The last few years have been interesting, turbulent times. Lots of employee turnover, inflation, riots, fires, hurricanes, pandemic… what else?
The one thing that you can depend on staying the same is change and I’ll never be able to offer a sufficient explanation of why that is. But one thing I’ve learned is that it is more important right now than ever to truly know your business; to have a Craftsman Mindset as described in the book So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport.
How can you have a Craftsman Mindset, which is one of deep understanding of the work you do and the value it provides to others? Here are my thoughts that I would like to share with you: know your Product, Platforms, and Processes—which I call the Three Ps.
The First P: Know Your Product
Knowing your product simply means having a great understanding of what it is you do—whatyou are selling, servicing, solving for, advising on, fixing, recommending, building, or consulting on. Know how to do what you’re supposed to do.
The first time I heard the phrase “know your product” was when I worked for a sporting goods store in the shoe department. How was I supposed to know what to advise potential customers to buy? Know the product. If you have wide feet, try New Balance. Narrow feet? Go with Nikes… or maybe it was Reebok.
In the insurance world, knowing your product means understanding the insurance contract that you are selling and servicing from a high level down to the details, so you know how to insure someone or something properly.
Knowing your product:
- Makes you helpful to others and allows you to guide them to what is best for them.
- Saves you massive amounts of time by reducing the back-and-forth.
- Builds trust. Have you ever talked to a salesman that seemed to make up stuff on the spot to simply close a deal?
How can you know your product? There are a lot of great educational organizations out there. I like the National Alliance’s Certified Insurance Counselor (CIC) program, which has the most practical education I know of.
If you don’t want to pay for a course, next time a client asks you if something is covered, open up the policy and try to answer it. Start with the insuring agreement, then go to the exclusions and the definitions.
The Second P: Know Your Platform
By platform, I mean your tools, whether digital or physical. In an insurance agency, our tools are mostly digital.
In your agency, your primary platform is your agency management system. That’s the one you should know the best. I’ve heard that most agencies understand and use about 20% of what their AMS can do for them. That’s a tragedy of epic proportions. Can you imagine the time and money you would save if you knew how to properly use your AMS? How many shiny objects would you be able to resist the urge to buy if you knew your AMS could already do it for free? You’re already paying for 100% of the AMS–why not get your money’s worth?
After your AMS, you should probably focus on learning your Microsoft 365 or Google account apps. Imagine the relief you’d have if you could get Outlook to stop auto-correcting CNA to CAN. Imagine how you could close a Workers Comp deal because you could visually show your prospect the real net rate using Excel.
There are so many platforms that are underutilized and misunderstood that I can’t write a articlelong enough to explain.
One last one: Adobe Acrobat. Simply knowing how to use the navigation tools to zoom in and out and skipping through pages is not just a massive time saver, but it will also prevent your index finger from blistering up from all that scrolling on your mouse. Maybe even more important is learning how to get Adobe to recognize text and search for key terms using OCR(text recognition).
The Third P: Know Your Process
What do I mean by process? It is a planned-out way of doing things in a repeatable, consistent manner. It is a documented system so everyone knows how to do it. It tells you how and when you’re going to use your platforms. It tells you when to do what, so you don’t have to rely on your memory.
Processes ensure a decaf heavy cream latte from Starbucks tastes the same in Orlando as it does in Omaha.
In my office today, we have the Sales Process, the Renewal Process, the Data Clean Up Process, the Proactive Expiration Process, and many more.
Not only do documented processes save time, create consistency, and reduce errors, but they make it easier to train new hires. Start them out learning a single process. Once they’ve mastered that, add in another, and so on.
This third P especially applies to the ambitious type of agent. Having written processes will help you scale your business much quicker, whether organically or through acquisitions.
I don’t want to be fatalistic, but I often feel like the small insurance agency is slowly moving to a position where we won’t be able to afford to operate without clear written processes. There’s simply too much competition from all over the world easily accessible through a Google search that is ready to capitalize on your mistakes and inconsistencies. The agencies that have clear understandings of their own best practices are the ones that will continue to exist.
Where to Start
There are of course many other important things to know in order to run a successful agency. I haven’t mentioned anything about sales, marketing, human resources, or any type of administration. So why focus on just these three Ps? That’s because I believe these are important for everyone in the company to know. These are the three core categories of competency that everyone who works in the agency should start with.
You may be wondering where to get started learning. I would suggest that product knowledge is the first P to work on. Having a good understanding of your particular line of business (auto, home, workers comp, EPLI, etc) is key. Your clients trust that you are selling them what they need – don’t let them down! Knowing your platforms is second, starting with HawkSoft. Go to HUG and other HawkSoft-sponsored events. Attend webinars, trade shows, and other organized events. Then focus on Process. Creating and using written-out processes is what will allow your business to grow without too many growing pains.
In an increasingly connected and changing world, the Three Ps will allow you to adapt and progress with the changes that will inevitably keep coming. Have a Craftsman Mindset. Or as Paul Hawkins once said at a small training meeting I attended back in 2010, become “students of the industry.”
Author
Eli Gillespie, CIC, AFIS
Gillespie Insurance Services
Redlands, CA
