The Craftsmanship of an Insurance Agent

I despise being called a vendor.? That’s not the way I see myself.

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Vendor connotes that I am replaceable, that I dispense a product that can be shopped and compared against several similar products.

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But that’s not the way I view myself and it’s not how I want to be viewed.? Allow me to digress for a moment to illustrate…

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There are many parts of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs that linger in my mind years after I read it.? He was a hippie that didn’t believe in deodorant, for one thing.? Early in life, Steve Jobs believed that if he ate nothing but apples his body would emit only good smells.? His coworkers begged to differ.

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More importantly, Steve Jobs was a fanatical craftsman.

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Steve Jobs obsessed over customer accessibility.? He required that his products be intuitive, as well as aesthetically pleasing.? He studied architecture and design and incorporated these ideas in the look and feel of his product.? He obsessed about these details so much that insisted the circuit boards inside the phones be beautifully organized and aesthetically pleasing.? If anyone was going to open his product to see the design, he wanted the person to know that every single detail of his product had been carefully considered and curated.

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He got this from his adopted father.? His dad made cabinets.? And when his dad made cabinets, he insisted the back of the cabinets that faced the wall were to be as beautiful as the front.

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When it first came out, the iPhone was incomparable.? A beautiful piece of craftsmanship.

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The reality check for myself, and for everyone else – if I want to be viewed as more than a vendor, then my work needs to be a piece of fanatical craftsmanship.

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As Bernoulli said about Isaac Newton after viewing an elegant solution to math equation:

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“We recognize the lion by its claw”

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As an insurance agent, here are the ways that I recognize other lions:

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1.???? Risk Management Design and Business Advice

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I’m going to be philosophical for a second about why insurance brokers exist.? After all, people can buy insurance online.? If they want to be their own broker, then godspeed.

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Insurance brokers exist to stop clients from blowing themselves up.

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People blow up by taking on more risk than they can afford.?

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When people invest, they do this by taking on excessive leverage.? They create a scenario where if things don’t work out perfectly, everything falls down like a house of cards.

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It’s the same deal with insurance.? Businesses blow up when they self-insure a risk they didn’t know existed or couldn’t afford in the first place.

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The most successful insurance brokers intimately know lots of other businesses just like yours.? They’ve seen successes and failures.? They can recognize good management, good systems, and good operators.

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They’ve also seen when things go horribly wrong.

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A lion has helped their client prepare for numerous catastrophic scenarios.? Maybe the client hasn’t implemented every single policy and procedure, but they are well educated about the locations of all the landmines.

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2.?????????????? Policy Design

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It seems obvious that an insurance broker should be good at insurance.? This is not always the case.

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Many brokers are generalists.? They’ve got clients in industries where they have very little knowledge or experience.? It’s immediately obvious to me when an agent is out of their depth.

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Remember Steve Jobs’ circuit board?? Every wire is exactly where it’s supposed to be.? It’s aesthetically beautiful and carefully designed.

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With an insurance program, a lion has carefully considered each part of the program and their implications at a time of claim.? They have done the background research on a variety of topics.? Examples include how much it would cost to rebuild the structures.? They have discussed the financial impact on net income that would occur if a location were to shut down.? They have discussed the financial impact if there were a cyber breach or an accusation of wrongful hiring or firing.

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The Lion has a way they do things.? The circuit board is carefully considered and designed.

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3.?????????????? Marketing Design

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Offering the best value to a client requires careful consideration of the products offered by the agency.? Speaking from experience, this is an active process that is executed over a long time.? An agency never stops examining the insurance marketplace to determine whether they have the right insurance company products to serve their clients.

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And then, once they have those products, they have a plan on when and how often they will present these products to their clients.

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It’s impossible to quote every account every year.??

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In fact, quoting an account too often will have a detrimental effect on the customer’s reputation in the marketplace.? Underwriters are people too.? They want to know that if they provide a competitive solution they will win.? If they see the same file on their desk every year, they will ignore it.

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At the same time, never providing competitive solutions is either an indication of a lack of expertise, or just plain laziness.

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The Lion has a long-term plan strategy regarding which products they offer and when they offer them.??Their customer knows the plan, and cosigns with the plan.

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4.?????????????? Service Design

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Every industry has unique insurance needs.??

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Honestly, the people I work with just get tired of explaining their business.

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They get tired of explaining “What is a sober home?” “What is an ASAM certification?”? “What does it mean to be CARF accredited?”

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It’s a breath of fresh air to talk to insurance brokers and customer service representatives who speak their language.

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As I said earlier, many agents are generalists.? How can you ensure that the customer service team knows this industry if there is little experience serving that industry???

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The Lion has a customer service team with tenure and industry knowledge.

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5.?????????????? Relationship management

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From my perspective, this is where a lot of national agencies fall flat.? To put it more nicely, it’s the reason why small to medium-sized insurance brokers exist and are still needed, even though there are fewer of us than ever before.

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How can a publicly traded, national agency, have a personal relationship with a mom-and-pop shop on main street?? It’s impossible.

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Relationship management is intentional.? It happens over a long time.? It happens by being a good listener and solving problems.

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The Lion has a strategy for staying in contact.

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Conclusion:

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I imagine that most people would look at what I do and have no idea or appreciation for its art and its design.? That’s okay.? If I looked at Steve Jobs's circuit board, it would have been pearls thrown before swine.

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But you should take my word for it.?

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There are vendors and there are craftsmen.

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If you want a craftsman, take some time to understand the craft.?

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