller accounts should become a process for all producers, not simply a one-time event. The time spent not servicing the account can be reallocated to bringing on more new business that will grow their book of business — and the bottom line of the firm.
Consider paying the producers out for the year or over two years to “bridge” their income and encourage them to help with the transition as efficiently as possible. The financial hit to the agency is very minimal, but keeping the producer in the right mindset can go a long way.
Tomorrow, we’ll dig into producer activity management.
If you have questions about Today’s ViewPoint, or would like to learn more about driving your sales pipeline, please email or call Zack Pittman, Senior Consultant, at 440.220.4100.
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