Story Time 

Years ago, we took our nine-year-old son to LegoLand. He was more than a fanatic–he was a madman. Always building things. Mostly with Legos. 

As soon as we got inside the park, he made a beeline for the greatest thing he had ever seen: a park bench made out of Lego blocks. 

We tried in vain to persuade him that there was better stuff further inside the park. But to no avail. Probably blew 20 minutes looking at that bench before he reluctantly gave up the bench for the promise of something more valuable. 

  

Adults Do That All The Time. 

Especially when we’re running businesses, we get obsessed with what’s right in front of us and don’t pause to go find the good stuff. 

That’s an expensive mistake since most of the high-value things we can do are strategic, not tactical. Until we can let go of “the way we do things around here,” we can’t see what’s in the rest of the park. 

But what’s in there is high-margin, aggressive, sustainable growth that you can experience as a business owner. If you plan to own your agency for a decade or more, what’s inside the park will make the difference between getting by and fulfilling your dreams. 

Here are 3 major ways to improve your lifetime earnings from your business by millions of dollars. 

 

1. More Recurring Revenue Per Customer

You work hard to get new customers. And you pay a lot. Your Customer Acquisition Cost is probably at least $300 on average. 

(To figure out your CAC, divide all your Sales & Marketing costs by your total number of new customers.) 

If those customers are paying $1000 in premium and you earn a 10% commission, that’s $100 per year. But say you win both of their cars, their house, and a life policy with a total annual commission of $400. That’s like having 3 more customers with a fraction of the hassle. 

Want a rough gauge of how you are doing? Calculate your Policies Per Household like this: 

Policies In Force / Households = PPH. 

(Of course, not all policies are created equal, but over your entire book, this will matter.)  

Anything north of 3 means your business is doing a great job at earning your customers additional business. Probably your customers and your employees are happier than at most agencies, and your profit margins are way better. 

 

2. More Years of Revenue Per Customer.

Using the previous example, a $400 customer gives you 4x more annual revenue than a $100 customer.  

What’s better than that? A $400 customer for 20 years versus a $100 customer for 5 years. Here’s the math: 

• $100 * 5 years = $500.  

• $400 * 20 years = $8,000. 

That’s 16x. 

Moreover, if you subtract your Customer Acquisition Cost of, say, $300, you end up with this:  

• $100 * 5 years = $500 – $300 = $200 
• $400 * 20 years = $8,000 – $300 = $7700 

Now it’s 38x. 

Let’s extrapolate: To generate $1M in lifetime commissions, you’d need:  

• 5,000 of Customer A or 
• 130 of Customer B. 

What if you could turn 130 of your Customer As into Customer Bs? You’d have to earn it, of course, by getting to know them and giving them real value. 

Would it be worth sacrificing some of your prospecting budget? Some of your hamster wheel time? 

 

3. More Value From Employees.

You secretly know that your business is running you, not vice versa, right? You frequently wonder how you can get rid of your busy work do do more valuable things, yes? (Every business owner does if they want to grow.) 

If you could do something more effective with your time, we’d call that better “leverage.” 

Guess what, your employee’s time is probably massively underleveraged. They’re doing whatever tasks they’ve been told to do. 

But their time is certainly not all optimized. Their most valuable work probably takes 3-4 hours per day. The rest of their time is spent completing inefficient tasks, using inefficient processes and tools, trying to look busy, attending meetings with no outcomes, checking boxes, etc. 

Probably they’re so accustomed to it that they don’t even realize it anymore. 

What if you could help them stop doing low-value work? What if 3 people could do the work of 4? Huge win! Here’s why: 

1. You’d be able to afford better talent. 
2. They’d be more satisfied. 
3. They’d innovate and solve problems better. 
4. They’d be more likely to stay longer. 
5. They’d take much better care of customers. 

By the way, we’ve proven this to be true at Client Focus. We constantly innovate to help our employees produce more value–for the company, the customers, and themselves. 

The result is happy customers who keep using us, month-in and month-out.