After you purchase an insurance agency, the next 90 days are crucial to the long term success and profitability of your newest investment. It’s time to evaluate and learn about your new employees and learn how the agency you purchased operates. Before you successfully integrate a new agency into yours, create a team consisting of new and existing employees to brainstorm, execute and manage the transition.
Including employees from both agencies will bring new ideas and ensure equal communication with employees of your existing location and the newly acquired one. Retention is your number one priority the day you take the keys and its imperative that every person in the agency works toward this common goal. Your other number one priority is to take advantage of every new business sales opportunity available.
Here are a few items to brainstorm with your acquisition team:
- Identify each staff members strengths and weaknesses.
- Does it make sense to centralize certain functions if it makes the agency more profitable?
- Does the new agency have an agency management system? If yes, how will we integrate into ours? If they’re not paperless, how will we get data into our system?
- How will we answer the phone to make sure we don’t scare existing clients?
- Do we offer any markets the new agency doesn’t write? If yes, who will train the new staff on the new markets?
- How will we increase our new business production?
- How will we create a sales culture now that we’ve expanded? Competition, motivation, bonuses, other incentives?