You need to identify your markets, starting with no more than four categories. This guarantees that staff members remain very busy and produce much activity, but also ensures a flat or only low level of profitability. Generally, we tend to associate with people who are like ourselves. Additionally, you need to give your salespeople time and opportunities to do low-risk practice asking for referrals. In the life insurance industry this is second nature.
Referrals are a key strategy for an agency to have consistently high customer loyalty and retention.
I think this has not been well understood because its economic benefits are rarely clearly laid out. Referred customers have the lowest acquisition costs. What they uncovered was surprising, even startling. That is an expensive way to do business. It is also the norm.