“I’m in charge of developing this territory, so I’m due a little respect”…
Hmmmmmm…this was an email I received near the end of the day after an exchange over our attempts to get a carrier to quote a piece of business….the lack of respect was apparently due to one of our staff questioning the need for information that had already been supplied.
I sent the person involved an appropriate response..then got to thinking….
We (the agency) are the customer….and this person had just been in our office asking me to send them more business….I explained that we had other carriers that did the same thing and that we generally felt we got better results from those carriers… “well, why not give us a try again…we’ve changed”… Okay, so we did…but when an insurance company representative (Company Guy) acts as though they are doing an agency a favor by writing business for them, it would seem to me that things are a bit backward…then I asked myself if we ever treat our clients that way… You know…. like it’s 4:45 pm on a Friday and someone comes in and needs coverage…. Do we act like somehow were doing them a favor?… I sure hope not…the most difficult part of this entire equation to understand is that at the end of the day, it’s all about money….and here is one entity trying to give money to another entity… and the “other” entity positions themselves as though they are going to make it as difficult as they can to make that happen….
Well, I reasoned that we need to be sure we treat our customers like customers ALL the time…and as for the Company Guy, he’ll be off to other territories or other carriers in due time…the industry has a way of filtering those whose egos tend to get in the way of progress..meanwhile, we have at least four other carriers we can work with…
Earlier that day, I had a visit from another Company Gal… one I like very much..her and her company…they are the ones that were so competitive a few years ago, I referenced yesterday…. She apparently felt we were going to wind up trading punches in the parking lot over her companies strategy…of raising prices to get their profit picture in line… Well, I don’t fight with girls….mainly because they always win one way or the other… and secondly, there is no reason.. she didn’t create the strategy that got this company where they are today….and there isn’t much that can be done.. I emphasized that the agency MUST get to a profit sharing premium level before the end of this year..one way or the other…meanwhile, I have to move a nice account away from them to one of our other companies because of their “pricing strategy”… I pointed out that it can’t be much of a strategy to chase profitable business out the door because you have so many other accounts losing money…I think my friend agrees…. off she went and so we move forward….this company in time will get itself back on track..and they will be an important part of our future…we hope…
The Mrs was especially sweet last night…dinner waiting, music on and a glass of a nice Malbec waiting as I took Miss Lily (the One Eyed and now aging Lhasa Apso) for her early evening walk…and end to a busy day… and a lesson learned once again in how to treat or how not to treat a customer…
