The following article was derived from a presentation given at the ASCnet TENcon meeting, which was held last October in Orlando, Fla.)

Several years ago, we worked in an insurance agency whose owner began every staff meeting by asking, "What kind of organization are we?" We all learned quickly that it was a sales organization. Think that's a given? Not necessarily so.

Although sales are an agency's lifeblood, not every agency is a total sales operation. Our company is a boutique consulting, valuation and investment banking firm specializing in the insurance brokerage industry. We provide sales management training, operational and financial consulting, business planning, perpetuation planning and various other services for our clients. We studied agencies and met with our own sales-management team to identify the common traits of high-growth sales agencies and learn what really drives their new-business sales. We're going to share with you what we learned and encourage you to adopt some new practices to make your agency a total sales operation.