Using Your Insurance Agency’s Business Plan

Your business plan identifies your mission, strategy, goals, and milestones. Make them real.

A NextAgency Resource

High-growth agencies review the metrics their business plan identifies as critical

Last Updated: May 10, 2026

The Trailblazed Sales Project Study found that high-growth health insurance producers — those growing 20% or more year-over-year — were 31% more likely than their less-successful colleagues to compare actual results against their business plan on a regular basis. Fifty-four percent reviewed their results monthly. Among low- and no-growth producers, only 41% did.

This article explains why measuring your results matters and how life and health insurance agencies can learn from fighter pilots how to keep the information that matters front-and-center.

Having a plan is good. Using the plan is much better.

As described in the previous article, Insurance Agency Business Planning Made Simple, simply writing a business plan has value. It forces you to think through where you want to take your agency and how you could get there. But business plans offer a lot more when they’re used. It’s the equivalent of putting your star player into the game as opposed to keeping her on the bench. You’re more likely to win with her playing rather than sitting around.

What research says about reviewing plan results

The Trailblazed Sales Project Study investigated what differentiated high-growth producers (those who grew 20% or more year over year) from their low-growth and no-growth colleagues and competitors. One fact was that high-growth producers were not just more likely to *have* a business plan — they were significantly more likely to *use* it.

Specifically, high-growth producers were 31% more likely than low- and no-growth producers to compare their actual results against their plan’s projections on a regular basis. Fifty-four percent reviewed those results monthly. Only 41% of low- and no-growth producers with plans did the same.

All this means is comparing your actual results to those anticipated in your agency’s business plan. But how do you decide what to look for?

What agency metrics should insurance agencies track?

Sherlock Holmes once observed that “it is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which are vital.” The same principle applies to running an agency. The agencies that grow are the ones that figured out which numbers are vital and built the habit of looking at them.

Fortunately, your business plan will make this clear. Let’s assume you designed a simple, four-part business plan like the one described in the previous article. That means you have:

a mission (where your agency is going);
strategies (how you plan to get there);
goals (what needs to happen to implement those strategies); and
milestones (the discrete steps needed to achieve your goals).

Your goals and milestones should all be results-oriented. That means they describe what specifically is expected to happen by when (and who is responsible for making it happen). This makes them ideal metrics to track. They tell you what you expect to get done; your monthly review should tell if that expectation is on track.

This means finding your key metrics is straightforward. For each goal in your plan enter what the goals are expected to produce on a spreadsheet. Sort the results and you’ll see trends: measurements that appear across multiple goals. Congratulations, you’ve identified the five to seven metrics that will comprise your dashboard. The rest are still useful and important, but they may not warrant monthly review.

Plan, Track, Analyze, Adjust

A four step process will help you get the most out of your monthly review:

Plan: Identify what to track. Congratulations, if you’ve gone through the spreadsheet exercise, above, you’ve completed this phase.

Track: Gathering some of the data is simple. Your commission statements provide a lot of data. If you use an agency management system like NextAgency critical information is one report or dashboard tile away.

Analyze: Once you have the data match it to your business plan metrics. Are you on track to meet your goals? Falling behind? If your goal is to sell 180 new policies this year, you need to average 15 sales per month. How’s it going? Agency management software can help here, too.

Adjust: You’re on track? Great. Keep doing what you’re doing, or better yet, do more of it. Falling behind? Unless there’s seasonality at play, it’s time to try something new. Perhaps an email campaign? Creating a drip marketing work flow?

It’s this monthly cycle of planning, tracking, analyzing, and adjusting that brings your business plan alive instead of a bunch of bytes on your hard drive or an 8-1/2 x 11 doorstop.

Does this sound like too much work? It’s actually something you do every time you get behind the wheel. You’re constantly monitoring gauges and progress towards your destination, then making appropriate adjustments. Driving your business plan is similar, it just requires less gas.

Lessons in Cross Checking from Fighter Pilots

Now what’s hard is flying a fighter jet. Pilot turned business consultant James Murphy defines the concept of cross checking in his book, Business is Combat. To simplify, pilots will start their scan of gauges on the most important one, the attitude indicator, which shows the plane’s position relative to the ground and the horizon. The pilot will then take a quick look at the altimeter, before refocusing on the attitude gauge. Then the pilot checks other outputs before returning to the attitude indicator.

Insurance agencies don’t face the complexity fighter pilots do, but they can adopt this concept. Software like NextAgency enables you to generate dozens of reports. Identify the most important one and make that one your go-to report, the equivalent of your attitude gauge.

Using your business plan keeps you on track.

A business plan tells you where you’re going. A dashboard tells you whether you’re getting there. Neither is sufficient on its own. Successful agencies don’t wait to find out they’ve been knocked off course. They check their status often enough to know when they’ve drifted, and they correct early enough to matter. It’s the difference being intentional can make.

Learn More:

You can learn how to better implement your plan and access other material to help you grow your business in the NextAgency Resource Center.

Author Information

This article is based on Trailblazed: Proven Paths to Sales Success by NextAgency’s co-founder, Alan Katz and on columns he wrote for Benefits Selling magazine.