You Can’t Scale Chaos – Why Agencies Need Written SOPs

I’d like to shine some light on a little secret in the insurance world. A lot of independent agencies are winging it. If I had a dollar for every time I asked an agency owner, "If I was a new hire, what resources would you give me to teach me how to do my job?" and got a version of “we don’t really have anything written down” in response, I’d have enough to insure a yacht.

Nine out of ten agencies don’t have any written standard operating procedures (SOPs). No guides. No videos. No flowcharts. Nothing. Just a "figure it out as you go" approach that relies on tribal knowledge and instructions discussed over cubicle walls or via Teams.

This is a major problem. Your producers can’t just be told to sell, and your CSRs can’t be told to service without clarity on how to do that efficiently and consistently. The lack of defined processes leads to confusion, inconsistent customer experiences, missed follow-ups, and chaos when someone takes a vacation or leaves the agency.

There’s no shortage of reasons why this has happened, and I think the three most common agency origin stories are likely to blame.

1. The Producer-turned-Owner: They struck out on their own, sold like crazy to survive, and built an agency with duct tape and prayers. Now, three years in, they’re profitable but disorganized. They’re still flying by the seat of their commission checks.
2. The Legacy Agency: They’ve been doing it this way since fax machines were useful. If you ask why something is done a certain way, the answer is a shrug and a "because we always have."
3. The Former Captive Agent: In the captive world, everything was decided for them. Now that they’re independent, they have options and freedom... and no idea how to build structure from scratch.

Without structure, agencies struggle to implement technology because you can’t automate chaos. You can’t train a new hire to be efficient when every process lives in someone’s head. Staff revert to "the old way" because it feels safer and more predictable.

If you don’t have written SOPs, you are handcuffing your agency's ability to grow, innovate, and provide consistent service. It might feel like you’re saving time by not writing things down, but you're setting your agency up to hit a ceiling.

It’s time to fix that.

Check out Blog #2, where we’ll talk about the actual benefits of building SOPs.