Less=More: It’s Time To Break Your Agency’s Business Model

Here’s a truth I share with every agency owner I coach, and it never gets easier to hear: Your current business model is perfectly designed to produce your current results. If you want different results, you don’t need more effort or more hustle. You actually need way less.

I’ve spent years inside the operations of elite independent agencies, and the pattern is almost always the same: The average agency isn’t suffering from a shortage of anything; it’s drowning in surplus. Too many clients, carriers, meetings, tools, promises, and pipelines that go nowhere. The average agency doesn’t have a growth problem. It has a “too many” problem.

The part that stings: Most of that surplus was added with good intentions. Every extra carrier appointment felt like flexibility. Every marginal client felt like revenue. Every new tool felt like progress. Nobody sets out to build a bloated, unfocused agency. It happens one reasonable-sounding “yes” at a time, over years, until the agency is carrying so much weight that even the talented people inside it can’t move fast enough to win.

So what are the too many’s that are killing your agency? Think about having:

• Too many clients paying too little money. You’re spending premium energy servicing accounts that will never be premium accounts.
• Too many carriers. You already know this one in your gut. The top 20% of your carriers are producing 80% of your premium. The rest are disguised as “options.”
• Too many employees relative to revenue. If your revenue per employee isn’t at least $300,000, you don’t have a staffing plan. You have a staffing habit.
• Too many part-time clients. Do you have several single monoline clients that you’re most likely losing money on?
• Too much practice quoting. Your producers don’t need more practice quoting; they need to meet with more targeted future ideal clients you want to close.
• Too many apps and tools. Did you purchase these with good intentions and then abandon them the moment they required discipline?
• Too many producers who don’t hit their goal. They need to stop spending too much time on activities (Red Zone) that don’t produce a sales result (Green Zone). Hiding behind busy is not time spent selling.
• Too many unengaged employees. According to a recent Gallup Poll, 70% of employees don’t feel engaged and are less motivated and satisfied at work.
• Too many presentations are delivered without rehearsal. Producers provide price-based proposals, not solutions based on the agreed-upon problems in the current insurance program.
• Too many Tier One accounts. These are the top 25% of your customers that generate 88% of your revenue that never receive an annual stewardship report as part of a real continuation process. Your best clients are the ones most exposed to your competition.
• Too many interruptions. These take employees out of their most productive zones. Then it takes them 23 minutes to reach the same level of productivity.
• Too many broken promises made to clients, future ideal clients, team members, and carriers. Every broken promise eats away at your credibility.
• Too many commodity-based clients. We’ve all heard the saying—if you live by the sword you die by the sword. Price-only selling fuels practice quoting and unpaid consulting.
• Too many options about how you run the agency. Allowing everyone to operate their own way means you have little clarity about how you run the agency.
• Too many dripping prospect pipelines. Producers chase suspects and prospects, but not future ideal clients. The goal should be a pipeline overflowing with more opportunities with future ideal clients than time.

None of this is a talent problem; it’s a business model problem.

A quick gut check

Before you move on, be honest with yourself on a few of these:

• Do you know right now, without pulling a report, what percentage of your premium sits with your top five carriers?
• Do you know your actual revenue per employee? Not gut feel, the real number.
• Can you name from memory which Tier One accounts have not received a stewardship report this year?
• Do your producers know the difference between Red Zone activity and Green Zone activity, or are they just “busy”?

How many of these did you hesitate on? That’s your current business model talking.

Complexity is the enemy of execution

Every one of those too many’s adds friction. Friction slows decisions, dilutes focus, and gives your best people permission to be average. Complexity doesn’t feel like a threat because it arrives disguised as diversification, flexibility, and “keeping options open.” But complexity is expensive, and your agency is paying for it every single day in wasted hours, missed goals, and accounts you never should have written in the first place.

Every additional carrier is another appetite, another portal, and another underwriter relationship your producers must keep straight. Every additional low-value client is another file that still needs a renewal, a service call, and a potential E&O exposure, for a fraction of the return. Every additional unrehearsed presentation isn’t just a missed sale; it’s a missed opportunity to build the muscle memory that turns your producers into closers instead of quoters. None of these things are catastrophic on their own. But stacked together, they create an agency that feels busy and performs at average.

I have sat across the table from owners who could tell me, in detail, everything they think is happening in their agency. However, when they do a reality check-up, they realize things have drifted in other directions. That’s what chasing too many things does. The fix isn’t adding more to do; it’s subtraction.

What subtraction actually looks like

During a private coaching session with an agency owner a few years ago, the topic of the number of carriers she represented came up. She was proud of her carrier count (34) and declared she had “options for every client.” When we finally ran the numbers, six carriers wrote 81% of her premium. The other 28 were consuming underwriter relationship time, contingency requirements, and confusion on carrier appetites for almost nothing in return.

We didn’t add anything to fix it; we cut. She consolidated 12 core carriers, reinvested the freed-up time into deepening the relationships with her top six, and within 18 months her contingency income alone had grown by more than the total premium she’d been placing with the carriers she dropped. Nothing about her team’s talent changed. The model changed to fewer carriers, more depth, and more leverage.

That’s the pattern every single time: The agencies that get serious about subtraction don’t get smaller, they get sharper, and they become their best version possible.

Less = More: The challenge

If you’re ready to dramatically improve your business model, I’d like to challenge you and your leadership team to take some crucial actions.

• Fire the bottom 20% of your carrier relationships. Redirect that time and appetite toward the relationships already producing 80% of your book.
• Audit your book by profitability, not by policy count. Too many clients paying too little is not loyalty; it’s opportunity cost.
• Put a real stewardship process in place for every Tier One account. If your best clients aren’t hearing from you proactively, they’re prime targets for your competition.
• Kill the apps and tools nobody is using. If it’s not driving the model, it’s draining the budget.
• Track Red Zone vs. Green Zone time for every producer, then coach relentlessly toward the Green.
• Stop giving away free consultations and practice quoting. Suspects are never going to buy. Super qualify upfront; remember the best day to lose a sale is the first day.
• Rehearse before you present. Every unrehearsed presentation is a signal to the prospect that you weren’t fully committed to earning their business. Those who practice get better; those who don’t, don’t!

None of these improvements will require more budget, more employees, or more hours in the day. They require the willingness to simplify and make better commitments, executed at a genuinely elite level.

Give it 90 days

You don’t need to solve every “too many” on this list at once. Trying to fix all of it simultaneously is just another form of too many. Pick the three that are costing you the most right now. Put a number and a deadline on each one. Review progress with your leadership team every two weeks, out loud, with real accountability, not a status update nobody owns.

Ninety days of disciplined subtraction will do more for your agency’s profitability and culture than another full year of too many’s. Your team will feel the difference before your P&L does: less scrambling, less frustration, more clarity about what matters and who’s accountable for it. That level of clarity is contagious. It’s also exactly what separates the agencies that talk about being elite from the ones that are.

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, your current business model is perfectly designed to achieve your current results. If you aren’t excited about your current results, do something about it.

The author

Roger Sitkins is the CEO of Sitkins Group, Inc. After over 40 years he has truly become an icon in the insurance industry having trained and mentored thousands of insurance professionals.

Roger was inducted into the Michigan Insurance Hall of Fame in 2017 and in that same year also received the Dr. Henry C. Martin Award from Rough Notes magazine. Roger is among only six people to have the honor of receiving this prestigious award.

Recognized as the nation’s top insurance agency results coach and renowned leader for improvement, he believes that if you improve the life of one person, you improve the world. To learn more, visit www.sitkins.com.