4 Tips For Growing Your Small Business Book Faster
Main Street businesses don’t stand still, and neither does the challenge of placing their insurance coverage. A landscaper adds a plow truck. A cafe opens a second location. A consulting firm lands its first enterprise contract.
When your clients are growing and pivoting, knowing your carrier’s appetite before you submit is what gets you fast, confident quotes and positions you as the agent who’s always ready. Here’s how to identify which carriers are truly built for the businesses you write.
1) Get the inside scoop from your marketing representative. Marketing or territory reps have insights that appetite guides don’t capture. They know which classes are heating up, which ones are cooling down, and what’s happening in your local market. During your regular check-ins, ask specifically about key classes and how the carrier handles businesses in transition—a retailer adding an e-commerce channel, a contractor expanding into a new trade, a professional services firm bringing on its first employees. Your underwriter is another great resource, too.
A territory rep who can answer those questions confidently is working for a carrier that understands small business isn’t static. They’re hungry for growing businesses.
2) Track submission patterns to find your best fit. When you submit similar risks to multiple carriers, patterns emerge. One carrier consistently comes in competitive on retail properties. Another excels with professional service firms. A third moves fast on restaurant accounts. Track those patterns over time and not just as a single-moment snapshot. Whether you use a spreadsheet or artificial intelligence (AI)-powered software, the tool matters less than the discipline.
Consistent submission tracking reveals which carriers are truly built for the risks you write, including how they respond when a risk evolves year over year.
3) Explore carrier portals for ease of doing business. The best portals tell you what an appetite guide alone will not. A carrier that invests in its agent portal—with continual quoting enhancements, appetite-screening tools and robust coverage resources—is signaling that they understand how you work.
But look deeper: Seek out carriers with clear guidance on their target classes and the industries where they have real appetite and expertise. Then check whether they make it simple to build multiline accounts. Can you pair a flexible businessowners policy with small commercial auto and workers compensation?
A carrier serious about Main Street businesses should let you customize coverage to fit each business with minimal effort.
4) Prioritize carriers that invest in time-saving technology. The test of a carrier’s technology is simple: Does it give you time back? The best tools take work off your plate, making it easier to quote, service and grow accounts without adding complexity to your workflow.
That’s the thinking behind Liberty Mutual’s investment in AI-powered capabilities. These capabilities reduce admin work and create a faster path from submission to quote by more seamlessly moving information from emails and documents into the quoting system.
When businesses are moving quickly, technology like this helps you keep pace.
The Next Chapter Is Yours to Write
When you understand a carrier’s appetite, you’re ready to grow alongside your clients. Every small business has a next chapter, and the agents who earn long-term loyalty are the ones who are ready for what’s next.
Liberty Mutual has been writing small business for more than 100 years, and it’s built for the Main Street businesses at the heart of an agent’s book: 650-plus classes, new products and flexible coverages that grow as clients do. For agents whose books are full of next chapters, it’s a carrier worth a fresh look.
See what’s new at Liberty Mutual for small business.
