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The latest insights and thought leadership for independent insurance agents.
The past couple of months have been challenging for everyone to navigate. In many areas, though, many businesses are slowly starting to reopen.
It can be tempting to just run back to business as usual but now is a perfect opportunity to rebuild a stronger business during uncertain times. With the right strategy in place, you can eliminate the blocks and challenges to your growth. However, it can be difficult to identify exactly how you can overcome challenges and identify opportunities for the growth of your agency.
A SWOT analysis can help. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It can provide an overall look at your company to help you see exactly where you can rebuild your agency.
A SWOT analysis can help you decide if you need to introduce a new service or change your processes. By listing your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, you can quickly spot areas to focus your energy on.
Read on for a helpful breakdown of a SWOT analysis and how to use it to grow your insurance agency.
List the factors that set you apart from the competition. What do you do best? Think about why your customers come to you and stay.
For example, many people choose an independent insurance agent for personalized service. It provides a humanizing element, rather than feeling like a cog in the wheel of some major corporation.
Other strengths you might have include:
Next, list the ways that your insurance agency could improve. What drives customers away from you and towards your competition? It can be painful to take an honest look at the ways your company is falling short. Without a comprehensive understanding of your weaknesses, though, your SWOT will be incomplete, and you won’t be able to find critical areas of growth.
A common reason, for example, customers decide to choose larger corporations is the convenience. There is technology already in place that lets them conveniently handle their policies and shop for insurance. If you rely on phone calls and paper transactions, you are at a significant disadvantage.
Other potential disadvantages might be:
Identify where your company can grow. Find where a new service, market, or area presents growth for you. Opportunities are how you can continue to outpace your competition and grow your business.
The greatest opportunity lies in the customer base that you already have. Concentrate on ways that you can continue to build relationships with your current customers. Your existing customers will help you sell more, retain your customers longer, and grow through referrals. Consider the opportunity that lies in proactively recommending policies based on customer profiles.
Networking is often a critical opportunity for agents. Building a reputation within the community can be a way to create a presence. Building relationships with other businesses can also provide valuable referrals.
Some more opportunities you might want to consider:
What is potentially fatal to your agency? Threats can come from within your company, through the changing market, or even within the industry and changing regulations.
For many agencies, convenience is a threat. Your customers can quickly and easily shop for the best policy for them. It’s no longer a painstaking process to figure out what your competitors are selling.
Other threats include:
Once you have created a list for each category, display them side-by-side to get an overall picture of your company. You will probably see patterns in each list to help you identify your most pressing issues. From there, you can develop a strategy to grow your agency.
Identify ways that you can use your strengths to take full advantage of opportunities, as well as mitigate foreseeable threats. Also, consider how you can overcome your weaknesses that might hamper your ability to seize opportunities and leave you vulnerable to threats.
Having a list alone is not enough to help your company. Use your SWOT analysis to create an actionable plan as you begin to open your business again.
Business growth is not the result of random chance. It takes intentional decisions. A SWOT analysis can provide you with critical insights to make the best decisions for your agency. Without the right technology in place, your company is missing out on critical growth.
Independent insurance agents use Agentero to boost their revenue, save time, and deliver a superior customer experience. We integrate with your current technology to modernize your operations and position you for growth. Check out our website to learn more.
