How To Build An Agency That Runs Itself

Imagine your insurance agency humming along like a well-oiled machine while you’re miles away, toes in the sand, sipping a margarita on the beach. Or, if that’s not your dream, maybe you just want to be able to take a few weeks off here and there to spend more time with your family or catch up on rest.

Either way, the following tips from Hayk Tadevosyan can help you do just that. Hayk is a President’s Club member, owner of agency-focused training company 100 App Team Member and an industry veteran of over fourteen years. He built a team that wrote over 9,000 policies in a single year — including a record month where they cracked a thousand policies while Hayk wasn’t even in the office.

He credits this remarkable success not to micromanaging but to nailing down the mindset, personality traits, systems, and management principles that keep his agency chugging forward with minimal friction.

Make Your Agency Run Smoothly When You’re Not Around

The Self-Sufficiency Mindset

Success, according to Hayk, starts with finding your why. “You have to blow up your why to make it as big as possible,” he says. If you can keep your purpose in focus, the daily challenges you encounter seem trivial by comparison.

Your why will look different than someone else’s. But for Hayk, the mindset shift came when he stopped focusing on money metrics and started focusing on his customers and his team. Instead of blaming circumstances and making excuses, he began simply trying to make a difference. “We put the customer first. Everything else takes care of itself,” he says.

The Five Personality Traits of Top Producers

Through careful observation and some strategic coaching, Hayk identified five traits he likes to encourage in his team members and look for in new hires. He believes these personality factors separate the great producers from the rest of the pack:

1. A focus on providing options

“The best opportunities are disguised as problems,” Hayk says. Great producers see every phone call as a chance to help their client in some meaningful way.

2. An emphasis on people, not money

“Serve before you earn,” he says. “You want to make a lot of money in this business? Serve a lot of people.”

The year his team sold 800 umbrella policies was also their best year across the board. Hayk says this is no coincidence.

3. Optimism

Stop trying to be a realist, Hayk says. That’s a path to pessimism in his opinion. Instead of looking for a realistic middle ground, reach for lofty possibilities that would make a real impact if you can attain them.

4. Relentlessness (but never ruthlessness)

“Relentless people push the envelope where it matters,” Hayk says. “How hard can I work? How effective can I be? Ruthless people are fools, but relentless people are geniuses.”

5. A collaborative nature

Social butterflies know how to keep the conversation going in unique and engaging ways. Collaborative producers will work with customers to find the perfect solution and close the deal.

The Systems That Keep Things Running (So You Don’t Have To)

Hayk likes to follow one golden rule: Don’t micromanage your team; overmanage your systems instead.

He points to five systems that help his producers keep the agency running independently:

1. The morning huddle: This is a time for his team to share wins, motivational stories, or other tidbits of inspiration.
2. Wednesday team meetings: Hayk uses these meetings to review numbers, activity, and results.
3. Gamified recognition: Hayk funds $30 per month, per person in Bonusly so his team members can reward each other for great work.
4. Monthly one-on-ones: These are casual meetings over coffee, not performance reviews. “We talk about ideas, health, and family,” Hayk says.
5. Team meals: “The team that eats together stays together,” Hayk says. “Culture is not as expensive as turnover.”

The Hiring, Training, and Leadership Principles That Build A Successful Team

Hayk’s hiring strategy is simple. “I try to disqualify candidates and not waste my time,” he says. To accomplish this, he screens for PDCC: Positivity, Drive, Coachability, and Competitiveness.

Of these traits, coachability is key. Hayk pulls a quote from Darwin when he says, “It’s not the strongest species that survives, it’s the one that adapts the quickest.”

He also structures his compensation model to reward great performance. Team members earn a modest salary, but they have generous opportunities to earn commissions and they receive ten free leads per day to get the ball rolling. Hayk believes this gives his producers the motivation and the tools they need to be go-getters without him having to interfere much at all.

Set your team up for success with leads from EverQuote.

As Hayk points out, one of the best ways to encourage your producers is to give them ample leads and then reward their successes. That means you can take a huge step toward your agency’s independence by signing up for fresh leads from EverQuote.

Build your pipeline today by contacting EverQuote here.