I have no choice is a common sentiment among businesses: “The competition is doing it, so we have to do it.”

The insurance industry is ripe with traditions that agencies feel they must follow because “it’s always been done that way and really, how can we effectively compete if we’re doing something different?”

If you believe that you must follow suit with things your competitors are doing or offering, then you’re letting your competitors determine your business model and shape your company values.

Following the competition puts a limit on creative thinking and implementing any innovative practices in your business.

If you don’t stand for something or you try to stand for everything, you actually stand for nothing

Nothing - this is how the buyer sees a company who is generically the same as every other competing company.

Being the same, saying the same things, offering the same things, and maintaining the same model will not get you farther ahead. In fact, you will risk going backward because you’ll have to work harder and harder at doing the same things since there is no point of differentiation.

Buyers need a solid way to make a good decision for their business. When they look at a group of quotes from a seemingly homogenous group of agencies, there’s nothing but rather superficial reasons for making a decision. 

Which spreadsheet do they like better? Who do they like better? Who might offer better service after being hired?

There’s nothing substantial to use. And how solid of a business decision is that?!

Now it’s common thought to have a collection of products and services to offer as a point of differentiation, but the problem is that those same things can also be acquired and offered by any other agency. This is not seen as a point of differentiation in the eyes of the client. Instead, what they see is a collection of products that they can get from you or any of the others.

Take a stand and stand for something your clients would find valuable

Counter to this traditional thinking, it’s those agencies that deviate from the traditional model that are the ones who are seeing great success.

If you find that you’re competing on the same things as your competitors, then it’s time to step out and create your own category.

No one said you have to run your agency like everyone else. No one said you have to offer the same products and services as everyone else. No one said you have to work with all businesses regardless of size or industry.

Create a specialized process for analyzing a client business. Define a niche market in size, location, or industry. Create a specialized culture that delivers unique results to your clients (think Zappos or Umpqua Bank). Focus on a core set of services that you do exceptionally well and become known as the go-to source in your market (or even nationally).

If you create a new category, then the buyer now has a new way of judging the competition – who can offer the same thing as you?

Those who are truly finding a way to make themselves different will be dominating the market, making it even more difficult to continue competing with the traditional model.

Photo by John Paul Rodriguez.

@wendykeneipp

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Providing great client service is a claim that nearly every insurance agency makes. Being able to provide that great service, versus just promising it, is dependent on a number of things being in place.

It begins with a definition of what great service means to your company.  And that is dependent on what you would like the client to experience every time they have an interaction with your company. Which is dependent on…well, let’s just take a look at how this works.

Defining the company

• Starting from the top, the purpose of your agency must be clearly defined so everyone knows why he or she works so hard every day. What end are their efforts trying to achieve?

If it’s just to put more money in the owner’s pocket, then it’s not a very good motivator for treating clients well or knowing what to help them with beyond answering their questions. If it’s to help clients better manage their HR or risk management programs, then that’s a different focus altogether. Now answering questions with that “better management” end goal in mind, means they can also proactively make suggestions to the client or to the account team on how to better help the client achieve those goals.

• Next, the agency values must be clearly defined. Values are used to help shape and direct behaviors. When the values are known, everyone is able to use a consistent method of treating clients and making decisions. Without defined values, everyone is left to use their own set of decision-making criteria, which might not produce the results the agency expects.

• Everyone needs to clearly understand the cultural expectations of the agency and leadership needs to actively reinforce it. It’s important to promote/reward appropriate behaviors and reprimand ones that don’t reinforce the cultural expectations. Without this, the culture becomes a fractured grouping of behaviors and does not promote consistency across the organization.

Some say you can’t define a culture; it develops naturally. To some degree culture is a naturally developing personality of any organization, but just like raising children, behavioral expectations should be put in place to be the guiderails for good decision-making.

• Now that your company values and behaviors are defined, describe what you want a client to experience when they interact with your company. We have to define what great service looks like in order to deliver on it.

• Determine what processes and procedures must be in place in order to deliver on this experience. This means having the right people performing the roles that play to their strengths, and they’re given responsibility and authority to make decisions and deliver on good service. After all, you’ve defined your purpose, values, culture, and client experience – they should be well equipped now to know how to make great and consistent decisions that reflect the best intentions of the agency.

Follow through on the details

• Once you’ve determined what the roles are to effectively deliver on the service you’ve defined, there will be some training gaps to fill in. Maybe it’s for technical skills, new content skills, proficiency of tools, or even good personal relations. Consistency in training will help reinforce consistent behaviors.

Finally…

• Leadership must be regularly communicating and reinforcing company purpose, values, and expected behaviors. Using multiple forms of communication is important, but even more so is demonstrating it through behaviors and actions.

And as you create these collective definitions, be sure to take an honest assessment of where your customer service really is today – is everyone in the agency actively working to Wow! clients and make them exceptionally happy? Or is it a more reactionary style in answering client questions and really just meeting the minimum expectations of customer service?

Without clear company definitions and ongoing communication so everyone on staff knows it as well as the leader, the “great service” claim is sitting on pretty uncertain ground.

Based on individual life experiences, everyone has his or her own ideas of what “good”, “best”, or “exceptional” looks like. Don’t leave the success of your company to chance or hope that your definitions match those of each of your staff.

Photo by Seattle Municipal Archives.

@wendykeneipp

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Kevin Trokey identified as a leader in the St. Louis business community.

April 30, 2012 - St. Louis, MO - Kevin Trokey, CEO of Benefits Growth Network, has been selected for an esteemed local business award. The St. Louis Small Business Monthly has chosen Trokey to be recognized as a part of their feature “100 St. Louisans to Know to Succeed in Business”.

According to the feature article by editor Jeremy Nulik, their motivation for creating this list is that they want their readers “to get as much success as you will allow into your life and knowing the right person at the right time increases your probability of success.”

Trokey expresses his appreciation to the St. Louis Small Business Monthly and the community. “I am flattered and honored to be selected by my peers as a role model in the community. Helping people build better businesses is both my passion and my business. It makes me very happy to know that people feel I’m successfully filling that role.”

All 100 were honored at a special luncheon on March 14, 2012 at the St. Charles Convention Center.

Benefits Growth Network, based out of St. Louis, MO, is an international membership-based consulting firm specializing in growth strategies for independently owned insurance agencies and brokerages. Through the exclusive Benefits Growth System™, members get individualized planning, coaching, training, use of proprietary systems and access to a network of thriving insurance agencies. For more information about BGN, visit www.benefitsgrowthnetwork.com.

We talked recently about managing the changes insurance and benefits agencies are making as a result of the changing business model. One of the questions we hear a lot in these discussions is “Whose responsibility is that?”

And it’s a good question.  One that needs to be explored within your own structure.  We can give you some ideas, but we can’t answer it specifically because each agency is as unique as the people within it. You might already be set up to deliver in some of these areas, or you might need to bring in new people, reallocate resources, or hire some outside firms for support.

One thing is for certain – you’re going to have to make some changes.

As buyers and their needs become more complicated, delivering on this new level of sophistication requires more people in the agency to take on an active role in acquiring and supporting new clients.

Let’s start with the producer role

In this new model, we need to take time to think about how the producer’s job has changed, and we need to evaluate what that change looks like for them, for the client, and for the agency. Producers are sales people who are good at working with clients and making promises. They may not be so good at delivering on all those promises, especially when we have a growing repertoire of services, and nor should they be.

Think about it like this. When you’re in a restaurant, does the waiter make the food? No, they are the liaison between the customer and the kitchen.  And they are experts, hopefully, at being that relationship person and the translator between the two. The chef is the expert at making the food and the bartender is the expert at making that drink. The waiter makes sure you have an excellent all around experience.

We need to look at insurance and benefits agencies in the same way. Producers should not be doing it all themselves. We’ve moved beyond that model where you can have a do-it-yourself production staff. It takes a team.

Let’s look at some areas within the agency where you might need to add or restructure

Marketing – Being the first point of contact with the prospect through marketing activities and messaging. Having a point person filling this role is an important part of the new model. This person needs to be a very strong connector between the leadership team (to help create the message) and the sales team (to ensure proper delivery of the message).  This person should also be creative and motivated to create a strong internal and external marketing program.

Prospecting – Bringing in new revenue should be top priority for the agency, and should be given appropriate attention and resources.  Prospecting efforts should be supported by strong sales leadership, which helps drive the efforts of the producers by providing accountability, time management planning, regular sales development meetings, and account strategy help.

Client Service – What the client receives needs to reach beyond reactive policy service issues. Additional services, unrelated to the policies, need to be delivered to clients, and people with expertise should be responsible for that delivery. This may be people with special areas of expertise in an area like wellness, it may be someone to help coordinate the delivery of third party providers, or it may be internal folks who deliver a variety of solutions around HR or risk management.

Traditionally, agencies have relied on carriers for a lot of their business support services like marketing materials and activities, prospecting lists, and they’ll even participate in team selling efforts and offer some client programs like wellness or safety.

Sometimes these are the right resources, but you also need to be open to partnering with other solution providers and creating some of these things internally.

Creating the right structure will take some time to figure out what works best. As you work through it, I highly recommend you first create a vision of what you would ideally like the customer to experience when working with your company.

Start from the ideal, and then create a structure to support it. Don’t limit yourself to thinking about what your structure or team currently looks like. Companies can be reorganized and people can be trained.

Photo by Marina Kuperman Villatoro.

@wendykeneipp

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