Insurance Business Strategy Examples for Agencies
Having a few insurance business strategy examples is incredibly helpful when creating your insurance agency’s strategic plan. You may know your agency’s challenges, but how to fix them, well that can be daunting.
Thankfully, you have your friends here at APP to help you organize your game plan.
For most agencies, growth is on their mind. Growth comes from more than just new business. In fact, for many agencies, you can’t outsell bad processes or people. To achieve sustainable, stable, and profitable growth, you need insurance business strategy examples to help you on the way.
In this blog, we break down our top growth strategies:
- Retention
- New Business
- People Development
Insurance Retention Strategy Examples
Retention is the hardest job in an insurance agency. Yet we spend so much time, effort, and resources on new business. Your first step is to identify your current retention rate and why people are deflecting from there.
We have 7 strategies that can nurture your retention:
- Creating a Process & Training on How to Stop a Cancellation: Many agencies don’t reach out to clients who cancel, and when someone calls in to cancel, they don’t make an effort to retain them. Instead, come up with a clear process that includes scripts and asking for a copy of the declaration page in order to cancel. At the very least, you’ll have the declaration page on file to aid in winning the client back later.
- Agency Standards: Create a guide of your standards – when you write better business, it stays!
- WOW Service: Is your team trained on how to WOW Customers or only handle transactions. Listen to a few recorded phone calls to see if your team is being impressive on every call. Hint: APP has WOW Customer service training.
- Sell on Value: Make sure your agency has a written value proposition that everyone knows and can recite. If you sell on price you will need to service on price.
- Client Nurturing: Your customer can’t only hear from you when they need something or there is a problem. Now is a great opportunity to engage in client nurturing via email and texting.
- Metrics & Incentives: You need to be able to clearly share your retention and cancellations with the team. We need to operate on facts not feelings. You can also identify an incentive plan to match.
- Renewal Reviews: They can be hard to get started but they are completely worth it. You will boost retention, reduce remarketing, clean up the book, earn referrals, and close cross sells. Plus, we can help roll this out to your team!
Insurance New Business Strategy Examples
-
Invest in a Marketing Strategy: To drive new business, independent insurance agents must prioritize a targeted marketing strategy that maximizes visibility and lead generation. Allocate budget to digital channels, such as search engine optimization (SEO), to rank highly for local searches like “independent insurance agent in [your city].”
Complement this with pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns on Google Ads, targeting keywords with high purchase intent, and run social media ads on platforms like Facebook, using demographic filters to reach homeowners or small business owners.
Offline, sponsor local events like charity runs or chamber of commerce meetings to build community trust. These efforts should be tracked with tools like Google Analytics to measure ROI and refine campaigns, ensuring a consistent flow of qualified leads to fuel agency growth.
-
Build a Repeatable Sales Process: A repeatable sales process is essential for converting leads into clients efficiently and consistently. Implement a customer relationship management (CRM) system, such as Salesforce or HubSpot, to manage leads through a standardized funnel: initial contact, needs assessment, quote presentation, and closing.
Automate follow-ups with email drip campaigns and schedule reminders for phone calls to maintain momentum. Create a scripted sales pitch tailored to common client needs, like bundling home and auto policies, while allowing flexibility for personalization.
Document this process in a playbook and train agents to follow it, ensuring scalability and reducing reliance on individual talent, which leads to predictable revenue growth.
-
Sales Call Coaching and Auditing: To enhance sales performance, invest in regular sales call coaching and auditing to refine agents’ skills and ensure quality. Conduct weekly coaching sessions where agents practice handling objections, such as concerns about premiums, and learn to build rapport through active listening and empathetic responses.
Record sales calls (with client consent) and audit them biweekly, using a checklist to evaluate clarity, adherence to the sales script, and closing techniques. Provide actionable feedback, such as adjusting tone or pacing, and share top-performing call examples to set benchmarks.
This ongoing training improves conversion rates and builds confidence, enabling agents to close more deals effectively.
Develop Your Team
Investing in Your People: Maximizing ROI on Your Biggest Expense
For independent insurance agencies, payroll represents the largest expense, often accounting for 50-60% of operating costs. Investing in your people through targeted training is the most effective way to increase the return on this investment, driving performance, retention, and profitability.
A well-trained team delivers superior customer experiences, closes more sales, and fosters client loyalty, all of which directly impact your bottom line. By committing to an ongoing training strategy, agencies can transform their workforce into a competitive advantage, ensuring long-term success.
Here’s how:
-
Customer Service Training: Exceptional customer service is critical for client retention and referrals, which reduce churn and boost revenue.
Implement monthly customer service training workshops focusing on skills like active listening, empathy, and conflict resolution. For example, train agents to handle claims inquiries with clear communication and proactive updates, reducing client frustration. Use role-playing exercises to simulate common scenarios, such as explaining premium increases, and measure progress with client satisfaction surveys.
Well-trained staff can increase client retention rates by 5-10%, significantly enhancing ROI by preserving recurring revenue streams.
-
Leadership Development: Strong leaders drive team performance and align staff with agency goals, amplifying the impact of your payroll investment.
Establish a quarterly leadership development program for managers and high-potential employees, covering skills like strategic decision-making, team motivation, and performance coaching.
Use case studies specific to insurance, such as managing underperforming agents or navigating market shifts, to build practical expertise. Pair this with mentorship from senior leaders to foster accountability.
Effective leaders improve team productivity and reduce turnover, which lowers hiring costs and maximizes the value of your payroll.
-
Sales Training: Sales training directly boosts revenue by equipping agents to close more deals, increasing the ROI on your staffing costs.
Conduct biweekly sales training sessions focusing on consultative selling techniques, such as identifying client needs and tailoring solutions like bundled policies. Teach agents to overcome objections, such as cost concerns, with value-based responses and practice through mock sales calls. Track key metrics, like conversion rates, to assess impact.
A 10% improvement in close rates from trained agents can significantly increase new business revenue, offsetting payroll expenses.
-
Retention Training: Training focused on client retention empowers agents to build lasting relationships, reducing churn and stabilizing revenue.
Monthly retention training should cover strategies like conducting proactive policy reviews to ensure coverage aligns with clients’ evolving needs, such as adding life insurance after a marriage. Teach agents to use CRM tools to schedule timely follow-ups and send personalized communications, like anniversary emails.
Retention training can improve client retention rates, with each percentage point gained reducing the need for costly new client acquisition and enhancing payroll efficiency.
-
Committing to an Ongoing Training Strategy: Sporadic training yields limited results; a consistent, ongoing training strategy is essential to sustain performance gains and maximize ROI.
Develop an annual training calendar with regular sessions, blending in-person workshops, online modules, and external certifications like CIC or CPCU for advanced skills. Allocate a dedicated budget, such as 2-3% of payroll, to fund these initiatives and track outcomes like retention rates, sales growth, and employee satisfaction.
By embedding training into your culture, you ensure continuous improvement, reduce turnover, and amplify the value of your largest expense—your people.
🔥 Check Out Our Latest Blog: Step-by-Step 2026 Business Plan for an Insurance Agency Guide
🎉 Get Your FREE Top Reports To Review Monthly In Your Agency
🚀 Introducing 2026 Annual Strategic Planing
📈 Ready to Take Your Agency to the Next Level? Book a Meeting with Agency Performance Partners for Tailored Strategies That Drive Real Success. Schedule Your Consultation Today! Book Now
🤝 We’re Agency Performance Partners; APP is your insurance agency’s best friend when it comes to training, strategies, brutal truth & tough love that’ll grow your agency with hugs & high fives along the way….just like a BFF. LEARN MORE
