Want to know the “secret” on how to grow your insurance business?
On building a massive referral base?
Mine and the other members’ massive agency growth? (I hit 5 mill in premium after 4 years).
Meet Luis Aleman, Fully Covered’s very first student.
When he came to the program, he’d already managed to scale his agency to a decent level…
About $800k per year in premium…
But there was a big issue.
Lead costs were killing him!
His production was good, but the expense of acquiring new business was just too high.
“I wasn’t breaking even. I was pretty much in the hole with most of the stuff we were doing.”
The root problem was simple…
Luis was primarily getting leads two ways:
- Buying them
- Referral partners
However…
Neither one of those sources was really dialed in.
The bought leads were easy to get — but closed at an abysmal rate and were insanely expensive.
The Referral Partner leads obviously closed much better…
But they were even more expensive.
Because Luis was spending countless hours and dollars just to catch LO’s and Realtor’s attention.
He knew Referral Partner leads were the best… but with all the effort he was putting in to get them… he was never coming out ahead.
That’s where Fully Covered came into play for Luis.
In 2019, he did 1.4M in business.
Then, 2.3M in 2020. And 2.5M in 2021.
It gave him a reliable, predictable way to land Referral Partner leads — with a tiny fraction of the time and expense.
From 3-5 referral partners in 2018, Luis grew to 20-25 partners in 2021.
But NOT just any Referral Partner.
I’m not talking about someone who tosses you a few policies here and there… in exchange for some free coffee and donuts.
Instead…
I’m talking about a Referral Partner who sends you EVERY single new lead they can.
So you can turn around and sell each of them on a new home policy — and usually an auto or two as well.
Of course, you have to know how to build the right relationship with these Referral Partners.
Or else they have no reason to give you business.
And no, like I said…
This isn’t about free coffee and donut delivery.
There’s a much more effective way to win them over.
And once you know how to do it… your agency could turn into a “new policy machine” that basically runs on autopilot.
And he says, where it all starts, is growing the network itself, generating leads for them and creating a plan for them to succeed.
The ticket in the door is “here’s some leads, here’s some people looking to buy homes.”
After that, it was growing their business in the next 7-8 months. That’s the goal and we stick to that plan.
Nowadays, Luis actually spends nothing to acquire his Referral Partner leads today.
And now Referral Partners are chasing him!
“It took us to another level. In our first year and a half, we went from $800k on a yearly basis to $1.6 million, and I’m not spending any money anymore.
“[Before] I had to go out there… set up lunches, this and that. But now, with all the stuff we have set up for Referral Partners, they’re coming to us.”
How did he do it?
Of the thousands of P&C Agents I’ve met and coached…
Luis is by far one of the most impressive.
He just gets it.
In just a few years he’s doubled his production to 2.5 million a year…
With an extremely lean operation.
So, what if you had this guy showing you how he does it?
Luis regularly sits with other P&C agents to discuss insider-only insurace agency growth strategies. Here’s some of the questions we talked about…
How to grow your insurance business and scale as fast as possible when you’re a new agent with a new office?
The easiest way to scale and to grow is to plan, plan, plan.
For Luis, when his agency was starting to take-off, after 6 months in the Program and learning the marketing habits..
He set every Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to be his “Office Day”.
He would prospect and do office work every MWF.
Tuesdays and Thursdays would be his days to be out of the office.
He also developed an assembly line in his office which he calls the 30-30-30 Rule.
With the 30-30-30 Rule…
A quote is sent within 30 minutes they get a quote request.
If a binder request comes in, that would be where the next 30-minute rule would apply.
And the last 30 minutes would be for those that needs to have changes in the policy.
“I had a laptop, I had a Verizon Wi-Fi thing. I take that everywhere I go. As soon as I receive a quote, I will pull over the side of the road. I will pull over into the parking lot and do the actual quote.
That’s how I got to grow very rapidly in the beginning. You can grow as fast as you want but you have to be able to plan it.
Don’t think that you’ll gonna do the same thing everyday and you’ll gonna succeed that way. You have to change it up a bit. If not, that how you get burned out as well.”
How are these insurance agency growth strategies sustainable?
Here’s what Luis has to say…
The biggest thing that happened to make it sustainable…
Is hiring salespeople… 3 sales people and 4 virtual assistants.
This book by Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited thought me the basics of the assembly line I created.
Every person in your office has to have a hat – customer service, sales person, processor, etc.
I developed an assembly line in my office where all the sales person in my office, all they have to do is quote, reply to emails, and pick up the phone.
All they have to do is sell, sell, sell that’s why we’re so fast.
Second person is the one who binds all the policies, also called an administrator. Gets the binder requests, sends the documents, sends the application to sign. Then the sales people will follow up in a week or two.
My assistant also has an assistant so for when she’s away.
My VA’s, all they do is all the service work. Non-renewals, non-payments, underwriting.
That way, you get to focus on implementing your plan on how to grow your insurance business. Instead of getting pulled into the day-to-day.
Nato owns Guajardo Insurance Agency. He learned the lessons he needed to learn so that his agency avoided the traditional ups and downs of lead flow and sales. He created Fully Covered to do just that. A methodology and system that provides predictable and automated online leads to insurance agents that have a passion for helping people.
Today, Nato runs his business together with his wife, Angelica, without the stress of finding the next client or worrying about if there is enough money in the bank. Plus, he gets to protect clients with our Agency and protect his peers through education and systems that took years to figure out on his own.
