Virginia Agent Embraces Service with a Smile

Aristotle once remarked, “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” Nothing rings truer for Jennifer Richard, MSHA, ARM, RPLU, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Professional Risk Associates, who has paved a successful career path building relationships and challenging herself to achieve her goals—all while having a great time doing it.

Growing up in Richmond, Virginia, Jennifer’s exposure to the healthcare space came as part of the family. Her mother worked in pharmaceutical sales and her father had a solo podiatry practice. While in high school, she worked at her dad’s practice and a pivotal moment came one summer when the office manager left, and Jennifer wound up helping run the practice.

Driving Forces

“That pointed me in the direction of pursuing something in business. I love healthcare—the patient aspect and helping people—but I did not want to go into medicine. Maybe it was because of looking at all the feet,” Jennifer said jokingly. “But I really enjoyed working in the business side of the practice and decided that was the avenue I wanted to take for my future career.”

Jennifer was accepted to the business school at Virginia Tech and concentrated on marketing and sales. While learning from the business courses she took, Jennifer also gained practical exposure by interning at a large pharmaceutical sales company.

“Some of the projects they gave me were really fun, but I just couldn’t get into the big company feel. I felt like I wasn’t able to make much of a difference with my work due to all the corporate red tape. So, when I graduated college, I wanted to find somewhere smaller as a company where I was able to do just that—make a difference.”

As with most recent college grads, Jennifer searched and applied for jobs, and eventually landed a sales and marketing position with Professional Risk Associates.

“I started with Professional Risk in August 2001 and the first thing I did was become a licensed agent. As far as my sales role, we had a regulatory product called Practice Guard that the agency wanted me to sell. But by December, due to a hard market, a couple of major carriers pulled out of the market, and we saw rate increases of 30 to 40 percent. There were a lot of physicians who were looking for medical malpractice insurance alternatives, so nobody was interested in buying Practice Guard at the time. With the hard market rate increases, we just kept getting calls and we needed people to help service accounts, so I became an account manager.”

With the market flooded with prospects, Jennifer’s marketing instincts kicked in.

“We’re a small agency, so we all wear multiple hats,” Jennifer explained. “I split my time 50-50 between account management and marketing. One thing I was hired to do was create brand awareness with a consistent message for the agency. So I created a newsletter, reached out to every medical society and local healthcare organization, went to practice manager meetings, conferences, dinners—just network and do all I could to get out in front of doctors. I really did a lot of business development work trying to drive leads to the agency.”

Course of Action

From a big picture perspective, driving leads to Professional Risk Associates fulfilled the ultimate goal of the agency—to grow the business. But Jennifer wanted to grow as well.

“I was looking for ways to advance my career. I wanted to move up and the only way to do that was to sell. I always wanted to be in a sales role to experience that challenge. So I became a producer selling medical malpractice insurance while still managing the marketing side of things. And that was a natural fit because if you’re out their selling in the marketplace, you can also accomplish your marketing objectives. You can’t do business development without being in the marketplace.”

For the next 10 years, Jennifer continued this simultaneous work, and took more of a strategic approach to sales.

“What I was looking to do was network more and build programs. I was putting together different programs with organizations that would drive leads to the agency. And then once I started building up accounts, the real fun began. You really get to be creative when you start assisting your clients in managing their medical malpractice program. I love being challenged and learning new things, and it’s exciting when you’re involved with the larger accounts—just getting into all the nitty gritty, the complexities of medical malpractice, and helping them navigate the more complicated parts of insurance.”

And it isn’t just the insurance side that Jennifer and the agency are looking to help clients with; in fact, insurance takes a back seat at times to another form of support.

“Our agency is very innovative and forward-thinking,” Jennifer said. “We work closely with our carriers’ risk management teams and have created tools that provide practices with guidance on reducing their risk. We want to educate our clients, not just on medical malpractice, but all the things that impact their practice. Our docs are very busy, and we need to get them the tools and information they need to protect themselves. So when I think about Professional Risk, I consider us more as a healthcare organization that sells insurance. We look at helping practices mitigate their risk and we just happen to sell insurance—that’s the way we do it.”

Gratification

In her current role as Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Jennifer still helps manage some of the agency’s larger accounts, and she continues to oversee the sales and marketing for Professional Risk Associates, where the agency is evaluating methods of using technology to aid with both servicing and the sales process.

“Ease of doing business is something that’s important to everyone,” Jennifer said. “We’re rolling out products that will make our sales team more efficient and make it easier for our clients and carriers to work with us. And going back to my business development roots, we’re going to leverage technology to drive leads to Professional Risk.”

Jennifer has now also taken on the responsibility of being a mentor to the sales staff.

“I spend a good amount of time training the next generation. We have six producers and three of them joined within the past few years, so they’re still learning the ropes. The mentoring—it’s different, it’s new—and when you see someone truly appreciate what you have taught them, it makes it a lot of fun. It’s the same way with my clients. At the end of the day, when you enjoy the work that you do and can see you’re making a positive impact on others, it’s truly rewarding knowing you are making a difference.”

This article originally appeared in the November 2021 issue of The Agent’s Advocate, a publication of The Doctors Company.