Consulting Services

At iQ Consulting, we lead with our leaders. Our founder delivers all of our agency consulting services. His personal relationships and experience working with the top agencies and brokers in North America uniquely qualifies him to consult on best practices and growth acceleration. These relationships provide an infinite reservoir of business acumen, experience, and insights to draw from to help implement actions, and benchmark results against industry high-performance standards. A shared reservoir of knowledge, experience, and peak performance is what you get when you work with iQ Consulting.

Assessment

We begin with a thorough assessment of your agency’s structure, culture, financial strength and talent pool. We invest the time required to get to know you, your people, your culture and your goals. We evaluate every aspect your agency’s sales culture, including your production talent, sales process, sales management, mentorship and sales support.Once we understand who, and where you are, we work with you to develop an approach that’s right for your agency to take you where you want to go. Our experience working with high performance Producers, Sales Managers and Executive Teams lends great perspective to this process, and leads to insightful, accurate and appropriate advice

  • At iQ Consulting, We believe strongly in the benefits of building a total agency sales culture where everyone supports the sales process. Critical to this construction process is identifying and assembling a team of drivers, executors and supporters of cultural change. Our talent assessment and optimization approach uncovers specific talent within your agency, positions them strategically, and leverages their talent in concert to accelerate change and growth.
  • With the proper team in place, we can begin to tackle the cultural, intellectual and skill based impediments to organic growth and develop a sound business plan that helps us effectively navigate the road to success by mapping out our current position, our destination and the most efficient and profitable path to take.
  • Navigating unfamiliar territory without a map, compass or guide is akin to running a profitable, growing agency in the absence of a meaningful business plan. Both are sure recipes for a long, and stressful journey. The later is one of the leading causes of underperformance, and agency consolidation.
  • At IQ Consulting we help guide our clients efficiently into accelerated organic growth and profitability by developing and implementing meaningful, strategic business plans. Each year we facilitate dozens of agency and individual producer planning sessions for our clients.
  • Our comprehensive approach to business planning gives proper consideration to your market place, agency culture, talent pool and growth goals. Because Cash flow drives agency health and vitality, Cash flow is also drives our motivation and approach to business planning. iQ Consulting’s holistic, profit driven approach to planning focuses agency talent and resources on accelerating organic growth to create significant gains on Cash Flow, Return on Investment, Shareholder Value and Owner Income. Real world planning for the real world.
  • A plan without execution is just a dream. Our plans include concrete actions, assignment of responsibilities, timetables and periodic reviews to monitor progress, and create accountability. Change is inevitable, so we participate in the review process, to ensure the plan adjusts to reflect change within your agency.
  • Our job as consultants job is to help you maximize cash flow. The goal is always finding greater cash flow through efficiency, growth, productivity and optimization. Some of the changes we recommend are easy, others are difficult. No pain no gain. Very few Consulting firms focus on book optimization because it requires tough decisions on the part of owners and producers. Every iQ Consulting Client that participates in book optimization sees:
    -Increases profit margins on small business of 20-30%
    -Significant high end book growth from stagnant seasoned producers
    -Significant increases in average revenue per new business relationship.
    -Significant recapture and realignment of service capacity from marginal accounts re-tasked to key accounts impacting retention.
    -A profit center that acts as an incubation chamber growing new production and service talent.
  • It’s a delicate negotiation process that requires proof and promise of significant reward for short term sacrifice. No one does it as well as iQ Consulting, because no one does it as often, and few have gone through the process with their own books and can give testimony to the rewards. We have and we can. Once the optimization process takes hold, we’ll help you deploy the cash flow it creates to achieve your growth and profitability goals.
  • How many carriers do you need to be viable and competitive in your marketplace? Who is your ideal carrier partner, and what qualities make them a true partner? How many of your carriers are minor players in your agency? How many were signed as a defensive move, or because they are, or were the low price leader. How is your carrier mix affecting profitability, and relationships with key partnerships? How do we answer these questions?
  • At iQ Consulting, our carrier relationship assessment process evaluates carrier relationships based upon a thorough assessment of needs, wants and detailed description of what your executive team believes an ideal carrier partner brings to the table. We use these factors along with a matrix of critical components as a litmus test to measure and evaluate need, compatibility and long term viability of all of your carrier contracts. As always, this process is driven by the goal of finding greater cash flow through efficiency, growth, productivity and optimization.
  • The best practice model we subscribe to is an optimized carrier mix populated with fewer generalist with broad appetites who compete and win in your marketplace year in and year out, and select carriers with niche focus who dovetail into agency specific focus, and a judicious use of brokers and excess / surplus players to fill the gap. We understand the risk/reward of culling carriers, and we’ll be clear on addressing both, but the truth is, most agency’s simply have too many mouths to feed.
  • This a direct result of the agency sales culture and the inability of agents to sell and retain business on value, not price. Almost every carrier contract decision made has pricing at its roots. Improving the sales culture greatly reduces the need for duplication in carriers. The results of carrier optimization are significant both from a operational cost savings and from an income and cash flow perspective.
  • Contingency optimization is a direct and extension and logical result of carrier optimization. Very few agency’s consciously marry carriers and clients to maximize contingencies. Even fewer consultants will touch the subject. Google “contingency optimization” and you’ll see what we mean. Why?
  • Simply put, it’s not easy to do, 2nd optimization cannot be done at the expense or to the detriment of the client. Yet, contingency income ranks high on the list of on of revenue sources that generate cash flow and owner income, carrier contingencies rank Historically, the average agency owner has missed out on significant cash flow and personal income by not investing the intellectual capital to uncover, understand and take advantage of contingency opportunities. Why?
  • Contingency optimization is a dynamic, fluid and complex business activity influenced by uncontrollable factors with significant risk / reward ramifications. It’s like gambling, without knowing the odds. Still, the very best in our business consistently enjoy revenue as a percentage of commission from contingencies 10% higher than average agency. The bigger gamble is leaving contingencies to chance by not trying to optimize. It begins with carrier mix optimization and ends with constant and consistent direction and monitoring of policy and premium placement.
  • The middle involves heavy lifting in the form of *contract analysis and comparison, *book analysis, *historical loss experience, *contract review and negotiation, *book of business optimization *Risk improvement, *producer communication and discipline, and effective use of excess/surplus markets to prevent contingency bleed from unprofitable accounts, or accounts in risk improvement mode. A concerted effective effort at contingency optimization will increase revenue as a percentage of commissions by 10% or more.