Home Based Insurance AgencyWorking remotely as an insurance agent is simple and you can absolutely run a successful insurance agency out of your home. The days of meeting with clients in person has passed and you no longer need a brick and mortar location to write business. In fact, most insurance companies today no longer require you to have a physical location and will give appointments to agents who work out of their home if they can display potential for new applications. What they care about is how much you can write and can you provide the same level of service from your home as you can from a physical location – the answer to that is yes you can.

How To Ensure Success

Set standard business hours & stick to them

When you work from your home it is easy to get distracted, work on house projects, go out to lunch, play with the dog etc. The best advice I can give on this is stay focused during business hours. Working from home has perks, but if you’re constantly doing other things because you can, this will hurt your business and your growth. Treat your business hours like you would have from a typical office.

Dedicate space in your home to your business

When we relocated our business from an office park to a home office we made sure that our dedicated space felt like work and was not multi-functional. We had some space so we actually built a detached office at our home. This space was great to keep work and home life separated. When we moved, our new home had a large flex space downstairs with a closed door and two separate work areas for a total of about 400 sqft. It is a great office and offers quiet closed door office space. It feels like work and is only used for work. Best of all, you can deduct the dedicated space from your taxes. Talk to you accountant about this.

Use Google My Business the same way just with one important change

Many people fail to utilize Google My Business when they work from home because they don’t want to display their home address on the internet. Great news: You don’t have to display your address! A single checkbox in Google My Business will hide your physical address but still provide you with all the advantages that Google My Business offers!

How to:

  1. Access your claimed Google My Business page.
  2. Go to the Info section, then the address field. Click the Pencil.
  3. Go to the bottom of the address field and click, “Clear Address”
  4. Next, go to the Service Area just below the address. If this is blank, you can specify where you service, such as within 25 miles of Redmond, WA. Remember, local search is all about being local so don’t push out your service area too far. Hyper local is better than too broad.

That’s it. You’re all set.

Have a great website & service center

Consumers will always visit insurance agency websites and look around. Whether it is to check you out or just find your phone number be sure that your website makes a great first impression. Invest in a professionally built website that looks great on desktop and mobile. Your mobile version should be a responsive version of your website, not a separate mobile site. Google’s mobile first indexing means your mobile site is indexed first, so be sure it is the same as your desktop. This is called mobile responsive design.

Now that you have a great looking site, offer your existing customers a way to service their own policy when you’re closed. Not only will this free up your time, but it offers them something that other agencies aren’t doing. These service centers can allow customer to request driver or vehicle changes, request proof of insurance or access links to make payments online. This little bit of extra service is what will help you grow your home based insurance agency from home.

If you have questions or need help with growing your home based insurance agency we’d love to help. We’ve spent years helping agents market their businesses and be successful online.