Does your agency set goals for itself? Are these goals measurable and timely? No matter who you are it’s necessary to set goals for yourself whether it’s in life or in business. Without goals, you have nothing to strive for and nothing to measure yourself against and, in the business world, goals are everything! Owning a local, independent insurance agency means you are competing against other local agencies as well as larger national carriers for business and customers. Because you’re agency is small, having attainable short term and long term goals in place is essential.

While you may have some internal goals in your head that you sometimes share with employees, you should get in the habit of writing them down where everyone can see them. It’s important that everyone in the agency is on the same page when it comes to common company goals. If you don’t have goals in place, your agency will have a hard time flourishing and moving on to new stages. When coming up with new goals, we recommend following the S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely) model, but how does the S.M.A.R.T. model work?

• Specific: The goals you and your employees create should be specific and measurable and should avoid anything too general. For instance, don’t write down a goal that says “everyone do well.” How can you measure that?
• Measurable: Are the goals you’re coming up with measurable with concrete numbers attached? For instance, maybe you’re trying to get more customers to sign contracts than last month or last quarter, or you’re trying to reach a certain profit goal. You can easily see whether or not you reach what you’re striving for.
• Achievable: Because you’re a locally owned insurance agency, your goals will be smaller in scale than that of a national or regional carrier. Many small companies make the mistake of creating lofty goals that are very difficult or improbable to achieve. Instead, start small! Start off with goals you are confident your agency can and will reach, and get slightly more ambitious for each new goal.
•  Relevant: Are the goals you are setting for your agency applicable to the day-to-day happenings of your business? We recommend creating goals that are mainly relevant to two things: selling your product and building relationships with customers that will help your agency.
• Timely: A timely goal is one that is made at the right or appropriate time and relevant to your business. Since winter is coming up, one of your goals may be to sell a certain number of insurance policies that pertain to winter protection whether it’s related to cars, homes or businesses. Additionally, if there is any part of the year where you know your agency will be busiest, you may want to stretch your goals to reflect the increase in business you’ll be experiencing.

If your insurance agency doesn’t have goals to work with, then you cannot expect your agency to grow. In the age when many consumers are flocking to the larger insurance carriers, independent agencies need to measure themselves against the best in order to grow and prosper in the future as a viable insurance marketing agency. If you’re a smart agency, you will follow the S.M.A.R.T. model and start building towards concrete goals.